thoughts and actions and other things.

around the world in 79 days

2009-11-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

On the last day of living somewhere on the other side of the world, it's hard to know how to feel. Saturday, August 1st, 2009 marked an immense change in my life as my two years in Japan ended once I took that final bus ride to Kansai Airport. What follows are the events that happened after Caitlin and I left our apartments in Japan until almost three months later when we arrived back in our home state of Pennsylvania. With this entry I did not split each country into separate posts as to preserve continuity. And so it beings with plane ride to neighboring China with our sights set on the Trans-Siberian Railway...

China - 8/1 to 8/4

As we boarded the flight bound for Beijing, I knew that our cultural surroundings were about to change drastically. The veil of predictability and order in Japan disappeared in the form of a giant group of people carrying what seemed like completely random things stuffed hastily into large plastic bags. Though soon after this I would become quickly familiar with this scene, it was funny to see the Japanese employees at Kansai try to retain their cool as the China-bound passengers pushed forward toward the checked baggage counter. Actually, breaks in order like this became not only amusing but downright relieving by the end of my time in Japan...a good sign that I should be leaving, I think.

The interesting thing about our flight to Beijing is that it made an unannounced stop in a smaller city (Yantai or Tainjin possibly) where all passengers were told to get off so that we could be exposed to a body temperature calibrator. Caitlin failed the test and was kept separate from the rest of the passengers while I imagined what I would do with my time if she was quarantined for some strange amount of time. Thankfully, however, they determined that her runny nose was not a case of Swine Flu and were back on another flight later on that evening.

Beijing is crazy. If I were to try and imagine a place that is completely the opposite from Japan, there would be no need because that place already exists and it's called Beijing. It's so crazy that I need to go back there some time just to see if the rest of the city is as chaotic as the areas that I experienced. Shirtless men walk around and slap their stomachs as they spit in between sips of beer as the cloud of pollution that engulfs the city adds to the haze of motion that never stops and never calms. On top of this, there is so much culture here that it's worth spending significant amounts of time exploring.

We only had about three days in Beijing but it was enough for this particular visit. Reflecting upon the experiences like finding a seemingly clean restaurant that was open late, staying on a street that seriously looked like a war zone, being the closest that I have ever been to either crashing in a car or making a serious consideration to overtake the driver as to limit his death wish to himself and not his passengers...all of these things will remind me of what an adventurous to start a long journey across the world.

Mongolia - 8/5 to 8/11

Mongolia was quite an experience. I don't know if I could even vaguely compare it to any other place that I have ever been yet almost everything that I read about the country before visiting held true- people still do live in ger communities (sometimes referred to as yurts), Ulaan Bataar (aka "UB") is not the safest place in the world, and, most everyone rides horses in the countryside.

The train ride from Beijing to UB marked the beginning of the Trans-Mongolian leg of the Trans-Siberian railway and I must say that it was a pleasant introduction to a total of six days and nights of trains headed toward Moscow. Most of the people on here were adventurous Westerners, a trend that definitely did not continue on future legs of the journey...

Six days is an awkward amount of time to be in Mongolia because it's too short for a lengthy Gobi Desert tour yet one is left with a lot of free time in UB even if you take a trip for a few days in the countryside. We ended up doing the latter, hopping in a minivan to Gorkhi Terelj National Park where we played frisbee with little kids, rode horses, hiked, observed nomadic life and slept in a ger.

It was a nice experience but a few days was enough so we headed back to UB to see if there were any more tour opportunities of a similar time length. Unfortunately, there were none and we were confined to a hostel for something like four days. I do not used the word 'confined' unintentionally here because there were many signs posted in our hostel warning to stay off the streets after midnight. Actually, weird stuff happens in UB any time of the day. An example would be when a random Mongolian person, while talking on a cell phone, tried to take things out of Caitlin's purse as we walked down Peace Avenue in the middle of the afternoon. I fortunately glanced back and saw him reach for the purse, his face showing no change in emotion and I pushed him away. Worse than this was getting hit by rocks thrown by a gang of homeless children whose faces and pleas for money had become all too familiar by the time that we finally caught the weekly train into Russia.

Nevertheless, Mongolia is a stunningly beautiful country that has amazing mix of influences from the Cyrillic alphabet to the sustained reverence for the great Ghengis Khan. It was a bit of an accomplishment to make it out of there but my memories of this strange, fascinating place were worth the effort.

All of that said, the flexibility of our trip worked to our favor at this point as we decided to head north into the one country that Caitlin had first talked about visiting since we met a few years back...

Russia - 8/12 to 8/28

Getting into Russia is not easy and pretty much everyone in the world needs a visa to go there. My personal experience of acquiring a Russian visa is not one that I would like to repeat (having to send my passport from Japan to America and then back to Japan, only to have it lost in the mail for 10 days though finally arriving two days before a trip to Indonesia...) though it was much more difficult because I was living abroad. All I can say is that I will never again put my trust in post office in my hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, though, strangely enough, a similar thing happened in Japan when applying for our Chinese visas right before taking this trip.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that fully independent traveling through Russia is not something that is encouraged by the powers-that-be. It's very common here to do group tours and stay in expensive hotels and the authorities tolerate it because although outside influence is not very welcome you are at least kept within view while handing over a large chunk of your rubles. We decided to not go through a tour agency in order to see the country from a real perspective (also because we could not afford to stay in the expensive hotels). This decision proved to be one that let us into a world that most Americans have no clue about: the curious, passionate, and enigmatic Russian people.

One of the positive things about the dominance of these high end hotels is that a market on the opposite end has opened up as many middle-class Russians have opened up their apartments to budget travelers like ourselves. Of the two and a half weeks that we spent in the country, we never once stayed in a hotel or hostel but had dinners, chatted, and enjoyed beers (and, yes, a lot of vodka) with everyday people.

First, though, the train ride ride was something to talk about. This second leg of three Trans-Siberian trains traveled from Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia to Irkutsk, Siberian Russia and was a uniquely strange purgatory between nomadic central Asia and the European descendants of eastern Siberia. Our train car happened to be without air conditioning or a restaurant car so we were stuck enjoying our spicy ramen out of styrofoam containers while watching the barren Mongolian steppe slowly fade into dense Siberian woodlands.

I remember it being so hot and unventilated in our train compartment on this day that we had decided to lie down in our underwear just to get through it. Right as we had just settled into this routine, the door suddenly flung open and we were faced with two local Mongolians who seemed to be our new cabin mates, looking less than thrilled to discover that we were occupying the same space for the evening. They ended up spending most of their efforts hiding the things that they were smuggling across the border which included baby socks, leather jackets, and sparkly purses. The tension was broken up a bit as the Mongolian woman stuffed various goods down her pants in order to hide them from the Russian border guards. Her laughter was of amusement while ours occurred because Caitlin and I knew that things could not possibly get much weirder.

After spending six or seven hours waiting at the Mongolian/Russian border, we were on our way to Irkutsk in Siberian Russia. The weather was beautiful and it had cooled down significantly now that we had gone further north, allowing us to feel a bit more relaxed as we pulled into the station. However, we were now in a completely different culture that could not possibly be more different from where we had lived for the last two years. As the train slowly snaked through the Siberian woods, we observed small towns made up entirely of beautiful small, wooden houses that would define the architecture of this frontier-like part of the country.

After a night at an amazingly hospitable woman's apartment in Irkutsk (we discovered her place after politely knocking on her fence), we had decided to make take a six hour bus ride to Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake and source of 1/5 of our planet's fresh water. The two days on Olkhon Island (located in the middle of the lake) were amazing for a lot of reasons- we got to stay on a farm, eat some good Russian food, and meet some Slovenian travelers that come into play later in this story. Lake Baikal was definitely one of the most far-removed placed that we had visited on our entire trip.

The next and final leg of our Tran-Siberian Railway was the 9,000km (6,000 mile) trek from Siberia (Irkutsk) to European Russia (Moscow). This route is a non-stop journey, four days and four nights in duration, a fitting experience that holds the title of the World's Longest Train Ride. We rode third class the entire way and it averaged out to $120 each to travel what ends up being about twice the length of the United States from coast to coast. I might say that this might be the most "cultural" thing that I have ever done, and I think that the pictures may speak for themselves in order to back this statement up.

After a LOT of quality time with local Russians (vodka and all), we had finally stepped foot in Europe's largest city. Moscow is a sprawling and dynamic place where classic architecture abounds while the English language is virtually nowhere to be seen (I'm not complaining, just observing). If we weren't able to read Cyrillic letters, there would have been no way to match up the street names written in our English guide with those that were faced with while in Russia. But, this was a lot easier to make sense of than a lot of the signs that I had to decipher while living in Japan. Anyway, Moscow is a wonderful place that I want to visit again sometime in the future. We found the cheapest place in town to stay which was with a couple named Galina and Sergei's apartment (see a video of her place here) that averaged out to 300 rubles ($10) per night.

At this time Caitlin was fighting off a sickness from four days on the train while I got to experience a Friday night of clubbing in the city after meeting up with my bother's friend and born-and-raised Muscovite, Andrey. That particular night ended after I had lost track of Andrey (among other things) and fell asleep outside of the Metro station while waiting for it to open at 5:30am.

The remaining time in Moscow was spent with our French roommate at Galina and Sergei's place. She had spent a year living/studying in Poland so a lot of the language skills that she had learned were transferable to Russian which helped us out as we were attempting to buy train tickets to St. Petersburg. Being French, our companion was naturally an extremely hospitable friend to Caitlin and myself as she actually served us some apple compote made from some leftover food that we had from the big train ride (we had to take food for the entire four days with us on the train). As well as working towards her PhD in political science (and speaking five languages fluently at age 23), you well might run into her at the Eiffel Tower where she works as a tour guide.

So, we did eventually make it to St. Petersburg, knowing that we only had a few days before our strict 30 day tourists visas were to expire. Caitlin had arranged a place to stay with a Couchsurfing host so after yet another sleepless train ride, I borrowed (and paid) a policeman to use his phone to call our potential host for the next few days. Soon after this, we met up with Alexander, a 22 year old recent graduate and newcomer to St. Petersburg. We got to see the unparalleled Hermitage Museum of art and culture, teach Alexander how to add tomato sauce to pasta noodles (he still wants me to send him this ingenious recipe), and watch weird music videos from the early 90s on Russian TV.

On the downside, Alexander ruined some of our clothes due to his lack of knowledge of his half-broken washing machine and he then creeped us out by hanging out alone in a dark room in his apartment while drinking beer and staring out the window. I do know for sure that he was happy to both practice his English with Caitlin and me and bragged over the phone about having "real, live Americans" in his presence. Our two days with Alexander were well spent but by the end had duly earned the infamous nickname of "Creeps".

And that was Russia. Our two and a half weeks here were some of the most interesting and memorable of our long journey back home. However, by this time we were ready for a break from the often esoteric Soviet atmosphere. Thankfully for us, the next place that decided to go would be more like home than any of the 13 countries that we passed through over these three months.

Finland - 8/29 to 9/6

Finland has a nickname for itself- "Little America." I'm not sure how many Americans are aware of this title, but Finnish people take a lot of pride in having many of the comforts of my own country exist in theirs as well. For example, you can spend hours upon hours lost in a Kärkkäinen the same way you would in a super Walmart. They even have their own completely unique version of Finnish baseball...a very confusing thing to watch on TV if you are used to the "standard" rules seen in most other parts of the world.

Crossing the Russo-Finnish border provided quite a culture shock for both of us. Often outdated communist-era buildings were now replaced with ultra-modern Scandinavian designs that instantly made us feel more at home, possibly due to resemblance to things that we used to see in Japan. The bureaucracy that seemed to tie up most things in Russia had now disappeared and though the language was baffling, seeing roman characters once again reminded us that we were now not so far from home.

After a freezing night of camping with our newly acquired tent in Helsinki, we met up with some friends of friends who were willing to take us to their house in the suburbs of Lahti for the weekend. Little did we know that Sami and Marjo would be the nicest and most trusting people we could have ever imagined as we ended up attending their son's Verner's birthday party, seeing the biggest ski jump that I've ever seen, and experiencing true sauna culture.

Suburban Finland did seem a lot like suburban America. However, the emphasis on winter activities (even in the summer) was something that sets Finland apart from the things that I grew up around. In fact, after riding the train back from Helsinki with Marjo, the first thing that we did was spend time in their sauna. Afterward, they were very excited to hear if we liked it (and of course we did) and offered us a beer as we sat in our towels in their back yard. It seemed like not long ago that we were sharing a cramped train berth with Mongolian smugglers so taking all of this into account we were pretty happy travelers at this point.

The skiing museum was also a source of great pride for the people of Lahti and we were amazed to see people actually go down a full sized ski jump in the middle of summer...

After a wild night of karaoke in downtown Lahti, we headed to a lake in the central part of the country where Sami let us use a wood fired sauna near his family's cabin. We spent that afternoon alternating between heating ourselves up and then jumping in the freezing water to cool down.

The rest of our nearly two weeks in Finland were spent hitchhiking (from Turku to Pori),

camping (in abandoned campgrounds),

and staying with more incredibly nice people (near the city of Vaasa).

We left the country feeling revived and ready for Eastern Europe.

Sweden - 9/7 to 9/9

We only went to Sweden because it ended up being cheaper to take a boat there before heading to Estonia and the European mainland. By this time we were ready to get out of Scandinavia, mostly because of the insultingly high prices for transportation and accommodation. We did our best to avoid these costs, only paying for a room one night out of the twelve days that we were there. But, when you step onto the Stockholm subway and are forced to pay five Euros for riding for it two stops, you want to get out of Scandinavia.

At the least, the boat ride was nice.

And we had finally come across at grocery stores, for the first time in our trip, MEXICAN FOOD. This was big.

Estonia - 9/10 to 9/16

By the time we got to Estonia, Caitlin and I knew that we needed a break from each other. After seven weeks of making every single decision together we were welcoming some alone time for a few weeks. However, we stuck it out in Estonia and hung out for another week before splitting up. Being in a country that we both really liked made us feel upbeat about our upcoming alone time.

The capital city of Tallinn is an awesome scene straight out of Europe's past. Though we saw a lot of the 'old town' areas of Eastern Europe, this was my first and probably favorite of them all.

The next adventure was the island of Saaremaa. Here, I consumed what might have been the best beer that I've ever had in my life- a 10% bottle of Saaremaa Ale that I had with popcorn while watching the movie First Kid with acclaimed comedian Sinbad. Strangely enough, I would share a flight to Milwaukee with Sinbad a mere two months after this very memorable evening.

Now that we had spent some of the more pleasant time had on the trip together, we were now ready for a much needed two weeks of traveling separately.

Latvia - 9/17 and 9/18

After Estonia, Caitlin's plan was to bus straight to Warsaw while mine included hanging back and seeing the other two Baltic States: Latvia and Lithuania. My experiences in these two countries were short (about two days each) but I was just happy to concentrate on reading, cooking for myself, and taking pictures.

Riga, Latvia was a nice stopover. I watched the owner of my hostel get drunk while entertaining a young female friend of his, highlighting some very interesting cultural differences in work etiquette. I also found a modern photography exhibit which I really loved and that alone made my memories of Latvia positive ones.

(One more thing to note while I was in Latvia was that we chose a flight home during this time. Our departure date would be October 16, 2009 out of Rome, Italy so we now had a concrete date and city to work around, although we both knew that we had many options for our route to get to our final destination.)

Lithuania - 9/19 and 9/20

I will remember Lithuania as the country where I read a good chunk of Crime and Punishment. I was, however, very impressed with the city of Vilnius and its enormous old town neighborhood.

Poland - 9/21 to 9/27

Poland. I love Poland. My great-grandparents came from here so I felt a particularly strong attachment to my experience. The most homesick that I ever became during the trip was when I ate pierogies and had a good beer after a weekend of hiking...that must say something about my attachment to Poland.

I spent some time in Warsaw just wrapping up Dostoevsky's mind games before checking out the post-WWII resurrections of the city. I found a good vegan restaurant and just enjoyed the wide open plazas before plotting my next move to Krakow.

The vibe in the city was a really interesting one, incorporating both the old and the new.

In Krakow, I met a woman who insisted that I take her picture by some good lighting after giving me a tour of the area. She told me that she was rich because she married a wealthy man but had too much free time oh her hands. I couldn't offer any practical advice for that problem but nevertheless enjoyed the chat.

The best part of Poland was without a doubt the small mountain town of Zakopane. Nestled at the base of the Tatra Mountains, Zakopane is as much a destination for Polish nationals as it is with vacationing foreigners. These were the first mountains that I encountered in Europe so I was excited to get out and hike that weekend.

My final thought on Poland has to be the food. Eating the real thing after growing up on the frozen variety of pierogis validated my love for this food. Thumbs up on pretty much everything that I consumed here, but the pierogis were definitely number one on my list.

Fried cheese came in second...

and the beer, third.

Czech Republic - 9/28 to 10/3

Prague has a special place in Caitlin's heart because she studied abroad there in 2005 and over the years in Japan I had heard a lot about how much she wanted to go back to visit her host family of mother and daughter pair Jitka and Kristyna (whose family had now expanded to husband Peter and newest addition Karolina). They had also heard a lot about me so we were all looking forward to the meeting. Prague also marked the end of the 'alone time' portion of the trip as Caitlin and I met up after two weeks of separate travels.

Prague feels like a very creative place, which makes sense as exists within various crossroads of cultural influences. I have other friends that have lived here and can see why it's such a popular destination. I feel like we got out a good amount during our week here but also feel like we spent an equal amount of time hanging out with Jitka, Kristyna and the rest of the crew.

After this, we hopped on a train, opened a Kozel (our favorite beer of the trip) and set off for Austria.

Austria - 10/3 to 10/4

The only positive thing that I can say about Austria is that I know that I never want to go back to Salzburg. I also made a salad out of the contents in my food bag that added up to something really worth mentioning. Seriously, it was a very good salad.

Slovenia - 10/5 to 10/11

Though it's difficult to make comparisons like this, I might say that Slovenia is my favorite country in Europe. The funny thing is that we only visited here because we had befriended Gasper and Klavdija, two very hospitable Slovenes that we'd met while in Siberia a few months back. Back then I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn't quite place their country on a map if I had to. However, after going there, it would be one of the first place that I'd want to return to in Europe.

Though Slovenia is not a big place we felt lucky to be staying with what turned out to be two well known theater people. Gasper was most recently the host of the children's karaoke television show Umkovizija (look for him in the background at 0:15) and was currently performing in the play 'Revizor' by Nikolai Gogol while Klavdija is a costume designer for various theater productions. After a long night out with Gasper in the lively capital of Ljubljana, we watched him give a spirited performance in front of a packed house that evening.

Gasper and Klavdija were eager to show us the hot spots in the city during the few days that we had there. Fortunately for us, Slovenian culture places just as much emphasis on nature as it does any man made attraction so we soon found ourselves exploring ravines, dried up lakes, and receiving lessons in which wild tree branches are good to smoke (a Slovenian tradition).

The Julian Alps were another natural highlight. After seeing the famous castle at Lake Bled, we decided to venture a bit more off the tourist track to Bohinj (which also has a nice lake) in order to get one final stretch of hiking in before our impending return back to the States in about a week and a half. There were only a few tourists in Bohinj so we felt like we had the mountains all to ourselves. We even had a local dog follow us on our hike for the day. When trying to return him to his owner at the end of the hike, we were told not to worry because he was known for latching onto hikers just for the exercise.

It's a little known fact that pizza and wine are considered better in Slovenia than in Italy by locals who most likely had the chance to compare the two since Italy shares Slovenia's western boundary. I would encourage anyone who is interested to also take part in this culinary exploration.

As our time in Slovenia came to a close, we were well rested after a few days at Klavdija's house in the countryside (including some homemade pumpkin soup), Gasper and Klavdija drove us to the coastal town of Piran where I had some delicious polenta and some of Caitlin's feta stuffed grilled squid. Not cutting into our enjoyment of this final evening, we then rushed to the train station where we caught our train to Venice with less than a minute to spare. An amazing end to some time very well spent in our new favorite country.

Italy - 10/12 to 10/16

For me, being in Italy again was the final reward after months of traveling though unknown territory. Our main concern here was to spend a lot of the money that we painstakingly saved up in other places on some good Italian food and wine. So, that's exactly what we did while spending some time in Rome.

I was also lucky enough to visit Celano, the town where my ancestors are from. Five minutes after getting off of the train, I knew I was in the right place.

We didn't plan on spending the night there, but were persuaded by the friendly locals to do so. Seeing this small, traditional community made me happy to be mingling with people that are most likely my distant relatives.

After this it was back to New York, then back to Pittsburgh. The first bit of culture shock was on the airplane as we found a SkyMall magazine and looked at the edition titled "Tastes of America" with amazingly oversized roast beef and chipped ham sandwiches on the cover. It made both of us laugh so hard that we almost cried.

And just like that, we were back in Pittsburgh where not much has changed in the past few years. In fact, we arrived the terminal right in the middle of a Steelers game so a lot of the normal airport operations ceased so that people could watch it. And, once again, I knew that I would have to find my own way in a culture that, in ways, seemed even harder to relate to than before I was stranger to it. That challenge remains to this day as I have thoroughout these two years redefined my priorities, my self, and my surroundings.

I could only hope that at some other point in my life would I be able to learn as much as I have in through these 79 days and 13 countries. But, if anything, I know now more than ever that knowledge and experience have no limit so I'm not counting it out.

saying goodbye in between a million other things

2009-07-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well, things have been quite busy with me recently but now that my last day of work is done (as of earlier today), I've got two weeks of odds and ends to do before I leave Japan. This whole week was full of farewells from students, teachers, friends, and anyone else that I've befriended over the past two years. I feel like I want to give a massive review and analysis of all of the things that I have seen, done, and learned while living here but if I started doing that, honestly, this post would never end.

However, a good insight to some reflections about living and teaching in rural Japan can be gained by reading the speech I gave to my students and teachers during my final day at each school. Below, you can see it written first in Japanese characters followed by a pronunciation in roman characters (how it sounds when spoken) and finally a translated English version.

今、夏がきて、皆さんは遊ぶことに忙しいでしょう。私も楽しみたいですけれどちょっと時間がありません。なぜなら私はすぐにアメリカに帰りますから。二年間他の国でよい経験になりました。鳴門に住んで今、二年前とは別人になりました。日本での生活は挑戦がいっぱいでした。例えば私がアメリカから引っ越しをしてきた時、日本語は全然勉強していませんでした。でも他の言語を習いたかったから、日本語はとても難しかったけれど私の選択はある意味正しかったです。　鳴門で少しずつ勉強していきました。今は話すことができますけどアメリカでも勉強したいです。他のチャレンジと言えば一人で料理や、洗濯や、掃除など。初めてのことばかりでした。
　いつも働いている時、または家にいる時、私はたくさんのことをしています。自分の国では、それらは簡単にできます。私が大切なことをする時、時々日本語の会話は難しすぎました。それでも毎日新しいことをだんだんと習いました。また、私はいつも自転車で学校に行っていましたから、毎朝私の足はとても疲れていました。日本の生活で一番大変だったことの一つは自転車での移動でした。車があればよかったな。私の気持ちが落ち込んだ時は、生徒の顔を見ると元気になりました。この関係はとても特別だと思います。生徒からの手紙や英会話を頑張ることをいつも思っています。将来この思い出が生活の中で一番懐かしく思い出されるでしょう。その気持ちをずっと大切にしていきたいと思います。鳴門での二年間は決して忘れません。

Ima, natsu ga kite, minasan wa asobukoto ni isogashii deshou. Watashi mo tanoshimitai desu keredo chotto jikan ga arimasen. Nazenara watashi wa sugu ni America ni kaerimasu kara. Ninenkan hokano kuni de yoi keiken ni narimashita. Naruto ni sunde. Ima ninen mae towa betsujin ni narimashita. Nihon de no seikatsu wa chousen ga ippai deshita. Tatoeba watashi ga America kara hikkoshi wo shitekita toki, nihongo zenzen benkyou shitemasen deshita. Demo hoka no gengo wo naraitakatta kara, nihongo wa totemo muzukashikatta keredo watashi no sentaku wa aru imi tadashikatta desu. Naruto de sukoshizutsu benkyou shite ikimashita. Ima hanasukoto ga dekimasu kedo America de mo benkyou shitai desu. Hoka no charenji to ieba hitori de sumu koto deshita. Mainichi hitori de ryori ya, sentaku ya, souji nado hajimete no koto bakari deshita.

Itsumo hataraiteiru toki mata wa ie ni iru toki. Watashi wa takusan kantan ni dekimasu. Watashi ga taisetsu na koto wo surutoki tokidoki nihongo no kaiwa wa muzukashisugimashita. Soredemo mainichi atarashii koto wo dan dan to naraimashita. Mata, watashi wa itsumo jitensha de gakko ni imashita kara maiasa watashi no ashi wa totemo tsukarete imashita. Nihon no seikatsu de ichiban taihen datta koto no hitotsu wa jitensha de no idou deshita. Kuruma ga areba yokatta na. Watashi no kimochi ga ochikonda toki wa seito no kao wo miru to genki ni narimashita. Kono kankei wa totemo tokubetsu to omoimasu. Seito kara no tegami ya eikaiwa wo ganbarukoto wo itsumo omotte imasu. Shourai kono omoide ga seikatsu no naka de ichiban natsukashiku omoidasareru deshou. Sono kimochi wo zutto taisetsu ni shiteikitai to omoimasu. Naruto de no ninenkan wa kesshite wasuremasen.

These days summer has made its way here and everyone is busy enjoying themselves. I would also like to be doing the same but for me my time is running out because I'll soon be returning to America. Living in another country for two years has been a great experience. All of this time I've been in Naruto and I can say that two years ago I was a different person. But, for me, Japanese life was full of challenges. For example, I had never studied Japanese before coming to Japan. I had wanted to learn another language but I think my choice was interesting because Japanese is very difficult. However, I think I made the right decision. While living in Naruto, I studied little by little and now I can communicate and when I go back to America I'd like to keep studying. It was challenging to do all this while living alone. Every day I would cook, clean, or do laundry by myself and it was my first time experiencing a routine like this.

During my time here it seemed like I was always busy either working or doing something at my apartment. It felt as if I always had plans lined up. However, it's easier to do even simple things in your home country. Sometimes the Japanese ability that was required to do something very important proved to be too difficult. And, yet, every day I gradually learned something new. Also, I was faced with a bike ride every morning that left my legs sore when arriving at school. This actually might have been the most difficult part of my life in Japan. Taking a car would have been a lot easier, I'm sure. But, whenever I was faced with these difficulties, seeing the students always cheered me up. The relationship that I have had with them was a special one and I'll never forget the letters that they wrote me, the English conversations that we have had, or any time when they really gave their best effort. These really will become some of my best memories of my life and the results of my efforts was worth it. There's no way I could ever forget the two years that I spent in Japan.

Done and done...and so far it feels nice to be an ex-English teacher. It actually kind of feels like I just got done running a two year marathon. My last time giving the speech was great. It was this morning during an assembly at the technical high school and as I sat there waiting to give it, I thought about what an amazingly different culture I had just lived in for two years. I had a Tim Kinsella song in my head and as I took the stage I sensed a giant wave of relief that seemed like it was a few years in the making...

__________________________________________________

On another subject, I somehow was able to take another trip to Indonesia a few weeks ago...and I'm still not really sure how I was able to pull that off. Jon flew in from Korea and took his bike while I rented one for about $2 a day and used someone's old motorcycle helmet because Balinese people are incredibly nice and won't hesitate to help you out if you need something (ESPECIALLY transport). We biked for three days to a volcano and then back to Ubud where we ate consecutive raw meals for days on end. Bali the second time around was even better than the first and I found myself running into the same locals (one of whom remembered my name actually) on this surprisingly small island.

Next stop: China, August 1st...

in search of cardboard boxes

2009-06-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day that I felt significant anxiety about moving. Thinking about all the things that I need to take care of in the next month could really stress me out but I'm going to take it day by day and still go plum picking even if I should be figuring out my tax refund or packing up my apartment.

signs of summer

2009-06-11T04:41:00.000-07:00

So, summer is here but it's not actually hot yet and I've been spending a lot of time hanging around my apartment after a full day's teaching and biking. It's so nice to have my windows and door wide open before the cicadas emerge for the season. When they do, nights here are filled with the sound of constant buzzing and wings flapping awkwardly towards the lights located outside my apartment. I'll only be here for another month and a half so if anything I'll just catch a glimpse of the full-on summer heat and bugs. I don't think I'll miss either of these things too much.

These days, however, I am thinking a lot about the good people that I am about to leave in Japan.

Although I know that moving on from this experience is good for me, many of my thoughts will remain with those who have I've shared this unique life with- one that can only be truly understood unless you have been here, living it first hand.

soaked almond and sudachi juice raw dessert

2009-05-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

One thing that I can say for sure about living where I do for two years is that I've become pretty domesticated. On a normal day, biking and cooking seem to take up the majority of my time when I'm not at work. Yesterday, Caitlin and I spent the day doing both of these things as we ended up making a desert using only uncooked ingredients. My camera was sitting around so I decided to show how we created it.

The first step we took was to soak about three cups of almonds in water overnight. My mom had included these in a recent package and I wanted to make some kind of raw meal with them but had not really thought about what I wanted that to be exactly. I had a lot of raw honey and coconut oil so I figured that a dessert would probably work out best. After coming across this website we decided to go for a Key Lime Pie taste, replacing the limes with sudachi- a locally grown fruit that looks like a small lime and has a similar flavor.

After soaking the almonds overnight in filtered water (soaking like this is a common way to soften nuts before blending or whipping them in a food processor), we took off the skins in order to have a smooth yogurt-like consistency after they have been whipped. This is what the almonds looked like after a night of soaking and with no skins:

I ended up whipping the almonds in two batches for about five minutes per group. I never really measure ingredients when cooking so I just added water to the mix as the food processor was running in order to get the consistency right. It looked like this when I was done:

Next, I poured the contents onto a strainer in order to separate the almond milk from the whipped mass. I don't think this step is very crucial but it's nice to have some almond milk to use for my coffee or something like that.

Now that we had the base for our dessert, we went to the store and bought some fruits to mix with the whipped almonds to give it the taste that we wanted. Caitlin squeezed about 30 sudachis and exctacted about a cup of juice that would serve as the main flavor of the pie filling.

To make the crust, I blended a bag (250 grams) of prunes with some more (uncooked) almonds, cashews, a half of a banana, and the juice from one lemon. Any time I had ever made a crust with prunes or dates it has been really good and this time was no exception. After finding a container to use, I pressed the mixture into a crust.

Next, we blended one avocado, one mango, a half of a banana, the sudachi juice, some uncooked coconut oil, and several large spoonfuls of raw honey together in the food processor. The mixture was then combined with the whipped almonds to create the raw pie filling.

The final step was to simply pour the filling into the crust and enjoy the sight of a totally uncooked, all-natural desert.

I put it in the freezer (which some people would say takes away the pure 'raw' title) in order to harden the filling and just had my first taste of it this morning. I didn't feel bad eating this desert for breakfast because it's mainly just fruits and nuts...but I'm sure I'll be eating this at the end of every meal this week because it turned out so good.

So, that was one of a few things that we made yesterday. If you have any questions about the recipe you can email me (brad.direnzi@gmail.com) or, better yet, buy a raw food cookbook if you really want to get into it.

life these days

2009-05-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I have two months left of work here in Japan and I can tell that things will be busy until I depart. Plans for each weekend seem to fill up quickly as most recent events have been geared toward outdoor things, as they should be in spring. About a week ago my friend Rika and I took advantage of some nice weather and hiked to the top of Shikoku's (and Western Japan's) highest point on the summit of Mt. Ishizuchisan in Ehime Prefecture. It was steeper than anything I've been to around here and I enjoyed the challenge of climbing up the metal links draped along the sides of its cliffs.

Hiking in Japan is mostly done by retired couples though it's not too rare too see college students out with their school clubs. There is a sacred importance of nature here that's well exhibited when your're out on a hike...something that's a bit hard to put into words which can compare it to hiking in places outside of Japan. The same respect that Japanese people place on things such food, bathing, and language is also shown within their view of places like Ishizuchisan.

On this day, we were out from 11:30 to 5:30, finishing just in time to bathe in a local hot spring onsen and eat some dinner. After a campfire beside the Yoshinogawa River, sleep came pretty quickly.

The whole next week was reserved for my junior high schools to prepare for their Sports Day on the weekend. I wasn't able to go to the actual event but definitely participated in more than enough of the practices. My students really liked being outside even though they were jumping rope for hours and hours on end.

On Friday I cut out of work a bit early in order to bike 80km across Tokushima and attend a friend's 25th birthday party the following evening. We all ate some great things cooked over hot coals and I drank someone else's expired sangria which tasted exactly like really sweet soy sauce. It was a beautiful night with great people and most of them ended up on a giant fort/castle/playground thing where we hung off of rope nets and looked for constellations in the sky. I don't think that too many were identified at that point in the evening.

On Sunday morning I woke up without feeling too bad, quickly remembering that I was faced with another (at least) four hour bike ride back home. I left around 2:00pm and this time I followed a path between the highway and the river and was cooled off by a bit of rain along the way. Biking back east was much easier than the opposite direction because it's mostly a downhill slope.

Though I've got only two months left here things are still feeling very normal. My neighbor Theo and I are now teaching a weekly hour and a half long 'Travel English' class (the definition of that title being completely open to our interpretation) where we finally see that there actually are some young people that live in our town. In some other current news, over a hundred swine flu cases in Japan were discovered very close to where I live and there are rumors that schools may close in order prevent its spread. Another fellow teacher and Naruto resident, Sarah, was told this morning to stockpile two weeks worth of food in her apartment just in case she is quarantined. Flu paranoia was sparked pretty quickly when news of it came about here. I'll make an assumption that it's because I'm foreign, but a lot of people are straight up asking me if '[I] have swine flu.' In reality, this is just a more prioritized question that prefaces the usual inquiries ('Do you have a girlfriend?', 'Can you eat Japanese food?', etc.). Although I can easily deal with answering one addition to the same ten questions that I'm asked over and over again, one thing that might actually put me over the edge these days is the amount of times that I have heard "YES WE CAN!!!" screamed in my direction. These three words have also become a guaranteed way to strike up laughter when delivered with a loud voice (usually by a class bully) as a response to ANY question posed by a foreign teacher. Not that people know any better, but I would not like the man that has brought about a pride in my country that I never even knew that I had to be trivialized as so many other things seem to be here. But at this point, as I always have done, I just have to make myself laugh at the ridiculousness of all of it.

So, I'll be busy planning my travels for August and September when Caitlin and I head to Beijing to ride the world's longest train route ending in Moscow (well, maybe technically speaking the Trans-Mongolian route is not actually the longest). After Moscow, it looks like we'll be flying to Poland and then making our way to the Czech Republic where we've got an ex-host family to put us up for a bit. Then we my leave things pretty open and stick around Eastern Europe, but that much has not been thought out thus far...

OK, time to watch some Flight Of The Conchords episodes.

(p.s. Happy birthday, Grandma!!)

kyushu roadtrip

2009-05-11T05:28:00.000-07:00

The first week of May in Japan is Golden Week- a time where most Japanese people have a bit of time off from work and can explore their country or travel abroad. This year Caitlin, Dianne and myself took an adventurous road trip from Tokushima to the southern island of Kyushu- the only one of Japan's four main islands that I've never been to. We had four or five days to explore by car and spent them economically by camping out for three of these evenings (two of them for free and with permission at an abandoned campsite). We all wanted to spend a significant amount of time outdoors exploring some parts of northern Kyushu and I think that we got a good feel for things here even though we were visiting for a relatively short period of time.

After a lot of driving and a ferry ride to the city of Beppu, we came upon a place called Ubayama Farm which seemed as if it was a kind of local tourist spot although there was not much there except for green pastures and cows. Since Tokushima's land mass is about 80% mountainous, being somewhere like this where there is space to take your shoes off and walk on the grass feels incredible. I really never thought that I would miss something so simple as this but living in a town that is sandwiched between mountains and the ocean has made me appreciate coming from a such a wide-open country. We pulled into the campsite right at dusk after following some signs that took us to an overgrown lot with a huge plastic cow and some crazy looking tents that were either used for storage or for people to sleep in. One of these tents contained unicycles and scooters and another contained a pile of hay that we eventually used to make a campfire. An old woman pulled up in a car as we were setting up and gave us the go ahead to camp here even though she told us that the place had been closed for two years. She then gave Dianne an egg as a present (which I think was sitting on her dashboard) and wished us a good night. After going out for a nice meal at a local restaurant, we gathered some wood and had some drinks by the campfire while playing acoustic guitar and singing songs about the lack of foreign visitors in Shikoku. The only line I really remember was Caitlin saying something about me always sitting in my apartment and listening to Pink Floyd.

The next day we ventured out to Mt Aso. A lot of people had recommended me to visit here and we all liked hiking around the eerie volcanic scenery. We camped at another spot next to the mountain and saw a lot of bike gangs who were also on Golden Week road trips. That night we attempted to go out to eat in a smaller town near Aso and were denied four times in a row by restaurant owners as they saw that we are foreigners. Though I am really, really used to xenophobia at this point it is particularly annoying when you are simply trying to eat dinner and are given lame excuses for non-entry when it's 8:00pm and the restaurant you're attempting to patronize is clearly still in operation. But, of course, letting things like this roll off of your back is the best way to deal with it or else you'll spend all your time with the frustrations of feeling like you are perpetually crashing a party upon entry to some Japanese establishments.

After our day of hiking in Aso we checked out Takechiho Gorge and found that we were not the only people to make the day trip here. The scenery was awesome but the Golden Week crowds that a lot of people had warned me about kind of made wish that I was alone on a mountain again. And the larger the crowd that I am in here is usually proportional to how under dressed I feel...not that I worry about that too much.

We spent another night at the abandoned campsite, as the old woman came back to welcome us ("Konban mo, ne?" or "Ah, so you're staying another night?") with good wishes but, unfortunately, no egg. We made another campfire and cooked fish and vegetables wrapped together with aluminum foil as I drank Budweiser and thought about my return to America.

Our final day was in Beppu. We visited the infamous co-ed outdoor mud onsen and it was everything that I thought it would be. Bathing outside in the mud made me feel amazing and I wonder why this practice isn't more common (or maybe it is and I'm just not aware). I would love to go back to Beppu one more time before leaving Japan.

We were then on our way out of the spaciousness of Kyushu and back to the rugged terrain of Shikoku, our home. Back to work, back on my bike, and time to get used to the warm air of summer.

sakura, sakura

2009-04-22T03:18:00.000-07:00

OK, well, the cherry blossoms (sakura) have been gone for a while but I just put the pictures on my computer and I don't know when I'll see them again in Japan so it's worth a blog post. People here wait all year for the sakura to bloom and when they do it signifies the beginning of spring when the kerosene heaters and put back into storage and everyone emerges from their homes to sit under the trees and drink beer. Quite a nice tradition, I think.

naruto to hokkaido by train

2009-04-06T05:18:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I went on a trip to northern Japan. As opposed to going abroad, this time I stayed in the country where I live so that I could travel feeling like a resident. I had no big plans besides a desire to head north, spend time taking pictures, read books, and check out local food. I had ample time to do all of these things and also met a lot of people along the way. Though most of my traveling has been fairly open-ended, I took this chance to really have an experience that depended upon my interactions with people that I met during the trip.

My first stop was Tokyo. After taking the first bus of the day from Naruto to Kobe, I spent 10 hours riding local trains before meeting up with my friend Yuko, who had just recently moved to the city. The next day we went to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) in Kamakura and hung around the seaside for the afternoon.

After spending a few days in town I took off on a 19 hour stretch from Tokyo to the city of Aomori in the northernmost part of Honshu. I left from Tokyo at 10:30pm and reached my destination at 5:30pm the next day, having only one significant break between trains from 4:30am to 6:00am.

Along the way, I stopped in Sakata City where my good friend Julia lived for two years. I had an eight minute stopover but managed to take a bunch of pictures before continuing on my way.

After a night in Aomori and some really good scallop ramen, I was soon heading though the Seikan Tunnel which connects Japan's main island of Honshu with the island of Hokkaido. At this point, I was noticing a lot of the same people were using the same local train ticket (seishun 18 kippu) as me because we were all getting on and off the same trains.

My first stop in Hokkaido was Hakodate, a port city that was one of the first centers of commerce when Japan started to initiate trade with neighboring countries. It's very rare to see red brick buildings in Japan but there are quite a lot of them here. It reminded me a lot of some places that I know in Pittsburgh.

I also came across a photography museum in Hakodate that I really liked. The museum was in a building that was constructed in the 19th century and the rooms looked like they could be in my grandma's farm house.

Six days after departing from Naruto, I made it to Hokkaido's capital city of Sapporo. The snow piled up as we headed north and once I stepped out onto the platform of Sapporo station, I knew that I'd soon have to put on every article of warm clothing that I'd brought.

Sapporo's nice and spacious atmosphere was a welcome change from a lot of the cities near where I live. I was kind of weary after all of the train rides so I spent my time walking around and tasting amazing seafood ramen and having some authentic Indian food at the Jozankei Onsen.

The next day I caught a ride with a guy who was commuting from Sapporo to Asahikawa, a city close to Daisetsuzan National Park. He spoke no English and said that he had never met a foreigner before which made me surprised that he'd gave me a lift. My destination was Mt. Asahidake- the highest point in Hokkaido and a place that I have been wanting to get to since reading about it last year. After a Friday night of drinking local sake in Asahikawa I woke up early the next morning and caught a bus to the park. Going up the mountain really scared me because all of the roads were packed down with snow and the bus driver was speeding up the hill the whole time. It was only me and a family of three on the bus and they seemed to be unphased so I tried not to worry.

As the bus finally made it up the mountain, we were greeted by enormous amounts of snow. I walked over to the log cabin youth hostel and got a room for the night (and in true Japanese fashion they thought I was CRAZY for coming without making a reservation first) and then rented some cross country skis for the cheap price of 500 yen (five dollars). This was my first time on them so I wasn't too graceful but it was a good way of seeing the area and taking some pictures of the snow.

I ended up taking the cable car to the top of the mountain because there would be a few meters of snow that I'd have to contend with if I did it on foot. When I was asking around about Mt. Asahidake most people told me that it's a hit or miss experience depending on the weather. I think that I lucked out on the day that I went.

The next morning I came back to Asahikawa City and then found some rides back to Sapporo, though this time it took significantly longer because we took local roads. Back in the city I took it easy, explored, read, and was amazed by this cake that was for sale for $800:

The next and final stop was the coastal city of Otaru. There are a lot of nice cafes and things here so I took advantage of that atmosphere by hanging around the warehouse district near the port.

In the evening, I caught a show about Naruto wakame (seaweed) and got so excited that I took pictures of the TV to show my students.

Before heading back I had one more day in Otaru. I spent it by going back to the Jozankei Onsen and then making my way to the ferry terminal. By this point I had met so many people on trains, in hostels, and in restaurants that I was already getting phone emails from them. During the entire two weeks I was amazed at the amount of attention that I attracted just by being a Westerner traveling alone.

And then, 22 hours on a ferry, a night spent sleeping outside, and four hours of bus rides (and a bike ride) later, I was back home.

The experience of traveling to northern Japan on local trains was one of the best insights into this culture that I've had. It also turned out to be two weeks of language practice since there seemed to be very little English spoken in a lot of the areas where I stayed. I feel that seeing the country like this was a fitting way to solidify all that I have invested in Japan. Cultural adaption here does not come easily for a many people (and did not for me), but acquiring habits which allow you to see a more real side of life in such a different place is without a doubt worth it to me.

“We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No, sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.”
-Milan Kundera

kaki tabehodai (all you can eat oysters)

2009-03-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Three people, two hours of eating, and, as a result, one week of good health according to Kennsuke.

after all, it's well worth it

2009-03-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the frustrations of living in such a different culture can get to you and bring about feelings of isolation as a minority in an extremely homogeneous population. Recently, I feel like I have been more aware of this fact and have been affected by a wave of culture shock that's compounded by cold weather, an absence of classes during this time of the year (i.e. LOTS of free time at work), and the longing for feelings of anonymity in my community. Granted, I will without a doubt miss those instances when people stop me at the grocery store to tell me that I'm tall, students not being able to comprehend that my eyes really are green and that I'm not wearing color contacts, or people almost crashing their cars as they stare at the foreigner who is jogging beside the rice fields. Although I'll never be able to truly relate to these things, I can at least understand that they happen and not be thrown of just because I can't locate the source of why they occur.

For me, my routine during the winter is simple. I bike to and from work, spend time trying to stay warm by the kerosene heater in the staff room (without feeling lightheaded from the fumes), pick up the usual things from the grocery store, make dinner, and get ready to do it all over again. I generally like the simplicity of this time of the year and because there's no residential central heating here, getting outside and riding my bike for an hour and a half in the cold will probably keep me warmer than sitting under blankets in my apartment. However, as spring approaches, memories of what sometimes seems like a past life where I had a group of friends that I'd often see creep back into my thoughts.

I feel like Japanese culture can be analogous to a powerful locomotive running full speed ahead where those that hop on and join in this way of life are accepted as a part of the culture and those that don't are outcasts. When feeling homesick or culture shock, the 'defined' way of living around me can seem narrow and almost a binary all-or-nothing kind of thing. These feelings are also magnified when you are literally the only non-Japanese person where you work and the 'values' of straightforwardness are not accepted here the way they are in America. In fact, it's seemingly just the opposite. Conversations about what foods are delicious or how cold it is in the winter are the things that keep people united here. It's truly an amazing display of cultural cohesiveness that I could have never imagined without experiencing it firsthand over a long period of time. Of course I take part in these conversations and it makes me feel good that I can navigate through them with ease now that I would say that I have a significant understanding of Japan and its culture. But, I'll always be an outsider here and I am very far from losing sight of this fact.

There is a big difference between these recent, intermittent waves of isolation and how I dealt with similar situations last year. At this point, I understand and recognize signs of culture shock and can give myself ample time to do the things necessary to find relief. Last year's feelings at this time (when I was also experiencing the end-of-winter drag) were grounded on a desire to feel rooted in my situation in general, knowing that I had at least another year and a half in this very different life. The contrast now results in my finite time here. These feeling are still very real but are nowhere near the unidentifiable, sometimes crippling adjustments of being a first year resident.

All of these things in my head can take they cyclic tolls but can also be erased by the reason that I came here- to be a teacher. Living a life that often cannot be backed up by the rational processes of a Western mind suddenly makes sense when, after a year and a half of being their English teacher, you're at the 9th graders' graduation ceremony, standing in front of them and giving a final bow before they go on their way to high school.

So, the fact that I'm getting out of Shikoku for a few weeks starting on Friday is a good thing. Last year I was off to New Zealand but this time I'm keeping it domestic and using the seishun 18 kippu (an inexpensive way to travel on extended breaks by local trains, mostly used by university students) to see more of the country. I'll be doing it alone, trying to get to Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido and, from there, hopefully spending about a week traveling around the area. I should be making plans this weekend for places to stay, etc. but I'll probably just leave it open to make these decisions upon arrival. I'm saving my Alan Watts book for the train (11 hours just to get to Tokyo...) and looking forward to the open fields, mountains, and coastal scenes of northern Japan. Four more days of work and then it's me and my good ol' backpack.

graduation season

2009-03-05T23:40:00.001-08:00

Unlike schools in America, the school year here in Japan ends in March so this time of the year marks significant transitions for the lives of my students.

Last Saturday was Naruto Tech's graduation ceremony which prefaces pursuits of various futures such as carpentry, engineering, music, and sports, while others head straight into the workforce.

As you can see, it was an occasion worthy of some uniquely manicured nails.

Meanwhile at Naruto Jr. High, I taught my last English class to the 9th graders after getting to know them over the past year and a half.

Next Friday, I will be there as they transition from junior high to high school. It's no wonder my suit gets a lot of wear this time of the year.

winter greens

2009-02-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

Tonight my Japanese teacher canceled our lesson together right when I was about to call her to say that that I didn't want to bike to her house in the freezing rain. This left me open to make a nice dinner for myself and spend some time juicing some veggies that I had in my kitchen. Since I go to the grocery store every day there's never a short supply of food in my apartment and tonight, following Matt Monarch's advice, I decided to juice and head of spinach and a bag of carrots. Back when I lived with Jon in Pittsburgh, I would often wake up to find our kitchen in disarray as he had made a similar mixture before heading off to work. The only sense that I could make of it was that Jon was a messy roommate and had little consideration for the shared rooms in our apartment. However, as I observed his strange messes more, I became interested in trying these weird concoctions little by little to see why someone would go though so much trouble just to make a glass of vegetable juice. Little did I know at the time (and without any prodding by Jon), I was going headfirst into the world of raw food meals, garbage bags full of pulp, and frequent but expensive trips to the health food store.

As I learned more about and experimented with eating mostly non-processed, uncooked foods, I saw that creating meals for myself could be a really interesting and practical form of creativity that I had never given much consideration to before. But I didn't go into it with that mindset, really, I was primarily amazed by how much cleaner my whole body felt after drinking some carrot juice or eating a giant salad. It snowballed from there and, after some months of preparation for it, I was eating a strictly raw food diet (see this post from June '07). Jon and that summer's third musketeer, Mr. Anthony Ritchey, joined in as the three of us set out to eat raw together. Living with someone who is also on a raw diet makes it a LOT easier because not only do you have another person to share meals and preparation with, but you've also got an ear to vent the frustrations (and exhilarations) of all the work that's required to creatively eat only vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. Though keeping strictly raw is pretty tough (I did it for about a month), you learn to consume things by substitution- a method that requires some forethought and experimentation. As a simple example, natural sweeteners like raw honey in place of any other sugars, nutritional yeast instead of cheese, and avacadoes or raw cashews as natural sources of fats are all things that have stuck with me to this day as I prepare meals for myself. I think that it's no coincidence that many raw foodists seem so crazy/spacey...at least for me, I felt a lot different mentally and physically when I was eating like this (which is far from the case now).

And now, remembering back to that summer right before I moved to Japan and Jon moved to Korea primarily makes me thing of dancing on Thurday nights, knowing how much I would miss my friends and Pittsburgh, and constantly thinking about what my next meal would be.

naruto technical high school 10k

2009-02-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

Fastest student- 37:20.
Fastest teacher- 40:00 (Yamaguchi sensei, 2nd pic from the bottom).
My time- 45:00 (The plan to stick with the baseball team worked until the last kilometer when I cramped up. I am convinced it's because of the curry that I ate last night for dinner. My reverse psychology of eating whatever I wanted the night before as to not over prepare myself and become nervous came back to haunt me).

mid-february updates

2009-02-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

Thinking back to mid-February of last year brings back memories of freezing bike rides in the morning, teaching while wearing a winter coat, and sleeping under every blanket that I could find in my apartment. These days I have been going running after school in shorts and a t-shirt while fending off the brightness of the sun. I've got to say that I kind of miss the cold weather at the moment because I really like coming home and drinking tea and all night to stay warm...although I'm pretty sure winter still isn't quite over here.

Settling in after this most recent trip to southeast Asia has been significant because I can now feel that my life in Japan has an endpoint that's within sight. A few weeks ago I handed in my official papers letting the Board of Education know that I would not be staying for another year. I feel a little differently now that I (and most of my coworkers) know that come August I won't be living in Japan anymore. However, this can be a positive thing because if I am feeling down for one reason or another I can always say "Well, it's the last winter in Japan" etc, etc. So, as pretty much everyone does, I'm making a mental list of things to do here before heading off to somewhere else.

Changing the subject a bit, I've finally got around to putting many of my pictures online from the last year and a half. Check them out here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/direnzi/

You can browse through albums or just look at them by paging from beginning to end (the most recent ones are shown first). I will soon be uploading some older shots as well so I'll try to label where and when they are from. I plan on putting things up periodically (I've got about 1,600 posted at the moment) and I've also put the same link as above on the right of this page.

Other news...let's see...I have been running for a few weeks in preparation for Naruto Tech's 10k race that will take place tomorrow. I feel like I am in pretty good shape for it and I've been lucky because the warm weather has made it easy to train. A lot of the other teachers will be racing as well and it will be entertaining (as it was last year) to run along with them. I bought proper running shoes for the first time in years and I think that's making it a lot easier to run long distances (10 kilometers is 6.2 miles). The race takes places all throughout the farms by the school- basically the same terrain where I usually go running anyway.

I have been doing lessons on President Obama's inauguration speech with my upper level classes recently and the response has been great. One of my students even went out and bought the transcription of the speech and came to me after class, wanting to know the meaning of specific phrases that she'd highlighted and looked up in her dictionary. You know, it's a really nice thing to be proud of the person who leads the country that you're from.

Also, believe it or not, I'm back to traveling again in about a month. Last year Caitlin and I went around New Zealand (see this post) for spring break and there were a lot of places that I was considering (India, Australia, Vietnam, etc.) before figuring out what kind of trip that I wanted to do. For my last spring here I've decided to spend my vacation time seeing more of Japan while spending as little as possible. I'm looking forward to figuring out some creative ways to make it to some places that are nowhere near where I have spent most of time while living in Japan. If and when more details about my trip unfold, they will be posted.

Finally, because I might as well make this post full of random things, here are some pictures from a recent trip to Gifu. I almost forgot how snowboarding is one of the most fun activities ever...

southeast asia, winter '08/'09 (part one) hiking and exploring in malaysia

2009-01-14T05:10:00.001-08:00

Well, once again I'm back in the Tokushima winter with my piles of blankets, 'heaps' of tea, youtube evenings next to the space heater, and looming thoughts about future employment. For now I'm trying not to stress about the latter as I've recently returned to this comfortable life after three weeks of traveling in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Here's a bit about what happened during this time (and remember that you can click on any of the pictures to see an enlarged version):

The long-awaited winter vacation ('fuyu yasumi') is one where many teachers here get a chance to do some traveling either in Japan or in other parts of the world. Because it's close, warm, and cheap (and awesome), southeast Asia is a very popular destination as I found myself taking a trip to Thailand and Laos during my first winter holiday one year ago (see this post). Having learned from the experience, Caitlin and I didn't do much planning after we had decided to travel together again to a new part of southeast Asia because in this part of the world, you can just simply up and then take it from there.

After a seven hour flight from Osaka to Singapore, we stayed for a night in the city and had a chance have a meal and catch our breath before making our way to the Malaysian section of the island of Borneo- a place known for orangutans, biodiversity, and headhunting tribes. The city of Kota Kinabalu in the Sabah province was home for a short while as Caitlin and I met up with Ann (her sister) and Leah (her cousin) in at the now infamous Lucy's Backpacker Inn. Right away we had some bad luck when Caitlin came down with a severe stomach illness and had to stay in bed for multiple days so we soon moved from Lucy's to a room at the swanky but inexpensive Hyatt Inn close to the waterfront. We all quickly learned the number for room service and spent a lot of time ordering fresh juice while hanging around the hotel. This was my first clue of how amazing the selection and quality of fruits and vegetables would be in this part of the world. Though I am very lucky with what's available in Japan, things just have their own taste near the equator.

Anyway, while Caitlin's condition improved, Ann and Leah both caught her sickness and were now stuck in bed for a few days. I used this time to explore Kota Kinabalu (or 'KK' as everyone calls it) and discovered the amazing night market and gritty, gritty side streets and alleys.

Late night on Christmas Eve, I decided to buy a solo plane ticket to see some caves that were featured on BBC's Planet Earth series. The next day I was on my way to the town of Miri in the Sarawak province as I, in mid-flight, realized that I had confused the city names of 'Mulu' with 'Miri' and needed to catch another flight in order to reach Gunung Mulu National Park to see the caves. Thankfully, I stepped off of the plane in Miri and bought a ticket to Mulu with such ease that I was on a plane heading there 20 minutes later(you gotta love that Air Asia is so cheap that you can take flights on a whim as long as there's a seat for you...). My Christmas day was spent in transit between KK, Miri, and Mulu and I found myself at the park with no accommodation or tour bookings whatsoever (something that the guidebooks strongly recommend against) but I ended up staying in a large dorm room beside the park headquarters for about 15 ringgit (or about $4) a night. After some food and a shower, I went to bed early and listened to the never ending downpour of rain that would have had me convinced that the building was constructed under a waterfall. The next morning, I awoke to find three feet of water covering the steps to the building.

During the next two days I was out and about in the park, seeing the caves and getting to know some great people.

We had to take boat rides to and from the caves that crosses through small villages and schools that I hiked to later on that day. This was the Malaysia that I wanted to see.

Gunung Mulu Park was an amazing experience. It felt nice to travel alone for a short bit and I think that because of the remote location of the park, only very adventurous people ended up there. There is really no nearby town and all supplies must be flown periodically on the tiny airstrip beside the park's headquarters. Everyone that works in Mulu is from a tribe local to the area so the employees were pretty much all related in some way...and you'd quickly get to know this just by chatting with them. After a nice time in the jungle, it was back to KK and on to what would be the most challenging but rewarding part of the trip.

I had never heard of Mt. Kinabalu before buying my plane ticket Malaysia. Upon researching things to do in the Sabah province, I found that it was definitely the main reason for people travel there- the highest mountain in southeast Asia (higher than Mt. Fuji), within the diversity of Kinabalu National Park, and seemingly not an impossible task 'for people of all ages.' Caitlin was just well enough after her sickness to get back to the outdoors so it was fortunate that we had booked our hike on the days that we did. The day before starting out on the mountain, we caught a long distance cab ride from KK to the park and got a good rest the night before. The first day's hike was short but intense with most of the trail being large steps that were unrelenting but not impossible if you're taking your time.

We spent that night at Laban Rata, the sleeping quarters located a little over half way up the mountain. With some dinner and tea, we were in bed at 7:30pm so that we could wake up at 1:40am (the earliest I've ever got up for anything) to climb the most difficult part of the trail in pitch black so that we could see the sun rise at the summit. With our very memorable local guide Helmy (who was given the name 'Sir Helmsly' during the hike), I spent the day witnessing some of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life.

When all of the hiking was done (going both up and down) our time spent on the mountain was about 30 hours. A little bit of that time was spent sleeping, some of it eating, but a lot of it was climbing steps in the earth that seemed to never end. We experienced hours of heavy rean on the way down but it felt nice after we had already completed the difficult part of the climb. Our legs didn't work for a few days afterwards but the big event of the trip had been accomplished and we felt amazing after seeing what it's like to be 4,050m above the sea when the sun rises on a perfectly clear morning.

I must say that when I first stepped foot in the city of Kota Kinabalu I was hesitant to feel comfortable because I felt out of place as a westerner in a Muslim culture. After spending a week and a half there, I've now been able to get to know some one of the most humble and generous people that I've been exposed to. And I really mean that...no one was pushy or really even attempting to get money from me. In fact, I was usually offered a beer or a seat by the people I made small talk with. Everyone in Borneo had such a nice and relaxing vibe and that was apparent from the time we took our first unmarked van from the airport to the city to the final taxi ride on our way back to catch our flight to Indonesia.

The final significant event in Malaysia was the New Year's party. Myself, Caitlin, Ann, Leah, and her friend Jocelyn went out and made some new friends while celebrating the entrance of the final year of this decade. Pictures do best at telling the story of this particular evening.

So, on New Year's Day, we packed our things and were off to a new country.

(part two) dances, juices, and gamelan music in indonesia

2009-01-14T05:09:00.001-08:00

At 10:00pm on New Year's Day, Caitlin and I landed in Denpasar on the island of Bali with no place to stay and little knowledge about the country we were in. We paid for our visas after exchanging a few Japanese bills for stacks of Indonesian rupiah and then wandered out into the hot night air looking for a place to stay. Upon a taxi's suggestion, we found a guesthouse in a shady part of the city of Kuta- a place known for surfing, white sand, and having more tourists than locals. Our place had no sheets or toilet paper and the owner tried to make us pay twice because we "didn't have proof that we paid the first time." Welcome to Bali, where surprises and interesting situations truly never end.

We both knew about Kuta from reading guidebooks and knew to stay away from it. On the first night we had our first taste of Bali cuisine which blew us both away. I was really hungry at the time but I thought that our first meal there was some of the best food that I've ever had. Upon reflection, though, I know for sure that Bali probably had the best variety of and quality of food that I've eaten anywhere in the world. And the fresh juice...honestly, it's good (and cheap) enough to make the trip to Bali just for that reason. But, other than that meal, Kuta was unimpressive as expected. Caitlin got creeped out at an internet cafe by a local, I was offered magic mushrooms countless times in the ally where we stayed, and I'm sure other things occurred that aren't worth mentioning but I don't remember. The next morning it was off to Ubud.

So, what we read about Ubud was that it is Bali's cultural and culinary center. All of this is totally true but when I first got there I had a hard time getting used to the spiritual/raw food/working vacation/zen power trippin'/yoga pants wearin'/just read Eat Pray Love type of tourists. (I'm allowed to make fun of this stuff because I'm into most of it, but I think that the chances of being annoyed around this crowd are very high.) But, honestly, the food and juices were so good that I would put up with any crowd to be around it...even in this otherworldly supercharged Asian Shadyside (a Pittsburgh reference, sorry if you don't know it). The place that we stayed at in Ubud was awesome and it was only 90,000 rupiah (about $9 a night) split between two people. A worker there named Made ('Mah-day') befriended us and then wanted us to send him Japanese textbooks so that could learn how to speak better with Japanese tourists. Obama was a topic that came up with him (as it did with many people there) and I explained why I was hopeful about his presidency. Made then told me about Indonesia's president and how he was also hopeful that he was going to bring clean drinking water to the village where he lives. This conversation really stuck with me.

Next, we wanted to get out to some weirder and crazier parts of the island so we got on a bus heading to a volcano north of Ubud. Our driver was cool and he took us the 'secret way' there so that we didn't have to pay an entrance fee. This town was great because there really were no other tourists besides a Swedish couple who we saw walking around the one street that exists there. We very quickly got to know the people that we were staying with which allowed them to repeatedly offer their volcano hike tour packages to us even when we assured them that we were completely not interested (we were probably even still sore from Mt. Kinabalu). By this time, though, I was attuned to the methods of disarming their persistence. We bought some paintings off of a guy named Zero who makes his living, like almost everyone else does, on the tourists that spend money there like it's nothing. In the evening, I heard gamelan percussion (indigenous to Bali) in the distance so Caitlin and I followed the sound and sat down with some guys who were drunk on wine, just enjoying the evening and their music. This might have been my favorite night in Indonesia.

The next morning we had arranged a ride from the volcano to Lovina, a quiet beach town located on the northwestern part of the island. It was a long, hot, and bumpy trip and I was not in a good mood when a woman ran up to me as I was stepping out of the van, trying to show me a hotel room. We ended up staying with her and by now I was realizing that it's pointless to bargain hunt because the hassle of getting people off of your back is not worth the small amount of money that you'd save. Lovina was a peaceful experience and our one day snorkeling adventure was one of most amazing things that I have done...and I really didn't expect it to be.

We ended up back in familiar territory as we were back in Ubud the night before we were leaving for Singapore. This time we knew the deal here and just took it easy with one day left in the country. I think we each ate about six meals each this day and then went to see Balinese dance with live gamelan drums. It was incredible and I felt really lucky to be witnessing it.

Earlier this day, we also got to check out the monkey park in central Ubud. People were letting these monkeys jump all over them and sometimes even scratch and bite them which I thought was crazy but no one else really seemed to mind. This was a really interesting place to observe and it was like no other park that I've ever been to. And as with a lot of Bali, there were large groups of Russians everywhere which made me excited to visit there in August.

Some other things that were prevalent around the island were makeshift gas stations which were usually just reused glass bottles with gasoline in them. Sometimes young children would be the ones who would fill up your vehicle by pouring the gas into a funnel that led to your gas tank (not the safest thing in the world!). Stone carvings were also EVERYWHERE and that's what gives Bali it's magic feeling- there is ancient stonework all around that provides the outline for streets and cities and, combined with the smell of incense and clove cigarettes, this stuff really makes Bali what it is. Finally, while walking on the streets it's impossible to pass up the banana leaves and flowers that are strewn everywhere as Hindu offerings (Bali, unlike the rest of Indonesia which is Muslim, is a Hindu culture). The are always everywhere you walk, almost like a parade has just rolled by.

And after a week, our time on the island was done. I think we both came away from Bali with an impression of an incredible place with such a unique creative energy for all aspects of life. I feel like I need to go back and see more of Bali and Indonesia because I can't imagine a place to be more interesting in a strange, magical kind of way. Next, it was off to Singapore for our last two days of traveling.

(part three) winding down in singapore

2009-01-14T04:24:00.000-08:00

We got to the city/country of Singapore late in the evening with intentions of staying in Little India, the same district where we were on the first night of the trip. After a bit of looking we settled on the same place as three weeks ago when we had the stopover. Little India is always bumpin' so we found a 24 food stall and got one of the countless fried rice plates that we ate while traveling. We headed back to the hostel dorm room to find our roommate who was, by all visual clues, living at the hostel and seeming a bit disturbed that we were intruding on his space. This would be one of the last nights spent crammed in a small room with five other people so I didn't care. But, Little India is a really cool place to stay and the markets were so full of interesting people and constant action.

The next day we checked out some things on Orchard Road and I think we were both surprised by how modern Singapore is. This part of town seemed much like a western city and it's also immaculately clean and seemingly very safe. We made our way to the botanical gardens from here and were really impressed with the diversity of all the plant life. From what I know now the garden alone seems to draw a lot of visitors to the city.

We had two days in Singapore and both were spent exactly the same- eating Japanese food for lunch, going to the botanical gardens for a few hours, spending time reading a goldmine of English books at Borders (this was amazing), and then hanging out in Little India. Singapore is a really cool city that seems easy to get around and very livable. A few days here was not enough and I hope I find myself back sometime in the future.

After an overnight flight back to Osaka we were, once again, back in Kansai Airport. The most pressing issue for me while we waited two hours for the first bus to Naruto was the need to put on anything other that the clothes that I had been wearing for pretty much three weeks straight. Getting back to my apartment felt nice and, actually, so did the cold weather. It seemed like we were gone for a long time but for me it never takes very long to snap back into the life-in-Japan mindset, though I still, as I always do, immediately began to plot where I will be going and what I want to be seeing next.

a bit of small town life

2008-12-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

Today I got a flat tire in the middle of a 45 minute bike ride to work. I didn't have class first period so it wasn't a big problem to walk the rest of the way. Eventually, the vice principal called my cell phone to ask if I was OK when I didn't show up for the morning meeting at 8:15. I told him 'panku o shimashita' (I got a flat tire) and he assured me to take my time and that we'll take care of my tire when I arrive at school. As soon as I showed up he was on his way to figuring out how to repair my bike. An older man on a scooter came to look at the situation and recommended that I change both tires for a charge of 5,000 yen ($50). This is something that I've got to do eventually and have been putting off for some time but I saw no need to pay that amount for a task that I can easily do myself. My mind was able to filter out the bike mechanic's slurred colloquialisms enough to understand my options and I assured him that all I needed was a patch and that I could replace the tires later. The man was soon back on his scooter and I was teaching 7th graders about Christmas traditions in North America. The vice principal was again on his chair in the staff room, content that we resolved the problem and that I was once again with a working method of transportation.

This past week has been full of appreciation for my small town life. I can say from experience that it's during situations where I need help from others when I truly feel the generosity of my neighbors and coworkers. This appreciation has come to me at an interesting time when I'm about to, for the sixth time since I've moved here, leave my home in Shikoku for weeks on end. My mind feels clear and ready to take on more of the unknown in a new part of Asia, though it comforts me to know as well that I will soon return to my small town with the coworkers and students that I know so well and that, as long as I am here, there will be a hot tray of curry and rice waiting for me when lunchtime comes around.

taichi's visit/back to southeast asia

2008-12-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the consideration that people show each other here can hit you and make you feel so lucky to live in a country where going out of your way to help someone is the norm. That happened to me today and I came home feeling really positive after my bike ride home. Though, when this happens, I wonder how well I'll adjust in the future to living somewhere where people aren't as nice as they are in rural Japan.

I spent most of the day reading about Malaysia and Indonesia as the other teachers asked me questions about why I chose to go there during the break. Later on at the grocery store I saw a student who witnessed me shopping for tonight's dinner. I seriously thought that she was going to faint when I tapped her on the shoulder to say hello.

This past weekend my friend Taichi, who lives in Pittsburgh but is spending a month in Osaka to visit his family, came to Naruto to hang out. We walked around the farms in my neighborhood, talked about music, ate good food, visited Shinto shrines by my apartment...it was a good time for an impromptu hangout like this.

So on Friday it's back to Southeast Asia for three weeks. Here's the flight schedule so far (and probably more to come)-

Osaka to Singapore
Singapore to Kota Kinabalu (Borneo)
Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar (Bali, Indonesia)
Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
Singapore to Osaka

It actually hit me that I'll be in Southeast Asia once again as I read about the coffee that people drink in Borneo. Nothing but condensed milk is used as a sweetener and if there is anything that will forever remind me of a particular three days sleeping in tree houses deep in the Laotian jungle, it is coffee with mixed with way too much condensed milk...

takashima island

2008-12-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

Having four free periods in a row at school gave me an excuse to explore some of the foothills around Naruto Jr. High...a reminder that there's no loss of interesting things in my neighborhood.

a short yet practical wish list for the holidays

2008-12-03T22:43:00.000-08:00

-I wish that there was some ordinance that prevented farmers from burning things every day so that I didn't have to breathe in smoke while biking home and while in my apartment.
-I also wish that people couldn't smoke cigarettes inside the Board of Education office. Walking in here is like a weird time warp to the 1970s (or what I would imagine office polices to be like back then). I absolutely hate being subjected to cigarette smoke in an unventilated room but not many other people here seem to mind (besides Jill, Theo, and myself).
-It would be logical if the kerosene heater at my high school was turned off when it's not cold out. Today's weather is beautiful but the windows remain shut and the heater is on at full blast. Once the decision has been made to turn it on for the winter it stays on and I happen to be the one that sits at the desk right beside it.
-It would be nice if people didn't stare at me every day while I eat lunch and then rush over to see what I didn't eat and then ask why I dislike deep-fried ham.
-I wish that it was easier to get up in the morning when not using indoor heat.
-I wish that the NHK guy could take a hint while trying to make me pay for having a TV that I don't watch.
-I wish that I could find my copy of 'Botchan' that I bought in Matsuyama.
-Finally, it would be nice if it actually felt like December.

alternative thanksgiving celebrations

2008-11-27T03:58:00.000-08:00

Being abroad during holidays can feel a bit weird and isolating at times but not when you have another reason to celebrate. Caitlin's 25th birthday was a good excuse to remember that although my friends and family are missed I have reasons to be thankful here as well...

biking, teaching, and studying as the cold sets in...

2008-11-21T03:11:00.000-08:00

Today at school I was invited to Ihara sensei's cooking class where the students were assigned to make a particular food so that I could taste it and give them feedback on what they made. I ended up having two bowls of udon, sweet potato gratin, a fried egg and rice dish with shrimp, boiled octopus, and ramen. I know, the demands of this job can be a bit overwhelming sometimes.

The cold weather is now back in Shikoku and day by day small changes in routines are made with the burgeoning season. It's strange, I feel very different now than I did last year at this time but I'm able to recall echoes of where my mind was back then. This was a hard month...the newness of Japan had worn off and I had to get used to living a very different life. I had some stereotypical culture shock responses to the adjustment during this period- prolonged anxiety, rejecting Japanese food, going to bed early (8:30 or 9:00pm), paranoia that people were talking about me in Japanese, etc. Thinking back on it, it was a really hard time to be here. I almost couldn't imagine life ever feeling 'normal' in this situation but little by little it happened and I can look back and say that this comfort level was earned through experience. I can't say that everything that I see in Naruto makes complete sense (sometimes it's very far from this case...) but I'm conditioned to it and that makes all the difference.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying spending nights in my apartment making sushi and studying kanji for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in two weeks. I've been pretty content doing that or just drinking tea while listening to music as I'm bundled up on my small floor couch. If you didn't know/remember, there's almost always no central heating in Japanese homes so finding ways to warm up by alternative methods can prove to more effective than simply hibernating under a pile of covers. Taking a warm bath will keep you feeling good for a long time after it's over and washing dishes with hot water can provide a nice break from the cold as well. At the moment, though, it's really not too cold yet because I still can't see my breath in my apartment yet and my olive oil hasn't started to freeze.

Today is the start of a three day weekend and my only plans are to hang around Naruto and get some studying done. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow but I'm hoping to work on plans for my trip to Borneo that's coming up less than a month...

naruto kogyo koko culture festival

2008-11-17T02:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Naruto Technical High School's annual culture festival- an event otherwise known as an excuse for my students to dress up like women or cartoon characters. I played drums with a band again and it was of the highlights of the day from what I was told. My camera ran out of batteries half way through the day or else there'd be more pictures of the male teachers jumping at the opportunity to wear eyeliner and lip gloss. This makes sense to me only because I've spent so much time at this school but I guess at first observation habits like these can be pretty hard to explain. Nevertheless, it was the best (and, sadly, probably the last) culture festival that I've ever been to and I was happy to hear so many people describe my drumming as 'crazy'.

I was also fortunate enough to see an awesome show in Osaka a little over a week ago. The band Torche from Florida played the second date of their tour of Japan at a small place in Osaka where we (me, Caitlin, Dianne) were charged 5,000 yen (about $50) to see the show. Three years ago, I payed $5 (possibly $4) to see them in Pittsburgh. This price increase is not directly related to a higher demand to see the band, but is an example of just how things go in this country sometimes. But, without a doubt, I would gladly pay the same price in the future to see a show this good.

a strange new feeling called 'pride'

2008-11-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

Last week I was alone in the staff room when I saw that Barack Obama was to become the 44th President of the United States. I was not alone here in experiencing the overwhelming emotions that came along with seeing a multiracial president (with the middle name Hussein!) personify the opportunities of such a unique country and it was a bit difficult not to be back home to see it firsthand. With people's ideas about the possibilities for the future (both in the U.S. and abroad) seemingly pivoting within a few hours on election day, I'd like to believe that America can become more like the concept of a country that truly recognizes the multiculturalism that it contains. This is the 'America' that I grew to know through six years of living, studying, and working in Pittsburgh with people of very different pasts, some of whom have directly influenced me to be doing what I am today. I could say a LOT about the other side of the American coin that's in the process of flipping after eight years of personally feeling so absolutely disengaged with those who had significant control of my country's perception. Having 'grown up' within these years, I feel that as Bush's seclusion and ignorance to the sensitivity of other ways of thinking, while filtering down to some parts of America that I am familiar with, had strengthened my reactionary feelings against what seemed to be a culture of illegitimate consumption and extreme replication of corporate goods. But, that's not America. That's part of it, but you simply cannot pigeon-hole such a diverse country. I only realized this after moving here and, for me, my current living experience also sheds light on the mobility of the American (such as myself) who has the potential to experience such vast diversity in his or her own country as well as abroad. I'm hopeful that Obama can serve as a beacon for the acceptance of cultural diversity that Americans, whether some know it or not, host within the Land of the Free.

I think that this email from an older Japanese friend sums up this revived hope of the American image quite well:

Theo and Brad,
Congratulation!!
Finally your dreams and dreams of many people of the world come true. The stance of Obama, New president of US appealed and attracted many people of the world. I understand that his stance grown by his international experiences, is to accept the diversity of races, cultures, religions and so on. Up until that moment of election, White, Christian and republican ideology of small government except big military dominated the world. Different category from them was considered to be wrong or inferior to them. That is why they confront harshly withe others rather than going together, accept others, and compromise.

From now as he said in his speech, it is time for him to work hard with a lot of cooperation to fill the gaps which have separated American people and the world. Military itself can not solve the problems. It rather brings hatred. People of Iraq and Afghanistan need help to build hospitals, schools, irrigation for farming.and so on. Sometimes new president needs to compromise to bring peace to there with so called enemies. There are no body who is totally evil. They have hatred against those who oppress and segregate and exploit to make money. As Obama is smart and has wisdom, he including many people can change enemy's to friends. There are places for Japan to cooperate with that area.

I should say God bless you, United people of wisdom.
Let's meet again sometime at Cosmos forum or lunch.

Toshi Okamoto

iya valley highlights

2008-11-03T00:30:00.000-08:00

Here's some pictures from a camping trip to Iya on the first day of November. Iya Valley and Kazurabashi (vine bridge) are some of my favorite places in Japan...

ni ju roku sai (twenty six years old)

2008-10-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I celebrated another birthday in Japan. Twenty six, from what I can tell so far, is one year past when people start saying that you're getting old. Twenty six is nice, it's kinda like just another year w/o the 'milestone' status that twenty five holds for some reason. But, anyway, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who wrote me a letter, sent me a long email update, shipped me package full of brownies, and made me feel like so many people were thinking of me. If only you all knew how much it means to come home to a letter waiting in the mailbox all the way out here in rural Japan...well, put simply, it makes me feel so much closer to the other side of the world. And, even if not at that exact moment, sometimes I really need that feeling. (I still haven't had a chance to respond to any emails or letters but I will as soon as I get the chance!)

But things are good these days. Without all (or most of) the ups and downs of last years' autumn, time is going by as I find myself busy most evenings and without a free weekend for a quite some time. I can feel myslef taking on the list of things that I want to do before I not longer a resident here. As of now, most of them involve camping, hiking, or bike trips.

back in korea, october '08.

2008-10-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

Every time I leave Japan I seem to gain a better understanding of the culture that I am living in. Going to Korea is interesting for me because for two nations that share some basic similarities, Korea and Japan are, in some ways, very, very different places.

On Friday afternoon I caught an early afternoon bus out of Naruto to Kansai Airport where I took the two hour flight into Seoul. Jon and I decided to meet at Yongsan Station, about an hour west of Incheon International Airport (where I flew in) and three hours North of Geumgang University, where he is studying Korean. We hit the streets right away and met up with some American friends who were waiting for us to arrive. I knew all of them from my trip to Korea last October and it was nice to feel welcomed right when I arrived. Jon lived in Seoul for a bit last winter so he knew what neighborhoods would be good to check out on the weekend. We ended up in Sinchon, or 'the Bloomfield of Seoul' as he calls it. Friday evening was a night full of convenience store mushroom wine, noraebang (Korean karaoke), makgeolli (Korean rice wine), late night gimbap (rice and vegetables rolled with nori seaweed), and finally giving into sleep at 6:30am.

On day number two we checked out the street life that makes Seoul such a cool city. The Namdaemun market district was amazing...there is no place in Japan where you can buy a kilogram bag of cashews for about $10 or find street vendors serving spicy food with attitudes to match. I kind of wish that Japanese cities had the bustle of a place like Seoul but urban areas here just hold a different kind of appeal. I think that for me at this particular time it was really good to see people display their emotions outwardly in public for a change, even though those emotions caused me to witness fistfights, arguing, and lots of spitting. Strangely, all of this was a relief from the isolation that I was feeling before I left home.

In the evening, we decided to head out early to a small town called Danyang where we planned on climbing Mt. Soebaeksan the next morning. We managed to see a bit of the Myeongdong shopping district before taking off on a three hour train ride south to the middle of the peninsula.

By far, my favorite part of my six days here was hiking Soebaeksan. It was around 15km (about 9 miles) round trip and the trail up the mountain was basically straight up without any switchbacks. We all had a good sleep that night.

Finally, we made it to Jon's new home at Geumgang University- a Buddhist school located at the foothills of Gyeoryong National Park. This is really out in the middle of nowhere. Before going to Jon's dorm, we didn't see any other westerners for days. There are a handful studying at the school, including Jeff- a 25 year old monk in training from Seattle who lives and works at a nearby temple.

(Below- the view from Jon's dorm room.)

After missing the last bus into town by seconds (literally), Jon and I took a taxi and then a train back to the city of Daejon where we slept for about one hour at a place called Hotel X and then at 6:00am I was on a three hour shuttle back to the airport. Getting back home is very routine at this point and I think that my patience while traveling has increased more than I had realized. This trip was an awesome six days of hanging out with one of my best friends while exploring a good amount of some really untouched parts of Korea. I was excited to come back to Japan mainly because I missed the food and I knew that I had only two days of work before the weekend. Landing back into Kansai once again made me realize how calm and orderly Japan is. In Korea, it's common to be pushed on the streets, have people jump ahead of you in line, see people sleeping at their jobs, etc. The big difference between last year's trip and this one is that I wasn't grossed out by this stuff this time. I find that I can more easily deal with cultural differences like this by (usually) just appreciating the uniqueness of it and taking things with a sense a humor. Actually, I would say that the latter is almost required for the life that I have been living for a little over a year.

So that's how I have come away from this recent experience. I'm really glad that I went to Korea again because I feel like I wasn't fully adjusted to living in Asia at the time that I went last year. Noticing how much better I deal with unknown (and often very strange) situations is a good measure of what I'm gaining with the more time I spend abroad. Day by day, you can see the relevance of things or places that once seemed overwhelming or uninteresting...whether that be a crowded street market or an empty Korean bus station at 5:30am.

off to the mainland

2008-10-09T06:54:00.001-07:00

It's Thursday evening and at the moment I am listening to an old Coalesce album while putting off the small amount of packing I have to do for my trip to Korea tomorrow afternoon. Though it was only four days of work, this was a long week for me. On Monday, I was unfortunate enough to discover that my school lunch contained ground up peanuts, which I am severely allergic to. Thankfully, I didn't eat too much before realizing that my throat was closing up and that my thoughts were becoming delusional as I started to sweat profusely. Anyone with a serious food allergy may be acquainted with the post-ingestion feeling of impending illness and, in my case, anaphylaxis. But, I know the drill. After teaching elementary kids about insects and school subjects I was fortunate enough to be able to go home and lay down as my histamines slowly returned to their normal state. Not the best way to start off my week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended one of my schools that has some serious discipline problems. The abridged version of the events that happened on these days is that a 7th grader got pushed down a stairwell on Tuesday and had to go to the hospital to receive six staples in his scalp. I won't go into details about what happened to him the next day when he came back to school, but I will say that he was not spared from the other students' bullying just because he had split his head open the day before.

BUT, today was a really good day and I taught some of my favorite kids at Naru-chu and that always improves my spirits. My Japanese lesson went well and I am always impressed by how fast two hours will go if you're in the mood for learning. I'm lucky to have a teacher who enjoys cheesy English-to-Japanese puns because I come up with that stuff all of the time. I was also impressed recently when Miori sensei's husband was daring enough to try my quinoa-vinegar-basil-nutritional yeast dish that i've made for countless people while living here:

They both seemed to like it a lot but we all still ate enough sashimi to fill us up either way.

So it's the end of a week that really tested my nerves but tomorrow at this time I will be in Seoul- a year and one week after I was in Korea last October. I'm happy to get out of Japan for a bit but I think I'll be glad to come back as well...so far that's always been the case.

not in my own words...

2008-10-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

September 25, 2008, 9:30 pm

by Judith Warner (taken from her opinion blog written for the New York Times)

I spent the past week in New York, helping my mother recover from surgery. It was a new role for me, taking care of my mom. It must, I think, have been somewhat destabilizing.

Perhaps when previously untapped wells of care-for-others are accessed, there’s no stopping the flow. Or perhaps it was just that, after five days locked in stare-downs with my mother’s cat, my eyes were playing tricks on me.

This may explain why, on Tuesday afternoon when I went to The Times Web site and saw the photo of Sarah Palin with Henry Kissinger, a funny thing happened. A wave of self-recognition and sympathy washed over me.

That’s right — self-recognition and sympathy. Rising up from a source deep in my subconscious. I saw a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life. I saw this in the sag of her back in her serious black suit, in the position of her hands, crossed modestly atop her knees, and in that “Mad Men”-era updo, ever unchanging, like a good luck charm.

Governor Palin met with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. (Photo: Stan Honda/ AFP-Getty Images)

Why, all of a sudden, was I experiencing this upsurge of concern and kinship? I knew, on the one hand, that this new vision of Palin had to be a mirage. Only a few hours earlier, I’d nodded along knowingly as a band of old-school liberals, gathered in my mother’s apartment to cheer her through her convalescence, tore the Alaska governor apart.

“He’s probably the first Jew she’s ever met,” one older gentleman, who himself had grown up as one of the only Jews in pre-World-War-II Lincoln, Neb., said of her meeting with Kissinger.

“No, there was Joe Lieberman,” his wife reminded him, putting me in a mind of the comedian Sara Benincasa’s utterly hilarious Palin parody, as a chorus of “despicable” and “disgusting” filled the room.

My friend Mary has long said that I have a tendency to develop a Stockholm-Syndrome-like empathy for the people I write about. But I don’t think that’s what was going on here.

I think — before I blinked — I had an actual flash of insight. I think I finally stumbled upon a major piece of the puzzle of how it is that so many Republican women can so passionately claim that Sarah Palin is someone they relate to. (It’s worth noting that polls have definitively shown that John McCain’s Palin gambit has not paid off in attracting disgruntled Democratic women voters.)

That the women who agree with Palin would also like her is not surprising. But the whole business of relating? That has remained mysterious for me. What, I’ve wondered, could the kinds of suburban moms I met, for example, at the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia, some of them former professionals with just two children apiece, one a former grad student making links between Palintology and the work of Homi Bhabha, have in common with a moose-killing Alaska frontierswoman with her five kids, five colleges and pastoral protection from witchcraft?

I think I’ve seen it now. In her own folded hands, her hopeful, yet sinking posture, her eager-to-please look. Sarah Palin is their — dare I say our? — inner Elle Woods.

I had thought of Elle Woods, the heroine of the 2001 and 2003 “Legally Blonde” and “Legally Blonde 2” films, a great deal during the week that Palin became McCain’s running mate and made her appearance at the Republican National Convention. The thoughts didn’t actually originate with Palin; my daughter Julia had recently discovered the soundtrack of “Legally Blonde: the Musical” and then the movies that inspired the Broadway show.

Re-watching the movies with Julia, I’d been surprised at how time, and motherhood, had tempered my affection for Elle Woods — a frilly, frothy blonde who charms her way into Harvard Law School and takes the stodgy intellectual elitists there by storm with her Anygirl decency and non-snooty (and not-so-credible) native intelligence.

I’d found the “Legally Blonde” movies fun the first time around. Viewing them in the company of an enraptured 11-year-old, who’d declared Elle her new “role model” after months of dreaming of growing up to be a neuroscientist in a long braid and Birkenstocks, was another story.

“You can’t,” I’d admonished Julia, “accomplish anything worthwhile in life just by being pretty and cute and clever. You have to do the work.”

“It’s just fun, Mom,” she protested.

Right.

You don’t have to be perennially pretty in pink — and ditsy and cutesy and kinda maybe stupid — to have an inner Elle Woods. Many women do. I think of Elle every time I dress up my insecurities in a nice suit. So many of us today — balancing work and family, treading water financially — feel as if we’re in over our heads, getting by on appearances while quaking inside in anticipation of utter failure. Chick lit — think of Bridget Jones, always fumbling, never quite who she should be — and in particular the newer subgenre of mom lit are filled with this kind of sentiment.

You don’t have to be female to suffer from Impostor Syndrome either — I learned the phrase only recently from a male friend, who puts a darned good face forward. But I think that women today — and perhaps in particular those who once thought they could not only do it all but do it perfectly, with virtuosity — are unique in the extent to which they bond over their sense of imposture.

I saw this feeling in Palin — in a flash, on that blue couch, catty-corner to Kissinger, as her eyes pleaded for clemency from the camera. I’ll bet you anything that her admirers — the ones whose hearts really and truly swell with a sense of kinship to her — see or sense it in her, too. They know she can’t possibly do it all — the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they.

The “Legally Blonde” fairy tales spin around the idea that, because Elle believes in herself, she can do anything. Never mind the steps that she skips. Never mind the fact that — in the rarefied realms of Harvard Law and Washington policymaking — she isn’t the intellectual equal of her peers. Self-confidence conquers all! (“Of course she doesn’t have that,” said Laura Bush of Palin this week when asked if the vice presidential pick had sufficient foreign policy experience. “You know, that’s not been her role. But I think she is a very quick study.”)

Real life is different, of course, from Hollywood fantasy. Incompetence has consequences, political and personal. Glorifying or glamorizing the sense of just not being up to the tasks of life has consequences, too. It means that any woman who exudes competence will necessarily be excluded from the circle of sisterhood. We can’t afford any more of that.

Frankly, I’ve come to think, post-Kissinger, post-Katie-Couric, that Palin’s nomination isn’t just an insult to the women (and men) of America. It’s an act of cruelty toward her as well.

cho gotsui, ne.

2008-09-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, there's been some amazing sunsets that I've been watching from my front door. The picture below was taken on Saturday night before going to the ume-shu party.

And, speaking of ume-shu, our homemade plum alcohol turned out great. Back in June I posted about how a group of us went to a farm and picked plums (ume) and bottled them with rock sugar and liquor. Three and a half months later, I opened mine on the night of the party and was surprised at how good it was. Here are the various jars of ume-shu (mine is on the far right...photo credit to Sarah).

Having many different mixes to choose from was nice because they all had a distinct taste. Yuko made her batch with brandy, I used less sugar than was called for, some people's plums were of a different variety, etc.

Afterwards, me, Caitlin, and Dianne (a first year teacher from New Zealand) headed out to karaoke. It was an intense two hours of singing, concluding with a seemingly never ending version of Led Zeppelin's 'Achilles' Last Stand'. I woke up in the afternoon yesterday feeling pretty bad, mainly because I was sore from singing and getting acrobatic in the karaoke booth. We were grossly overcharged for our two hours spent there but upon a day's reflection I'd say that it's karma for our un-Japanese behavior.

It's Monday and I am feeling good. The weather is nice and cool, my classes are going well, and next week I will be in Korea hanging out with Jon. Sugoi.

hanging around ehime

2008-09-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

I had a four day break this past week so I decided to hang out in Ehime-ken, another one of the four prefectures (states) that make up the island of Shikoku. Ehime lies in the northwestern part of the island and, from my experiences, it seemed to be a bit different than the areas in Tokushima that I'm used to. Rika showed me around the capital city of Matsuyama and we took the ropeway up to Matsuyama Castle, a place that I would love to visit again. From the top of the castle there is a 360 degree view of the entire city and on a clear day you can see the mountains that surround the area in the distance. Fortunately, we had really nice weather that day but unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera with me.

Another incredible draw to Matsuyama is the Dogo Onsen. This was a place that I've heard a lot about from Japanese people who have been there. Here is what it looks like from the outside:

The whole area caters to people coming to or from the onsen (public bath) and there's a nice relaxing feel as you walk around. The building is about 800 years old (I think) and the sides of the second floor are not enclosed which lets you feel a nice breeze as you sip green tea after emerging from the natural spring water. I could have spent a long time in this area without a doubt.

The long weekend was also full of great meals like this one (below) that we had at a really small restaurant in Matsuyama. Rika had heard from her mother that this was a good place so we both ordered an 11 course meal that included a variety of traditional Japanese dishes and some really smooth sake to wash it all down. The chef prepared the food directly in front of us as we watched him create what would be our next dish. My possible favorite was the shrimp and sashimi dish served on ice (2nd picture, below). One of the best meals I've had in Japan, I'd say...and that say a LOT.

The next day, we rented a bungalow near some good hiking spots in the west. There was an amazing tea house next to our place that we hung out at for a bit before we went back to make dinner. This room kind of looked like it would be in a Stanley Kubrick movie or something...

For dinner we made Mexican food and I was happy to be the first one to introduce Rika to the wonders of homemade guacamole.

The hiking we did the next day was a bit surreal. We drove up to the highlands (called 'tablelands' here) and trekked above the tree line to the top of a mountain as the clouds slowly made their way across the sky.

At the top, a man emerged from the trail wearing a huge backpack and, while taking it off, he unfolded a parachute as he attached its cables to harnesses on his shoulder straps. We knew he was going to attempt to catch the wind and fly off but it was still hard to image what that would actually look like right in front of you. But, as quickly as he had came, he pulled the cables and the wind caught the chute and carried him up into the air. He circled the mountain top for about 20 minutes and then landed right near his tent on the side of the mountain. As we were leaving he was about to take off once again, this time with a different parachute.

So, I feel like I have grown accustomed here to a point where I can really explore and do the things that I want to do with my free time. Being in year number two (as opposed to one) also has its benefits. Even with this being true, though, living in Japan will never be 'normal', but I kind of like it that way.

back to being busy

2008-09-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

I'm back in school and although my job doesn't require much (if any) work, I've been busy with other things as usual. Last weekend my friend Rika and I ventured out to Mt. Tsurugi and we were lucky enough to see it at a really nice time of the year. We didn't make it to the summit but the views of the misty mountainside from the trail were totally worth the drive out there. I'm really hoping that I can get to Tsurugi once more before it's too cold.

My schools had their culture festivals over the last few weeks as well. A lot of preparation goes into these and usually they are a lot of fun (but exhausting) for the ALT in attendance. Either way, it's always nice to interact with the kids outside of class.

Also, I went to various parties to signify the end of the culture festivals and the summer as well.

And over the weekend I hung out in Kobe for the first time and went to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game...

And now I'm really, really tired.

the last weekend of summer '08

2008-09-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

Here I am, back at school, eating more school lunches that used to be strange but are anything but after a year of them, and taking in compliments due to the first professional haircut (meaning not done myself) that I've had since the summer of 2002. The first classes of this year were with my most easy going students so it was a nice way to ease into doing actual work again after a very, very extended summer break.

The last weekend of the summer was a good one. Caitlin and I were looking to camp out in Kochi-ken, a prefecture which has some great scenery and a variety of nice beaches. We managed to set up on the beach without getting hassled, which does not come as a surprise in Japan. Southern Shikoku is a bit different from the north but observing the people definitely reminds you that you're still on the same island. I'm excited to go back with the intention of giving surfing a try...

dramatic haircut pics

2008-09-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

9/1/08. After about a year, it was about time.

first food co-op delivery

2008-08-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

On Friday I came home for lunch and found a five foot high stack of boxes in front of my door. This was a very exciting day because the first shipment of organic vegetables and various all-natural foods had successfully arrived. Not only am I very happy to be eating organic food once again, but having groceries delivered saves me a lot of biking to and from the store.

I spent the majority of my weekend experimenting with some new recipes while consistently drinking large amounts of carrot and cabbage juice. One of the best things about my living situation is the time and money that I have to prepare food for myself. And speaking of money, I was surprised to find that most of the organic food was not much more expensive than the conventional produce that you'd find at the the grocery store.

On Saturday, Yuko and I hung out at a mountaintop park in Kamiyama and I took a nap that risked poisonous snake or mukade (poisonous centipedes) attacks. Although I didn't see any mukades this time, there were two really big snakes on the way back to the car. It was amusing but not surprising when I saw two junior high kids chasing them off the walking path. Figuring that these snakes were most likely poisonous, my reaction to them was pretty much the opposite. (Not the best picture of the snake below but it gives you an idea of how hard they can be to spot.)

Another notable attraction of this park is a very well-maintained statue of Tokushima Prefecture's mascot, Sudachi-kun. (Sudachi is a locally grown citrus fruit that resembles a lime in taste. Without a doubt, a main source of pride in the area.)

The udon shop at the top of the mountain was closed so we eventually made our way out of the park to grab some food. Going up and down this road was one of the many times I was glad to be in a car and not on a bike.

And now, it's back to this for just one more week.

it's about time for something new

2008-08-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

After some expert recommendations, I bought the Canon PowerShot G9 right before coming back to Japan and so far I'm really happy with it. This means that I will be taking my camera more places and documenting my time here (and other in countries) even better. Hopefully having a nice camera will encourage me to become familiar with the manual settings and other cool stuff on the G9.

above- the view from my apartment at dusk.
below- YRG cafe in Tokushima City.

To say that work is slow right now is an understatement because I am free to sit in the office and read books all day. Actually, it's often a rotation between books, Wikipedia 'research', email, and a few other random things. I don't mind it right now because it just feels like an extended summer vacation.

School starts on September 1st and I'm looking forward to teaching again. The break has been nice and was much needed but going into the second year of work isn't stressful because I know what to expect. In fact, I'm already planning my next trips. This morning I bought tickets to Seoul, Korea to see Jon in mid October (almost the same time that I went last year) and the wheels are in motion for some relatively lengthy traveling in Indonesia during December and January. More on that as the plans unfold.

Late summer in Tokushima is full of cicadas, humidity, fresh pears, and ample time to catch your breath before returning to life in the Japanese public school system. Knowing that this will probably be my final year of teaching in Naruto will hopefully cause me to appreciate doing everything for the last time. I can say for sure though that doing most things here for the last time will be easier than figuring them out for the first time.

america, baseball games, festivals, etc...

2008-08-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

So this is one of those posts where I have so much to catch up on that it's kind of hard to know where to begin. I have been so busy during this past month that any free time I had in America was probably spent sleeping or eating bags of avacados or tubs of hummus.

I've been back in Japan for a little over a week now and didn't really skip a beat from the time I landed on Sunday evening to the next morning when I bussed out to the Koshien national baseball tournament with the Naruto Tech guys. But, more about that later...

On 7/16, Caitlin and I took a flight from Osaka to Detroit and soon after found ourselves in the the very familiar territory when we touched down in the Pittsburgh International Airport. The first indication of being close to home was actually in Detroit when I heard a man talking on his cell phone while waiting for the connecting flight to Pittsburgh. I never thought I'd be so excited to hear someone say 'dahntahn' but once I did it was a big reality check that I was about to see a lot of people and things that have been on my mind for quite a long time. After parting ways with Caitlin, I was driven to Greensburg by my dad in what was a strangely normal trip back to the suburbs (In fact, I think that I can speak for my entire trip home when I say that the normality of what I experienced was one of the main things that I desired while back in the States). The first thing that I did at my house was eat all of the foods that I requested my mom have when I arrived. Produce tastes so different to me in Japan. Last year when I moved here one of the biggest adjustments I had to make was to my diet because a lot of the foods that I was used to eating can't be found in Naruto. Back in the US, I was quickly reminded of how much enjoy kale, swiss chard, good olives, etc. and I basically felt like I never stopped eating from the time I got home until I flew back. However, even though I loved the foods that are impossible to find in Japan I still really missed eating Japanese food.

Being in Greensburg for the first few days was good but confining because I'm not used to staying in a place where you can't go anywhere unless it's by car (I also think that I was missing the excercise I that I get on my bike everyday). It was also strange to see people driving EVERYWHERE while the sight of anyone walking or biking was few and far between. I think that's why I like living in cities- public transportation and centralization provide an alternative to owning a car. Some of my friends have owned one for over 10 years now and I'm happy that I've stuck to biking, walking, or bussing.

But, anyway, I hung out in Greensburg for the first weekend and was lucky enough to see a great amout of my extended family all at once. My jet lag crept up on me every day around 7:00pm causing me to feel like I could sleep for about a week but it wore off after five or six days. My first moments hanging out in Pittsburgh were odd and kind of surreal. My uncle dropped me off in Shadyside where I walked to meet up with some friends and as I made my way to Walnut Street I noticed how big and spacious everything was. Visually, it was exactly how I remebered it but it felt so different being there now that I was a visitor instead of a resident of the area. I realized that I was taking in my surroundings in a different way after a year abroad...comparisons and evaluations of places during the traveling that I've done over the past year constantly made their way into my head. I couldn't stop doing it and realized that one could probably file this under 'reverse culture shock'. As for the other things about western culture that are obvious reminders that I'm not in Asia, I'd say that that most of them (staggering numbers of obese people, witnessing complaining at a restaurant, etc.) were prefaced while traveling around New Zealand four months ago. For me, it was seeing the things that were so normal to my life for six years again that made me feel like I have been living in outer space for the past year...partly because so little had changed with people and places in America and partly because I often feel that Japanese society and the American society are so different that it's hard to believe that they exist on the same planet.

Eventually, I made my way across the state to Philadelphia where I caught up with some of the main people that I came home to see. I didn't want to just make a quick stop to talk about the past year but I wanted to have some actual experiences with these people again. This was done by having cookouts, attending weird/funny parties in the city, making a side trip to New York City, and drinking beer that has no resembelence to Asahi, Kirin, or Sapporo (I'm really not a fan of Japanese beer). After about a week out east I headed back to Pittsburgh to catch up with more people and eat more Mexican food at Veracruz in Oakland. It was time well spent and though I didn't get to see everyone that I wanted to I was fulfilled with my visit.

The trip back to Japan was pretty smooth. Fourteen hours of flying and then a two hour bus ride later, Caitlin and I were back in my apartment. The next morning at 6:00am I was on another bus back to the Osaka area to attend the Koshien high school baseball tournament. My Naruto Tech students played (and won) and it was one of the most fun sporting events that I've attended in recent memory. The games here are so energetic and emotional, way different for my experiences at Major League games in the States. We played another game last Sunday but unfortunately didn't pull out a victory against a very strong team from Tokyo. A funny thing that I noticed was how the crowd rooting for Naruto Tech LOOKED like they were from Shikoku (in other words, like they came straight off of the farm). It was a classic game of country kids vs. city kids and I'm proud to say that my students gave the Tokyo guys a very good fight.

In between baseball games was also the start of Awa Odori dance season. In Naruto it was three days long and in Tokushima City it goes on for four. I'll be heading out to the latter tomorrow evening and Thursday.

I gotta say, it's nice to be back.

bike trip from naruto to hiwasa

2008-07-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

Today I'm at school with nothing more to do than feel the pain of my sunburn and blog about biking down south this past weekend. The students are taking their mid year exams but I, of course, still have to show up. Why? Because it's Japan.

On Saturday morning I had planned to wake up at a decent time to get an early start for the trip. My destination was the Mugi area only because it looked like a feasible distance on the map of Tokushima that I was looking at on my wall. I had never been to that area before so I was unsure of the road conditions but I hoped that they'd be a better than Route 12 (the road to Ikeda that I took last week). I woke up at 7:30am to a thunderstorm that I thought signified the cancellation of my plans but after waiting it out I decided to go for it (even though there was a 94% chance of thunderstorms for Saturday and Sunday).

I headed out with my camping gear and a few other things around 10:00am and the humidity was already in full effect. It never got too sunny on the first day but the first few hours of riding were fairly hot.

The picture above is of a woman I met while taking a water break in the city of Anan. I heard her from afar saying, 'Sorry...sorry' which is like a Japanese way (a.k.a. 'indirect') of saying hello. I knew the EXACT conversation that we were about to have and, of course, I was right on. If you're a foreigner living in this part of Japan, answering these questions becomes second nature very, very quickly:

What country are you from?
How long have you been in Japan?
Where are you going?
Are you an English teacher?

I was happy, though, that she didn't ask if I liked Japanese food, if I was married, or compliment me on the two Japanese words that I said during our conversation. But, of course, all of these topics were brought up by other people a little later on in the day. After the awe of meeting me (really, she was just thrilled at my existence), she then tried to give me multiple copies of The Watchtower. I told her that I'm visited almost weekly by Jehovah's Witnesses in Naruto and that I don't need anymore pamphlets for my collection. I think she was a bit weirded out that I was so straighforward but I see no point in feigning interest in the subject. Anyway, it was nice talking with her and we both went along our way shortly afterwards.

After going through both Tokushima City and Komatsushima City, Anan had nice spacious views of rice fields and farms that are less crowded than the area by my apartment, and it's hard for me to imagine that it gets much greener than a rice field in Tokushima.

I headed down Route 11 south until I caught up with Route 55 which was bit more narrow a lot more mountainous, but I really enjoyed the variety of scenery. After Anan, the flatness disappears and the road winds it's way through the forest so there were more trees and shade around me. The road had a good shoulder pretty much the entire way as well.

The further I headed south, the steeper the hills were. I saw signs for the town of Hiwasa so I decided that I'd stop there to see if I could find a campground. At this point I had been riding about 5 hours so I wanted to have the evening to relax and explore a new part of Tokushima. I arrived in town a little before 3:00pm.

Hiwasa was a great stopping point. It's a pretty secluded place on the coast but there was a lot of thing to keep me occupied for the day. One of the temples of Shikoku's 88 Temple Pilgrimage circuit was there (Yakuoji) and it was one of the most interesting that I've been to in Japan so far.

You can see the temple from anywhere in the town and when I got close to it I realized that it was a lot bigger than it seemed from the street. I really was impressed at how well maintained it was...there was even a small museum of old paintings other things on the first floor.

(This is pretty much the entire town.)

After the temple, I hung out at the foot onsen for a bit and relaxed my feet with some people that looked like they've been there all day. The water was a bit too hot for me to stay there for more than 15 minutes.

Then the sun was out and I felt like heading towards the beach and possibly looking for a place to camp out later on...

I went swimming for a bit and scoped out a camping spot that seemed like it was out of the way from people hanging out on the beach. I wasn't too thrilled with pitching my tent after dark but I knew it was best to do that because there was a big 'no camping' sign right as you entered the sand.

BUT, as I was walking out of a bathroom in a Sunkus (a convenience store), I saw an old co-worker, Mr. Yoshihara, standing right in front of me. He doesn't speak English so it was funny to explain to him what I was doing there. I told him that I was looking for a campground and he told me to follow him because he knew one that was close by. I did and was able to pitch my tent (legally) right at before dusk. We then made plans to get together (somehow...) in the future and get beer. The way things happen here I don't doubt that this will occur.

The next day I got up early and hung around the coast for a bit. There was a path to a small island close by so I hiked for a bit before packing my gear up and taking off. Going back was a lot easier because I knew exactly where I was going and what to expect. The sun was out and I knew I would get burnt but I really didn't care too much.

I didn't stop too much on the way back with the exception of eating some great sushi in Anan and then multiple stops for water at either Sunkus or Lawson. I ended up making it home in 4 hours.

So, the total biking time was 9 hours and the total distance came to around 135 kilometers. I definitley want to make this trip again because it's not too difficult but provides a pretty good workout for your legs if you do it quickly. I was really happy that I didn't have any bike issues. This is the first time that I'm able to do trips with decent gear so I'll be taking advantage of it as much as I can this summer. I haven't decided on where I want to go to next...probably to a more mountainous part of Tokushima. The good thing is that there's no shortage of mountains around here...but my next trip will have to wait until August because in about a week I'm on vacation.

徳島の梅雨は終わりましたか(is the rainy season over in tokushima?)

2008-07-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

I am hoping that it is because tomorrow I plan on biking about 100km down the east coast of the prefecture to a town called Mugi to camp out either in the woods or on the beach. Last weekend I did an 80km ride from Naruto to Ikeda (where Caitlin lives) and had no trouble doing it in a little under five hours (with a slashed tire and river swim in between). I didn't take any pictures on that ride but tomorrow I'll bring my camera because I'll be exploring some areas that I've never been to before.

It's super hot right now but for some reason I'm not affected by it too much (yet, at least). I'm also noticing the 'saltwater' smell in the air that isn't there in the winter...it's a good reminder that I live close to the beach. And, now that the cockroaches are back in my apartment, I'm not a bit surprised at seeing them on my tatami mat when I wake up. This year I kind of kick them out of the way while last year I was terrified of them for some reason. On that note, the strange array of bug bites that I've got on my legs is no surprise as well...

I hung out with my neighbors for the first time since winter the other day and it was nice to realize that I can have a choppy but usually decent conversation with them in Japanese. One of them speaks very little English so this allowed us to feel more like friends because his wife didn't have to translate everything for us. I'm sure she was happy about that, too.

Today is the 4th of July and I have been playing 'American Jeopardy' with my 9th graders. You would not believe how much they know about American history. It's pretty unbelievable because no only do they know this stuff but they can answer some difficult questions in a non-native language. ごついね！

That's about it for now. The heat has finally arrived and I'm spending these last few days before vacation eating quinoa with avocados, listening to Black Sabbath, studying some Japanese, and riding my bike everywhere. Oh yeah, and I'm still really excited about going home.

one year down and america has never looked so good

2008-06-25T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I taught my last class at Naruto Technical High School for the summer term. This is a big milestone because it means that I've completed one year of teaching here. Well, maybe saying that I 'survived' the year would be a more fitting term at some points in the experience. Teaching English at a technical high school in rural Japan is something that maybe only others that have done it could truly understand. I clearly remember the feelings of complete isolation and frustration when I started to teach lessons there, not realizing the complexity of the relationships between students, teachers, and myself. I remember that blogging in November about the lack of discipline and attention to my attempts at education was the only way that I could really vent about the situation. (Zannen, ne?) My frustrations, however, didn't only lie within that school but with this entire country and my severe lack of understanding of how things worked here. The days were also getting short and cold while I was missing all of my friends as well as living in a country where I could understand the language. Also, the true realization of the differences between living in Japan and visiting Japan were sinking in. I think that this was a tough thing for me to internalize because I had certain impressions of this country after spending some time here as a visitor (i.e. everything was super clean, everyone was fashionable, pocari sweat was the best drink the world, etc.). Needless to say, I had never seen the 'Tokushima' side of Japan- unrefrigerated egg vending machines, roadside honor system produce, the silence and stillness of an evening in Naruto...

But, anyway, I feel like my progress and the comfort that I presently have at Naruto Tech has been a something that I've really earned as I made my way through the mistakes and misunderstandings bound to the first year of teaching abroad. I have about 30 different classes there now and for each one I know their English ability and motivation level so there's no more guessing weather my lesson will be a hit or just ignored. Now that I realize my role as an ALT at the school I'm able to relax and just be thankful that I have more of a clue about what is going on around me. And I have to say that I've never met a nicer bunch of kids that will always go out of their way to yell 'hello' out of window as I'm walking back from buying lunch at the local grocery store...or tell me at school that they saw me on the train over the weekend. As standard as it may sound, on my worst days here I really do think about how much I like all of my students and how it's so worth it to be here based on my relationships with them (and my co-teachers as well).

Aside from the 'normalities' of work, my real focus right now is set on good ol' America. I'm counting down the days to my visit (three weeks left) while planning, emailing, and dreaming about the country that I was so anxious to leave one year ago. I don't think it will matter what I do while I am home but I did tell my mom that I want tacos for dinner one night and that I'd like to be with her as she runs errands around downtown Greensburg. I want to see that the people and things that I knew on the other side of earth still exist, because in between the mountains and rice fields of Tokushima, life in southwestern Pennsylvania is sometimes hard to imagine.

summertime in shikoku

2008-06-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

So, it does not feel like June 26th at ALL right now. I've been busy and my trip back home is rapidly approaching...

Summer is a good time of the year for being here because there's a LOT of things going on. I've been having having a packed schedule which has been good for keeping me out of my usually hot and humid apartment. Here's an example of last week's activities:

6/16- Bike ride from Natuto through Aizumi, Itano, and some other small towns.
6/17- Getting udon with a Japanese friend and then discovering an awesome new park (and campground) by the airport.
6/18- 20k bike ride with Sarah and then night swimming at the beach.
6/19- Homemade sashimi dinner with Miori sensei and her husband.
6/20- Tempura and sushi dinner with Hiroko, Taka, and Rikuto.
6/21- Candlelight Japanese/Malaysian song concert with Miori sensei.
6/22- Clothes swap and then guitar recital in Kitajima.

As June's rapidly ending I'm not complaining because I kind of feel like I need to get out of Japan once again. And this time I won't need to buy a guidebook for where I'm going.

plum picking and ume-shu making

2008-06-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year in Japan to pick unripe plums and make homemade ume-shu- a sweet Japanese liquor that results from steeping sho-chu (alcohol), rock sugar, and ume (plums). On Saturday a group of us headed out to western Tokushima to gather some plums for our own homemade ume-shu.

Shimada sensei, Sarah's coworker, was really excited to have us at her mother's farm. She gave us important advice like not to eat the unripe plums because they can cause some unpleasant stomach problems...and unfortunately for most of us this advice was shared a bit too late.

Sarah displayed the common 'Tokushima farmer look' style very well.

And I think that Yuko had done this before...

This part of Tokushima is beautiful and very green now that the rainy season is here and most of the rice has already been planted. Rice fields are also an important host to a lot of wildlife in the area. Evenings are filled with the sounds of frogs, soon to be replaced with cicadas once the summer heat arrives.

The plums were first soaked in water for about 3 hours and then the stems taken out using a toothpick. The jar that I am using is 4 liters and for 1 kg of plums (about 45 of them). I added 1.8 liters of sho-chu and 600 grams of rock sugar to the jar and then closed the lid tightly. From what I know it's best to refrigerate the jar while the mixture steeps but my fridge is not nearly large enough so I just put it in a cupboard under my sink. I'm not sure how cool it will stay once the summer arrives, though.

So in about three months I'll be enjoying a nice glass of ume-shu on the rocks that will hopefully assuage the late summer heat in Shikoku.

a year of blogging

2008-06-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

So the blog has reached the year mark. A lot has happened in that time and it's nice to be able to see pictures and re-read my impressions of when I first moved here. All I can say is that I'm very glad that the long adjustment is out of the way.

Last weekend I went to an earth day festival in Kamiyama. I got to drink overpriced hemp beer and eat some awesome food. Lots of barefoot people were hanging out and I was into it. Definitely an event that I'll be going to next year as well.

pictures that i didn't take

2008-05-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

So, I've posted this picture below because it might be my favorite from the New Zealand road trip and the story behind it is kind of interesting. This was taken by a Korean woman at the Milford Sound as I was settling down to prepare lunch and enjoy the view on a clear day (it was cloudy when we arrived the day before). I noticed her a bit before she starting taking pictures so when she began to snap some shots of me cutting up vegetables for a salad I wasn't too thrown off. Actually, this type of attention is not uncommon in Japan so it made me feel a bit at 'home' after days of driving in an unfamiliar country. Anyway, she came over to me a bit later and after naming all of the ingredients in my salad the woman politely asked my for my email. I of course gave it to her and by coincidence later on in the day I ended up day helping her husband find some gasoline in one of the most remote parts of New Zealand after his car stalled out in a nearby tunnel (yeah, that's a whole other story). This was two months ago. The interesting part of the story is that I thought of this couple for the first time since the event happened yesterday, the same day that they emailed me this picture along with this short message-

I think meeting you is one of the good things that happened to me during my trip. I'd like to keep these good memories for a long time and hope you had a good time, too. If it is possible, I hope me can meet again some day.

p.s. I am sorry about that it took so long to send pictures.

(I'd suggest clicking on the below picture to see it full-size.)

These other pics were ones that I really liked that Cris and Caitlin took last week. They're straight off of their Flickr pages so all credit goes to them.

Anthony, myself, Caitlin, and Cris at the summit of Mt. Tsurugi.

Ant and I, windblown and about to finish the three hour climb.

Head first into the desert, Naruto.

Cris at Kyokaimae station.

Ant having some breakfast in my apartment.

In the depths of Iya Valley, somewhere in Tokushima.

this has been a busy month

2008-05-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

Yeah, things have been busy around here. May has been a month full of visitors- three different sets, actually. Early in the month my parents flew in from Pittsburgh, Last week Jon, Nikki, and Hillary came by ferry from Korea, and right now Ant and Cris are now somewhere in Japan after taking off from Philadelphia last week. I think that time goes the quickest when visitors are around. Maybe this is because there are so many things that I want to show people when they come here, I'm not sure. Either way, May has been flying by.

My parents' visit was a bit short due my dad's four days of hospital time but, as I told them, they got to see the efficiency and determination of the Japanese people in a true but unlikely way. We had a few good days of sight seeing and after their visit I think my mom could now navigate the Kyoto station area with her eyes closed...

Next, Jon and some other Fulbrighters from Korea met up with Caitlin and I in Kyoto and we did a quick highlight tour of some fun things I like to do in the city. These included (but were not limited to) finding tiny, alleyway bars, famous temple viewing, LOTS of Japanese 'fast food' (udon and soba were favorites), multiple hours at the onsen (natural hot spring public bath), very late night/early morning karaoke, and gettin' down Pittsburgh-style at a dance club.

The next day, Caitlin and I took a bus ride to a small town about an hour north of the Kyoto called Ohara. This town has the kind of bucolic, picturesque feel that most people would think of when 'Japan' comes to mind. It was a good Sunday kind of thing to do.

The next weekend Ant and Cris arrived by taxi in Naruto. I showed them the wonders of Kizu (my neighborhood), we camped in Iya and hiked Mt. Tsurugisan, went on the vine bridges after they were 'closed', and then got lost in some really strange parts of Tokushima. It was the best...I could only wish that I always had two good friends waiting for me in my apartment after work so that we could cook dinner and listen to the Melvins.

This weekend I am going to catch up on my sleep and probably just hang out. And I promise that I'll update my blog more! Oh, my dates for visiting America will be July 16th through August 2nd...my tickets were purchased yesterday. I'm interested to see how I feel after a year of 'sumimasen's and 'hai hai hai's...

back into the swing, again.

2008-04-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've been settling into the routine of the new school semester. This can be a bit disorienting here since so many staff members have switched schools over the spring break. About every three years teachers are moved from their current schools to a new location that's sometimes so far that certain teachers must move away from their families in order to be closer to their newly assigned school. Right now I'm working with a teacher who has just finished a three-year stint living alone in a very small town in western Tokushima. When I asked about her experience living far away from her husband and young children, she replied, "It was my treasure."

So, the new school year looks like it's going to be a good one for me. I've met most of the new 7th graders at my three junior high schools and I've got a few new co-teachers that, thankfully, I get along with very well. A few weeks ago I had my first day teaching elementary school, something that I'll be doing about once a month now. The kids were the best and within an hour of stepping into Akinokami Elementary there were students riding on my back and racing me across the soccer field. Teaching feels really natural right now and I wonder if I'll continue with it whenever I leave Japan. Actually, I think a lot about what I'm going to do after this. It's strange how one day I can be so set on going back to America someday to live in a city again and other times I'll be intent on either staying in Japan for more than two years or be wanting to move to another continent to possibly be lucky enough to teach my native language again while absorbing (some of) a completely new one in the process. Well, this decision won't be faced anytime in the near future so I should save my actual worries for a time closer to that date.

Some more updates on things here- Hmm, let's see. My parents will be here in less than a week. We'll be seeing West Side Story (in Japanese) in a theatre close to Kyoto station and then they'll be following my life in the inaka (countryside) of Shikoku for a little while. I'm so used to my routine now that it'll be nice to have an outside perspective of it all once again. Also, last weekend I went out with the teachers at Naruto Kogyou Koukou (Naruto Technical High School) and had very memorable time, including a $100 round-trip cab ride to Tokushima City for the purpose of hanging out at a snack bar with a Russian waitress who spoke English. The woman turned out to be from Ukraine was nice enough to give me some Japanese language tips before we headed off to another snack bar (you're basically given consistent conversation from a hostess and pricey drinks at these places) where an older woman insisted that I give her my phone number so that I can speak English with her and her son sometime in the future. Six months ago this stuff would have been weird and kind of difficult to make sense of but now it simply signifies life as usual.

Avocadoes are in season here and I've been eating about two a day if I can find them ripe enough at the store. This has been making me really happy.

OK, that's about it for now.

if only these things could be around all year long

2008-04-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

Good friends...

and cherry blossoms.

on the road in new zealand

2008-04-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

Well, spring is officially here in Shikoku. In Naruto the sakura (cherry blossoms) are in full bloom while my long underwear has been put into seasonal hibernation as Caitlin and I both head back to work after a two-week roadtrip through New Zealand. Here's a summary of what we experienced in this amazing country.

On Thursday, 3/20, we caught the 5:30am bus to Kansai Airport and after the two hour ride and one final bowl of udon we took off on a three-hour flight to Hong Kong and then an 11 hour ride to New Zealand's largest city, Auckland.

We arrived on the 21st at about 6:00am, marveling at something from the plane that we don't see too much of in Japan- big, empty fields. All I wanted to do when I got there was simply walk around in the grass (there's not much of it here in Tokushima). We got to our place and then found nearby Victoria Park where we napped and then ate some salad later on in the evening. We then explored a bit until I started to feel crazy due to lack of sleep and the fact that we were now in late summer instead of early spring as it were in Japan. I think I passed out around 8:00pm or 9:00pm while Caitlin attempted to find something to do on a Friday night, later commenting that blue-collar attitude and fashion the locals brought back fond memories of good ol' Pittsburgh.

The next day we got up and made our way to the rental car agency where we had reserved a car for the following 13 days. Now, this would be a pivotal day in our experience in NZ because neither of us had our original driver's licenses from America which is required for our international driving permits to be valid. It turned out that they were very lenient and just glanced at our IDPs before giving us the go-ahead. Though the rest of New Zealand was expensive, the car rental fee was surprisingly cheap and proved to be a fairly economical way to see the country.

Later that day we made the drive from Auckland to Tongariro National Park and found a camp site just as the sun was setting (this would be a reoccuring theme). We paid $4 NZD (approx. $3.17 USD) to set up our tent, thinking that there would be many of these unmanned sites throughout the country. It turns out that this would be the only one that we'd come across and we ended up paying upwards of $40 to camp out in these huge, extravagent "holiday parks" that were seemingly like their own self-sufficient communites- expensive but still the cheapest accomidation available in town.

Anyway, Tongariro was incredible. This was our first taste of New Zealand's vastness and variety. We woke up with the goal of reaching the Emerald Lakes and retracing our steps after having some lunch and a break to rest our legs. The goal was acheived and the weather couldn't have been better (although I really wish I would have remembered my sunglasses before we left the carpark).

As you probably saw, Tongariro is an active volcano and its last eruption was in 1926. The fear of being on a volcano never really hit me...I think I remember telling Caitlin that I'd be able to outrun lava no matter how fast it is. There were no trees in sight as we made the seven hour hike to the lakes and back and the surrounding rocks were spectacular, providing a kind of unearthly, mystical tone. Speaking of which, neighboring Mt. Ngauruhoe (seen in the background in a few pics) was used as Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings movie.

After a long day of tramping (that's what you call it here) and sunburns, we headed south to get a head start on our trip to Wellington to catch the ferry from the North Island to the South Island. This was really the only thing that we really had to be on time for throughout the whole trip so we made sure to be fairly close to Wellington the day before we needed to be there. Where we ended up was a quiet town on the east coast called Wanganui. Here, I got to eat a very non-Japanese veggie burger, we experienced our first holiday park, and camped out right beside a goat.

Early the next morning we headed off to the capital city of Wellington armed with vague directions and the same three CDs that we'd been listening to while in the car (Bjork's 'Volta', New Order's 'International', and Helmet's 'Greatest Hits'). It was during this drive when we realized that investing in an iPod car adapter would be very worthwhile. Unlike the previous day, this was a very easy drive with very little crazy Japan-like roads that go up, over, and around mountains and sheep farms alike. I was lucky to be driving this day.

The three-hour ferry ride was amusing because there were a lot of hungover people who went to see Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne the night before in Wellington. The crowd REALLY reminded me of something straight out of western Pennsylvania.

That evening we ended up Nelson, a city recommended by a New Zealander I met in Tokyo a few months back. I could see how some people would enjoy being here but Caitlin and me were not into it. We stayed here the next day for some reason as well, only to come to the realization that if you're in New Zealand, get down with nature and don't worry about the urban areas (unless you're into bunji jumping). The church was nice, though.

After our Nelson convalescence, we made our first significant drive on the South Island to the Franz Josef Glacier. Unlike parts of the North Island, everything we lush and green the entire way down the west coast. We tried to go to a beach on some private property at one point but things got weird when we hit a dead end right beside some locals who probably see 50 people attempt the same sneaky move daily. We made it to a campsite beside the glacier near sundown and got some good sleep for the first time in a few days (not much was had in Nelson).

The glacier hike the next day was awesome. The crowd of glacier-goers was definitely posh...We felt out of place but not in an uncomfortable way at all. These are the people that actually do pay the $30 USD for a plate of pasta at a nearby glacier-themed restaurant while the number of campers eating avocadoes cut by a Swiss army knife (like ourselves) proved to be low in this particular area of the South Island. Our group was good though...we even had the token lone traveler crazy person who really, really enjoyed talking about glaciers.

The next day we made our way further down south to the small town of Te Anau that serves as the gateway to Fiordland National Park and the spectacular Milford Sound. We camped at a funny hotel called 'The Great Lakes' where the made us pay $30 to pitch our tent in a children's playground a few feet from the highway. This may sound like a lot of money for camping but at this point $30 was around par for what we were seeing throughout the country. Te Anau was nice...we found a nice 'natural' pizza shop and a grocery store where we packed up on groceries for our three day stint at the Milford Sound. The next day we made the awe-inspiring drive to a place that literally feels like the edge of the earth.

We spent our time here really just taking it all in. One of the days was spent hiking separate trails along Route 94, mine proving to be a bit too much of true rainforest for me to feel like I could do it all in one day. It's hard to imagine the magnitude and remoteness of the Milford Sound unless you find yourself there in person. No wonder Kipling called it the 8th wonder of the world.

After getting our fill of Fiordland, we began what was to be the begining of our long trek home. (On our last day there we took a boat ride out to the Tasman Sea...I included the picture above of a group of Koreans that reminded me of my life in Asia that I'd be returning to in a very short time. These guys also made me want to visit Jon again sometime in the near future...)

As we retraced our route back east we picked up two Polish hitchhikers (Chris and Justina) and took them on the three-hour ride from Te Anau to Queenstown. They had just done a portion of the Routeburn track hike and were retrieving their van the next day from the Routeburn carpark. I'm still not sure why they were going to Queenstown for the night if their van was in Te Anau but we ended up meeting up with them at a bar later on in the evening which resulted in an excess of Tui beer (maybe my favorite NZ drink), weird dancing to 90s music from America (that's ALL we'd hear on the radio!), and late night consumption of a falafel burger called the 'Bun Laden'. It was a good night.

We made our last big drive from Queenstown to Christchurch the next day which took us across the South Island from west to east. Again, amazing scenery. And I think we saw a good portion of the 60 million sheep in the country.

The next day we said goodbye to the car. By this point it felt like our home maybe even more than the tent did. When we pulled into the rental agency we had put 1,872 miles (3,013 km) on the odometer. After all of this time on the road, we felt like there should have been some kind of ceremony as we parted ways with our ride.

Later that day we flew to Auckland and found the cheapest place to stay near the airport. Thankfully, we didn't spend much time in the room. Got to see Auckland on last time that evening and do a bit of gift shopping for all of the people on Japan that knew we were away. We woke up early to catch our flight and were on our way to Hong Kong at 8:00am.

And just like that we were on our way home. The trip was a good break from the norm and being in a western culture has provided me with a very new perspective of my life in Asia. I think I needed it, too. New Zealand is a good place to keep it simple...we pretty much stayed outdoors the entire time because with views like these they only thing you really need to spend your money on getting from one magnificent sight to the next.

Well, it's back to life as usual for another few months.

a few cultural comments...

2008-03-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days I've been reading a book that I found in my apartment that provides a general overview of Japan's history, culture, and economy. The book, written by Lucian Ellington, is called 'Japan: Tradition and Change' and I thought it would be interesting to both highlight and comment on some passages (mostly dealing with Japanese culture) that I've come across while reading it. I think this is a good book to examine for blogging purposes because it deals with a lot of general things that I see every day but may be new to those who haven't spent time in this country.

-"In Japan many employees put in long hours on the job together, socialize after work with each other, play on company teams, and live side by side in company housing...In fact it is very unusual for many Japanese to have any other friends to speak of other than work mates. All this makes it almost impossible for many Japanese to separate work from private life" (158).

I'm truly in a unique position here. I'm working in Japan but I don't have to subscribe to the group mindset and philosophy to the extent that the Japanese do so I'm able to observe this world but not actually 'live' it. Watching how teachers work together is pretty fascinating here because there's a certain daily order of operations that keeps everyone in check and, from what I can see (in my situation at least), everyone's role is well defined. Institutions in Japan are different from the United States because of the elevated level of commitment that the Japanese exhibit when taking part in a group or activity. In America this generally occurs more by personal choice but here the high responsibility of being part of the team is simply expected. Anyone teaching English here will tell you that questions like 'What are you hobbies?' and 'What sports do you like?' come up ALL the time. I see this as a logical method of categorization on the part of Japanese people. When I first came here I didn't really understand all of the interest in my favorite sports and hobbies but it makes sense to me now. For example, I am known for a few things in Naruto which include but aren't limited to 'This is Brad. He is from America. He plays the drums. He likes fish but not meat. He has blue eyes (even though they're green), etc.' Because so much time, effort, and importance are placed on what institutions you subscribe to here, saying what you like to do tells a lot about yourself. So yeah, I'm not in the position to generalize all Japanese concerning this topic but I know that many people spend a lot of time with their coworkers because this tight group cohesion. This book was published in 1990 and I think that things are in the process of changing but the social structure here is still very, very different than what I was used to back in America.

-"Japan is not a society where individuals who dare to be different have fared well. The old Japanese proverb that the nail that protrudes to far is hammered down has mean difficult times for, among others, many young people that do not fit in with the group" (167).

I have witnessed a few students who have shown a complete disregard for the conformity and pressure of school life in Japan and the reaction of the teachers has been interesting. Most of these students are swept under the rug and ignored by their teachers and most of their peers and no one really attempts to make the non-conformist students fall into line (at my schools). These kids literally walk around the hallways during class, sometimes opening up the doors to the classrooms just to mock the teacher or make some other kind of disruption. This lack of discipline drove me crazy when I first got here but now I realize that it's not my problem and all I can do is attempt to get along with these students outside of class (which I've done well with so far).

-"That the Japanese are among the world's most educated peoples is apparent in aspects of society other than the classroom or the workplace. Anyone who has ridden a Japanese train or subway knows that almost everyone seems to be reading a book, magazine, or newspaper" (133).

First of all, this quote can be updated by adding 'or using a cell phone' to this list. Many Japanese do exhibit a very strong daily commitment to education. I've had this conversation many times on any given Monday:

Me: So what did you do this weekend?
Student: I study English!
Me: Really?
Student: Yes!
Me: All weekend?
Student: Yes!
Me: Well, what else did you do?
Student: I study math! (etc, etc.)

Granted, 'I study English' is a go to answer for the 'What did you do this weekend?' question but I know that a lot of my students really do study many, many hours every Saturday and Sunday.

-"Three behaviors that most Japanese high school students don't engage in are drinking and drug-use, after-school work, and dating. Laws and societal mores concerning drinking and drug use are quite strict, and teenage drug and alcohol problems in Japan are minuscule compared with that of the United States" (140).

In a country where beer vending machines are very common, it's a good thing that almost all of the youth know to wait until they are 20 before they can use them. I don't know about the dating thing...I am aware of a few relationships between students although it's kept very low key. I can say that with some of my classes the male and female students literally ignore the presence of the opposite gender and only socialize and do classwork within their own group.

-"Many working females are typically young, unmarried women for whom the Japanese have a nickname which may be translated as OLS or "office flowers." These young women work for a corporation for five to six years after they graduate from high school or junior college and, upon marrying, leave the company. "Office flowers" are never given meaningful work but instead are expected to create a pleasant environment for the permanent, mostly male employees by making and serving tea and running errands" (155).

The book follows this paragraph by saying that not all women fit within this pattern. All of my eight co-teachers are female so I'd say that women here at least have a promanent role in English education. A co-teacher of mine let me borrow a book that descibes a woman whose husband would put in very long hours at work only to come home and say three words to his wife: 'food' when he wanted dinner, 'bath' when he was ready to relax, and then 'bed' when he wanted her to unroll his futon. I don't work with any 'tea ladys' but I know that they're common in some other schools in this area. From what I've read and seen it seems that with every new generation comes more equalities between genders. Since I mainly interact with school-age Japanese I can say that I don't see too many outright gender inequalities while at school. Boys and girls tend to stay separate and clubs are usually either all-male or all-female so gender identity is still a strong determining factor in the students' actions.

graduation, the weekend, etc.

2008-03-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

On Friday I went to a graduation ceremony at my smallest school. The day was a bit more relaxed than I thought it would be although I was happy when the actual ceremony was over and I could talk with the students, parents, and teachers that were there. Of course there were old men on bikes who were chatting away with me in Awa-ben (the regional slang for this part of Japan), not realizing that I can only make out a few words if I'm lucky. I'm used to this though and can usually respond somewhat accordingly. After the ceremony, I got home earlier than usual so I took a walk around my neighborhood and enjoyed some of the warm air and then watched (and loved) the movie Into the Wild. I've read that foreigners' spirits (in Japan) are generally pretty high when the weather improves, but I think that's true for most people that have to deal with winter temperatures.

I also went on my first off-road bike ride of the season and discovered some great trails right by my apartment. While riding I noticed a lot more of my neighbors outside mostly to prep their gardens and fields for the growing season. I remember how green the rice fields were back in August and I'm looking forward for seeing that again...it sure beats having those fields be so bare during the winter.

Well, it's Monday and I'll be on a plane to Auckland, NZ in three days. As with my other trips that I've taken while living here so far, the fact of the matter really hasn't hit me yet. I know that it's going to be very different to be in an English-speaking country but I'm pretty sure it won't take long to get used to my native language being spoken all around me. Wow, it's sure a lot easier to plan things when you don't have to navigate your way between languages. I hope the fall leaves are still in full effect when Caitlin and I make the drive through the country (which is about as big as the state of Colorado, by the way) and hopefully we'll notice all of the sheep that frequently cross the roads. Well we're both from western Pennsylvania so I think that we're used to avoiding deer anyway...

OK Chris, here are some pictures of my apartment. I've got three rooms- a kitchen, living room and a bed room. All of the rooms are separated by sliding doors and in two of the rooms I have tatami (woven straw) mats as the floor. My futon is folded up every day and put in the corner and at night I unroll it onto my floor and sleep. My computer is in the living room and I've got a balcony with a washing machine on it (yep, it's outside) and my clothes are hung to dry outside after they're washed. It took me a few months to get my place the way I wanted it but it definitely feels like home now.

finishing up the school year

2008-03-05T20:52:00.000-08:00

I just got back from my final class with some of my favorite students at Naruto Jr. High and this is the first time feeling the way that I do at the moment. I've been here long enough to develop relationships with the students here and saying goodbye to them was not easy. It feels really strange because on one side I'm really sad to see them graduate and go to high school but at the same time I've got to be happy that we got along so well in the first place. These 9th grade students would write letters to me every time I came to school, visit me in the staff room in the morning and during cleaning time in the afternoon, and they really, really liked English class. Things will be very different when going back to this school but I'll be looking forward to meeting the new students that will be coming in April (when the new school year starts).

It's been a pretty good week for me. On Tuesday night I was invited to Naruto University to attend a discussion about the '08 U.S. presidential election and I jumped at the chance because I realized that I wasn't too clear on the candidates' policies on a few issues. I spent the day researching the election so that at least I knew what I was talking about to some extent. A small but diverse crowd showed up, including university students from Indonesia. Laos, Japan, America, and Malawi (next to Zambia). The whole thing reminded me of being back in college and I realized that I miss being around that atmosphere.

The weather has been nice over the past few days...I've been opening up the doors and windows of my apartment and remembering what spring feels like. I don't think this winter was too harsh but lots of locals have been telling me that the past few months were very cold for them. Even though I had to bike though all the winter weather, the cold didn't get to me like it would in Pittsburgh.

Also, it looks like I'll have some more visitors here soon. My parents are thinking about making the trip in early May when I have some time off from work and then and then I'll be anxiously awaiting Anthony and Cris' trip during the middle of the month. But, before all that, I will be seeing Mr. Jordan Graw and Julia the day I get back from New Zealand and I'm very excited about it. And, for future reference, I now have my schedule for next half year and July 19th is a very possible date for a visit to America. I've been having some crazy dreams about home and it think this means that I'm excited to go back for a little while. It's hard for me to predict how I'll feel in Pennsylvania after being in Japan for a year...it could be totally normal or feel very different. I know that I've changed a bit throughout this experience, so we'll see...

graduation day

2008-03-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I somehow got up and out of the house in time to see the san-nensei (third year) students at Naruto Tech spend their final day at school. Graduation ceremonies in Japan are very formal and I was told to just follow everyone else as they sat down and stood up on command. There were a lot of speakers (including the mayor and the superintendent of the board of education, who I was having a beer with with later on in the evening) and an equal number of musical numbers such as the Japanese national anthem (which I never heard before). Afterwards, I helped take down the decorations in the gym and then had some lunch at my desk. A group of my favorite students came up to me to say 'thank you' and wanted their pictures taken with me. This made me really happy because I wanted to get in one last goodbye before the day was done. Graduates from this school go off to do many different things...from construction, to playing music professionally, to pro baseball. One of my most enthusiastic students will soon be the catcher for the Hiroshima Carp. I want to see him in a game sometime and revisit Hiroshima, my favorite Japanese city when I first visited the country.

ikeda sake festival

2008-02-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

OK, so this is how to describe an osake-matsuri (sake festival) in western Tokushima:

-Literally enough sake in one room to get the entire town of Ikeda at least 'buzzed'.
-This room having one of the craziest smells that I've ever come across...I can't even begin to describe it.
-Plastic taped to the floor so that you don't have to worry about taking your shoes off when you get into the building (this is very un-Japanese).
-Scores of people passed out in folding chairs throughout the day...and most of them in their late 60s and 70s.
-Realizing that there's really no way to pace yourself at an event like this.
-Realizing that eating breakfast beforehand would have been smart.

We basically stayed there until it became too difficult to consume Japan's famous beverage and left for some food and a nice, smooth beer.

But this guy wasn't going anywhere.

And people like this took the event a bit more seriously that I did.

As I randomly make my way through various small towns around here I'm happy to say that I'm coming away with more than a few hazy memories of friendly old men, strange alcohol, and multiple days of recovery.

long, long, long

2008-02-21T00:04:00.000-08:00

This week won't end. And it's been a strange one as well. I've been back into the habit of running once again but I couldn't do it the past few days because I've been getting home too late and the streets aren't really lit up in my neighborhood. The last thing I need is to fall in an irrigation ditch or some other ambiguous stream of water that runs not far from my apartment. Work has been really slow the past few days. A bunch of classes were cancelled (due to bad behavior of the students) and I've been sitting around reading about New Zealand. However, there have been some highlights. One of note was yesterday when a fellow teacher asked me, "Brad, how much do...you...alcohol?" This, of course, led to a lively conversation. This is at the same school where the vice principal randomly gave me a bottle of kintoki (sweet potato) flavored liquor because I think I mentioned at some point that I'd like to try it. Another amusing thing that happened today is the reaction that I got when I signed a receipt in front of some teachers. I guess signatures aren't really hand-written here so it must have been crazy to see the pen move with such quick and unfamiliar strokes. A whole group of teachers gasped and then clapped after seeing me do it.

Tomorrow is finally Friday and I'm catching a ride out west with Jill to attend a sake festival in Ikeda. Other than that event I just want to sit around and maybe watch a movie and cook some good food. Raging Bull came in the mail the other day so I'll be throwing that in my backpack before taking off. Less than one month 'til vacation and I am counting down the days.

the new normalcy

2008-02-18T04:04:00.000-08:00

Today I taught three classes at good ol' Naruto Technical High School. A day pretty much like any other but I took note of how a half year of adjustment will make things that beforehand seemed so unlikely or strange just part of the routine at a technical school in Tokushima. Here are a few examples:

-Boys plucking each others' eyebrows during class while wearing pink Dolce and Gabbana scarfs.
-A student eating a huge hamburger and hiding under a curtain as I explain my lesson.
-Once again, a student taking his pants off completely during class (I STILL don't know why this happens or why it seems like I'm the only one that notices it).
-The 'hibernating' students (usually baseball players) that have slept through every one of my classes and I have literally never seen their faces.
-Classes in which 75% of the students are playing hand held electronic games.
-Endless hand touching, head rubbing, and groping. (yes, these are all boys...and they do this stuff as they send cell phone texts to their girlfriends).

This is pretty much all I can think of for today. The good thing is that I really like these guys a lot, even if class simply consists of me just hanging out with them (it happens more than you'd think). I've always got a lesson for them but some kids can benefit more from the fact of my presence as opposed to a game or a worksheet.

I am happy right now but a lot of my attention is being focused on my upcoming trip to New Zealand (in a month!) and when I visit the States again at some point. And I think I finally feel what 'real life' here is like, though it's hard to really define that because those words mean different things to different people.

I can, however, say for certain that there are some things about America that I miss at the moment. Here's a small list of things that are on my mind:

-Walking down the street and sitting down with a cup of coffee and a good friend. I did that a lot in Pittsburgh. And I wish that the coffee shop nearby didn't close at 6:00pm.
-Hummus and whole wheat wraps.
-ANYTHING but Japanese beer...even though I sometimes pay $3.50 for a bottle of Hoegaarden at the grocery store.
-Waking up to discover a foot of snow on the ground.
-Playing music with my best friends.
-Wide streets.
-Blending in, being 'normal' and not stared at when you're not in the mood for it.
-Signs of any kind of subculture.

But these things will keep me sane for as long as I need them to:

-The good people here that make it worthwhile to stay another year.
-The situations that I find myself in and how I never thought I'd experience them.
-The 13,000 songs on my computer.
-Syd Barrett's biography (it's in the mail).
-Homemade strawberry pancakes.
-Never running out of people to write letters to.
-Not saving money but seeing such interesting parts of the world.

Winter, yeah, it's OK...but I'm pretty ready for spring to show up out here.

valentine's day 10k

2008-02-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been meaning to get back into running recently and I think that doing a 10 kilometer race (6.2 miles) in the middle of February with my students was a good way to do that. I woke up this morning and biked to my high school and joined the students in the baseball field where they were preparing to run. One of the teachers told me that if they didn't complete the race in under 75 minutes, they'd have to run it again.

I ended up finishing in 48 minutes. The course was mainly by the seaside through rice fields and farms on roads that were in good shape and fairly flat. The last two kilometers were a bit difficult as the sun was in my face while I was trying to keep myself together and cross the finish line in a decent time.

Two of the girls that attend the school cheered the runners on and proved that looking is good is more important than keeping warm in the middle of winter.

And finally, I received a Valentine's Day card from one of my favorite students that put me in good spirits during what's usually a pretty dreary time of the year.

JET interview, revisited

2008-02-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

So last year at this time I was not only freezing in my heatless apartment in Pittsburgh but I was also trying to prepare for my JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) interview at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC. Actually, my main source of anxiety was not the interview itself but rather getting to where I needed to be. The night before my interview my flight to DC was cancelled twice due to an ice storm in Pittsburgh but thankfully I made it out of the city only a few hours later than I was scheduled to. I stayed with Lisa who at the time was doing an internship at National Public Radio and also had a JET interview that day. I was dropped off in the city six hours before my interview and 30 blocks away from the embassy. I killed most of that time by scribbling away in my journal in the corner of an Au Bon Pain. Anyway, soon after putting my suit on in a nearby Starbucks bathroom, I got to the Japanese Embassy. A few other people were there waiting for their interviews, including Lisa. I wasn't really nervous as she and I sat and talked while waiting to be called into the interview room. Eventually, my name was next on the list and I walked though a door and was faced with a panel of three people that I spoke with for about 30 minutes. Here are the questions that I was asked:

-Please explain how you first got into teaching.
-In what ways did you shape the kids that you were tutoring?
-Have you ever studied any other languages?
-Do you think that you will be able to adjust to Japanese food?
-What is your opinion on how Japan is dealing with nature conservation?
-Please name and describe the three best things about Pittsburgh.
-What will you bring with you to Japan to share with your students as well as remember your life back home?
-Please talk about any issues concerning the relationship between Japan and the US.
-What would you do if you were asked to do teach very banal lessons day after day?
-I was then asked to do a ten minute self-introduction on the spot.

I'm happy to say that I walked out of the embassy feeling like I nailed it. I called my mom to tell her the good news and then got a nice cup of coffee and sat on a bench near DuPont Circle (even though it was freeeezing outside). That night, Lisa and I planned to go out and see a bit of the city but instead we stayed in, put on a documentary, and crashed very early in the evening. We did get to see some good museums the next day and I even snuck into the NPR building to see firsthand where all the 'magic' goes down.

The waiting period over the next month and a half was pretty awful. All that I knew was that in early April I'd either be shortlisted, an alternate, or rejected. I didn't resign my lease in Pittsburgh and knew that one way or another I was heading out of the city and, if possible, landing a job abroad. During the first week of April I got the email that had been waiting for since I turned my written application in sometime in November. And now I'm sitting on my tatami mat, drinking coffee and listening to King Crimson albums back to back and I've got to say that, as of now, I'm pretty content.

Of course I'll have to apply and interview for other jobs after this one (at some point) but I think that the whole JET application process really puts one's nerves through the ringer. I don't think it would have been so bad if the waiting periods were shorter (or maybe less vague on the dates that we'd be receiving important information). This may be the first time in my life where I'm not too worried about my next step, although I think about it a lot. Who knows what will come up between now and the time I say goodbye to Japan, whenever that may be.

first (but not the last) trip to naoshima island

2008-02-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

I might have said this before in an earlier post but this winter seems to be just flying by. I guess it's my first one spent in a climate that's significantly warmer than southwestern Pennsylvania and the lack of 'frigidness' is a welcome change...although I really miss seeing snow. Speaking of bad weather, Caitlin and I took a day during the long weekend to check out some installation artwork and an art museum on Naoshima Island near the city of Takamatsu in Kagawa prefecture. My ex-roommate Katyana was there last year and highly recommended visiting the island once she found out that I would be living in Shikoku. I was also happy to see some more of Yayoi Kusama's works aside from the installations that she has at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. We didn't get to see too many things during this visit (and faced some dreary rain at points) but now that we know how easy it is to get there it looks like Naoshima will be great place spend some time once the weather gets a bit warmer.

The rest of the weekend was pretty calm. I got to cook for some friends in the neighborhood on Sunday and Monday and it felt pretty good to prepare food for more than just myself or a few other people. It seemed like Fukui sensei and her family were really into watching me cut up vegetables although I'm not too sure why. The meal that I cooked for them was my version of an 'American' dish- seitan, quinoa, cashews, asparagus, cabbage, mushrooms, fresh basil, garlic, etc., etc. All plates were clean when the night was over so I was happy with that. On Sunday (the night before) Caitlin and I hung out with Hiroko and Taka (and Riku-chan) and brought over some pizza and a homemade salad and dressing for dinner. This was my first taste of pizza in Naruto and I was impressed. I think I'm lucky to live where I do soley based on the good Mexican food and pizza here. Yeah, and the sushi's not too bad either.

Hiroko's brother Shige is an interesting person. He is a teacher at a school for the deaf near Tokushima City and is deaf himself. When he talked, he used sign language, Japanese, and written and spoken English to get his point across. He would ask questions by writing them down in English and was able to lip-read most of the answers (in both English and Japanese). He was quickly able to adapt to our multi-lingual conversations (not that I can speak much Japanese) and has overcome his disablility to a great extent. Sometimes I get pretty frustrated as I blankly stare at 'Minna no Nihongo Volume I' but I realize that learning a second language could be much more challenging...

there's not much space in this country

2008-02-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

And piling stuff up until it falls down is really popular here. This is a teacher's desk at one of my schools.

"because the whole world isn't japan"

2008-02-06T01:52:00.000-08:00

Three years ago this month I took a trip to Reykjavik, Iceland and every time I look at the pictures it reminds me of how much I want to go back. This was my first time abroad and I went without any specific plans and, thanks to some wonderful luck and generous people, I got to see and experience a lot of really cool things.

(And my hair was long...which is kinda funny.)

hangin' out with miori sensei

2008-02-03T20:39:00.000-08:00

On Thursday evenings from 6:00pm-8:00pm I spend my time hanging out at the Ueta household with Miori sensei, my Japanese teacher. The night usually starts out with exchanging a small gift or food item if one of us ventured out of Naruto the weekend before. In Japan it's very common to bring back some kind of treat for your friends or coworkers when you visit a place of significance. I was in Tokyo the weekend before our last lesson so I brought her some cheese and wasabi snacks and told her "これはおもしろいです" ("Kore wa omoshiroi desu." or, "This is interesting...").

Miori sensei is a good friend to have here because she's very open-minded and interested in the world as a whole. This week she'll be going to Spain with her lunch group to see some of the sights in Madrid. I told her about my experiences in Barcelona a few years back and she said that one day she hopes to get there. We often talk about the places that we want to see and, though our lists of potential trips are extensive, we're both slowly crossing off each destination.

Miori sensei's husband is an elementary school principal and he does some really fantastic artwork in his spare time. The picture above is a depiction of the Kazurabashi Vine Bridge in western Tokushima. He creates this art by meticulously cutting one sheet of black paper with a very small knife and placing the paper on a white background so that the forms exist due to the negative space. All of the black that you see in the picture above is cut from a solid piece of paper and no marker or glue is used at all. Miori sensei tells me that his work is at the national gallery in Tokyo as well as some other major cities in Japan. When seeing his work in person, it's easy to believe this to be true.

why i don't teach from the textbook

2008-01-30T17:46:00.000-08:00

Because there are lessons like this:

(Bad picture, I know...but there was not too much lighting in the staff room that day. This is one of MANY amusing subjects that the high school text covers.)

Here is an example of a worksheet that I created for the first year English students at my junior high schools:

Basically, the students are to draw their favorite person (cartoon, celebrity, someone they actually know, etc.) and then write five sentences to describe him or her. I really like this format because it encourages them to be creative when practicing new vocabulary words and since all of my students love to draw (even the tech high school kids) it gives them an artistic outlet along with the writing practice. If I have a significant amount of time to work with I usally have the students group together in pairs and describe their drawings to one another. At the end of the class they turn their papers in to me and I make grammar corrections and comments on their pictures (which are always very impressive) before handing them back next class. The drawing above was one of my favorites from yesterday's classes.

(Click on the picture to see a larger version.)

the winter routine

2008-01-29T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to say that it's winter and I'm not feeling down at the moment. I can't really get out that much during the week but this month I'm finding a lot of enjoyment in sticking with a simple routine that includes cooking myself a fairly involved dinner each night. On the menu this week is quinoa ('keen-wah', a Pittsburgh favorite- reminds me SO much of the feasts we'd make on Mathilda St. in the evenings) with olive oil, apple cider vinegar, basil, sea salt, and nice heap of nutritional yeast. This is what plain quinoa looks like after it's cooked:

I've been using that as a base for my meals and then I'll sautee some tuna or vegetables and make a salad along with it. If I'm feeling really ambitious I'll throw some fruit and vegetables in my juicer and have something good to drink along with my meal. The only reason that I don't juice all of the time is because of the amount of effort that goes into cleaning my juicer. I've also been looking forward to a really good cup of coffee (thanks to my newly purchased grinder and french press) and a toasted brown rice and anko (あんこ) roll after dinner. The rest of my evenings are spent under a lot of blankets either reading, writing, or watching a DVD. Things are pretty simple these days but it I'm feeling good about it. As long as I can make it to the grocery store on my way home from school I think I'll be content until springtime.

Speaking of spring, I guess more of reason to keep with a relatively inexpensive routine is because I'll be heading off to New Zealand in late March. Caitlin and I will be spending two weeks (3/20-4/3) doing as many outdoor things as possible for the time that we are there and I'm excited because it'll be autumn during our visit. And when we get back it's be time for さくら (sakura, or cherry blossoms) in Japan!

Hopefully February won't drag on too long. Even if it does, spingtime will be worth the wait I'm sure.