Boys will be girls

We love the backstreet boys! Some of my crazy students with their #1 favorite American music. Not sure why, but it seems like the most popular imported male music artists (amongst my junior high kids) tend to be pretty effeminate. For example, the Backstreet Boys...Michael Jackson...British and American boy bands. But a lot of the popular female artists tend to be more boyish or tough, like Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera, Tina Turner. Not sure why. I think it sums up a lot of the gender differences over here a little bit...Japanese men overall tend to have a more feminine side to them (just look at some of their Tina Turner haircuts, watch them on TV) and while the girls tend to be cute and dainty on the outside, they usually are more assertive and adopt some masculine traits as well that underlie their girliness. Ne?

beat

Today was quite possibly the busiest 8 am - 4 pm day of work I've had at school. It was speaking test day and I was expected to give and grade tests to every single one of my Mizusawa students. So I ended up in every class, no break time, no bathroom time, running late from class to class because I was giving tests between bells, and worked during lunch and the lunch break too. I didn't have time to make tomorrow's activities so I'll be working tonight instead of studying for the JLPT which drives me crazy.

The only saving grace was that the English teacher actually thanked me for working so hard today. "You did a lot today! Thanks!" was what I got, but that was more than usual so at least I didn't drive home mad like I occasionally do.

The appreciation for other people's hard work is different here because supervisors never evaluate or tell you honestly anything about how well you do your job, and that is really frustrating for me because I want feedback in my professional life. I think I take work too seriously to be a JET sometimes...

I'm a B Boy

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving. No big ALT dinner this year like last year, so I'll probably eat sushi.

Decided late Monday night to head down to Tokyo with Lopaka and Debs on Tuesday night, and meet up with a couple people there. We had no real aims other than to drive to Tokyo and be in the city since we had Wednesday off work (for the Japanese version of Labor Day).

First of all, it is SO easy to drive to Tokyo from here. Why did I never know this? We parked at Lopaka's in Nakasato which is 30 minutes from my house, and from his place it was 2 hours and 30 minutes into the suburbs of Tokyo. All in all, 3 hours to drive to the biggest metropolis in the universe. Lopaka was very proud that is was only 3 turns from his house...turn onto the road near his place, head over the hills and turn onto the expressway, and it's one shot from there into Nerima where we took a quick 15 minute subway into the center of the city.

We headed straight for Shibuya, same part of Tokyo I was in last time, where the average age is probably 20. Once about every 100 people, you might see someone that looks over 30. So I probably stood out cuz Japanese people think I'm ancient, but at least I felt young there.

We met up with a guy named Hiroshi after a mellow dinner, and drank rum in the streets on the way to Club Harlem, Tokyo's famous trend-setting hip hop club. Club Harlem is where all the coolest and most serious Japanese B boys and B girls bump away, trying out the coolest dance moves they saw in the coolest new rap video, meticulously dressed to make sure they are following the coolest of urban fashion trends. I obviously stood out a little. Not only were we the only foreigners, but I was 3 feet taller than everyone, and I was either doing the Robot or the Roger Rabbit. What I should have done was donned a gold chain and a Yankees hoodie and smoked a cigarette and bobbed my head up and down told people I was Eminem's brother, but I didn't. Either way, I felt like a B boy even if I didn't look the part. Eventually had to teach Debbie and Lopaka a few sweet dance moves...they were SO clueless. We hipped and hopped until about 4 am and then headed back to Hiroshi's house, a pretty nice place in Shibuya.

The next day involved about 3 things: walking, shopping and avoiding getting trampled by the intense T0kyo crowds. We cruised Shibuya and found a luscious TGI Friday's where I had a luscious bacon cheeseburger, and then we met Kaori and headed out to Harajuku. Lots of browsing, cruising, munching and chatting, then headed back home around 10 PM, got into bed by 2 am. I'm beat.

Funny thing is, I'm going back to Tokyo tomorrow. Not gonna admit why I'm going, but it starts with Disney and ends with Land.

Tokamachi Bumpkins

Before I came to this rural area of Japan, it was described to me as the "Kentucky of Japan", likening it to a backwoods, country bumpkin area of America. Now, trying not to stereotype Appalachia or Niigata country folk, I put that idea in the back of my head. But yesterday, it resurfaced...

I went to my super small, super backwoods mountain school with 11 students (Nonaka elementary, the one with the tiny blue smurf-like principal). After my awesome class, I was shooting the breeze with the crazy toothless office lady and the smurf man. The topic of strange Japanese foods came up and I told them that I had eaten some strange stuff lately, including raw horse. As usual per any conversation with a Japanese person, I also had to divulge what Japanese food repulses me. "Natto and uni!" I said (Natto is dung-smelling rotten fermented soy bean poison, and uni is raw sea urchin).

"How about tanuki?" they asked. Tanuki? People eat those? I had to do a double take. "You mean those rat-like raccoon dogs that run around the woods at night?" I asked (they are essentially the weird forest vermin of Japan).

"Yup! Some people eat those around here!" they confirmed. It was the first time I had heard about it, and I found out that it seems to only be people in this backcountry area of Niigata that do it. "Only Tokamachi people eat them, the mountain people like us!" I realized that it's exactly like the legend that backcountry folk in Kentucky and West Virginia hunt and grill squirrels.

"Yah, we hunt them and then grill them!" said the toothless old office lady, making a shooting gesture. She slapped me on the back and said "Let's have a barbecue someday!"

Itadakimasu.

The weekend

My first normal non-sick Tokamachi weekend in ages, Friday night I taught loads and then met Martin for some chicken-gizzards-on-a-stick. Saturday I relaxed but had a good night out at Kaori's, playing drinking games and just being goofy.

Late Sunday night I went to a showing of some ski videos and slide shows by my friend Take and his ski buddies, plus a team called CMV who are former Japan National Ski Team members that are now free skiers, who have a little production company and are producing their own videos now. They live down the road from me in Nozawa Onsen and manage the Nozawa freestyle park. They are a bit younger than me and are considered part of the 'New Generation' movement in skiing which revolves around more creativity in using terrain, rails, backcountry, and of course pushing the limit in the air in the park and halfpipe (borrowing from snowboarding in those areas).

Take's brother Yuzuru skis sometimes with CMV and was in the video. It has some footage of him in Taos, New Mexico (one of my former home hills) hucking and landing a front flip off an 80-foot cliff in the West Basin of the ridge. Take and Yuzuru and a guy named Maru (who lives in Joetsu) took part in Taos's freesking comp last year and that's where they shot the footage.

We went out to an izakaya afterwards to relax. I couldn't drink cuz I was driving back home but they promised they would come to Tokamachi and have a good night out there. All these guys are incredible skiers and it was fun that some of them know and have skied with my friends back home like Ely and Gabe. It was great that they were familiar with things about New Mexico that few people in the world know anything about, and gave me a sense of renewed connection with my life back home.

And again it was of course great to see my buddy Take. He has a huge heart.

quick funny video clip from my favorite TV show about Bush's trip to Japan. It was fun cuz I got to look up the kanji behind Bush's head.
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=25257

damn, i'm whiny!

after reading that last post again, i realized how whiny i sounded and how I'm just making excuses for how my japanese has declined. Like anything else I just need to put effort into it, but like anything else you usually don't put out effort unless there is motivation...but the truth is I've plateaued out on my Japanese level to where I can do anything that I really need to do, and most of the people I spend my time with speak English (plus, it's my job to speak English so I do that all day). But I caught myself...I'm NOT giving up on the proficiency test, I'm going to give it a good swing and maybe I'll just end up being smart and passing the thing.

Since I've been studying more kanji, the idea of a tattoo briefly comes into my mind...not cuz I'm one of those people that think kanji tattoos are cool even though you've never studied Japanese (nothing against you, some of you are my friends), but because I committed to a tattoo long ago on Annie and Aimee's last night in town (yes, I had been drinking). One of my favorite kanjis is YUKI (because it's the kanji for SNOW) and i love the way the kanji looks. Plus, I like snow and it represents the fact that we live in the heart of the original Snow Country. That was the kanji we all decided to get eventually as a sign of our friendship, and as a bit of a souvenir for living in a life of Japanese snow.

Also, I like symmetry so one tattoo isn't gonna work cuz anywhere central will be on bone...like my spine, and I don't want it on my stomach, chest, bellybutton, throat or nose, so it would be on a leg or shoulder. But, that would be off balance, so does anyone have any ideas for a good second balancing kanji? Something that you would associate with me?

But the truth is I don't like tattoos or piercings and I don't want one, so all of this daydreaming about what tattoo to get is sort of the same as daydreaming about what you would do if you won the lottery...it's probably just not going to happen.

I sound like the devil

Lame weekend, caught a cold Friday and after my meeting in Nagaoka I locked myself in the apartment until Sunday night. Cough, fever, throat, etc., and I'm still stuck on it. I lost my voice in class today and the kids thought I sounded like a monster. It's getting kind of cold out, but not nearly as cold as it will be in a month so I guess I'm not complaining. I haven't used any of my kerosene heaters yet until I get better cuz the fumes will just keep me sick I think.

What I really should have done while I sat around sick was study...a long while back, Debs and Martin talked me into signing up for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) which is a national certification exam. I signed up for level 3 (though it's above my head) in the hopes that it would motivate me to study. But, as there is no real need for certification and the main thing I care about is conversational Japanese, the studying hasn't gone well. All it's made me realize is that I know no kanji, and my reading skills should be better. In the process, my conversational skills have also dropped because I've been trying to focus on the test-specific stuff I'm weaker at. So all in all it's screwing my Japanese in every aspect by killing my speaking Japanese, and then making me less confident about my abilities in all the other stuff. Problem is, the more I study, the more things there are to forget, and that kills the most important thing, which is confidence.

So, with 2.5 weeks to the test, I have about 250 kanji and 1,000 vocabulary to learn, on top of general reading comprehension. There is no speaking in the test (but there is a listening section, which I expect to ace). I have given up on the reading and kanji, and started to focus on my conversational abilities again...even my Japanese friends have asked me what the heck happened to my ability to communicate with them.

more news...

Here's a news article about the student...my heart is still heavy over it.

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20051111p2a00m0na005000c.html

I'm particularly sickened by the person that tried to take advantage of it in order to cash in. Seems to happen a lot in Japan...a certain brand of blackhearted jerk here has learned how to take advantage of the tacit agreement of honesty that the Japanese hold each other to. I remember after the earthquake, all the scams going around for people trying to donate money to earthquake victims, when it was going into a fraudulent account instead and pocketed on the side. Sooner or later people here will become less trusting of each other as they are in other nations where people have been screwing each other over for years...but I hope they will just get aggressive in their policing of scammers so the famous Japanese honor system can be upheld.

bad news

Damn. News just came in from my principal about the missing elementary student...he was found dead today in the mountains not far from Tokamachi. He was gone for a full 7 days. I haven't heard much more about what happened but it's got me pretty sad today...poor kid, poor family, friends and classmates...

missing student

I had a good weekend in Tokyo cuz my friend from college, Aubrey, was in town. I went in Saturday and came back last night. I'll put up a post with some cool pictures soon...

...but for now the thing on my mind is a little 8 year old boy who has gone missing in my town. He is a student at one of my schools (Kawaji Elementary) and he has been missing for 5 days. He is autistic and can't communicate. He disappeared Wednesday night I think, and immediately word spread through my schools. I have seen flyers all over with his picture on it, and other than that I haven't seen much in the news...I wish Japan had some sort of Amber Alert system like we do back home, but I know people are looking for him...(I hope). I offered help to my school but they weren't sure what to do with me. Apparently he has disappeared once before (decided to walk to Nakasato) but they are a little more worried this time because it's already been 5 full days and it's pretty cold out now, and he also is known to like water and was seen last not too far from the river. I hate situations like this for the obvious reason that you're worried about the kid, but also because all you can think about is what sort of bad thing has happened due to the circumstances and the nature of his disability, and feeling a little helpless. But I do think people are looking for him, Yuko's parents work in city hall and they are working overtime to coordinate the search for him I guess, and volunteers are going door to door with his picture. So all we can do is hope that everything will work out and that he'll show up safe and be home soon.

I love Tokyo!

Rambly post describing my weekend...recently I've realized that I've never actually gone to Tokyo just to hang out for a weekend. With the coolest city in the world just a hop away, that's a travesty! So I decided to skip down to Tokyo on the bus for the first time, for a solo night out on Saturday and then to meet up with my college buddy Aubrey on Sunday (in town from Taiwan for the weekend).

Got the afternoon bus, just by driving over the pass to Muikamachi, parking my car at the interchange of the expressway, and asking the dude if he had any open seats. $35 and 3.5 hours later, I'm in the heart of Tokyo in Ikebukuro. Found a bar in the Lonely Planet and headed there (they serve Kilkenny's on tap!) for some city fun. Sat next to a Canadian teacher guy and an obnoxious Kiwi, then the teacher guy's school's secretary lady showed up for drinks too. The bar had the Japanese version of the Blues Brothers playing...people were friendly, dancing, and enjoying a Saturday night.

in the Ikebukuro bar, grooved to the Japanese Blues Brothers

After that wore down my next option was to decide which part of Tokyo I should finish my night in. I chose Shibuya because I'm partially familiar with it, wanted to check out a couple places, and knew there would be some cheap and interesting lodging there. Rode the subway around (much easier now than it used to be) and went hunting for another bar from the book. I got kinda lost, and ended up just enjoying people-watching and the colorful visual stimulation from the lights of the city (felt like a raccoon transfixed by some shiny silver or something). 1.5 hours later and lots of confusing and completely contradicting answers from Japanese people about the location of the bar, I gave up, hopped into a club for a $10 beer or two, and then went in search of my very first Capsule Hotel experience.

Crowds and lights of Shibuya at night...

Capsule hotels are officially rad. I found "Capsule Land" on a main corner in Shibuya and checked in. For those of you that don't know what a Capsule Hotel is, it's essentially the most Japanese contribution to the world of hotels that you could imagine. Japanese cities, pressed for space, have to get creative in how they house their travelling, drunken businessmen (no women allowed in capsule hotels). So they made these huge vertical towers of space-saving rows of capsules, which are essentially futuristic robot coffin tubes that you call home for an evening.

I checked in by buying my ticket from a vending machine, put my shoes in a special locker, took the tiny elevator up to the "Rocker Room" (so it said in the elevator), and found my very very tiny locker where I put whatever I could stuff into it. Kaori was right when she told me to pack light for capsule hotels...anyway I put on the free yukata robe and headed in search of the bath area.

Japanese-style public bath


I was really pretty impressed by the bath/sauna/shower area...it was big and tidy and not stinky or grimy. Enjoyed that before I ventured up for a night's rest...

Next I went up to the 9th floor to find my "room", which was exactly what I imagined it to be...a big plastic tube. You crawl in (luckily there is just enough space to turn around if necessary), put your wallet and phone on the 'shelf', and essentially just turn on your TV and fall asleep - after putting down the shade which seperates you from the dozens of surrounding salarymen encased just feet away.


my capsule!

It was comfortable, but I'm also not clausterophobic so that helps. It was barely long enough for my western self, and the paper thin futon was acceptably comfortable. The TV had everything a drunken salaryman needs, from weird Japanese sports, to free Japanese adult channels. There are little headphones instead of speakers, and radio stations and a tiny a/c too. Promptly fell asleep in my cozy little space rocket hotel room.

Who needs space to sleep anyway?

Next morning woke up with random guys crawling out of their coccoons just in time for the 10 am checkout. After another bath and then some jostling to get in position for the elevator, i handed my locker key to the front desk and was on my way out. Total cost...about $35!

Headed to Tokyo Station to meet with Aubrey who came to Tokyo for a trade show he was working in (he works with dealing bicycles and components). He brought along a japanese dude who bought a bike frame with him, and the three of us trudged around the city for a day before picking up another old Lewis and Clark kid, a Japanese guy named Maru (but we called him Fred in college).

I really wanted to see the kids in the Harajuku/Yoyogi area so thats where we headed first. This area is the center of the latest crazy trends and fashions that mostly young Japanese girls are into...really wild costumes, goth stuff, characters, dresses, leather body suits, you name it, on Sundays these kids come out of the woodwork to show everyone how freaky they can dress.

one of the bands we grooved to. this guy's got doo-doo on his head!

some of the Yoyogi kids. Aubrey especially liked paper-on-the-nose girl.

one of these freaks is not like the other!


Maybe if it were on sale...

We gawked and snapped photos before heading across the road in Yoyogi to the Meiji Jingu which is a shrine deep in a beautiful forest (very peaceful in the middle of the metropolis). It was a great walk into the shrine and you could see a lot of people dressed for weddings and the shichi-go-san blessing ceremony that little girls do at the age of 7, 5 and 3. Watched a couple weddings (a white guy marrying a japanese girl, interesting to watch the families try to coordinate things in the procession) and enjoyed the peace for a while. Cruised around Yoyogi park and grooved to some really great street bands before realizing my time was running short to get back to Ikebukuro and catch my bus.


Meiji Jingu gate

girl and mother preparing for the shichi-g0-san ceremony

me and aubrey at the wooden torii

Subwayed there and went out for a huge sirloin garlic steak (gotta get that city food) before jumping on the bus, and was back in my apartment by 9 PM! I gotta get to Tokyo more...

the boys...Kokubo, Maru, Me and Aubrey

Most of all it was really great to see Aubrey. Nobody other than Aunt Susie, Mia and Take have come to visit me so it was fun to see another familiar face. Aubrey and I always get along (he was my ski buddy in college, within two weeks of our freshman year, he and I hitchiked 80 miles up to Mt. Hood from Portland, then hiked up and skied down Palmer Glacier twice. We did this all cuz some guy bet us a pizza that we couldn't). I really enjoyed hanging out with him and his Japanese is great, and I made a couple new Japanese friends in the process.

Go Tokyo!

a few things from this week...

1. last night about 1 A.M., a noticeable earthquake hit while I was going to the bathroom. Of the hundreds of strong earthquakes I've felt within the past year, this was the first I can remember being mid-pee.

2. My fly was halfway open during my big class to 50 elementary students today. The loud kid kept shouting something at me in Japanese but I assumed he was just being obnoxious.

3. I was a rock star yesterday, though I hadn't planned on it. I went to Mizusawa's culture day festival in the morning where I helped with a quiz game they played with all the students. Then the science teacher came up to me and asked "you sing Beatles?". Sure, who doesn't right? So I asked, "With other teachers?" imagining a big chorus that I could just blend into in the back of the group. "Yes, other teachers" he said.

I get up on the stage, turns out it's just 5 teachers, a band with drums, piano, guitar, and then just me on vocals. The math teacher also sang vocals with me, but as the curtains opened and a microphone was placed in my hand, I sure felt alone. However, the students were thrilled and started getting up and dancing below the stage and screaming and pawing at my feet. Rock star. I sang "Hey Jude" and "O bla di".














that's me singing, half surprised cuz i didn't think it'd be just me and a mic in my hands