Trip to Asakusa

Today we met up with Kaori, one of our friends here, and went to Asakusa. Today is the first day of Golden Week, so there are lots of festivals going on. Upon arrival, we went for lunch at a famous Udon/Soba place. I had a shrimp-noodle soba, and Toby had soba in yam dipping sauce. Very yummy! :D

After that, we went to the famous temples there, which are dedicated to Konnan, a Buddhist deity. Pictures will be posted a little later on. There were also some delicious sweet potato Youkan (cakes) and of course we had to have some Baskin Robbins ice cream for dessert. ;)



After seeing the sights in Asakusa, we took a boat trip down to Tokyo harbour. Pretty kewl - we saw the Rainbow Bridge from the water and took the monorail train into Odaiba.



Odaiba is awesome! It's like a big conglomeration of weird architecture, archades, shopping malls, and theme parks. We checked out the Fuji building, and finished up with some Thai food overlooking the harbour. A very full day.

Watching the wrong feet

Today I taught a student named "Tobita". (Her family name, of course. I'm probably the only person in the world with "Tobita" as a given name.) I'm not sure what else we might have in common--her comprehension wasn't that great.

After work I almost killed myself in the middle of the Shibuya Hachiko Crossing. At the time I wasn't conscious of anything within 15 feet of the pavement; I was too busy staring at that enormous 7-storey screen, upon which was showing "Ole". It's a very nifty commercial that you can see on nikefootball.com, in a tiny little window that is (by my calculations) a gazillionth of the size of the screen in Shibuya.

Man.... Nearly half a year here, and I'm still getting distracted by the bright lights of Tokyo.

Resp... Resputin? Respunzel? Resputnik?

Today I was asked if I was interested in a promotion.

As is so often the case, scripture seems to capture this moment perfectly: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (Lk23:34)

Anyway, I said yes, although I'm not sure how a promotion would work out with my allergies, in particular my allergy to... you know, the R-word.

To clarify: this doesn't mean that I am, as of now, promoted, since I wasn't exactly offered a promotion. Rather, they are going to start showing me the hoops I'll need to jump through in order to get promoted (I get the impression there are many).

This sounds overly complicated, but I like to compare it to the Matrix. You know: "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

Come to think of it, my work is like the Matrix in many ways. And I'm a lot like Neo. Except, instead of bullets, I dodge two-year olds trying to take out my knees with Ultraman action figures. Also, if I wore that rad coat Neo wears, I would melt.

P.S.: Blast from the past! It's good to hear from you again, man. I'll never forgive Boris for the way he dissed you.

Free!

Excellent. I have a wireless lan in my laptop, and for the first time ever it is actually working at home! It has worked everywhere else, just never at home. :D :D :D

Monday Madness

So last Monday I went clothes shopping with some friends (one Canadian from work, the other Japanese). We went shopping near my branch - it's kind of a trendy shopping district. So we had just come from one store and were heading to another, when I spotted a giant sheep. A sheep by itself would be pretty strange, even for Japan, but even stranger was that it had a police escort of 3, and was being led by a giant white guy. All of this was being followed closely by a camera crew.

In other news, we recently saw "28 Days Later" and "American Splendor". Both were pretty kewl. The former had a few inconsistencies, but hey, it's a zombie movie. The latter was pretty nifty - kewl photography.

Tragic treats

If you're going to use an image to market a product, you'd want the image to be a positive one, wouldn't you?

Well. Today I saw a bunch of candies on display. The candies come in good-sized tins, and printed on every tin was a picture of Setsuko, the young girl from the potently depressing anime flick, Grave of the Fireflies. These tins of candy, you see, closely resemble a tin that Setsuko carries with her through hardship after hardship, symbolizing (if I may be so bold as to venture) her inexhaustible and heart-breaking innocence.

The cognitive dissonance is difficult to convey if you haven't seen the movie. So, as a rough analogy, imagine seeing a red dress on sale, and imagine that it's being promoted using a shot of the Red Dress from Schindler's List.

(And I just read to the end of the GotF page I linked to above, where I read this: "when this film debuted in Japanese theaters, it was shown as a double-feature with My Neighbor Totoro!" This also makes my head hurt.)

Shortly after spotting these candies, I accompanied some friends to a nearby arcade, where we saw the coolest shooting game ever. The gameplay is much like VirtuaCop or Time Crisis, except the game machine has sensors that read the position of your body. So, if you want to duck behind the side of a cop car, you actually physically crouch down; if you want to dodge out of a doorway and take cover behind a wall, you actually physically step to the side. It was hellafun, except that I turned out to be a big fan of crouching, which more or less destroyed my legs.

Of course, none of us did particularly well at any of the games by local standards. Japanese arcade fans are crazy.

(Thanks to Won Yung for the clip. PS, Won Yung is not a ring-leader.)

Karaoke part II (of ??)

We went to a different place this time, with the promise of a better selection. And lo, the selection was grand!

Notable songs on the line-up included Under Pressure, Mr. Roboto, and Money. Incredible finds! Unheard of! I felt like Louis Pasteur discovering that thing he discovered. And other remarkable options not yet sung, but sure to make an appearance in the future: songs by Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, and Boney M (you know the one).

And all this after being informed that we'd gotten stuck with a second-rate room, that an even better selection might be available next time. The mind boggles!

The group this time included two Japanese girls, an ethnic-Chinese-by-way-of-England-and-before-that-Malaysia who was also a big fan of J-pop and pretty good with the kanji-reading, and a not-Asian-even-a-little-bit fellow who probably has the best Japanese out of all of us gaijin. Upshot: Japanese songs made a strong showing, and I joined in the singing of Medaka no Gakkou (children's song vaguely remembered from the distant past), CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA (which I have heard hundreds of times as the theme song to Dragonball), and Honey by L'arc en Ciel.

Too much fun. I just hope I don't have to speak tomorrow.

If the house is a-rockin'

I had a word with our (gaijin) neighbours upstairs, politely asking them to "keep it down".

I hated to do it. I've never been a big fan of sticking to what you might call a "normal" sleeping schedule, or keeping quiet for that matter. So I hate to act the adult here. (Emphasis on the word "act".) But our walls (thin though they may be) are actually shaking. And, really, I'm being positively nice, compared to what some of the Japanese tenants in this building might have done (and still might do): since for them there would be difficulties involved in direct conversation, admonition, or negotiation, they're liable to go the route of indirect communication and just call the cops.

So, I anticipated ending this post with something along the lines of "at least our walls have stopped shaking", but we seem to have hit upon a relapse just now.

Sigh.

On the schedule tomorrow: more karaoke.

Unclean! Unclean!

Yesterday was really quite cushy. (Which is lucky, since I still feel a little out of sorts from the illness that hit on the Philosopher's Path--yet more evidence that philosophy is bad for the health.) In the morning had some impromptu training in some school out in the boonies about 40 or 50 minutes west of Shinjuku. (I mean, boonies in terms of the Tokyo area. In terms of back home, well, it kind of makes Metropolis look like a vegetable stand.) After that I had to ride the train back into the city, and when I got back to my usual school I discovered that someone had made a scheduling error in my favour, with the result that I spent some time working hard for my money, at Starbucks, reading a paper on Hegel and slowly sipping a Matcha Cream Frappucino.

(The Matcha Cream Frap is not of this world. It has been blessed by the patron Saint of Tastebuds. Its ingredients are pure joy and delight. The recipe was painstakingly crafted by the Gods after they'd had enough of that tired old Nectar crap. For those of you who lack access to this beverage, be thankful that you do not truly know what it is that you're missing.)

I got back, and spent about an hour and a half helping a student do some translating--as in, this student works professionally as a translator, and sometimes comes in to check a few things. (She told me she'd requested my help in particular; no doubt she'd been impressed by my black belt in pedantry.) This was great fun, because the material undergoing translation was a History Channel special on "Barbarians". I wish every day at work could involve in-depth discussions regarding the precise manner in which the Mongols piled up the heads of their defeated foes.

So, anyway, that was about it for the day.

Today I was back teaching 2 year-olds. And it actually went OK this time. I spent the whole lesson actually leading them through activities, as opposed to looking on impotently as my supposed students run around wildly on the opposite end of the room.

That should have been the hardest part of the day. Having cleared that obstacle, it should have been clear sailing from then on in.

But.

After working in the daycare center, I have to do a couple of lessons back at my normal school. Today one of those lessons was a man-to-man kids class ("man-to-man" means "1 on 1", even if the teacher is female, and even if the student is female and/or 3 years old). Two unfortunate things happened during this lesson.

1. The child sneezed. Mightily. Thereby producing a handful of mucus. Yes, handful--I'm talking about a sizable quantity of mucus here. I was prepared, however: I had a pack of advertisement-tissues in my suit jacket. So I reached into the pocket, got the tissues, and just as I was about to offer them to the kid, he reached out and wiped his hand (full of mucus, remember) right down the front of the jacket.

I'm always so jolly during kids lessons, but I must have made a pretty good mad face right about then. I got him to say sorry without having to repeat myself, and he was subdued for almost an entire minute.

2. This kid hates the cards we use in lessons. So... well, let's cut to the chase. He put the cards down his pants and held them against his crotch, OK?

Trip To Kyoto Part 2

To finish up what we started a few days ago...Leg 2 and Leg 3 of Day 2, plus Day 3.

There is a really kewl picture of the monk that was taken slightly before the Buddha head picture in the previous post, but I dare not put up too many more pictures here out of consideration for the people with phoneline internet. Of course, all of these pictures (I apologize for the amount, I took over 100 in Kyoto, hee hee ;)) can be viewed on Deviantart (link at left), as usual. Took another panorama with the tripod at the beginning of Leg 2, a complex of quite a few shrines, and with a little tweaking in photoshop it came out all right:



We saw some really kewl things at that site. We saw some traditional Kyoto kimono:



and a monk stuck taking pictures of crazy tourists.

On to Leg 3, which provided us with a spectacular encounter with (what we believe to be) an aquaduct! Looking quite Roman actually. Unfortunately the shrine there was closed.

The last bit of Leg 3 was the Philosopher's Path. Beautiful Sakura, a little stream with bridges to the houses on the other side, and lots of other beautiful flowers. It was very peaceful and quiet. A long walk but a great end to a very long day.

Unfortunately that day was so tiring that Toby got sick that night. We went right back to our hostel, and Toby slept from 8pm until 10 the next morning. Meanwhile, I decided to edit some pictures on photoshop and lo and behold! The internet is connected! Free! I'm laughing because the hostel was charging 50 yen per 10 minutes downstairs. Ha ha! :D

The next day Toby still wasn't feeling well, but we managed to see lots of great things anyways. We went to the JR Kyoto station for lunch, where we ate a restaurant called "Garlic". It definitely lived up to it's name. There was a great view of the city, where you can see a sea of grey concrete apartments and factories interspersed with old-style houses and ancient five-tiered pagodas. Quite scenic. The JR Kyoto Station building is something in and of itself. The architecture is amazing and the size is unbelievable. I believe it's waayyyyy bigger than Vancouver International, but I could be wrong. From the views you get inside and outside you'd think it was at least twice as big. Here's an amusing picture-paradox:



As I said on Deviantart, two questions. 1) which way is up? and 2) which way does the roof curve? lol.

After that, we walked around the area near the station a bit. There were two large temple complexes and we watched a bit of a chant going on in one of the temples.

Last picture: At all of the shrines and temples there are purification stations where you wash your hands or drink from the water to purify yourself. Sometimes they have things guarding or protecting the water, like this dragon:

A brief geopolitical interlude

The 11 o'clock news today spent about 20 minutes on this story:

Worried families of Japanese hostages wait and pray

The Japanese peace movement has latched onto this story something fierce, although I think that's a little unrealistic. Of course, I do sympathize with the movement, in general, on other grounds. Apart from the basic foolishness of Gulf War II, Japan in particular has arguably violated its own constitution by participating.

Included in the news broadcast was a shot of Rumsfeld's reaction to information that Japan had decided to stay put despite the ultimatum. It went something like this: "Oh, they've decided not to pull out? Well, I haven't heard that report. But, uh, it's a good thing." Not only did Rummy need some reporter to tell him about this official decision of the Japanese government, but he sounded ever so excited about it, too. It just goes to show how much Japan's presence is appreciated by the GWII ringleaders.

And about the headline in the Reuter's article up above. I only see one praying dude mentioned in the body of the story, and I saw no praying or prayer accessories in evidence at any time during the 20 minute TV news piece. So how exactly is it appropriate to characterize the "families", in general, as praying? Prayer may be a compulsory response to tragedy in the USA (and even in Canada I saw some letters post 9/11 criticizing Chretien for not "leading the country in prayer" or some such), and it's fine if prayer's your thing, but it's not everybody's thing, OK?

Another 3 Day Weekend/Trip to Kyoto

This weekend we decided to go to Kyoto. This sounds easy, but it's actually quite involved. We took the Shinkansen (after hearing many stories about the dreaded Overnight Bus), and managed to get there quite early on Wednesday (about 1pm). This took some work (mainly in getting Toby up ;)) but we arrived at the guest house without much trouble. After depositing our bags we went for a walk on the banks (i.e. cement walls) of the Kamogawa River, which is apparently one of the best places for Sakura (cherry blossom) viewing in Kyoto. Here is a picture so you can get the idea:



After that we took a train into Kyoto Station to see the sights. A really kewl one is Kyoto Tower:



But Kyoto Station is, unfortunately, a bit like Tokyo Station. In other words, there are some neat things to see, but not much to do. So we went over to Shijo Dori on our way to Gion Shirakawa. Shijo is a really happening place, more like Ginza. Lots of stores, people, lights... We got to see a lot more of it than we'd actually intended on our way to Gion, because someone decided that there should be two stations on two entirely different lines both named "Shijo". Anyway, we got to Gion eventually, and it was definitely worth it: a small path with a cherry-tree-lined river to the side; and on the other side of the river, old-fashioned wooden restaurants and tearooms, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows, geisha, and (no doubt) pricetags fit only for nightmares.



We also walked through Yasaka Shrine (that we would again visit the next day), and saw all the lanterns lit up, which was pretty. It was also pretty much the end of Day 1.



Day 2 was much more lengthy and involved. We first moved our stuff from our first night's hostel to the second, which is closer to Kyoto Station (JHoppers). It was really kewl, especially, as I later found out, because I could connect to wireless internet for free on my laptop. Hee hee ;).

We started off by visiting the Kyoto Imperial Palace. It is only opened to everyone for four days each year, and we just happened to be there during the four days. Luckily the weather was fantastic and we got some great pictures of the buildings and the garden inside. Here is the main entrance gate:



And the throne room:



And lastly, the garden:



After visiting the palace, we ate lunch on the palace grounds. I was the only white tourist in there! There were plenty of Japanese tourists, and we did see one white guy come in, check it out, and then leave. Too bad, the food was excellent and not expensive at all.

Having some food gave us the energy to set out on our (reportedly) six hour walk - a tour of some of the more famous shrines and temples in Kyoto. The first leg of our trip took us to Kiyomizu Temple. It's up on a mountain, so the view was beautiful. In some of the pictures you can actually see Kyoto Tower down in the city. Here's the first building we saw walking up to the Temple.



And the view of the city from the actual Temple itself:



The next part of Leg 1 took us through some winding city streets (Sanneizaka and Ninenzaka). We saw some fantastically expensive pottery and some very tacky souvenirs. As we were walking down these streets, we saw a Buddha head sticking up from over the hedge, which was a surprise:



It turns out the Buddha head is within Kodaiji Temple (which we didn't enter).

So that was Leg 1 of Day 2. Leg 2, Leg 3, and Day 3 of our Kyoto Trip will possibly appear tomorrow. ;)

Light at the end of the tunnel

A few weeks ago I signed up for a special program at work, which involves working once a week in a kindergarten/daycare centre.

It is, for the most part, a pretty sweet deal. I now get paid to (among other things) eat lunch with the kids, participate in playtime, and (for about two hours a week) loiter around in a coffeeshop while waiting for a phonecall. (That last one is a little hard to explain. Rest assured, it's important!)

But.

When I woke up this morning, I had no idea where the centre was. I hadn't been given a map. No worries, though, a quick phone call got me the name of the station I had to go to. And I had been told that there would be a member of the Japanese staff waiting for me when I got off the train on my first day.

So, yeah, that's what I was told.

Long story short, I got to the place about 2 minutes before my first class started--as it turns out, it was a class of 2 year-olds. Breathless, and with no time to prepare whatsoever, I walked into class.... Now, let me ask you: do you remember what kind of student you were when you were 2 years old? No, of course not. You weren't a student when you were 2. 2 year-olds don't belong anywhere near anything resembling a classroom. Which is to say, the class went great.

And so on. Let's just say that I was quite, quite tired by the time I got out of that place. It probably didn't help that I was tired to begin with, having had a week of funbutstupid late nights.

No matter. Tomorrow is the first day of a 3 day weekend. We're off (on a somewhat hastily assembled trip) to Kyoto!

P.S. Assuming this link isn't down from overtraffic, you can very enjoy the English-teaching humour.

Sukebei! (Pervert!) - Or, The Perils of Having a Ground Floor Apartment

Friends, we have been robbed. Don't be alarmed, nothing of value was taken. But, I have learned an important lesson in keeping an eye on your laundry :(.

I got up early this morning to make our lunch. I was checking some stuff on the internet, when I heard a rattling outside (presumably from the laundry racks hanging from a long pole that you can peg your laundry to). I figured it was the wind or just a neighbour disentangling our laundry from the divider on our balconies (because with the wind it can happen), but decided to take a look just in case. What I saw was very weird! There was a guy standing there pulling at our laundry!!! Having just woken up I was a little stunned but he saw me and ran away - crossing the driveway to another neighbour's balcony and taking something from there too, then leaving so hastily on his scooter that he nearly knocked down a couple of "don't park here" signs in the driveway.

I looked at our laundry carefully but I couldn't figure out what was missing. It had to be something small because all the large stuff was still there and I clearly remembered what I put out there (since it was just yesterday). It was my underwear! I know exactly which ones too!

:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

And now we know where they get the merchandise for those crazy vending machines.

Hanami Addendum: 5 seconds of... well, not fame, per se...

Can't believe I forgot this!

While we were walking up to the bridge to Kitanomaru park, a Japanese guy started walking along with us. Since he wasn't handing out any flyers or tissues, clearly he wasn't selling anything, so I thought maybe he was asking for change. Then I started to figure out that he was just talking about the flowers, and saying something or another about us. And then, finally, I noticed the rather large microphone in his hand.

After some muddling through in Japanese, broken English (the Japanese interviewer had no English, but the Taiwanese cameraman had a little), and a quickly aborted foray into Chinese, they got their intentions through to me.

Family. Friends. We were interviewed by a Taipei news show!

There is a very low, but non-zero probability that our little 5 second clip ("...the blossoms are very pretty...") will be seen by someone who knows us. If someone does see it, in all likelihood it will be a former student from one of my tutorials at SFU, who will no doubt hate my guts because I gave him/her something in the C range.

I'm not sure why they decided to interview us, exactly, but they probably wanted to interview a white person, saw Kate with me, and figured I could help bridge the language barrier. Which I suppose I did, kinda, eventually.

So this is maybe kinda exciting, but it is surely nothing compared to the post that Kate is going to have to make Real Soon Now.

ERGH

That's pretty much all I can manage at 4:30 (now 5) am. The neighbours above are apparently enacting World War III, and now I'm awake. ERGH!

Oh yeah, would these be Japanese neighbours? Noooooooooo. Baka gaijin! :( :( :(

見わたすかぎり．．． (miwatasukagiri)

Cherry blossoms are a big deal in this country. There's a word, "hanami", which you could translate as "flower viewing", but in effect means "cherry blossom viewing", because, well, cherry blossoms are a big deal in this country.

Now, I thought I knew cherry blossoms, and yeah, I knew they were pretty. After all, there are a few streets back in Vancouver lined with cherry trees, right?

Bah. Those trees are nothing. They are trash. An insult to the eyes!

Here there are parks full of cherry trees, and rivers lined on either side for kilometers with cherry trees, and right about now they are all in full bloom. Now, I'm not really one for pretty things, as such, but damn are they ever pretty.

Today we took a trip over to the Imperial grounds and Kitanomaru Park. Here's a shot of the park from the street; I think that's the Budokan (built for butts to be kicked in) at the upper left.



To get to the park you need to cross a bridge over the moat, and the way is lined with more trees. Here's a great shot looking down the side, and I'm trying not to be a sissy here, but will you look at that! Purest pink above, green and purple below.



After checking out the park, we crossed the street to Yasukuni Shrine. There was another trainload of cherry trees here, although nothing so spectacular as at the park, in my opinion. Because it's hanami time, it had quite the festival atmosphere, with dozens of stands selling food, toys, and (live) goldfish (which, as I recall, have a habit of dying even quicker than the ones back home); mats were laid down for the groups of people lying around, eating and drinking, many of them looking very red-faced, one or two passed out already (and this at about 5pm on a Thursday).



To top it all off, there was even a guy showing off his trained monkey; I thought I could take a picture of it over the crowd by holding up our digicam and viewfinding with the screen, but the LCD doesn't really work at that angle.

Anyway, with all that, you'd never know that this is a terribly controversial place, enshrining 2.5 million war dead, including a host of certified war criminals.

We walked up to the shrine proper, though of course we didn't pray.



On the way out, I saw an elderly Asian couple walk up to the torii gate (which frames the above picture), look around dourly, and leave without really entering. I'm not as good at differentiating between Asian races as I perhaps ought to be, but I'm pretty sure they were Korean.

Hmm. Chilly. I seem to recall a story from Won Yung about when she was class president in South Korea, leading her peers in a barrage of thrown coke bottles aimed at some Japanese tourists. (This was after she knew I was partly Japanese. It was said in good humour, though. I think.)

Here's another sakura shot, taken by Kate during an earlier solo outing along Meguro River:



The Meguro River would be one of those lined by cherry trees for entire kilometers. Hence the line in the title, "miwatasukagiri", which means "as far as the eye can see" or words to that effect. It's a line from "Sakura Sakura", a children's song I know from some time or another, and which, as it happens, I've been struggling, in vain, to find on KaZaA. There are apparently a couple dozen awful pop songs with "sakura" in the title (not to mention all the songs that ever appeared on Card Captor Sakura), but the good old lullaby is nowhere to be heard.

By the way, these picture thumbnails are linked to the "full views" of the pictures at DeviantArt, and there are some more sakura pictures there as well.