Where I've Been

Weather Games

hey all,

So as usual, when I decided that I should air out my futon, it promptly started raining just after I hung it outside. Why does the weather feel like my futon should be soaked all the time? Why can't it drop a beautiful Japanese girl into my lap once in a while, instead of dropping loads of rain onto my bed?

Apparently, it is resentful of all the bad things I've said about Japanese weather. To be fair, the weather when I first got here was pretty decent. Hopefully, after August has passed, there will be another bout of good weather before winter descends on us, and maybe another one after winter leaves. Although according to some people, winter is actually a pretty good time here. Supposedly, you can actually go outdoor rock climbing no problem in November, December, etc.

We'll see.

Cheers,
Dave

小田原=Odawara=small rice paddy plain

hey all,

Yesterday I met up with a few outdoor club members in Odawara to see a festival there. This involved a bunch of guys hauling around a small shrine on their shoulders, setting it down on a barge, and then waiting as another group of guys rowed the barge and two other boats across the bay.


After the festival, we checked out Odawara castle, parts of which are not even a year old. It was mostly demolished 150 years ago, then reconstruction started in the 1950's.

We also stopped by nearby Ninomiya Shrine, which dedicated to a man who was too poor to afford school, but read books while travelling on his job.Originally, more was planned, but the weather was a little bad, so that was all we did.

Cheers,
Dave

This Week, and Break

hey all,

I went to the outdoor club's social night last Friday. This time, it was held at a pretty good Thai restaurant in Kinshicho, part of Eastern Tokyo. Today, there was another hike in Okutama which I had planned on joining, but the big toes on my feet were bothering me a little, and I felt really tired this morning, so I've just been watching anime all day. The temperature is back around 35 C, so the air conditioning has been a blessing.

Tomorrow, I meet up with another outdoor club member in Odawara to see a festival where they float boats and shrines down a river. I think I will also try to see Odawara Castle, a temple, and maybe a traditional goods shopping district.

I can't really believe it, but I still have over one month of summer break left. I've already climbed Mt. Fuji, but now I think Hokkaido might be a bit much. I really don't know of anything that I'm dying to see there, except for the snow festival in February. Getting around seems like it would be a pain, and so would lodging. There is an trip being planned to Hokkaido by one of the outdoor club members, but it seems too expensive, especially considering the Spartan nature of the trip: camping and hiking for about a week.

I haven't been studying my Japanese since school ended, so I think I should be doing that for at least a few hours each week. I'm not sure what to do to fill all this free time ahead of me.

Cheers,

Fuji-san Hike

hey all,

So I've just returned from my hike to Fuji-san, or Mt. Fuji as the rest of the world knows it. The experience has been described by others as surreal, and like walking on another planet. At 3776 meters tall, the peak of Fuji can barely be considered as being in Earth's atmosphere: the thin air gives many hikers a difficult time, and many lodges along the way up sell canisters of oxygen, bottles of oxygenated water, etc.

From the 5th station.

The terrain itself seems otherworldly. You can see clouds below your feet, Mars-like red soil and rock, and bizarrely eroded volcanic rock formations.

Since this is a more touristy hike than the outdoor club usually organizes, I just asked around my friends here to see if anyone was interested. Several were, but had already made plans, but another ALT was available and interested, so I ended up hiking with him. We left Omiya around 9, took several trains over to Kawaguchiko, then took a bus up to the 5th station of Fuji. There are 9 stations on each hiking trail. We arrived at the Kawaguchiko 5th station around 3PM. The Kawaguchiko 5th station is 2305 meters high. From there, John and I hiked up Fuji on foot. From the 5th, it is around 5-6 hours to the peak of Fuji. Since we arrived so late in the day, we ended up hiking for 1.5-2 hours in the dark. I brought a headlamp for myself and an extra flashlight for John to use.

Sunset at around 3000 meters.

Part of the trail.

We stayed in one of the 8th station lodges for the night, ate a delicious dinner of curry rice, and then pretended to sleep until 1:40AM. The lodge was very crowded, so it is really difficult to fall asleep with that many people around you (unless you are Japanese, in which case you will sleep fine). Around 1:40, we all (John and I had met up with two random British guys who were pretty friendly) decided we should try for the peak in order to see dawn from there.

Thus began another night hike. The 8th station lodge we stayed in was at 3400, so we had the last 376 meters to go. Those last few hundred meters were rather difficult, due to the dark, the cold, the wind, and the fog/misty rain which normally shrouds the peak. We arrived well before dawn, but dawn failed to arrive, as the summit stayed cloudy.

Me at the cloudy summit. The sign says "Fuji-san summit. Please take your trash down with you."

The hike down took maybe 3.5 hours.

Cheers,

Return to Okutama

hey all,

I just got back from my second trip to Okutama. I want to say right off the bat that some how I lost about 30-40 pictures of Nippara cave. If you've been in Mammoth cave, think that except Japanese: smaller and more cramped. Still, it has some very interesting rock formations and a few big open areas.

Captured out the window of the bus from Okutama station.

From the peak of Mt. Kumotori: 2017 meters tall. That's Mt. Fuji in the background.
Sunrise at the lodge.

Mt. Fuji in the distance before 9AM.

I would give you a detailed narration of the trip, but basically it boils down to: hiked for 5 hours straight, stopped at the lodge for the night, ate dinner, woke up at 4, ate breakfast, hiked for 5 more hours, and walked around Nippara cave.

The one thing that makes for somewhat more interesting reading is I did get to try a real onsen. After two long hikes without a shower, both me and Louis both thought the onsen was a good idea. Basically, it is the same as the small private one I went to before in Nikko: you pay to get in, strip down, wash, and then soak in hot water that is pumped up from the ground. I asked if my tattoos would be a problem, and they said they were ok, so that was cool. We only got to soak for a little bit, as we had to make an express train and there was a half hour wait before we were admitted to the onsen (a lot of other hikers felt the same way as we did, but got there earlier).

While riding the bus back to the train station, an old Japanese guy next to me started trying to talk to me in English. After a few minutes, his wife looked over and then said "David-san?" I had run into one of my teachers from my junior high school. We talked for a little bit, and then parted ways at the train station.

Tomorrow, I recuperate a little, double check the weather, and get ready for my hike up Mt. Fuji Wednesday/Thursday.

Cheers,

Enkai, Weekend and Week Plans

hey all,

So yesterday my school had their enkai, which is an all you can eat/drink social affair with the school staff. For a lot of ALT's, this means you get to see your fellow teachers get drunk and work up the courage to talk to you for the first time.

For me, it meant paying 6,000 Yen for lots of pretty decent food and a little alcohol while playing several games. We did Bingo, and also a multistage competition between the first, second, and third year teachers, and the administrative staff (the group that I belonged to), that involved picking up dried beans with chopsticks (tricky even for people who use them every day of their lives), doing pushups, and drawing a picture. The games where pretty fun, but a lot of people drove to the restaurant, so most were not drinking very heavily. As at work, I was still ignored most of the time by most of the people.

After that, I ran into one of the new ALTs (the replacement for the replacement that quit before his first day of work), and we went over to the Hub in Omiya for a few drinks. Pretty good time, as I ran into a bunch of drinking buddies there and got a phone number from a cute Japanese girl.

A special trip to an island was planned for this weekend, but they left Friday night by boat from Tokyo, while I was drinking with my teachers. There is another trip that will take me back to Okutama, the first hike I did with the outdoor club. The plan is to leave tomorrow, hike for several hours, stay in a lodge for the night, and check out a cave the next day. We will be hiking the tallest mountain in Tokyo prefecture (Kumotori-yama), and visiting the largest cave (Nippara) in the Kanto region (which includes Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, and Kanagawa prefectures).

Tuesday I will rest up for my planned climb of Mt Fuji on Wednesday/Thursday. Fuji is so huge that most people climb all day the first day, rest in one of several huts most of the way up the mountain for a few hours, and try to reach the peak at dawn, which is supposed to be one of the most amazing sights you will ever see. A good part of the second day is spent getting off the mountain.

Next weekend looks free at the moment. The rainy season has, I believe, officially ended. Despite that, it did rain quite a bit yesterday. However, it brought a brief respite from the heat, which has been hovering around 35 C, or 95 F for most of the last week. I've been trying to get a weather widget to work on this blog, so you all can see how ridiculous the weather is over here, but so far it seems buggy and instantly reverts to the default of New York instead of displaying the weather in Omiya.

I hear that it will rise above 35 C for most of next month, in addition to being humid, which is why even Japanese people detest their summer weather.

Cheers,

Japan = Jelly

hey all,

Here's a small collection of Japanese jelly products.

A small packet of multivitamin jelly.

The same, only energy jelly.

A "mango latte": actually just whip cream on top of mango jelly with cubes of tofu inside.

The same, only coffee flavored jelly with cubes of tofu in it.

Otsuki Camping, and Summer Break

hey all,

This weekend was quite the adventure. We headed over to Otsuki, which is in Yamanashi prefecture, about 2 hours away from Tokyo. There are several mountains in the vicinity, and on the second day the plan was to hike one that (on clear days) affords one a good view of Fuji-san.

Well, on the first day, we all met up at Shinjuku station, headed over to Otsuki, did some grocery shopping, then hiked into the mountains for several hours, before settling on our camp sight. By then, it was starting to get a little dark, and we set up our tents, gathered fire wood, and started making dinner.

Day Two: swimming in some shallow pools instead of doing the planned hike. An OCJ member gets emergency medical care (not really).

Some pretty bamboo.

Our camp

A really gourmet meal of tomatoes, chorizo, bread, and herbs. Of course, the woman who cooked this didn't bring a flashlight, toilet paper, a sleeping bag or mat, or many other things. But she ate well.

Sleeping for me was something of a trial. Because of the size of my backpack and the temperature, I had decided not to bring my sleeping bag. I figured we would camp on grass, and the weather would be warm, so I just brought a light blanket. As it happened, we camped on very rocky soil, so I cut down a lot of small bushes and stuffed them under my tent. The weather was also a little cooler and more humid than I expected, but I survived. The deer were also something of a nuisance. I've never heard deer in the US make much noise, but Japanese deer make a call that sounds something like a rusty nail being pulled from wood.

Anyway, the plan was to camp one day, then meet a bunch of day hikers back at the station, but the day hikers canceled on us at the last minute, and tempers were flaring over that and other problems, so the day hike was canceled and we hung out by the river and swam a little.

Luckily for me, we caught an express train from Otsuki to Omiya, so unlike my trip to Otsuki, I didn't have to change trains at all.

My summer break starts on Friday, and there is a long trip being planned to an as yet undeciced location for that weekend. I may go with the club on that. For next week, I'm planning on climbing Fuji-san next Wednesday. After that, it is still very uncertain. Hokkaido is definitely going to happen, but where, when, and for how long is unknown. I'd also like to see the Northern and Southern Alps. Hiroshima, and the Kansai area will have to wait until the weather cools down, as it is supposed to be hotter there than here, and it is pretty unbearable here.

Cheers,

Camping Trip

hey all,

So later today I head off for my second trip with the outdoor club. We will be camping near Otsuki, which is a few hours away from Tokyo, in the neighboring Yamanashi prefecture.

I need to start getting my stuff organized, so I'll post the details and some pics when I get back Sunday.

Cheers,

School Lunch Special

Some kind of sushi: cooked fish sticks with pickle, rice, and seaweed wrappers. Pretty tasty

Fried chicken coated in what looks and tastes like corn flakes, with vegetable soup, bread, and weird Japanese style salad.

Omelet so cheezy it tastes like Mac 'n cheeze without the noodles, plus vegetables and rice, soup, and more random bread.

Although all these lunches are good, they are somewhat eccentric. Japanese people don't really know what to do with bread, so they randomly include it in meals without any intention of you making a sandwich and without giving you any toppings for the bread: they expect you to eat it by itself. I think this comes from their own practice of eating rice plain by itself: they equate our bread to their rice, without realizing that we like food to have flavor.

Japanese people also make strange salads: corn, carrots, and onions with a dash of tangy vinegar seems to be their idea of a salad. Although good, (and much better in my opinion than a lettuce-based one), it doesn't seem to be based on any Western tradition of salad.

Cheers,

Some Linux Complaints

hey all,

So in the past, I've been highly critical of both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. I've been using various flavors Linux since 2007, mostly Fedora. I'm currently running Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas. It seems like ever since Fedora Core 7, my experience with Linux has been more or less down hill. Fedora 8 was nice, but I could never get wireless to work. With Fedora 9, wireless finally started working, but I lost the ability hear sound in my internet browser, and KDE 4 (a disaster and a hazard compared to KDE 3.59) was manditorily included in the distribution. Fedora 10 and 11 continued this pattern.

In my current installation, which I updated just the other day, sound still doesn't work for the internet, and now I can't have my headphones and my headset plugged in at the same time, plus the sound feels a little choppy. I've also lost the ability to scroll and select items by tapping on the touchpad.

Why can't these people deliver on a simple promise to provide a useable alternative to Micro-tosh? Almost from the beginning, I've had Blackbox lean running as my desktop environment for Windows Vista, and I've had a really good experience with that. My webcam and headset are easy to use, I can watch videos on the internet with sound, and I don't suddenly lose my ability to scroll or select items by tapping on the touchpad.

Cheers,

Japanese

hey all,

Japanese is both very cool, and very frustrating to study. Perhaps one of the more frustrating things is the large number of homophones. 紙，神，髪，are all pronounced the same: kami, but they mean paper, god, and hair respectively. There are several other kanji/words that can also be pronounced that way.

One of the cool things is sometimes the kanji make sense. All kanji are made from 214 radicals, which are smaller pieces that have meanings themselves, but usually appear as part of a larger character. 親, for instance is composed of three radicals: 立、木、and 見: stand, tree, and see. The kanji means parent, or intimate, so you can create a story about a parent standing on a tree looking for a lost child. A lot of the time, they don't make any sense at all. 後　means after, and is composed of the radicals step, slight, and follow; while 家 means house, and is the radical for roof above the radical for pig. 書 means write, and has the radicals for pig's head, one, and sun/day in it.

I'm now at around 170 kanji that I can read, sometimes write, and sometimes pronounce. I think one of the really arbitrary things that annoyes me about kanji is the pronounciation. I can deal with kanji having a meaning that doesn't make sense give their radicals, and I can deal with 食　sometimes being ta and sometimes being shoku (the pronounciation changes depending on which other kanji it appears with, but its pronounciation is predictable from this other kanji), but I can't deal with 長野 being pronounced as Nagano sometimes and as Chono other times. There are a massive number of pairs like this: the same kanji pair having different pronounciations (and also slightly different meanings: 一日 (one day) could be tsuitachi, ichinichi, or ikka, depending on the meaning you want.)

As I think I've mentioned before, the literate Japanese person can read about over 1000 kanji. The newpapers limit themselves to around 500 kanji. In addition to the Japanese Language Proficiency test, there is also the Kanji Aptitude Test, which tests the native Japanese person's kanji ability. Supposedly, only 1% of Japanese people can pass the test's highest level, which seems to indicate that the Japanese people know what a burdensome writing system they have.

Part of this post was inspired by the fact that yesterday, I helped with a notebook check: the students copied a short dialogue from the textbook into their notebooks, and brought it up front for me to check. For me to mark that they had done well, I have to put a circle next to their name. Now, from experience teaching before, it helps and pays to know your students names, so I've been trying to learn to read the kanji in their names. This is complicated by the fact that Japan allowｓ an additional 200+ kanji (besides the official 1,945) that are only used in names. At any rate, I think I successfully read about 60-70% of their names. Needless to say, one of the cool things is seeing students smile because I can read their names.

Cheers,

Reading Ability

hey all,

So I've mentioned studying Japanese quite a bit, and I discovered today that my Japanese writing ability is now between a 1st and 2nd grader's. My vocabulary is easily above 444 words (words that I can write, say, hear, and read), but I only know about 150 kanji or so. 1st graders in Japan learn 80 kanji, and 2nd graders learn around 200: I know around 150, so I'm not quite at the 2nd grade level yet.

This means that I should be able to pass the beginer level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I've gotten to that level after less than 4 months of not too enthusiastic study. It is too late to register for the soonest JLPT, which is this month, but I think I should be able to pass the basic level for the next test in December. (This is somewhat confusing: beginer is the lowest level, then basic, intermediate, and lastly advanced.)

Cheers,

Week, Weekend, and Break

hey all,

Most of my work week has consisted of me studying Japanese, which is good for me in the long run but is pretty boring.

I never got to see the movie about Tsurugidake, because the club moved the time and location so that I couldn't get back home in time.

This weekend has been a bust as well. The weather forecast looked bad for Saturday and today, so I decided I wouldn't do the climb and went out drinking with a co-worker instead. As it happened, the weather here at least has been really good. There's a trip planned for next weekend to the Northern Alps, so I'll probably go to that.

My last day of work until September is the 17th. I still haven't made definite plans for my break, but I want to look into Hokkaido, and I may go see Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara anyway.

Cheers