Debut

hey all,

Been a busy week. Lessons are going pretty well, but I think my PM class is getting sleepier and sleepier every day. I have to have them go through an essay about designing stamps of all things on Monday, but hopefully we will have a new packet of material.

Yesterday went all right at work. A lot of baby lessons, but I got out at 5PM which was nice. Michi came over and we watched part of The Dark Knight, but the voices for the movie were really soft despite the volume being at 100% and we had to get up early for rock climbing anyway.

Today was the debut for my 70L hiking/camping backpack. It handled pretty well, and felt much lighter than my 46L. The bigger pack has more padding on the hips, shoulder straps, and back, plus it is actually designed for hiking as opposed to air travel like the 46L. But, I think I need to spot bringing all of my climbing gear on every trip though, because all those nuts, carabiners, cams, and slings really add up to a lot of weight that doesn't all get used. I think I'll really have to pack my gear carefully too, since it seemed...not full necessarily, but even with just my gear rack, water, rope, harness, and shoes the bag seemed like I'd have to start strapping stuff to the outside. Of course, I'll have to do that anyway for climbing/camping trips, but for just a climbing day trip it felt a bit strange.

We headed over to Yugawara, which I at least haven't been to for almost 4 months. We only climbed four different routes, but we climbed each one several times a piece, so we still got in a decent about of climbing time. Especially fun was a 5.10b called Christmas Rose which  I climbed 3 times. The last climb of the day was a frustrating 5.10b called Alibaba, which I had to down climb because I couldn't make it to the top. As the last climb of the day, I should have chosen a 5.10a or a 5.9 since I was already tired.

If you're in to flowers, Japan is not a bad place to live, especially since being in to flowers doesn't seem to have any homosexual or overly girly connotations. Most of the people stopping and taking photos of flowers are actually middle aged or retired guys with monster cameras. What I wanted to say is that right now is the ume season (the Japanese plum tree), and there was a whole field of them at Yugawara. And of course, for the next month to 6 weeks, we'll have the sakura season. Basically, if you aren't in to flowers when you come here, you will probably develop a major thing for them during your stay.

In the "It's a small world" department, in case anyone has heard about that earthquake in New Zealand, it appears that one of Michi's friends from yoga school might have lost her life in the incident. The name, age, and profession all match Michi's friend, and I don't want to to run the odds on there being another Japanese woman with the same name, age and job being in the same place at the same time as Michi's friend.

In about 16 days, I'll be looking at 2 years in Japan, not counting the 4 day romp I had in the US for New Year's.

Cheers,

Roasted Mountain, Mmmm

hey all,

Cheers,

Jogasaki Crack and Natural Protection, and Mt. Omuro

hey all,

Pretty good weekend. We ended up taking a lesson from our climbing teacher about crack climbing and how to use natural protection. I'm glad Michi brought a big roll of sports tape, because without it, our hands would have gotten all beat and cut up. As it is, they're just a little sore.

I actually left the lesson after an hour in order to see the mountain grass get burned. The were serving lots of roasted foods: roasted chicken, roasted octopus, roasted corn, etc, all of which probably go well with roasted mountain. Pictures coming soon.

After that, I headed back to the climbing spot and rejoined the lesson.

That'll have to be it for now. As always, there is too much on my plate for me to get through on any given day, so I'll just have to keep having adventures.

Cheers,

Jogasaki

hey all,

Here is me and Michi with our wares.

Don't ask me why traffic cones need to be cute in Japan, but there seems to be a law about it.

Dramatic, no?

The mountain we went to see is near the eastern coast of Izu, where we went rock climbing in 2009.

Palm trees just a 40 minute walk from...

...This. The mountain we wanted to see get burned.

One of our teachers will be out for a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, so I need to get in extra early to let one of the new teachers in, since he has an extra early class but doesn't have a key yet. That means it is time to take a shower, brush my teeth, and hit the futon.

Another picture of my climbing gear, but probably this is easier to understand. Quickdraws, carabiners, nuts, cams, slings, a toothbrush for cleaning dirty/chalky rock, and my protection removal tool (that black hooked device next to the toothbrush).

Cheers,

Wahoo Yahoo

hey all,

So this weekend's story would be really long, but it is already almost midnight, so it will leave it at this: Izu got the most snow they've seen in 15 years, and the burning of the mountain grass was canceled, or I should say postponed until next weekend. We ended up going to a museum, and taking a pottery class, and then spent all day today walking along the coast. After coming back to Tokyo, I met up with some of my former housemates, and they brought me the results of my JLPT.

As a quick side note, for some reason certain pieces of mail seem to be getting sent to my former place, and not forwarded to the new one, despite the fact that I set up a mail forwarding system at the post office.

Anyway, I passed the level 3. I got about 50% on the vocabulary/grammar section, and did a little better on the reading section, and for some reason I got 100% on the listening section. My Taiwanese former housemate said if I got about 20 points higher, I could pass the level 2, which is business level Japanese. I think I will try to take the level 2 this December. That will give me almost 10 months to get my vocabulary and grammar up to speed, since those areas are clearly my weak points.

Although this weekend was Valentine's Day, we didn't really do anything lovey-dovey (at the pottery class, we didn't even try to do "Ghost" homages). Probably next weekend, we have some more romantic things in plan, but it looks like Izu is planning on burning all that mountain grass next Sunday, so I might end up going to that.

Cheers,

Mail

hey all,

I received something in the mail today, but alas it was only my phone bill and not my anxiously awaited JLPT test results.

Morning classes are going OK, but my big PM group lesson is going through one of its frequent attitude shifts. Sometimes the students do really well, but sometimes it shows that they haven't been studying. Recently, I think the mothers have backed off a bit and since my students are all 7-10 years old for this class, that means that they've backed off as well.

Tired, so very tired. Probably a big bowl of curry and rice, plus a lot of pineapple chucks for dessert, on top of a second lunch of yakisoba is a bit much. And still I'm barely pushing 56kg.

Cheers,

Pictures, Etc

hey all,

So I was pretty nervous about NHK, but I think it went pretty well. They didn't focus on my class too much, actually, which was kinda nice but kinda disappointing at the same time. The rest of the day went pretty well. Nothing too much to report.

I have finally taken the initiative of uploading some pictures.

Here is my "old man" arm with a pain killer patch on it. I actually had to shave the hair under the patch to get the patch to stay on and to let my skin absorb the painkiller.

Here is some jelly and cream from one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. The jelly is made from ground up turtle shell. No joke.

My home made sweet and sour chicken.

My collection of rock climbing gear. You can see nuts on the right hand side (those hunks of metal hanging from steel wire), and cams at the bottom left (those half-moon mechanical devices).

These are some kind of shrimp rolls, I think. The one on the left has a demon/devil picture, and the one on the right is supposed to represent good luck. They're sold in celebration of Setsubun. These were really awful, but they were half off.

I may have mentioned it before, but I believe that I'm becoming a bit of a Hobbit. There is a joke in The Fellowship of the Ring before the Fellowship has truly formed and one of the Hobbits is complaining about not stopping for second breakfast, elevensies, tea, luncheon, or most of the other frequent meals that a Hobbit eats during the day. I, for one, have adapted the habit of eating a second lunch, since I often don't have much time to eat a full lunch with my students. I also need to keep my energy up for my afternoon classes, and besides, I'm still trying to get back up to 60kg.

Cheers,

Big Day

hey all,

So the big day is tomorrow. NHK is coming in and they will be filming. I'm really looking forward to next week ending, actually. Work has been going well, but this TV special has added a lot of unneeded and unwanted stress to everyone's lives. Luckily, I also have next weekend off. In fact, Friday is a national holiday, so I have a 3 day weekend.

This weekend was pleasant. I got to skype with a lot of my family, finally caught up with a couple friends, and even went indoor rock climbing. I also took some clothes in to the tailor to get a button reattached to a shirt, and to have some frayed edges and rips fixed in two pairs of dress pants. Sunday was apartment shopping. We looked at an area in between Tokyo and Yokohama, but the station's design would have been really inconvenient for us to use the train line we need to use, plus the area that would have made it convenient to use that line was not too convenient.

To understand more about why we have kind of lost interest in that area, you need to remember two things that I've mentioned here before. The first is reikin (礼金, for those who can read Japanese or who have Japanese enabled on your computer). This term pisses me off. It is often called "gift money," but it literally means something closer to "celebration money." I'm sure if I had convinced some poor sap to fork over 1-2 months worth of rent for no reason, I'd be celebrating too, but as the poor sap being forced to fork that over, I don't really see it that way. There is also shikikin (敷金), which is key money. This is usually 1-3 months rent.

So let's say you find a really nice place: good area, the building is not too old, flooring is solid wood, kitchen is spacious, etc. The rent is $700. You think to yourself Wow! That's a find! You look at the fees, and you gasp. The key money is 2 months, and the gift money is also 2 months. So although the rent is really cheap, to move in you have to pay $2800 up front. And you'd better like the place a lot, because the contract will be for 2 years, and at the end of two years, you will not get a single cent of that $2800 back. That is what we encountered at the first station. Although the rent itself was not too bad for most places, the fees were.

At the second station, we had more luck. Larger apartments for lower rent, and lower fees (gift money only 1 month, key money only one month). For me the second area would be pretty nice. Actually closer to where I work than I live right now, plus all the extra space, etc. My rent would actually be less than what I'm paying at my guesthouse, and I don't even get my own bathroom, kitchen or shower here. The problem is that Michi would have to find a job here in Yokohama, or face 50 minute commute on crowded and frequently delayed trains.

After apartment shopping, I gave in and on the way home bought some chicken, pineapple, ketchup, red pepper, onion, and vinegar. Can you guess what I made? That's right: sweet and sour chicken. Kinda a pain in the butt: you chop the chicken, dredge in flour+spices, then deep fry. The sauce is made by frying sliced carrots, onion, red pepper, garlic, and ginger, then adding pineapple, ketchup, vinegar, sugar, and cornstarch. I don't have an efficient way of saving the oil used by deep frying, so a lot of it gets dumped down the drain instead of going back into the bottle, and then you have to wash the cutting board, a bowl for dredging the chicken, a bowl for storing the cooked chicken, plus two pots (one for the sauce, and one for deep frying the chicken), and the knife. This may not seem like a lot, but the kitchen is small and I'm cooking by myself after all. I'm used to cooking things like spaghetti, curry, and mapo tofu, which basically require one pot, one knife, and one cutting board.

I had wanted to make a version using tofu (which you can get by the pound for about a dollar here (OK, OK, 400g for about 100 Yen, but nobody outside of Japan would understand that)) by Alton Brown, but his version just seems wrong. It calls for 2 pounds of tofu, 3 cups of ketchup, 2 cups of vinegar, 2 cups of pineapple, and all the other portions are similarly big. It calls for a lot of sugar, and even honey. Plus you have to marinate the tofu overnight, and I don't have big enough or even just enough tupperware containers to store all the food it would make.

I made a pretty passable version just by winging it. In any case, I have two large cases of mapo tofu for lunch for the next week, plus at least one more dinner's worth of sweet and sour chicken left over, so I'll be eating well the next few days.

Next weekend should be pretty exciting. We're planning on using the 3 day weekend to take a rock climbing lesson from the teacher who taught us how to multi-pitch climb, and have him teach us how to use protection. Yes, yes, stop laughing. In climbing, this means show us how to use things like cams, hexs, and nuts while climbing. We also have a trip planned in the same area to see an inactive volcano. They hold a yearly ceremony where they burn all the grass off the mountain to allow new grass to grow, and the plan is to see that and if we can, climb it before they burn it to see the dawn from the top.

My last item is that I still haven't received the results from my Japanese test, so I'm hoping that it comes next week.

Cheers,

These Old Bones

hey all,

Just a quick post. Work is going fine. We have two new teachers, and so the daily structure has been changing quite a bit. One teacher handles a "Let's Pass Eiken 5" class, which I think is pretty sad considering that two of the kids have been taking classes here for quite a while. Eiken 5 covers: colors, numbers, family members, days of the week, months, and basic verbs in simple sentence structure. Another teacher stays with the youngest kids all day, while myself, and 3 other teachers rotate through the classes. When we come to his class, we dictate the material to be taught, and he teaches it and handles discipline. I'm really impressed with him. He has to stay with these really tough to handle kids all day, and he handles them really well.

I'm not sure how permanent these teachers will be. The one staying with the youngest kids I think would be a great addition to the team, but I haven't really seen the other teacher teach too much so I'm not sure about him. We also have a non-native speaker staying on as an assistant, but she needs some training to be effective. Then there is another teacher who we've had come in, but I haven't been as impressed by him, and then that other non-native speaker who I've worked with during the weekend who has stumbled through simple things even after being shown how to do them by multiple teachers multiple times.

For some reason, one of the bones in my lower arm has been aching, just about where one of the plates is located. This just seems to happen from time to time, but I've come to associate it with cold weather. For all I know, it could be my posture while typing, writing, or any number of other things, but cold weather does seem to trigger it, and it has been colder than December or January recently. It makes me feel like one of those stereotypical war vets, "Ah, when the cold winds blow, I feels it in me bones."

The new Japanese study books have been working out pretty well so far. I do a couple pages in one of them each day. Sometimes it is some test style questions, sometimes I drill myself on vocab or do some writing practice of same.

The coming weekends promise to be busy, with work, travel plans, or other errands eating up the time.

Cheers,