Cheers,
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Hakone!
hey all,
This weekend's fare was a trip to Hakone. It is actually quite close to Tokyo, and even closer to Yokohama. The best comparison I can give for Hakone is imagine if all the Swiss people in Switzerland were replaced by Japanese people, and the mountains were formed by volcanic activity, not by glacial. Hakone is like that. Lots of green mountains, steep slopes and sudden valleys, lakes nestled between the mountains, switchback mountain trains, cable cars, and rope-way ski-lift like contraptions that carry you hundreds of feet off the ground and sway in the wind.
As it happened, the weather on Saturday was atrocious. We knew this, and went anyway. We arrived late on purpose, and had lunch at Owakudani, which is this hellacious valley with sulfuric hot springs (you can see the yellow sulfur deposits), clouds of egg-smelling vapor, etc. After that, we went to the hotel and thanks to the earthquake last month (and also the bad weather), we could enjoy the hot springs all to ourselves. I was treated to the interesting sensation of chilling rain coming down on my head and shoulders, and being immersed in hot water from the neck down. Both the inside and outside hot springs were wonderful. The water, unlike the water at Owakudani, didn't have that egg smell to it, and there was not a single person there. The men's hot spring also had a Gantz-like black ball from which the water was pumped into the pools. Very cool.
Dinner was delicious. A little too much fish for my taste, and they had raw ika, which are whole squid about as long as a thumb and chewy. But the chicken and everything else was good.
The rain didn't let up until quite late, but miraculously, Sunday morning was bright, warm, and sunny, and stayed that way throughout the day. We rode a sightseeing boat called the "Pirate Line" across Lake Ashi, and walked around the Hakone Checkpoint Museum. From there, we hopped back on the boat and rode that to a different spot on the lakeside, and then started the 9km hike along the old Tokaido down to Hakone-Yumoto station. We made it most of the way there but ended up taking a bus for the last section because instead of a historical cedar-lined path paved with rocks that Miyamoto Musashi, Sakamoto Ryoma and the like traveled, it became a normal concrete and asphalt affair.
Next weekend is supposed to be our second rock climbing trip to Ogawayama. We haven't been there since I first asked her on a date about 1.5 years ago. I'm hoping that the weather will be good. It looks decent, but at the moment there is a 30% chance of rain for the 3-day weekend. We'll be taking the easy way this time and staying in the lodge.
Cheers,
P.S. Hakone pics coming soon! It is late and I don't feel like waiting for them to upload.
This weekend's fare was a trip to Hakone. It is actually quite close to Tokyo, and even closer to Yokohama. The best comparison I can give for Hakone is imagine if all the Swiss people in Switzerland were replaced by Japanese people, and the mountains were formed by volcanic activity, not by glacial. Hakone is like that. Lots of green mountains, steep slopes and sudden valleys, lakes nestled between the mountains, switchback mountain trains, cable cars, and rope-way ski-lift like contraptions that carry you hundreds of feet off the ground and sway in the wind.
As it happened, the weather on Saturday was atrocious. We knew this, and went anyway. We arrived late on purpose, and had lunch at Owakudani, which is this hellacious valley with sulfuric hot springs (you can see the yellow sulfur deposits), clouds of egg-smelling vapor, etc. After that, we went to the hotel and thanks to the earthquake last month (and also the bad weather), we could enjoy the hot springs all to ourselves. I was treated to the interesting sensation of chilling rain coming down on my head and shoulders, and being immersed in hot water from the neck down. Both the inside and outside hot springs were wonderful. The water, unlike the water at Owakudani, didn't have that egg smell to it, and there was not a single person there. The men's hot spring also had a Gantz-like black ball from which the water was pumped into the pools. Very cool.
Dinner was delicious. A little too much fish for my taste, and they had raw ika, which are whole squid about as long as a thumb and chewy. But the chicken and everything else was good.
The rain didn't let up until quite late, but miraculously, Sunday morning was bright, warm, and sunny, and stayed that way throughout the day. We rode a sightseeing boat called the "Pirate Line" across Lake Ashi, and walked around the Hakone Checkpoint Museum. From there, we hopped back on the boat and rode that to a different spot on the lakeside, and then started the 9km hike along the old Tokaido down to Hakone-Yumoto station. We made it most of the way there but ended up taking a bus for the last section because instead of a historical cedar-lined path paved with rocks that Miyamoto Musashi, Sakamoto Ryoma and the like traveled, it became a normal concrete and asphalt affair.
Next weekend is supposed to be our second rock climbing trip to Ogawayama. We haven't been there since I first asked her on a date about 1.5 years ago. I'm hoping that the weather will be good. It looks decent, but at the moment there is a 30% chance of rain for the 3-day weekend. We'll be taking the easy way this time and staying in the lodge.
Cheers,
P.S. Hakone pics coming soon! It is late and I don't feel like waiting for them to upload.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Back, and GoT Commentary
hey all,
I've been really busy at school. Writing up daily schedules, doing an extra 15 minutes for my PM class to make up for my 5 day absence last week, doing make-up lessons, and just preparing for normal classes.
Every time I hand in some piece of requested paperwork to get my visa renewed, the immigration bureau sends me another letter requesting more documents. Apparently, they are "cracking down" on foreigners this year, which makes no sense. After the 1000+ earthquakes, many tsunamis, and the continued radiation leakage (which will apparently take the next 6 to 9 months to resolve and may end up surpassing Chernobyl in terms of radiation output), they should be happy that there are any foreigners left in Japan at all. Clearly the people who are still here are committed to being here; why make life more difficult for them (us)?
In other news, the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones premiered last Sunday. Rather than wait a year or more until it comes out on DVD, I found a site to view it on, and I watched it yesterday and a second time today. There are more cuts than I thought there would be, and some additions and changes, of course, but I like the direction the writers and directors are going in. The world is really well realized and some of the visuals were just stunningly beautiful. The actors all did a fine job, I think, and I hope that HBO will decide to adapt the other books in the series as well. I guess that depends on how the 10 or so next episodes are evaluated by the viewers. The only down point is some sites are claiming that the viewership numbers were low compared to other hit shows' premiers.
Cheers,
I've been really busy at school. Writing up daily schedules, doing an extra 15 minutes for my PM class to make up for my 5 day absence last week, doing make-up lessons, and just preparing for normal classes.
Every time I hand in some piece of requested paperwork to get my visa renewed, the immigration bureau sends me another letter requesting more documents. Apparently, they are "cracking down" on foreigners this year, which makes no sense. After the 1000+ earthquakes, many tsunamis, and the continued radiation leakage (which will apparently take the next 6 to 9 months to resolve and may end up surpassing Chernobyl in terms of radiation output), they should be happy that there are any foreigners left in Japan at all. Clearly the people who are still here are committed to being here; why make life more difficult for them (us)?
In other news, the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones premiered last Sunday. Rather than wait a year or more until it comes out on DVD, I found a site to view it on, and I watched it yesterday and a second time today. There are more cuts than I thought there would be, and some additions and changes, of course, but I like the direction the writers and directors are going in. The world is really well realized and some of the visuals were just stunningly beautiful. The actors all did a fine job, I think, and I hope that HBO will decide to adapt the other books in the series as well. I guess that depends on how the 10 or so next episodes are evaluated by the viewers. The only down point is some sites are claiming that the viewership numbers were low compared to other hit shows' premiers.
Cheers,
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Ahh
hey all,
So the swelling is almost totally gone, and I'm planning on going back to work on Monday. I've been watching a ton of movies. Here is a small sample: Prowl, Limitless, The Company Men, Hot Tub Time Machine, Age of the Dragons, The Eagle, The Illusionist (the French animation, not the live action movie with Edward Norton), Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, etc...Actually, that might be a near exhaustive list. I also finally got caught up on the anime Bleach.
As a linguist trained mostly in the US, I'm a big believer in the language universals theory put forth, for example by Chomsky. However, it appears that some researchers have found evidence that the so called "universals" might just be examples of convergent evolution. That, instead of all languages having certain properties (or, as important, lacking certain properties) because of the wiring of the human brain, languages seem to have the properties they do because of human culture. This is more akin to convergent evolution, like birds, insects and bat all being able to fly, even though birds, insects and bats are not very closely related to each other.
Cheers,
So the swelling is almost totally gone, and I'm planning on going back to work on Monday. I've been watching a ton of movies. Here is a small sample: Prowl, Limitless, The Company Men, Hot Tub Time Machine, Age of the Dragons, The Eagle, The Illusionist (the French animation, not the live action movie with Edward Norton), Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, etc...Actually, that might be a near exhaustive list. I also finally got caught up on the anime Bleach.
As a linguist trained mostly in the US, I'm a big believer in the language universals theory put forth, for example by Chomsky. However, it appears that some researchers have found evidence that the so called "universals" might just be examples of convergent evolution. That, instead of all languages having certain properties (or, as important, lacking certain properties) because of the wiring of the human brain, languages seem to have the properties they do because of human culture. This is more akin to convergent evolution, like birds, insects and bat all being able to fly, even though birds, insects and bats are not very closely related to each other.
Cheers,
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
One Month
hey all,
As you all know, yesterday marked one month since the powerful earthquake hit Japan. I'm really tired of earthquakes. Since 8:00 this morning (it is now 12:00), there have been 22 seismic events of various sizes in Japan. Many people, if I haven't mentioned this before, are suffering from "earthquake sickness," which is like motion sickness, BUT FOR THE EARTH. How terrible is that? When you spend a long time on a boat at sea, after you come back to the ground, you might still feel like you are on a ship being tossed about by the waves. Because of the near constant slight tremors and quakes, people will look around them to check and see if the shelves or other objects are shaking, since the people feel like the earth must be shaking when it actually isn't.
It doesn't help that when I look in the mirror I naturally tilt my head a little to one side now, probably because of the pressure my swollen salivary gland is putting on my inner ear.
For damage control, I'm taking this week off from work. I hope that no one at my school catches this. I'm still not sure how I caught it myself. From either someone at school before the earthquake, or someone at the guesthouse. I guess it really doesn't matter. I think I'm going to make a small set of material about mumps to teach the kids, have them learn about viruses, the anatomy of the head, etc.
Cheers,
As you all know, yesterday marked one month since the powerful earthquake hit Japan. I'm really tired of earthquakes. Since 8:00 this morning (it is now 12:00), there have been 22 seismic events of various sizes in Japan. Many people, if I haven't mentioned this before, are suffering from "earthquake sickness," which is like motion sickness, BUT FOR THE EARTH. How terrible is that? When you spend a long time on a boat at sea, after you come back to the ground, you might still feel like you are on a ship being tossed about by the waves. Because of the near constant slight tremors and quakes, people will look around them to check and see if the shelves or other objects are shaking, since the people feel like the earth must be shaking when it actually isn't.
It doesn't help that when I look in the mirror I naturally tilt my head a little to one side now, probably because of the pressure my swollen salivary gland is putting on my inner ear.
For damage control, I'm taking this week off from work. I hope that no one at my school catches this. I'm still not sure how I caught it myself. From either someone at school before the earthquake, or someone at the guesthouse. I guess it really doesn't matter. I think I'm going to make a small set of material about mumps to teach the kids, have them learn about viruses, the anatomy of the head, etc.
Cheers,
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Attack of the Squirrel
hey all,
As you can probably tell from the picture, my right jaw is quite swollen. Turns out that pain in my jaw probably wasn't from grinding my teeth. It only hurt a little Thursday morning, and I didn't notice it at all during the day, but by the time I got home, I could barely open my mouth, chewing was painful, and I only slept 3 or 4 hours, even after taking 600mg of ibuprofen. The kicker is that when I went to the doctor, he said it was probably mumps! I've been vaccinated against mumps; I'm positive about that. What kind of crazy mumps have I come down with? And how did I come down with it in the first place? From March 11th to the 22nd, I barely had contact with other people because my school had canceled class due to the earthquake(s). This virus usually has an incubation time of around 16 days.
There isn't much to do, except enjoy what I can until it gets tired of infecting me. I've got pain killers; and just like I did after I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I'll be going to bed with an ice pack like this:
Sexy, no?
Cheers,
As you can probably tell from the picture, my right jaw is quite swollen. Turns out that pain in my jaw probably wasn't from grinding my teeth. It only hurt a little Thursday morning, and I didn't notice it at all during the day, but by the time I got home, I could barely open my mouth, chewing was painful, and I only slept 3 or 4 hours, even after taking 600mg of ibuprofen. The kicker is that when I went to the doctor, he said it was probably mumps! I've been vaccinated against mumps; I'm positive about that. What kind of crazy mumps have I come down with? And how did I come down with it in the first place? From March 11th to the 22nd, I barely had contact with other people because my school had canceled class due to the earthquake(s). This virus usually has an incubation time of around 16 days.
There isn't much to do, except enjoy what I can until it gets tired of infecting me. I've got pain killers; and just like I did after I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I'll be going to bed with an ice pack like this:
Cheers,
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Eyes...Forward
hey all,
I've got that pain in my jaw from grinding my teeth in my sleep again, and I can see the purple bags under my eyes, but I'm looking forward to the weekend. This whole week has been one long improv session after another.
Instead of heeding the results of the evaluation test, we interviewed the parents one by one to see what the wanted, and based on that, we're making two classes: one where we keep explaining until the kids understand, and the other where we move on to the next topic after a set time limit, or until one or two students get it. But again, instead of just starting regular classes, we're doing this limbo thing until Monday. The first six students to arrive come to my class (which changes topic every two minutes or so), and the next six students go the the slower paced class.This means that we can't assume that the students are all on the same page, so we have to improv for 3 hours.
The afternoon classes are going smoother, but there have been a bunch of changes due to non-returning students/ losing 2 teachers.
The emergency plan is in place on the front door, and in each of the class rooms. But our materials are no where near being organized as I'm not sure where to begin, really; and it looks like Google Docs is incompatible with the Safari browser being used by the Macs at work. (P.S. Safari would still be a crappy browser even if we could access Google Docs.)
I think Michi and I might be going multi-pitch rock climbing on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to that. But really, I'm looking forward to putting my head on someone's lap or shoulder and just relaxing.
Cheers,
I've got that pain in my jaw from grinding my teeth in my sleep again, and I can see the purple bags under my eyes, but I'm looking forward to the weekend. This whole week has been one long improv session after another.
Instead of heeding the results of the evaluation test, we interviewed the parents one by one to see what the wanted, and based on that, we're making two classes: one where we keep explaining until the kids understand, and the other where we move on to the next topic after a set time limit, or until one or two students get it. But again, instead of just starting regular classes, we're doing this limbo thing until Monday. The first six students to arrive come to my class (which changes topic every two minutes or so), and the next six students go the the slower paced class.This means that we can't assume that the students are all on the same page, so we have to improv for 3 hours.
The afternoon classes are going smoother, but there have been a bunch of changes due to non-returning students/ losing 2 teachers.
The emergency plan is in place on the front door, and in each of the class rooms. But our materials are no where near being organized as I'm not sure where to begin, really; and it looks like Google Docs is incompatible with the Safari browser being used by the Macs at work. (P.S. Safari would still be a crappy browser even if we could access Google Docs.)
I think Michi and I might be going multi-pitch rock climbing on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to that. But really, I'm looking forward to putting my head on someone's lap or shoulder and just relaxing.
Cheers,
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Head...Ache
hey all,
Being a head teacher is turning out to be a lot of work. I've got three main goals that I'd like to see accomplished.
Don't get me wrong. I really think that we're doing some amazing things here, but as with any organization that's been around for a while, there is inertia, mis-communication, and entropy to deal with.
Cheers,
Being a head teacher is turning out to be a lot of work. I've got three main goals that I'd like to see accomplished.
- Create a re-usable, adjustable, progressive curriculum. This should cover simple topics using simple vocabulary and sentence structure, and move on to progressively more advanced topics with more advanced vocabulary and sentence structure.
- Organize the teaching materials that we have. We have lots of material, but we never know where it is, which is basically the same thing as actually having no material at all.
- Make available to the teachers in digital form all the texts and worksheets that we create. In the past, we've waited for the next packet of information to be given to us. This means that once we've finished teaching a unit, the packet goes back to the boss. If we have digital copies, we can update them and adapt them for particular skill/age levels. Plus, our changes will be saved for next time around. I'm currently looking at Google Docs as a solution to this, but its organization system is proving to be really wacky.
Don't get me wrong. I really think that we're doing some amazing things here, but as with any organization that's been around for a while, there is inertia, mis-communication, and entropy to deal with.
Cheers,
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Festival
hey all,
It's been a pretty good weekend. Saturday was catching up and preparing for tutoring Michi. Earlier last week, I also ordered a set of magnets to play with: you know, those small BB sized ones that are really powerful and can be arranged into millions of different shapes. I also spent a few hours playing with those.
Sunday, John, myself and our girls went to the Kanamara Festival in Kawasaki. I actually can't say too much more about the festival itself. If you are interested, google it. We also went to Kawasaki Taishi and we did that tracing thing, where they give you a picture of Buddha or another deity, or sometimes a sutra, and you copy it out by hand. With the deities, the outline is already there and you actually just color it in. Pretty fun, like being back in elementary school. I colored in the deity that is supposed to represent my Chinese Zodiac animal, the dog.
In earthquake related news, I have noticed a slight increase in food prices, about 20 Yen more expensive than a few weeks ago, at least for eggs.
I found an interesting article about bouldering in Japan here. Many Japanese people have been telling me the same thing as the article says ever since I came to Japan: that bouldering is becoming more popular, but the number of people actually practicing climbing is decreasing. One of the interesting points is that I've been to both of the gyms whose pictures are featured in the article.
Personally, I would probably attribute the rise in the popularity of bouldering to the somewhat anti-social nature of the Japanese. After all, Sony invented the Walkman, which lets you listen to music BY YOURSELF, even if you're in public or with other people. Bouldering lets you enjoy rock climbing, which in every other case is a sport that requires two or more people, all BY YOURSELF. Of course, there are also the house/room size and transportation issues. Rock climbing requires rope, harness, and lots of other gear, which must be stored in your house and then transported to the climbing site. You need to have space in your house for it, and you might not want to haul that much stuff around on a crowded train on a regular basis.
Cheers,
It's been a pretty good weekend. Saturday was catching up and preparing for tutoring Michi. Earlier last week, I also ordered a set of magnets to play with: you know, those small BB sized ones that are really powerful and can be arranged into millions of different shapes. I also spent a few hours playing with those.
Sunday, John, myself and our girls went to the Kanamara Festival in Kawasaki. I actually can't say too much more about the festival itself. If you are interested, google it. We also went to Kawasaki Taishi and we did that tracing thing, where they give you a picture of Buddha or another deity, or sometimes a sutra, and you copy it out by hand. With the deities, the outline is already there and you actually just color it in. Pretty fun, like being back in elementary school. I colored in the deity that is supposed to represent my Chinese Zodiac animal, the dog.
In earthquake related news, I have noticed a slight increase in food prices, about 20 Yen more expensive than a few weeks ago, at least for eggs.
I found an interesting article about bouldering in Japan here. Many Japanese people have been telling me the same thing as the article says ever since I came to Japan: that bouldering is becoming more popular, but the number of people actually practicing climbing is decreasing. One of the interesting points is that I've been to both of the gyms whose pictures are featured in the article.
Personally, I would probably attribute the rise in the popularity of bouldering to the somewhat anti-social nature of the Japanese. After all, Sony invented the Walkman, which lets you listen to music BY YOURSELF, even if you're in public or with other people. Bouldering lets you enjoy rock climbing, which in every other case is a sport that requires two or more people, all BY YOURSELF. Of course, there are also the house/room size and transportation issues. Rock climbing requires rope, harness, and lots of other gear, which must be stored in your house and then transported to the climbing site. You need to have space in your house for it, and you might not want to haul that much stuff around on a crowded train on a regular basis.
Cheers,
Saturday, April 02, 2011
April Fools
hey all,
I had originally planned some kind of April Fools post for yesterday, but I was too tired to pull it off. GRRM posted a good one about his long, long long long long awaited book being divided into 5 parts to be released serially, with 1 or 2 characters being found in each part.
The news is still dire here. There are no food shortages (yet) nor any recent scares that have emptied out the grocery stores. But the number of contaminated foods near Fukushima keeps growing, as do the areas where they are finding radiation, and it is obvious that 1 or more of the reactors suffered at least a partial meltdown, and it seems that most people would like to see the president of Tepco bottled inside one of the reactors, instead of snug inside a hospital bed.
Work this week went reasonably well. We have a schedule to follow until July, at which point we have some vacation time and can make a teaching schedule for the next 4 or 5 months. We've also been making videos to give to the mothers who would like to come in more often, but due to the circumstances find the trip to be a little too risky. Lots of slapstick and silliness to try and make them engaging.
That's about it for now.
Cheers
I had originally planned some kind of April Fools post for yesterday, but I was too tired to pull it off. GRRM posted a good one about his long, long long long long awaited book being divided into 5 parts to be released serially, with 1 or 2 characters being found in each part.
The news is still dire here. There are no food shortages (yet) nor any recent scares that have emptied out the grocery stores. But the number of contaminated foods near Fukushima keeps growing, as do the areas where they are finding radiation, and it is obvious that 1 or more of the reactors suffered at least a partial meltdown, and it seems that most people would like to see the president of Tepco bottled inside one of the reactors, instead of snug inside a hospital bed.
Work this week went reasonably well. We have a schedule to follow until July, at which point we have some vacation time and can make a teaching schedule for the next 4 or 5 months. We've also been making videos to give to the mothers who would like to come in more often, but due to the circumstances find the trip to be a little too risky. Lots of slapstick and silliness to try and make them engaging.
That's about it for now.
Cheers
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