Two Trips, Lost in Translation

hey all,

I wish I could take credit for the picture below, but it is not mine.

The peak in the middle, after the steep drop coming from the right, is the first peak of Kaerazu no Ken. Then there is the double peak to the left of that, and then the triple peak to the left of that.

Those peaks took us about 3 hours to get through. But I get ahead of myself.


View September 2012 Trip in a larger map

The first day was pretty similar to the last trip, but with a much shorter hike the first day: only about 1hour. The next day, we woke up at 5, and hiked for about 8 hours before reaching our lodging for the night.

(I should warn you that there is some profanity on one of those videos.)





Then a nice long rest, a good meal, and then we were up at 4:30 for the last day. Another 7 hours or so took us back to the gondolas, buses, and trains headed back to Tokyo.

The hike was pretty unremarkable, except for that 3 hour stretch of Kaerazu no Ken. That was some white knuckled, if-I-slip-now-they-won't-find-my-body climbing. It was really foggy, so visibility was low, plus there were the extreme ascents and descents and strong winds to contend with. The fog also kept condensing onto the chains and nearby plants, which the wind would whip and splash into our faces. Thankfully we had decided to stay at the lodges instead of camp, so our packs were relatively small and light, since we weren't carrying tents, sleeping bags, gas stoves, or dinner supplies.

I wish I had some good pictures of us going through this area, but it is not the kind of place that you just rest and stop to smell the roses. But here is one I took.

The fog makes everything hard to make out, but behind Michi there is no or less a straight drop. Behind me is a narrow rock face (which on the other side of that there is a sheer drop), and that rickety steel ladder crosses a straight drop.





Last week was also relatively uneventful.

This weekend, we went to a famous resort on the beaches of Zushi, which is just an hour or so away from our apartment. Her parents belong to some club, and we were able to stay there really cheaply.

Earlier today, we watched The Dark Knight. I kept glancing at the Japanese subtitles below, and they seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping up, except in one place.



In the subtitles, it says "You know what chaos causes/makes happen? Fear"  instead of "You know the thing about chaos? It's fair." In other places, such as the end where Harvey makes a speech about fairness before Batman takes him out, the translation follows the English pretty well. Not sure why the translator chose to do that, but hey.

One more week, and then we will head over to a zoo at work.

Cheers,

G4m3r

hey all,

Do any of you use Google's Chrome web browser? Michi has started using it, and I was tempted to give it a try, since I have a gmail account, blog through Blogger.com, and own an Android smartphone. My plan was to log on to this website, and type up this entry. BUT for some reason, Chrome wouldn't bring up the interface. I mean the program just hung there for a whole minute. Since when is a web browser designed by Google incompatible with a website owned by Google? That is like not being able to play a Blu-Ray disc (which was developed and backed mostly by Sony) on a Sony PlayStation 3. Anyway, I logged out and I don't think I'll be going back to Chrome any time soon.

I completed the penultimate assignment for my second curriculum design class last weekend, and got 29/30 on it. One of the questions I made was worded a little non-standardly, and I didn't include an answer key. I've got the last assignment due this weekend, and then I don't have another class until January 18th, which is a relief. The stress of trying to keep up with climbing, class, work, and yes, games, has been wearying. To top it all off, I seem to keep catching one bug or another every few days. Just after a week of taking medicine and when it finally seems to be getting better or even gone, I get hit with another bug which has me hacking, wheezing, and suffering with sinus headaches.

 The medicine I'm taking is this orange powder that you place on your tongue and down with big glasses of water. It tastes something like rancid cinnamon: sweet and fiery, and then with a sour and somehow cloying aftertaste.

I've been putting in a few hours each day to one game or another. Skyrim is still incredibly fun, and such a broad experience. The number of characters and their viewpoints, wants, and the quests they give you really draw you into the game and make it difficult to stop: you keep saying "Just after one more quest..." And I've already mentioned the crazy fact that you can mine ore, take it to a smelter and refine it, take the ingots to a blacksmith and forge your own weapons, then take them to a grindwheel and hone them, then take them to an enchanting table, and put a magical ability on them. Apparently for those interested, you can also marry 60 different characters in the game.
Dark Souls continues to be challenging, but I have defeated several other bosses since my last post, and I have leveled up about 10 times and greatly improved my weapons.
I completed Batman, but I started the NG+, which is gamer speak for New Game +. This is basically where you play the game from the beginning again, but all the experience and gadgets, etc stay with your character. The upshot is that the game becomes much more challenging: since you start the game with so much equipment and power, the game designers make the enemies tougher, there are more of them, and some of the aids of normal mode are taken away. For example, in NG+ there are no longer any flashing marks above enemies heads to signal that they are about to attack, you just have to watch them carefully to counterattack or get hit and take the damage. The main motivation for going through the NG+ is to collect the Riddler trophies, which unlock artwork, extra maps to practice fighting and stealthing on, and which also let you rescue hostages who are scattered throughout the city.

 I haven't neglected my reading, though. I finished T.H. White's Once and Future King, which I bought by accident while trying to buy it for my sister's B-Day. I also gave The Forever War a shot and greatly enjoyed that one. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Reamde (that's how it's spelled, no typo there), and as usual I can't seem to put his books down.

Michi and I and my coworker went to a gym a little bit farther away than usual, and it was just a huge place. Not very long routes, but the sheer number and variety was impressive. But it takes over an hour to get there, and the train fare is pretty high, and INSERT ADDITIONAL EXCUSES HERE. Basically, it isn't very convenient and the quality of the routes seems to be a little higher at our usual place.

Cheers,

Games and Climbing

hey all,

I put in a little more time on Dark Souls, but the current area I'm trying to clear out is pretty vile. It is called Sen's Fortress. The guards are these big snake-headed dudes with giant scimitars and shields, and then there are these cobra-headed multi-armed guys that shoot lightning at you, and then there are the traps and narrow walkways with swinging axes. I've easily lost 10,000-20,000 xp trying to clear this place out, so I think I'm going to grind my character in the Darkroot Garden for a little bit. I was finally able to kill those troublesome black cats, so with them gone I can prey on some of the easier enemies and level up my stats and weapons and maybe my armor.

My B-day present from my mom arrived: Skyrim. And my does it look big! For the previous game in the series (Oblivion), I happily put in over 120 hours and still didn't manage to finish it. There were just so many quests to do, so many areas to explore, etc. Reports are that Skyrim is easily over 300 hours long. And so far it plays really well. The graphics are a huge upgrade over Oblivion, the level up system is really awesome, the quests are well-written and the voice acting is good so far. The geography and level design is also a lot more interesting than either Oblivion or Fallout 3 (both games designed by the same company which made Skyrim.). The combat is a lot more fun than in Oblivion, but it is no match for Dark Souls in that department. But then, there is a lot more to do in Skyrim: you can mine metals, smith your weapons and armor, enchant your weapons and armor, gather ingredients and make potions, cook meals, pick locks, steal, buy and decorate houses, join different groups and complete quests for them, fight huge dragons and many other activities.

I also just watched a video about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and boy does that look fun too! Unfortunately, that game is also an RPG, which means that 40-100 hours of game play would not be out of the question. As I still haven't finished Batman, Battlefield 3, Dark Souls, and I've just started the gigantic Skyrim, I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to pick up the game when it comes out in February. I'll just have to see.

Michi and I went climbing with one of my teachers from work, and that was pretty fun too. Overall, its been a great weekend. I'm still climbing somewhere in the 5.10a-b range, so maybe a little more practice and I'll be able to pull off a few 5.10c's or d's.

I realized yesterday that what I was posting about earlier with Pascal's triangle and the binomial theorem was actually a power set: the set of sets you can make from a set, not strictly speaking a combinations problem.  Anyway...

Cheers,

Last Weekend Before Moving

hey all,

We had a pretty relaxing weekend. We made some chili, and watched some "classics" on Japanese TV, including a really psychedelic one called The Girl on a Motorcycle, which stars one of Mick Jagger's flings.

Today we went rock climbing at Rocklands again. Michi did really well on the walls, climbing a bunch of simple routes with better and better form before moving on to some more challenging ones. I climbed a few simple ones, before trying my hand at some pretty difficult ones (for me at least: 5.10b/c's), and stayed at that level for most of the day.

I've had Lovely Day by Bill Withers stuck in my head since watching the movie 127 Hours again the other weekend.



It's such an amazing song, and the scene where it's used is just heart-wrenching. Something like the effect of the brainwashing that the protagonist of of A Clockwork Orange undergoes where he begins to associate torture, rape, and violence with his favorite piece of music, Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Tomorrow, I return to work. Classes don't begin until the following week, but as I've probably said too many times: there has to be more planning and more order in what we teach, so that's what we'll be doing; planning and ordering.

There was a semi-large earthquake today around 4AM local Japan time, probably a 5 on the Richter scale. I was a little worried about my things back at my place, but when I got back today they were fine and nothing was broken or knocked over. I'm a little worried about the building that we're moving to, though. We'll be on the 8th floor, and it is not the newest building. It was probably built around 1979 or so. Younger than Michi but older than me. For the Japanese, this makes the building quite old, though.

Cheers,

Weekend, and More

hey all,

The weekend was pretty good again. More apartment searching, trip planning, and rock climbing on Sunday. Somehow, I made it up a 5.11a/b without killing myself at the gym.

I also managed to shatter the bottom of my nalgene bottle by leaving it in Michi's freezer overnight with a bit too much water in it. There is currently a 10% outdoor gear sale going on at Kamoshika, an outdoor retailer, so I headed over there and picked up a metal water bottle and a new everyday backpack was well.

Michi has recently replaced one of her purses, and I think when we head up to her family's second house in a few weeks, I will suggest that we burn her purse and my old satchel together. They have both served us faithfully for many years, and deserve better than being thrown away.

For some reason, one of my student loans' interest rates has increased to 8.25APR, and I wasn't notified at all about the change or the reason for it. That prompted me to make some extra payments on my loans and change my strategy. Since I can't pick exactly which loan to pay off, I'll target the one with the highest interest rate and try to pay that off first. Hopefully by this time next year.

I've looked into more online colleges. The one that I've been looking at the most also seems to be the most expensive, so I'm starting to look at others. Since I already have an MA, I'm looking at certificates in curriculum design, which greatly reduces the price and course load. Still, the main one is around $5000 dollars and has all kinds of administrative hoops to jump through, but I've found another one for around $1400 that seems a bit easier to manage.

Cheers,

Week

hey all,

The season finale of Game of Thrones was pretty amazing. Of course, the climax of the book is by far one of the highest points that I've encountered in literature, but with some sour chords lingering in the background and of course a feeling of "This could be going there or there, but either one would be stupendous."

Lately, I've been gorging myself on nata de coco, which is a dish from the Philippines made from fermented coconut water. It has a texture that is very unique, maybe best described as sweetened juicy wax. Although that might not sound delicious, it is. I eat about 2 cups or so at a time, which is probably overkill, but it is that scrumptious.

I think we're getting together a foursome for rock climbing on Sunday, which should be exciting.

In other news, I've finally gotten around to logging in to my student loan website and calculated that if I pay $1000 per month from July, 2011 until January, 2014 I can completely pay off my student loans. For some reason, their website doesn't seem to support you figuring this out right there, but if you have the interest rates and the principle, you can figure out the rest yourself with a spreadsheet program.

I think next week's lunch will be lamb and barley stew by Alton Brown. This week, I bought some frozen fried chicken, gyoza and shumai (both are Chinese pot stickers: basically just pork with spice with a wonton wrapper), and I've been alternating one for lunch, the other for dinner, then the third for the next day's lunch, etc. However, the temperature has been around 28C (that's about 82F for all of you in Burma, Liberia, and the US), but the humidity has been above 70%, so you always feel like you've got glue on your skin. In any case, frying every night is not really the thing you want to be doing in this kind of weather, so I'm going back to my "slave over a stove for a 1.5 hours- eat for a week" pattern.

Classes are for the most part going well. I'm working on the history book study guide a little, day by day, and it is coming along nicely.

Cheers,

Weekend "Alone"

hey all,

So my weekend by myself has been pretty pleasant. I've done a few loads of laundry, skyped with my parents, played video games with Bri, had drinks with John, and gone indoor rock climbing with one of the foreigners who recently moved in to my guesthouse. So at least the flood of people moving in hasn't been all negative: I've got someone close by to chat with in English (who I don't also work with, which is important because I really want to keep professional and personal matters separate as much as I can), and in the same person I've got a workout/climbing partner.

Climbing also went pretty well today, although I think both of us weren't in the best form, but we still got in a decent number of climbs.

Michi and I talked some more. Things will work out. Having a weekend off to do other things and gather my thoughts and look at the situation has really helped, as well as the advice I've gotten from others.

I've got another week of work ahead of me, so I'm going to get to preparing lunches and tonight's dinner.

Cheers,

Today

hey all,

1. Got up
2. Made rice
3. Went to work
4. Received pay
5. Bought chorizo and mustard
6. Cooked chorizo
7. Bought laundry soap, razors, and shoe polish
8. Did laundry
9. Polished shoes
10. Watched Game of Thrones, Episode 8 (Still awesome, only two more episodes left...)
11. Ate chorizo with bread and mustard
12. Downloaded pics of Siberian husky and the Chukchi people for my PM class tomorrow
13. Checked weather for Matsumoto trip next weekend (doesn't look good: 60% chance of rain on Saturday, 40% chance of rain on Sunday...)
14. Took a shower.
15. Wrote this blog entry
16. Brushed teeth
17. Passed out.

Tomorrow, I need to finish that evolution presentation for my AM class so I can show them on Wednesday. It is about 12 minutes long right now, most of it narration by Carl Sagan, but I'm going to add a quiz at the end.

The weekend was great. We fought, made up, found a place to stay, decided against it, and went rock climbing at Yugawara. It is off season there, and the weather on Sunday was not great, so we almost had the place to ourselves. There were probably 20 people spread out among the several hundred routes, so we barely met anyone. Only one other time has that happened at Yugawara. We also encountered some monstrous bugs, like some centipedes twice the length of a pinky finger, we're talking like 5-6 inches.  The first one was half way up a route, and I had to wait for it to crawl away from that area, lest I be bitten. I wanted to get a picture of the second one, but I didn't bring my camera and Michi's camera's battery was dead.

Cheers,

Trips

hey all,

So things are busy. I guess one of the nice things, about myself at least, is that when I'm busy I generally keep my room clean, organize my time a bit better, and don't waste it on stupid things. The downside is that I'm busy, so I don't have relaxation time or even enough time to fit in errands sometimes.

Take today for example. My one errand that I wanted to get done was to do a wire transfer to the US. But we had a 3 day holiday, so when I tried in the morning before class, I couldn't get through because I bet lots of people were trying to get their own bank errands done before the weekend. And between 1:30 and 6:45, I had 30 minutes of free time, split up into ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, which is not enough time to prepare for the next class and make a phone call.

In any case, Ogawayama was...dramatic, to say the least. On the first day, Michi and I went to a rock in the Family Rocks area, called Mara Iwa (Mara Rock, or something like Penis Rock in old Japanese). This is a rather tall pillar of rock which features a lot of slab climbing: smooth, almost flat and featureless rock walls. We climbed a few routes there but most of them were out of our league.

The next day we had a climbing lesson, but...that's where the drama comes in. For now, I'll just say that we finished the lesson early, and went hiking around the Rooftop Rocks area.

The last day was lots of fun. We went over to Mother Rock, again in the Family Rocks area. Most of the routes on Mother Rock are 5.8, 5.9, and a few 5.10's and above. We climbed almost everything that we could, something like 8 or 9 routes in 6 hours. With a really satisfying day of climbing in the bag, after two days of frustration and disappointment, we went back to Tokyo.

And back to work. Monday was a normal day at work, more or less. But Monday night, we left for our second trip, to Michi's second house near Mt. Asama. We got to check out a field strewn with volcanic rock, a shrine where Masayuki Sanada is buried, Ueda Castle (where the Sanada clan ruled), and also a waterfall. Of course, there was also the usual gardening and yard work as well, but for the most part, fun stuff prevailed.

Mara Rock on the right, and Older Sister Rock on the left.

A strange indentation in one of the rocks in Rooftop.

Our lodge seen from the top of one of the routes at Mother Rock.

Mt. Asama

Entrance gate to the volcanic rock field.

Me doing the demon rock thing.

Cookies made to look like volcanic rock, supposedly with some of the rock ground up inside them.

A cherry blossom tree near the Hasedera in Ueda where Masayuki Sanada is buried.

One of the remained turrets of Ueda Castle.

A waterfall we stopped by on the way back to Tokyo.

And then today, Friday, was of course another normal work day, but it felt like Monday. I kept on commenting on it during the day, but none of the kids got the joke. The parents did, though.

Cheers,

Georgie Boy

hey all,

Here's a couple videos (viewer discretion advised) of George Carlin about natural disasters. The second one has footage of the tsunami that hit northern Japan two weeks ago.





It's been a good weekend so far. Met up with my southern friend on Friday, met up with Michi today, and also ran a bunch of errands. I did laundry, made a 2 liter batch of chili, and even studied Japanese a little. The only down note is that when I went to the store to pick up peanut oil and spices and root beer, they didn't have root beer! I wandered around the store like a lost, sad puppy for maybe 10 minutes before I got in line to check out. I'll have to find a new source for root beer.

Today, Michi and I will be heading to a rock climbing gym we haven't been to before. We're accumulating quite the collection of climbing gym membership cards by now.

On Monday, the three remaining teachers are coming back in to work to make new contracts and start preparing materials for next year. It'll be good to get out of the guesthouse.

Cheers,

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,

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,

ahhhh

hey all,

Finally, a nice relaxed weekend. I got to touch base with Bri for the first time since coming back to Japan, made something half way between a chicken chili and a normal soup together with Michi, and watched The Holiday. Yes, it is a chick flick, but I thought it was watchable.

Today, we went over to a gym in Yokohama called Pinnacle rock Climbing. Not a bad place, but very small. It was inside a shopping mall, so actually most of the "customers" were kids who their parents were indulging or keeping busy for an hour of two so mommy and daddy could get some shopping done. Again, not a bad place, but a far cry from the climbing gyms that we usually go to. They also had a lot of gear all by Millet, which seems like a decent company, but everything was so expensive that I couldn't bring myself to even be interested in it. Clothes, most of which were 30% off, were still over $80, and they weren't that amazing. (Their backpacks, on the other hand, seemed nice, but I now have 3 Osprey backpacks: an 18L, 46L, and my new massive 70L. So, I'm kinda set in terms of backpacks. Although, the 46L is getting old, and something in between 18 and 46 would be handy, say, a 28L or 30L, especially something geared towards climbing needs...See what a problem I have when it comes to this? Outdoor gear has definitely replaced my past obsessively collected items of books, CDs, and movies.)

Anyway, we stopped by Yokohama station, which was convenient for Michi, since she had to return to Tokyo, and convenient for me since I live in that general area. I took her to a ramen/tsukemen restaurant, but alas, she was not too impressed. Their ramen is so-so, but their tsukemen is really quite nice: the soup is served boiling hot (literally still bubbling when they set it in front of you), and once it cools, has a thick meaty flavor and consistency which goes well with the noodles. She ordered the ramen.

Tomorrow, I go back to the grindstone. This week will be a long one, as will the next one: Monday through Saturday. One of our Saturday teachers has left, and myself and another teacher have agreed to divide each month's Satudays between us until we can get a replacement. For next month, it looks like I'm actually supposed to be in charge to supervising the new teacher for a few Saturdays, which is kinda a hoot because I still consider myself a new teacher.

Cheers,

Multi-Pitch, No Teacher

hey all,

Just got back from Joyama again (every time I type that I'm reminded of "Yo mama" jokes...). Saturday we climbed several single pitch routes as a warm up for today's main serving of multi-pitch madness. We only got in one multi-pitch route: a 4P route called Battle Runner. We climbed it before together with our climbing instructor, and we waited for a long time to climb it today. We had to wait both at the bottom, since it was very crowded, and also about two pitches up, where a really annoying woman stopped us. She was terrible at rock climbing, constantly saying "oh! scary!" and had long, decorated nails. She had no business on a multi-pitch route, and yet there she was, blocking the way, slowing us down, and constantly getting afraid of something that ...I was about to write "isn't scary," but actually it can be. Still, I don't see many sane people walking around at night exclaiming "Wow, it's dark" for 10, 20, or 30 minute stretches. What is the point in that? Yes, rock climbing is scary. Get on with it, or get out of the way.

In any case, we got up and down without incident, and actually ran into our climbing instructor again as he was either climbing with some friends or instructing more students. I was able to tell him that we climbed the whole route without falling once, and also without resting or asking for tension. (At least I was able to. Michi has a ways to go yet.)

Although I'm feeling pretty worn out from shopping, coordinating trips, dealing with troubles at work, and the muscle/mental ache of climbing (especially multi-pitch gives me this feeling: we were separated from the ground from about 11:00 to 16:00, or 5 HOURS), it was a good weekend. Michi and I haven't had any of our huge "It's over!" fights recently, and we're probably getting better at feeling out the mood of the other. It helps that we can lose our tempers with each other, and then patch things up quickly and move on.

 One of the larger projects looming over my head is a presentation I'd like to give about my stay in Japan so far, but some of the features I'd like to do are a little tricky.

Cheers

Big Wall

hey all,

So the low down is this: you're climbing up a rock wall and you run out of rope, but there is still plenty of rock wall up above you. Instead of going back down like a semi-rational person (to be a rock climber you probably have to be a bit off your rocker), you let your climbing partner climb up to your position. And then you keep climbing until you run out of rope again and notice that there is still more rock above you, etc etc. This is big wall climbing or multi-pitch climbing, and Michi and I took our first lesson in it last weekend.

I guess there are several things to know about multi-pitch climbing. First is the general process as I outlined it above. Second is the details of it: who climbs first, and how does that climber make him/herself safe once he/she reaches an anchor point (what knots, what gear, and what techniques etc), and what kind of communication is necessary for multi-pitch climbing to work and be safe. Once you get to the end of the rock, you need to know how you and your partner can get down quickly and safely.

I wish this picture didn't make me look like a dufus, but you can see I'm wearing my helmet, and the backpack Michi just got me. I'm belaying for Michi, who is climbing up to my position.

So that is the gist of what we were taught. It consists of a process of checks, a knowledge of a few knots, a few terms to facilitate safety and good communication, and a lot of double checking and triple checking for safety hazards, for which knowledge of what a dangerous situation looks like is necessary.

Another slightly uncool picture. But you can see how high up we are.

Nice pic of Michi.

The video should give you some idea the scale involved. The guy dressed in yellow at the top of the wall is our teacher, and that is where we finished the climb. Mt. Joyama is about 340m tall, and the wall that we climbed is easily 120m, or almost 400ft.

Although the classes were done in Japanese, most of the climbing terms are English, so that was pretty easy. And I guess my Japanese has gotten good enough for me to understand safety and some climbing instructions. I really appreciate our teacher, a climber who has over 30 years of climbing experience all over the world, and has actually published articles in climbing magazines, such as Rock and Snow. (No joke: I've seen the articles.)

Cheers,

610

hey all,

As of Tuesday, I'll have been in Japan for 610 days, or one year and 8 months.

I thought I'd share a silly story about lunch. As most of you probably have read here, I'm kind of a fan of Muji. They don't advertise (much...), their products are usually, well-built, simple, and convenient, and they also don't have brand names I don't care about plastered all over them. So when I wanted to by a lunch box, I went to Muji first. But the lunch box they were selling was too simple. It was just two interlocking plastic boxes with lids. If you wanted chopsticks, you had to buy them separately and the chopstick box was a different color and a different length than the lunch box. And if you wanted a band to attach the two together, that had to be bought separately, and if you wanted a bag to put everything in, that too had to be bought separately, all of it just didn't seem up to the usual Muji standard.

So I went to Don Quixote, which is one of the weirdest stores I've seen in Japan. I used to go shopping there sometimes when I lived in Tokyo, but they have the shops in most major cities and in Tokyo there was one for each major (and minor) shopping area.They are weird because of their selection of goods. They don't seem to sell cuts of meat, but you can buy eggs, tofu, cheese, milk, bread, snacks, juice, coffee, alcohol, etc. They also sell socks, underwear, shirts, suits, ties, etc. And they also do dishes, kitchen ware, appliances, weights for working out, make-up, toothpaste, shampoo, jewelry, etc. The strange thing is probably not the types of different merchandise that they sell, although they do sell some strange things, but rather the presentation and organization of it. For example, you can buy suits, work shirts, and business socks on one floor, and right next to that area without any separation is pastel elephant underwear...You can guess what is supposed to go in the trunk...

And all the regular clothes are mixed in with nurses outfits, Mrs. Santa outfits, school girl uniforms with too short skirts, etc. The food section is more or less normal, but the health and beauty section and the clothing sections can be a real eyeful if you're just wandering around.

Anyway, I went to the kitchen goods area, and immediately saw a lunch box: two matching interlocking boxes, which included chopsticks and had a special compartment to store them in. It came with a band to help keep everything together, an insulated bag to help maintain temperature, and two miniature ice packs to keep your lunch cold, should you so desire. And it was all the same price as the Muji lunch box by itself. How could Muji have dropped the ball so badly, I thought. Their notebooks are nice, I love their storage boxes for clothes and house goods, I have a pair of their house slippers, and 4 work shirts from their clothing line.Why couldn't they make a decent lunch box for a decent price? Why do I have to put up with a really nice lunch box that happens to say "We are passionate about lunch communication. The lunch is a good day pastime."

At any rate, the weekend was really fun. Michi made some ginger marinated pork with soup and salad, and a double or triple chocolate cake. The cake was really something of a work of art, but all of it was delicious. She also bought me a carabiner for my birthday...At least that's what I thought. The last time we went climbing, I dropped a carabiner and it rolled off into the woods and down a steep slope. It was almost the end of the climbing day, and I had barely been able to find Michi's shoes when she dropped them down the same slope earlier. There was little chance I'd be able to find the 'biner, so Michi said she'd buy me a new one, which she did. But she also secretly bought me a day bag: an 18L Osprey bag, with a built-in 3L hydration system including a drinking tube that hangs just below your mouth and with lots of pockets and straps and crannies to put stuff and a really nice reinforced back that allows air to flow through, instead of leaving your back a sweaty mess. I had been salivating over this bag for months, and I guess she noticed.

Instead of going to Kotakuji like we had originally planned, we decided to go to Tenno Iwa. I had gone there last year with Ayako and Tatcha when Michi was busy, so it was a first for her. For some reason, there was almost no one there, which was nice because there are not that many routes to climb. We did pretty well, but Michi fell twice and cut her shins a little on the second fall. The first fall could have been much worse, especially if she hadn't been wearing her new helmet. Now when we climb, we wear the helmets. I think I've been pretty lucky not to have busted my head open in this life yet, and I'm really starting to want to keep it that way.

Anyway, another day in the life of this English teacher, right?

Cheers,

Week Day Holiday

hey all,

Today was a national holiday, which naturally resulted in a rock climbing trip to Yugawara.

Pretty good climbing. We got there around 8:30AM, and beat many other climbers to the spots, and went out of our way to find a couple out of the way locations that proved pretty fun.

I thought I'd comment briefly on the new job. It has been about one month, and it is going pretty well. The hours are a little long, but I'm slowly getting used to them. I've gotten some good feedback about some of my classes, and it appears that the parents, my boss, etc are satisfied. My first paycheck is coming up soon, so that will also be interesting.

One of the housemates who's leaving seems like he wants to give me his bike, so that will shorten my walking commute.

Cheers,

Whoohoo

hey all,

Very excellent weekend. I finished watching Shutter Island and chatted with a friend Saturday morning, and then headed up to Tokyo to meet up with Michi. We didn't see each other at all last weekend, as I worked on Saturday and we both had colds. So this weekend was the first time we'd gotten to spend more than 2 hours together in two weeks.

We made a decent dinner of vegetable soup and yakisoba (fried noodles), and talked about A Song of Ice and Fire,the first book of which she is now about half way through...This actually makes me really jealous. In English I can get through one of these books in a couple of days, given enough time to read each day. But it has taken me the better part of 5 months to get through the first book in Japanese, and she's gotten through half in about a month.

Anyway, we also got around to the topic of baby names, somehow. No, that's not a hint or clue, but especially with my economic situation seeming to improve it is a topic that's come up. The funny thing is that we came back to A Song of Ice and Fire for this as well: there are actual attested fans of the series who've named a son or daughter after a character from Mr. Martin's excellent fantasy series, and if I had a daughter, I couldn't think of a better name than Daenerys or Dany for short.


Today we went indoor rock climbing, as there was a typhoon yesterday and the weather was still not too great today. We both did pretty well. Michi has been going bouldering after work almost every night this month, and she even took a private lesson outdoors earlier , like I did when I first started climbing. She can now climb some 5.10a's and 5.10b's, but her reach is a little short and sometimes her weak left hand holds her back. Still, it took me 5 years to reach the 5.10a mark, so who am I judge? I didn't break any records, but I did a couple 5.10a's and 5.10b, and finished with two 5.10d's. I almost completed a third, but I smashed my knee trying to pull myself over the last ledge at the end, and that really took the fight out of me.

I've been watching talks on TED recently, and I thought I'd share two here.The first is really brilliant, and the second is pretty interesting.






Cheers,