3 Months

hey all,

I am closing in on the three month mark in Japan. Here are some random things that I'm really excited about:

• I can now do internet banking. No more 3 day fiascos trying to make a simple wire transfer to pay rent!
• I just joined the Tokyo Outdoor Club. Since the bar is not really my environment, this gives me a much better shot of feeling comfortable while socializing. Check out the photos of past trips on their website. They're gorgeous! So, hopefully I can meet some people interested in doing cool things, and not just sitting in dark, smoky, loud rooms killing braincells.
• Getting paycheck #2 in 6 days!
• My new shoes! After getting tired of having my feet soaked when it rained thanks to holes in the bottom, and after slipping a few too many times while hiking Mt. Tsukuba, I bought a new pair of hiking shoes that double as my everyday shoes. They rock!

Cheers,

Haves and Have-Nots

hey all,

To those of you accustomed to thinking of Japan as some fantasy futuristic land, where almost everything is available, it might come as a surprise that certain things are not to be found here. For instance, like any homegrown American, I like peanut butter and root beer. When I was in Amsterdam, peanut butter was not hard to find, but root beer was. I had to go to an oriental grocery store to find some South East Asian knock-off root beer. It was actually pretty tasty.

So far, I have seen neither peanut butter nor root beer anywhere in Japan. At the local grocery store, I've seen several peanut butter-like products, but no real peanut butter. They have peanut soft, which is a sugary, whip cream-like spread which is very pale in color and much less dense than real peanut butter. This comes in several varieties: with chunks and without chunks. Even after exploring an international grocery store in Omiya train station, I have yet to see peanut butter. The international place was kinda ridiculous: they had Lindt chocolate from Switzerland, and stroopwaffels from Holland, but no peanut butter. Mango juice from Brazil and imported honey, but no peanut butter.

I also have despaired of finding root beer. What I read is that years ago, some pharmaceutical company decided to make all medicine taste like wintergreen, the primary flavor in root beer. So Japanese people associate it with medicine, and don't really like the flavor. In Holland, I talked to some of the students about root beer, but I couldn't really get an answer on why Dutch people didn't like the flavor.

At many train stations, there are vending machines for umbrellas. In Akihabara, they have maid cafes, which I briefly mentioned in an earlier post. The guy who lives next to me is into them, and he told me about them. These are places where you pay money to go inside and talk to pretty Japanese women dressed as maids. They address you as "Master" and if you order food, they will exlaim "Oh Master! Be careful! It's hot!" and then blow on your food for you, and feed you. In Japan, they have these kinds of things, but no root beer or peanut butter.

Cheers,

Another One Bites the Dust

hey all,

I mentioned in an earlier post that we've lost a few ALTs: one in my building left, and another one left last week as well. A new ALT (the one from New York) moved into my building last week, but he is leaving already. Monday was supposed to be his first day, but he apparently didn't sleep at all, and didn't go in. Something like panic attacks were described, as well.

One of the people from The Company came over, and he also talked to several coordinators over the phone. At the end of the day, he decided that he'd go back to the US immediately, paying the penalties for not giving 1 month notice to The Company and also already having paid 1 month's rent.

The thing that really freaks me out about this incident is that he taught in Korea for a year and China for a few months. What exactly is so terror-inducing about Japan that is not terror-inducing about China and Korea? Korea, from what I've heard from other ALTs, is not the greatest place to teach, be foreign, or to both teach and be foreign, but rather closer to the opposite of great. China is a freaking communist country, which does terriblely repressive things to its own citizens everyday. Nuff said.

Now, this is the second freak-out I've heard about. Earlier this year, we had a girl decide to leave after being in Japan for about 1 month. That was still pretty surprising, but I think the New York guy split after 10 days.

Cheers,

筑波山に登りました

hey all,

So as planned, I woke up and traveled over to Tsukuba, then over to Mt. Tsukuba, and climbed it. The new ALT had planned on coming, but when I asked him this morning, he didn't feel like going. So, I went by myself. Mt. Tsukuba is around 880m tall, depending on which of the two peaks you are on.

On the bus ride from the train station to the mountain, you actually start to ascend the base, and I was worried that there wouldn't be very much of a hike. My fears were unjustified. It took about 1.5-2 hours to get to the "top." Top being the valley between the two peaks. The male peak took another half hour, as did the trek from the male peak, down the valley, and up the female peak.

Gama-ishi: frog-rock, if I understand the sign. The Japanese people are taking turns throwing rocks into its "mouth:" if you get three rocks to stay in the mouth, this is good luck.

The male peak, as seen from the female peak.

The views were pretty amazing, and on the way down, I took a different path than I had on the way up. This path featured more interesting sites, including 弁慶七戻り, which is a rock formation with one massive boulder precariously balanced between two other massive upright boulders. The thing looks like the vibration from your footsteps could cause the one rock to fall and crush you as you tried to walk underneath it. 弁慶, or Benkei, was a warrior monk who was famous for his bravery. It was at this spot that Benkei supposedly started walking beneath the rock, only to turn around, too afraid to move forward. 七戻り, means "seven returnings:" it took Benkei seven tries before he made it under the rock.
The hike down took another 1.5-2 hours, so between the actual hiking, the 40 min. bus ride to and from the mountain, and the 2 hours by train, the whole day was taken up by this trip. Well worth it, many times over.

I have not decided what I am doing tomorrow yet. I was told that tomorrow is my school's anniversary, so there are no classes and I don't have to come in. I may visit Kawagoe again, but I think I might try for a new city.

Cheers

Drinking Japan

A variant of umeshu, Japanese plum liquor.

Very tasty umeshu.

A medium quality sake

Yoghurt-Drink (That's what the label says)

Weekend Plans

hey all,

So this weekend looks somewhat dreary as well. We have definitely entered the rainy season. Sunday looks pretty decent though, so I've been day dreaming about different places to see. I still want to see the Kansai region, with Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara holding more historic shrines, temples, palaces, towers, and gardens than most countries can claim. But I can't do them justice over a weekend. I looked into Hiroshima, even farther away than any of those cities, but I would beggar myself just getting over there, let alone paying for accommodation, food, and souvenirs. I considered going hiking near Yorii again, as several people have mentioned a few train stops near there with good hiking.

Finally, our new ALT actually mentioned Mount Tsukuba, which is about midway between the cities of Tsukuba and Mito. It is reasonably priced to get over there, seems to offer a good hike, and plenty of good sights to see. There are also some hilarious historical poems about the mountain, which are lewd enough that I'm not sure I can quote them here, mainly having to do with certain festivals. The mountain has two peaks, you see, and one is supposed to be a male god and the other a female god, and you see where this is going...Visiting Mount Tsukuba and its attendant shrines is supposed to bring good luck in relationships. I have avoided buying talismans for that at other shrines for fear of jinxing it, but I think I will need the luck now. We have a winner.

Cheers,

How do you teach...?

hey all,

My 3rd year English teacher asked me to teach "It is ____ for me to ____" to the students, or at least to introduce them to this sentence. For example, "It is hard for me to read Japanese."

They do not know the gerund form of verbs yet, so I cannot give them a sentence like "Reading Japanese is hard for me," and while "To read Japanese is hard for me" is kinda OK and understandable, it still sounds really strange and I can't imagine an adult mentally-OK native speaker saying it.

So basically, I just use the example sentence above, and then contrast it with "It is easy for you all to read Japanese," then I make a few more examples like "It is important for me to study language," after which I talk about my linguistics major, and how many languages I've studied. Another good one is "It is fun for me to travel," because then I can also use "I have been to...," which is a sentence that was just introduced last week. I usually try to have some of the students make up their own sentences to exercise some creativity, but these sometimes don't go over too well. I've made two different worksheets for this sentence: one which is just writing, and another which is speaking/listening, plus a little writing.

So, trying to teach this sentence has been interesting and challenging, especially when I'm not supposed to explain anything in Japanese, but then, before I listened to the Japanese teacher's presentation of it, I didn't know how to say it in Japanese anyway.

Cheers,