Six syllables! Six!!

The maths teacher / baseball coach at my school is a busy man. So busy, in fact, that he doesn't even have time for all the syllables in his morning greetings. For him, "ohayo gozaimasu" must be reduced from six syllables to a more efficient one: "masu!" It sounds like "muss" to me, and something about it drives me batty.
Today was an exam day, so I knew I had no classes. So, I figured it was okay to not shave and not iron my shirt, as I didn't have to look good for anyone. Of course, with my luck, today turned out to be the day of the annual staff photo. Everyone looked immaculate in their black suits... except me. It would be great if someone told me these things, wrote it on the blackboard, handed out a notice, something, anything so I didn't have to stand out any more than I already do.
Meanwhile I spent a pleasant afternoon cleaning out my desk, after a year and a bit. It turns out that Takebe - and that exact desk - has a long ALT history. I found worksheets dating back to 1998, handwritten with the pictures pasted on by hand. Word! My kingdom for Word!

Bikeless

My bike was stolen last night. I got back to Takebe after dinner at Chez Moscoso at 10:30, and there was no bike waiting for me. I figured I’d just parked it somewhere else and couldn’t find it in the dark, so I slept on it, and checked again this morning. No bike.
When I arrived at the BOE after my morning of classes at elementary school, I told my supervisor. After a bit of “ehhh?” he thought for a moment, then said, “but you have another bike, right?” THAT’S NOT THE BLOODY POINT. And anyway, that granny bike’s an unrideable dud. The conversation quickly faded, nothing happened.
Later, a couple of BOE colleagues came back from a meeting, including the sole English speaker. She was filled in with the news; she asked where it had gone missing from. Then, the conversation in the room shifted, and I was being asked how to say “eh” and “eto” in English.Goodness. Thanks so much for your help and concern, everyone. Sometimes I really do think the famed kindness of the Japanese is just a big ol’myth.

Today's thoughts

1. Today I harvested a rice field with my elementary school's 20 students. I'm gonna hurt tomorrow.
2. I wonder how pumpkin, chicken and white miso would go together in a stew/soup thing? I've had miso-pumpkin and miso-chicken at school, and it was tasty.
3. The current Amazing Race continues to be awesome.
4. The current Survivor continues to not be full of complete tools, for once.
5. I get to program the music for the Halloween party and the trivia night. This is one happy music geek typing here.

Bunkasai

Saturday was the annual school Bunkasai, or culture day. There were three events, taking up the whole day; a speech contest, with one competitor from each class; a play written and performed by each of the six classes; and a chorus competition, with two songs from each class. It was far and away better than last year's event. The plays were vastly improved by not all being set in a classroom, for starters. Here's my analysis, from what little I understood:
1A: a yakitori stand existing for about 4 seconds, an old lady being run down by a taxi, punch-ups (someone even thumped kocho-sensei!), and swigs of unidentified grog. Quite subversive, really.
1B: something called "cunning paper," otherwise set in a classroom. Dull.
2A: notable only for three boys riding a bike across the stage through a mob of girls. Otherwise, just a bunch of dialogue.
2B: it's a mystery what this slice of Bizarro World was about, but there was a magician, lots of cross-dressing, and absolutely nothing to do with school, which was a relief.
3A: something with someone burning to death after re-entering a burning building to rescue someone or something, as well as the receipt of mysterious voiced-over letters.
3B: a trip to the beach and euthanasia. Your guess is as good as mine.

TO-KYO! Hell, yeah! (2)

Hachiko says hi.

Sunday! Shibuya! Many photos were taken of Hachiko the blindly faithful dog and that street crossing before an essential coffee stop. Next, we shopped, but only in HMV, Tower, Loft and the Disney Store; all of which are much like the same things in Okayama, just on a Tokyo scale, of course. Next, we had a decent spaghetti lunch and a sublime icecream from Hagen-Dazs, and a stroll up to Harajuku and Yoyogi-koen.

I have really fond memories of Yoyogi-koen from my previous, pre-JET trip to Toyko with my family; I remember looking at the food stalls and painfully deciphering the hiragana I’d tried to teach myself – “ya…ka….zo….ba? Yakisoba! Cool! What’s yakisoba?” Today, we first saw the Tokyo Rockabilly Club dancing up a storm, then some badaaaasss BMX dudes, before finally finding our way to the rather legendary Harajuku girls. Ask Gwen Stefani, she’ll tell you all about ‘em. I’ll just explain with photos, and just say that they’re very weird, and a little bit awesome.

Screw the mouse - this is the happiest place on Earth.

Also at this point it’s worth mentioning the odd culture shock I had in Tokyo. I’m used to being the only foreigner, or all the foreigners being residents; I’m also used to two broad categories of Japanese people – those that assume you can speak Japanese (because what kind of barbarian doesn’t?) and those that assume you can’t (because it is the world’s most difficult language and foreigner simply cannot speak it). Seeing mobs of tourists, no-one giving a crap about our being foreign, and people asking “can you speak Japanese?” instead of making assumptions – well, it was all very refreshing.
The next stop was Meiji-jingu. There was a wedding party moving through, and with everyone dressed traditionally and looking immaculate, the army of tourists turned into an army of paparazzi. Weird.
Finally, nearing the point of exhaustion, we subwayed to Shinjuku, and shopped at Tokyu Hands and Kinkuniya, where I found three near-perfect books; a new one by primatology legend Frans de Waal about the common ground between human, chimpanzee and bonobo behaviour; an adult textbook that will save me a lot of eikaiwa preparation work (why didn’t I think of that before?); and a wonderful book in French, Lisa et Gaspard au Japon. Yes, I bought a children’s book in which two fluffy little dogs go to Tokyo and struggle with hashi, futons, toilet buttons and slippers. Due to absolute exhaustion, we grabbed a fresh burger at Freshness Burger and another coffee before retreating home.
Monday! We got up early-ish to get to the Tsukiji fish market before it closed. Little did we know that being a public holiday, it was already closed. We got there eventually, after more “fun” subway station navigating, and yes, it was all closed. It was a bit like, “it looks like it would be great… if it were open.” However we were only two stops away from Ginza so to Ginza we went.
In Ginza, we found the first alfresco café I’ve ever seen in this country (hallelujah!) then went to the same department store food hall that my Dad and I famously gorged at all those years ago. Sadly, the samples were reduced to some sort of not-mochi with the dreaded kinako, and one plate of wonderful chocolates. We tried another department store in the hope of free food, but to no avail. Instead, we had a quick look through the Sony building at the newest stuff, where the theme seems to be “the same… just smaller.” Finally, it was back to Tokyo, for omiyage shopping, a bento lunch, and a shink home.
Four hours on the shinkansen; one on the local; bed; exhaustion. Done.

TO-KYO! Hell, yeah! (1)

Last weekend was a long weekend. Great minds thinking alike, as they are wont to do, Danielle and I both fancied a trip to Tokyo, the greatest metropolitan area on Earth.
Saturday morning, early shink, arrived in Tokyo 10:30, subway to Ueno.
The first stop was the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno-koen. This is a beautiful place spread across a couple of buildings, primarily on Japanese art and cultural artifacts, with a hall of Asian treasures. That is, the Asia that Japan isn’t a part of, of course. Thankfully, the museum isn’t too huge, and doesn’t feel the need to display every single thing in its collection, so it’s quite manageable.
Back in Ueno-koen, we had a kebab (it’s a yiros in my neck of the woods) / samosa / chips / orange wedges lunch of gloriousness. Ueno-koen is very pretty, huge, and packed full of attractions, yet it still has NO GRASS.

Next, on to Kappabashi, which is a long street mostly of restaurant-supply shops. It’s claim to fame, and highlight for the average tourist, are its many “sampuru” shops; “sampurus” being the wonderful plastic food models displayed outside the average restaurant to entice in customers. I really wanted a bowl of spaghetti with hovering fork, or yakisoba with hovering hashi, or possibly even a big ol’ squid, but since anything of size started at 6,000 yen, I settled for some plastic tonkatsu (the crumbed pork cutlets, sitting on egg and rice) and a ramen keitai dangly thing. The lady I bought my fantastic plastic from gave me two keitai dangly things (an onigiri and a prawn sushi) for free! She was nice, as people who give you free stuff tend to be. I also bought a red lantern with “taiyaki” (fish-shaped pastry filled with delicious anko) written on it. Kappabashi is wonderful; why it’s not in the Tokyo LP is a mystery.


From Kappabashi we wandered through the quiet streets of Asakusa to Senso-ji. I think LP is spot-on about this
place; they say it’s certainly not the most beautiful temple, but it’s possibly the best-used and best example of a temple in action in all Japan. It’s wonderful, of course.

After a necessary Starbucks pit stop, we subwayed to Tokyo to collect our stuff. From there, through one baffling connection (Otemachi station? Booooo!), we found our way to our lodgings, at a hostel in Takashimadaira, which is a classic Tokyo suburb, with busy little streets and local small business surviving alongside the ubiquitous kombinis.




We lucked upon a fantastic place. It’s listed as a hostel, even though all the bedrooms are private, with their own toilet; showers, living areas and kitchens are shared, but only between three bedrooms. The third room joining mine and Danielle’s was empty, so we basically got a private apartment for the weekend, at about 3,000 yen each per night. Pretty damn sweet, I say.
















We soon subwayed to Shinjuku for dinner, looking for a particular Sri Lankan restaurant (we found it, it was good).
Yet again we got lost in the station; seriously, those subway stations are the most baffling thing in this whole damn country – we’ve been here a year and use the trains constantly, so if it’s this hard for us, then newly-arrived, non-Japanese-reading tourists must have a ball.
After dinner, we decided to go for a sample of the high life, and on an LP recommendation, found our way to the Park Hyatt’s New York Bar. That is one confusing hotel; it occupies the 39th to 52nd floors of an office tower (the lobby’s on the 41st, the bar on the 52nd); finding your way in is a feat in itself. We got to the bar, with its expected spectacular view, lounge band, and very wealthy (and probably very boring) clientele. Of course, you can’t get into these places without a bit of cash, and we paid a pretty obscene amount of money for one fancy drink each and some nibbles. Still, it was a fun bit of people-watching in an environment I’m not likely to visit often.

The School of Suck.

Today's elementary school day just plain sucked. Let me run you through it:
Lesson 1: year 5. Pretty good.
Lesson 2: Year 1 and 2. Chaotic. Kids can't sit still or listen, teachers do little to help the situation.
Lesson 3: Year 6. Entire class (bar three) refuses to talk.
Lunch: With year 6. Their teacher asks them to talk to me. Silence. I ask the class - in Japanese - what they'd like to do next lesson. Silence.
Lesson 4: Year 3 and 4. Year 4 kids are 10 minutes late, both teachers are over 15 minutes late. No explanation. Lesson is therefore very behind plan and I try to rush through; class is chaotic.
Bah.

On the Kibi bike trail

On Saturday, in a trip organised by daytripper queen Vicky, a bunch of us did the Kibi bike trail, something I've been meaning to do for over a year. It's a fifteen kilometre trail from Soja to Ichinomiya, just a couple of stops away from Okayama, weaving its way past temples, shrines, and burial mounds.
There were about twenty ALTs on this trip, and in our fleet of rented granny bikes, meandering among the fields, we made quite a sight. The scenery was beautiful; mostly farmland with distant hills, but with some houses, roads, and other signs of humanity always in sight (to my inaka-mind, it's not truly rural unless there's not a building to be seen). Together with the perfect autumn weather, it certainly made for an ideal way to spend a Saturday.

Dawn and Gary: have bike, will travel.

Chris, kicking some bike-riding arse way out ahead of the pack.

Chris, Kevin and Dave, enthralled by Kibitsu-jinja's koi.

A fortune-dispenser-thing depicting the life and times of Momotaro. Here's his birth, springing out of a peach, already about 10 months old, apparently.