Brian's Japan Adventure

September 25th, 2007

Bitchu-Takahasi, Visit II

First thing this morning I walked up the mountain. I didn’t have much time, so I went up before the office even opened and waited for them to arrive. I caught Mrs. Y just as soon as she arrived. I had a few questions about where and when I need to pick up my foreign registration card. I guess I’ll have to fit it in between classes on Thursday afternoon since I’ll be out of town most of the rest of the time during business hours. I also did a little research on how to get the computers at the library to work, and I’ll go back and try again after I get my foreign registration card. You need that before you can get a library card, and you need a library card before you can get online.

Getting the answers I needed, I zoomed back down the mountain, grabbed my bike and my books, and headed for the train station. I ordered tickets for Bitchu-Takahashi and I was on my way. It looked cloudy, and it even rained a little bit on the way there. You can see in the photos and in the Youtube video how dark and cloudy it was on the way there (The various mountain shots). It wasn’t raining when I arrived, but looked like it could let loose any time, so I hurried to the school. It’s about a 20-minute walk from the train station. I have one of those tiny little fold-up umbrellas in my bag, but those things don’t seem to last very long in my experience, so I’d rather not have to use it. That 20-minute walk is, by the way, entirely uphill. Parts of it are gentle slopes, and some are nasty inclines, but it’s all uphill all the way. Who decided that mountains are good places to build universities? The land must be cheap is all I can say.

I arrive at the university about 10 minutes before class starts and sign my name in the book. My schedule doesn’t give me much time for rest stops or breaks, which isn’t good. I’d rather leave 20 minutes early and have a little rest period after mountain climbing, but that just doesn’t work with the train schedules. So anyway, after signing in, I cross the courtyard and go into the Student Support Center. I tell the attendant “Watashiwa atarashii eigo sensei des” (I know this isn’t precisely grammatically correct Japanese, but it if works, it’s good). She looks at her sheets and says “Brian?” Yes, I must be in the right place. She shows me to little area divided from the rest of the room. This will be my “classroom.” I take a seat and wait. Here is how the rest of my time went, step-by-step (yes, I wrote it down in my notebook as it happened):

1:00 Ready to roll!
1:10 A bell rings. Must be time for class to start.
1:20 I get up and wander around the room. They have maps and magazines. One looks good, “English Teacher Magazine.” No, wait. It’s all in Japanese. What’s that all about?
1:38 I finish re-reading my entire scheduling portfolio, including my class schedule, procedures, notes, even train schedules.
1:40 I open up my new Haiku book and start reading about the original Haiku Masters.
2:05 The attendant comes over with a chart and says (I think) that the next class will start at 2:55. Uh, OK.
2:40 The bell rings again. This class must be over!
2:55 The bell rings again. Aha, a new class!
3:00 People walk in. They walk in my direction. Then they walk past me and sit down in another area. At least they said “konnicha-wa” as they passed.
3:05 I write down a few rough ideas for tomorrow’s Kindergarten classes.
3:10 I stop writing and reach for the Haiku book again.
3:15 The Chinese girl who originally showed me around the campus two weeks ago comes in, apologizes, and says I can go home now if I want, since there aren’t any students today.

Yup. School started YESTERDAY, so no one needs English tutoring yet. They probably don’t even know I’m here. That’s OK, it was quiet and I got in some reading and thinking.

So I packed up my stuff and walked back down the mountain to the train station to leave. Along the way, I stopped inside that big Buddhist temple I saw last time. I remembered my camera on this trip, so I have lots of good shots showing the mountains and rustic scenery of Bitchu-Takahashi. It’s very pretty and quiet, a perfect mountain town. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here; there’s no McDonalds.

After getting home, I see there’s no food in my side of the fridge, so I have to go to Happy Town or starve tonight. I’m sure not going to feel like doing that tomorrow night even if they are open that late. After returning from there, I dig through the teacher books on the shelf looking for stuff to do tomorrow. With my Kindergarten problems, I know I shouldn’t let it go until the night before, but I tend accept ideas more easily when I’m desperate. The adult classes are so easy; you can talk, play word games, and just anything I can think of can be made to work. But nothing, and I mean nothing, really applies to these little kids.

I figured out part of the problem today; the principal who goes with me to translate for the kids doesn’t speak very good English himself. I suspect he doesn’t understand all that I’m saying, so he doesn’t translate everything. I think I may have to start making my presentations with that in mind.

For the littlest kids, I’ll take the plastic food again, and we’ll play “What’s in the bag?” for fifteen minutes. My time with them is really short, so they’re easy enough to deal with. The 4-year-old class and the 5-year-old classes are about a half an hour each, and that’s tough to fill. People keep sending me suggestions, but most of these activities only take five or ten minutes. There’s just so much repetition that a 4 year old is going to sit through before getting bored.

I’m just going to lay it out for the principal tomorrow. I suspect he doesn’t want to suggest anything because he assumes I know what I’m doing. He can see that I’m not a normal college-age kid, so he probably thinks I have a bunch of experience in this or something. Maybe he even thinks I’d be offended if he suggested anything. I’ll make it easy for him tomorrow and just straight out ask him what I should do in the future. I know they have materials there, but I have so little time there outside of actual teaching that no one has time to explain anything to me.

Assuming I survive Kindergarten, I have lots and lots of things prepared for the other two classes, more than I can use in one class. I’ve been putting together crosswords and various games, so I think tomorrow will be a fun day for the grownups.

September 24, 2007

For Every Door That Closes, Another Opens

I had a two-part mission set up for this morning. First, I had planned to check out a few of the museums downtown, but it turned out they were closed for the holiday. It’s the first day of autumn, and that’s apparently a big deal. So there will be no museum today. Secondly, I was digging through my desk draw last night and found a bunch of documentation from a former student. Most of the stuff he wrote about his classes I already knew, so that wasn’t much help. However, he left a list of his favorite places.

After scratching out the bars (Are all college students drunks?) I was left with a few curry restaurants, which I will try eventually, and yes, a bookstore that sells books in English! My eyes bugged out after seeing that last part, so the first stop today, even before the failed museum mission, was to find this bookstore. It wasn’t hard. It takes up most of the first and second floors of the Okayama Symphony Hall. The symphony hall is the big round building that’s easy to spot; I have a photo of it in my photo gallery.

The section on books in English is actually pretty small, and mostly made up of either current popular fiction (Harry Potter, Stephen King, Danielle Steele) and classics (War and Peace, Shakespeare, etc.) so it wasn’t exactly the jackpot I had been hoping for, but they did have a few things that interested me for today, and I saw a few for next time as well, so I’m set for books for a little while at least. I went home with two books this time: The Haiku Handbook: How To Write, Share, and Teach Haiku, and also A History of Japan. The two of them cost me around 3400Y, or $40-ish bucks. Books are not cheap here; regular generic paperbacks are around $13 each, compared to $8 or $9 in the states.

They also have a large section off books about teaching English, and now I see where many of the books on the shelf at the apartment must have come from. They have many books for adults, and lots for children as well, but after looking for nearly an hour at children’s books, I just didn’t spot anything that would help me with the Kindergarteners.

A Multilingual Conundrum of Childish Proportions

Speaking of kindergarteners, my sister-in-law has suggested that we do some kind of letter-writing swap between the kindergarten here and my niece’s kindergarten class. I think this is a fantastic idea, but I’m not sure how to make it work. The letters that the kids write would be unintelligible to the opposite group. I’m hoping one of my readers can come up with some way to make this idea workable.

Telephone Mysteries

While I was browsing in the bookstore, Mom called, and I told her not to call me on the cell phone anymore since it was so expensive last time. After a brief talk, I checked my charges and the call didn’t cost me anything. I talked to Ptuny again the other night and it didn’t cost me anything then either, so I don’t know what to think. At first though, I figured that maybe I only get charged on certain days, but Mom called on two holiday Mondays. I wonder now if her call is actually what cost me so much. I’m walking around with this phone loose in my pocket. I wonder now if I didn’t somehow accidentally dial someone and use up a bunch of minutes that way. Anyway, bottom line for anyone wanting to call me: Call the apartment first, if I’m there, great. If I’m not, no one will answer and it won’t cost you anything. Second, try the cell phone and we’ll ust see how it goes.

So anyway, just as I was going crazy with a lack of books here at the apartment, I found a suitable solution to that problem. One door closed; another opens. Today’s bookstore was a little weak, but it’ll keep my busy for a few months probably. That was an out-of-the-blue solution to a problem I didn’t even know I had this time last week. Now about the Internet…

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I told a few people I would be posting Tuesday. Well, I won’t be doing that. I totally forgot that this week I am finally working a full schedule (Except for Monday the holiday). Tuesday I will be going to Bitchu-Takahashi for my first day teaching in that city. I think it’ll be fun, except for the long walk there and a climb up yet another different mountain. Wednesday is of course the dreaded Kindergarten (I really don’t think this is supposed to be so agonizing, but it is). Thursday I have an early morning meeting with the professor who I didn’t meet with last Friday, followed by my first teaching assignment up the mountain here locally, followed by my own Japanese class in the afternoon. Friday Marc and I are both doing an elementary school in Fukuyama, which no one knows any details about yet, not even a time or specific location. We don’t know if we’ll be teaching together or just going to the same place for different assignments. Somebody better get his or her act together pretty soon! Personally, I’m kinda hoping they don’t get their act together, as Fridays off sound pretty good to me, but that’s not too likely. Just as I am finally learning the trains and buses and “get around town” phrases, and am finally comfortable going places and doing things, I start getting too busy to do anything. Sigh.

So as you can see, I am going to be pretty busy this week. Actually, I’ll have the same schedule every week, plus another class at the university and another Japanese Lesson on Mondays starting the following week. “When will you be able to get on the Internet?” you ask in eager anticipation. I figured it up last night. I’ll have about an hour and half on Monday and Thursday mornings, as well as my break period on Wednesday (when I really have lots of other things to do). My “office” is closed on the weekends don’t forget. This is just not going to work. One door closed.

But surprise! As I was walking back from the new bookstore, I see some kids walking out of a door that caught my eye for some reason. The sign said “Megalo.” That name rang a bell for me. Where had I heard that name? Aha! Ptuny sent it to me in a message two weeks ago…it’s an Internet Café! It’s open 24 hours and they have various rate plans, but it looks like the deal I’ll probably be using is 990Y for three hours (That’s around $3.50 an hour). I have to add in about 400Y more for bus fare unless I want to ride my bike, but it is pretty far away for that. So figure $5.00 an hour. I can use their computer or take my own. I still have to figure out how to use the computers at the library for free, but between the library and Megalo, I might have a little more flexibility than I used to; two doors opening. I didn’t have my computer with me, and I don’t much like Japanese keyboards, so I haven’t actually gone inside or tried Megalo yet, but it looks like a valid option from the documentation outside. It’s still early afternoon here, so I could even go back and try it later today.

The Complaint Department

Some annoying grammar nazi-person (I won’t tell who it is, Dad) is complaining about my typos in these reports. Basically, these blog journals are one-pass rough drafts of my thinking as I write them; they’re not intended to be great works of literature. Sure, they all go through the spell checker, but that doesn’t catch a lot of things. My goal as I write these things is to remember what I did and what I was thinking at the time, not necessarily the best way to word everything. It might get a little tedious from time to time, so I apologize in advance. If you want to read the final, fully polished, beautifully written and hilariously funny version of my Japan experience, then wait for the book. No, I’m not kidding. At two or three pages a day, the hardest part of putting it in book form will be figuring what to cut out, not what to include.

Ohmygawd-what’s that sound?

OK, I am currently sitting here inside Megalo, the Internet Café. I passed about 5 gazillion porno videos in the way in. The little private booths have boxes of tissue paper and porn pictures on the walls. I hear strange sounds coming from the booths on either side of me. There’s a pay-per0use shower in the back. Gosh this chair sure is comfy though, and so is this nice footstool. I may have to throw away my clothes when I get home.

September 23, 2007

How to waste a day and get absolutely nothing useful accomplished.

Got up early this morning and did the laundry. Hung my pants and a few shirts out to dry. Then I decided to try hooking my laptop computer to the Internet at the library. Rode the bike to the little station, walked across the street, and took the #6 bus to the Tenmaya Station and walked two blocks to the library; no sweat, no problem.

I walked into the library, found a free desk with a network plug, and plugged right in. No dice; it didn’t work. I was able to run my Internet Diagnostic program, which told me that I was connected to the Internet, but could not get access. I suspect I need to authenticate with their router, but I have no idea how to do that. I asked at the office, but no one seemed able to understand me. Sounds like something I’ll have to ask Mrs. Y to take care of, but I won’t be seeing her until Thursday morning. Tomorrow’s another national holiday, so the library will be closed anyway; so will the school for that matter. Sigh. On the bright side, I had more time to wander the library and did in fact find a section of books in English. Not huge selections, mind you, but better than we have at the apartment. I didn’t inquire about getting a library card; I assume I’ll need my alien registration first, and that’s a project for next week.

Giving that up, I walked to the bus stop in front of the Okayama Train station and got on the #6 bus figuring it would take me back where I got on. I forgot to stop at Freshness Burger for lunch, which was part of my original plan; it was too early for lunch. The #6 bus didn’t go where I was expecting. I guess that’s one line that doesn’t do an exact loop. I wound up way over northwest of town somewhere in a parking lot at the end of the line. There was, however, a #27 bus sitting there ready to take off. I’ve seen #27’s downtown, so I figure it’s a good bet to get me back to town. I hop on and it does indeed take me to the Okayama Train station, a perfect round-trip to nowhere. I did spot one or two places along that route that look like promising pizza places, but nothing really interesting.

So, reaching Okayama Station, I cross the street and go for that Freshness Burger after all. It looks like it might rain any minute, and I don’t want to get caught in it. I need to invest in an umbrella, real soon now. When I finish my ultra-greasy, not-so-great burger, I start out the door and it’s a major downpour. I manage to run to an underground tunnel the leads to the station, but still get pretty wet.

I eventually get into the train station and wander around the bookstore a bit to dry off, looking more closely for books in English. Nope, they don’t seem to have anything for me. Giving that up, I buy a train ticket to the little station and give it up on the buses for today. I walk to the boarding gate and find that I missed the train by five minutes; a fifty-five minute wait was ahead of me. If I hadn’t made the useless stop in the useless bookstore, I could have been home by now. Nope. I’m sitting here in the loading gate, writing my blog right this minute. At least I had the laptop with me so the time isn’t wasted. Now I still have 30 minutes to wait. At least I was first in line and have a seat rather than having to stand here. 30 minutes to think. What will I think about?

Hmmm. How about I worry about that laundry I left hanging outside before it rained? I wonder if maybe Marc thought to take it inside for me? HAH!

[Update: Nope. Laundry is now drying for the second time.]

September 22, 2007

Putting Two And Two Together

As I mentioned yesterday, I had the beginnings of a plan to go to the beach today. I asked Marc to go along, and he gave it serious thought, looking at the brochure for about an hour, but eventually decided to pass on it. I decided to go anyway, as I figured the worst that can happen is that I get lost. I know enough now to find my way somehow to the train station in any city, if not by bus, then by taxi as a last resort. But I didn’t get lost. Here’s the whole story:

I got up early, gathered my stuff, and decided it was time to give it a try. I rode over to the little station at 7:30, showed the attendant my map, pointing to the city, and told him “oofuku Shin-Kurashi, kudasai” and he happily charged me 960Y and I was on my way. Last night, I was comparing the distance on the map between where I was going today and Bitchu-Takashi, where I went a couple of weeks ago. I know that trip cost 1900Y, so today’s journey cost a good deal less than expected. I get to the big Okayama station and change trains. It was about a 20-minute wait for the right train to arrive, so I sat and got a Green Tea from a vending machine. You can’t turn around without seeing a vending machine, and I like that. The train finally arrives, and about 20-minutes later I step off the train in Shin-Kurashiki. There’s a large city called Kurashiki that I passed through on the way here; I am guessing “Shin-“ means something like “Little Kurashiki,” but that’s just a guess.

The trickiest part was figuring out which bus to take. The brochure that my Japanese teacher gave me mentioned the name of the bus, but if the buses actually have names, they are written in Kanji, which I still can’t read. Fortunately the bus terminal has a big poster of local sightseeing things, and the beach is listed. I compare the kanji on the poster with the various bus stop signs, and settle on #3. When the bus arrived (a 40-minute wait), I asked the bus driver “Sami Bichi?” to which he replied “Hai!” After about 20 minutes on the bus, I see sandy beaches and get off. The bus fare was 420Y. So I mentally calculate the same fare coming back, which means the trip cost me 840Y for the bus and 960Y for the train ride, so my beach vacation has set me back 1800Y, or about $20. That’s WAYYY cheaper than last year’s beach vacation!

A short walk over a hill, and I am there. The swimming beach is a long, curved thing between two large stone fishing piers (or wave breakers depending on how functional you want to get). I could see mountains on the ocean horizon, sticking out of the water making dozens (hundreds in reality, but I couldn’t see them all standing there!) of small islands. Somewhere down the coast is the Seto-Ohashi bridge spans many of these islands and is the longest bridge in the world, although I didn’t see it today. Behind me is the standard backdrop for nearly any picture I Japan: tall green mountains.

The sand and beach itself is pretty standard, but the water is very calm. I’ve been to the Atlantic a few times, and it’s always rough with crashing waves. Not here; I’ve seen bigger waves in fishing ponds. I also immediately notice there are only three people on the beach when I arrive, two adults with fishing poles, and a child playing in the water near one of the adults. No one but the child is swimming, and I wonder about the water temperature. All the outdoor pools close here on August 16th, even earlier than in the States, so I wonder if there’s a reason for that. Nope. It’s as warm as the air temperature. It’s a sunny, hot Saturday on a holiday weekend at the beach, and no one is there. It was only about 10am when I arrived there, but it still seemed strange. It’s not the most convenient to access beach I’ve ever seen, but I saw no reason for it to be so deserted.

I walk around a bit to make sure I’m in the right place, and I am, so I eventually walk into the water. As I said, it’s very warm and comfortable. It felt great considering the sun was getting hot. I brought some little wipe-on sunscreen things (like Wet-Ones only with sunscreen) my Mom made me pack, and they actually worked pretty well, but it took two of them, and as far as I can tell, I only have two, so I’ll have to work out something else if I go again.

This is the first ocean beach where I could actually swim. As I mentioned, the Atlantic is always too rough to do much more than play in the waves. That’s fun, but today’s calm water was just what I wanted. It’ll do my back a world of good, that’s for sure. As the morning passes, more people showed up, but other than a few children, no one else swam. The adults each had little “claw shovels” and a bucket and were digging for something under the water. I eventually looked in a bucket and saw they had been picking up clams (or oysters, I dunno). By the time I left the beach there were at least a dozen clam fishermen working the area.

So after about three hours I called it enough and packed up my stuff to go. I had checked the schedule on the bus stop when I got off the bus, and the next one would be at 1:43. There were no buses after the one I arrived on until that one at 1:43 and no others until around 5:00, so I made darn sure not to miss it. There wasn’t anywhere else to go or anything else to do for three hours, so I wanted to hit that bus. It arrived on time, took me back to the station, and I rode the trains home. No fuss, no muss, everything flawlessly according to plan.

Wow; I impressed myself with this trip. Between ordering train tickets on my own, finding the right train, finding the right bus, riding the bus and getting off at the right stop returning on the bus and train, and all the steps in-between, it took everything I have been learning in the past three weeks to make it happen. There’s no way I could have done this even a week ago. Between the buses and now other nearby cities, I am ranging farther and farther from “home.” I wonder what crazy place I can visit next week?

Videos!

September 21, 2007

Another One Rides the Bus!

I went up the mountain first thing in the morning an got caught up on mail and blog stuff, but the real reason was that I had an appointment with a professor, who didn’t show up. Instead I downloaded and printed off a bunch of material for future Wednesday classes; crossword puzzles, news articles, and things like that. Afte it became clear that he really wasn’t coming, I went back down the mountain and decided it was time for another adventure.

At 12:30 I set off for Happy Town to buy a bus pass. I spotted a vending machine for them a few days ago. You can buy bus cards in values of 2200Y, 5500Y, or 11500Y. I go for the cheapest option, since I’m still not sure how it all works. I go out to the Happy Town bus stop and see from the sign that I’ve just missed that bus and the next won’t be along until 1:00. Yep, that means only one thing; time for McDonalds lunch. If it sounds like my world revolves around Happy Town, you aren’t far off.

The bus arrives, I get on and viola! The bus card actually works on the bus! Five minutes and 140Y later, I am at the Tenmaya bus terminal. No, I didn’t know it was going there, but I figured I could make my way back from wherever it went. I got off at Tenmaya and got on another one headed for the big Okayama Train Station. This mini-trip took another 5 minutes, but this time only 100Y. This is so much faster and cooler than walking or biking that I’m probably going to become a bus addict very soon now.

After arriving at the big train station, I had to decide whether to call it done and take the train home, or try another bus. A few weeks ago, Mrs. Y gave me directions to that swimming pool that included a bus schedule for bus number 10. I think I’ll try getting on that one, since I have been to the pool already. Since I know the route already, I can follow along the route on the bus schedule. Bus 10 comes along right on schedule and I get on. Twenty minutes later we pass the pool facility, the price on the meter says 250Y. That’s not bad; I’d gladly pay 500Y (both ways don’t forget) not to have to do a 50-minute bike ride to get there.

I don’t get off the bus yet; I decide to follow it for the entire loop and see where else it goes. The next bus stop is the DeoDeo store, a huge electronics store, similar to Best Buy at home, where we went the first day to find phone cards. I have found closer places to buy those phone cards now, but they have a great selection of those electronic dictionaries, and I am going to get one as soon as I feel confident that I know enough to use one. Now I know how to get there. I then ride through the rest of the stops, making note of a few restaurants and things, but nothing major.

At the end of the line, the bus just turns around and does all the stops in reverse. Eventually we hit the big train station again. When I go to pay for my ride, the machine rejects my card. Uh-oh. I point to “Stop #1” on the chart to the driver, and he makes a “round trip” motion with his finger, to which I reply “Hai!” He then points out the door and I get off. I assume that means there is no charge for a full round trip. I guess that makes sense; the only way to learn the routes is to ride them, so a round-trip is like advertising for them. Or maybe I did a faux pas, I dunno. Either way, I learned a lot and it didn’t cost me anything.

At that point I figure I’m doing pretty well and should call it a done adventure, so I walk inside the train station and buy a ticket to Hokkain Station (The little station). The bus I took from Happy Town didn’t have a number, so I didn’t know how to get back to exactly where I started. So I rode the train to Hokkain and walked a few blocks to Hppy Town to pick up my bike. Then I rode home. It’s probably the first time I’ve been downtown and didn’t sweat like a pig the whole time from walking or riding. Yup; I’m hooked.

So now I’m home and looking for something to do. I finished On The Road last night, and was really not impressed. On closer inspection, the books on the bookshelf here really stink. I don’t know if I want to waste my time on them. I need a better option. I did bring some audio books with me for my iPod, so I guess that will have to do, but it’s not the same as actually reading. Sigh. If anyone can Google me up an English bookstore in Okayama, I’d be a happy camper.

As I futz around with papers on my desk, not having anything to read, I glance through some information our Japanese teacher gave us yesterday, a bunch of tourist material in English. Cool! One of the brochures is about Kurashiki, a neighboring city. At first, I wasn’t too interested, but then I noticed a picture of a beach, and next to the picture was an explanation, in English, about how to get to the beach via bus from the train station. I know how to get to that train station, and now I know how buses work. Hmmm. Putting two and two together, I think I can make it to the beach without too much trouble. From the distance on the map, I’m going to estimate a cost of around $25. Only $25 for a beach trip? You betcha I can do that. And it’s supposed to be sunny and warm tomorrow (ain’t it always here). I’m going to try to talk Marc into going, but if he’s not into it… Well, it sounds like a big adventure anyway, doesn’t it?