Brian's Japan Adventure

September 20, 2007

Got up this morning a little later than usual, around 9:00. Walked up the mountain first thing. I didn’t have a blog entry from Wednesday written yet; I didn’t have time last night, and wanted to get up the mountain early before it gets too hot. For all I knew the Internet might still be broken up there anyway. But I did get a phone call from Mrs. Y yesterday that a package had arrived for me, and I wanted to get that ASAP.

The Internet worked fine today. I got an email from my brother, which I answered in detail. There were no new comments on the blog, so I assume no one had read it since I posted stuff yesterday. The vast difference in time zones make even Internet reading confusing. I made my afternoon (local time) blog postings around 2am USA time, so it takes time for people to see them at home. When I answered email today, that’s evening at home, so one way or the other, messages just sit there for the better part of a day.

I did a quick search for activities to think about for next Wednesday’s classed and downloaded them onto my USB drive for later examination. If the Internet croaks like last time, I’ll be OK. I have several new classes coming up next week, but really don’t know enough about them to prepare anything yet. Starting next week, I’ll have lots of preparation and planning every day. My “days off” are quickly coming to an end.

So I finished on the Internet and head back down the mountain, package in tow. When I got home, I cut open the box ($55 postage, youch!) and see what’s inside. A month’s worth of medicine that should hold me through about half of October was the most important item. I could probably get my prescriptions here if I really had to, but I’ve heard it’s complicated and you don’t always get the same things. I’ll deal with the mail until forced otherwise.

A box of clothes? What is this, Christmas at Grandmas?

Also in the box was a ball cap that says “USA” on the front. I had decided at the last minute not to bring it along, but changed my mind. I cannot find a hat here that fits (I have troubles finding them in the States too). Yes, I am a “fathead.” Those “One Size Fits All” hats are lying to you; it just ain’t true! I figure wearing a hat around town is going to look better than having a bandana wrapped around my head like Marc has. It’s also going to be an improvement over just having sweat run into my eyes all the time. I don’t know if the “USA” thing is good or not. It might be a conversation starter, but then it might be a bad thing too. I’ll wear it a while and see what unfolds.

Also in the box were three new shirts. Sigh. They’re long sleeves, so I’ll probably never wear them. They don’t fit around my neck, so they’re not good “necktie shirts” either. They are nice-looking shirts that I might wear someday, but I’m thinking long-sleeve shirts are not going to be terribly useful here. It’s just too hot right now. When it gets cool outside, I’ll still be wearing short-sleeves, just inside a jacket. We’ll see how the winter goes, but I sure don’t need any more long-sleeve shirts. I wish Mom would have called to ask first before wasting money on shirts and postage on clothes I can’t use. Phone calls are just not that expensive.

I made the mistake of bringing four full suits with me, after reading how “formal” everything is. Not true at all; at least not for anything I’ll be doing on a regular basis. They specifically said they WANT me to dress like an American college student while teaching. Gosh; I don’t look THAT bad on my worst day J Maybe the elementary school will want something more formal, but I don’t know anything about that yet. The bottom line is that the same clothes I wore in the States would be fine here for most days. There was a new pair of pants in the box that will be useful. I don’t know, but for $55 postage, I was hoping for more than a hat and a pair of pants.

Then, when 3:30 rolled around it was time for the next Japanese Language class, so I rode over to the language school and survived that. We worked on reviewing the homework and vocabulary from last time for the first hour, and then in the second hour we practiced grammar. Basic sentence structure, how to ask questions, how to introduce yourself to others; all very basic stuff still. I actually wish we had more of these classes closer together. At this rate, we really will be barely competent by the time we leave. Of course, I can practice and learn new words on my own, but that’s not really the point. So far, everyone I have met is more interesting in practicing their English than helping me with my Japanese. That’s to be expected of course, but it’s still not much help.

After class, Marc said he was just going home, so I gave him my books to take with him while I went to Happy Town. I restocked on the usual stuff. It looks like this is going to be a regular routine. With my bicycle basket, I can carry about two days worth of food, which comes to about $25.00 each time. If I buy groceries every second day, I cannot call it an outrageous food bill considering the situation. If I also eat out once every other day, that gives me a food bill of around $20 per day. That’s crazy in the States, and probably not all that good here either, but as I’ve said before, it’s really my only expense.

One thing that is good about the small portions they sell in the groceries is that nothing will get stale or sit around very long. A loaf of bread here comes in either a four-slice or ten-slice package depending on how thick you want it. I know back in the States half the oversized bread loaf would end up getting thrown out after a week. Potato Chips come in bag about half the size of a U.S. bag. Peanut butter, ice cream, and condiments are also similarly reduced in portions. This must be what people are talking about when they speak about Japan offering small portions of food. Restaurants here, or at least all of the ones I have been to, offer decent portions that I can’t complain about.

Tonight I picked up a pre-made chicken and rice dinner package and microwaved it at home. These pre-made dinners are called Obento, and are sold just about everywhere, even in the train station. Mostly they are mystery meat and yucky crap, but once in a while I’ll find one that looks edible. They always look colorful and attractive, even the ones with octopus and squid and worse. These guys know how to make food look presentable!

I also picked up a package of what appeared to be donuts. I haven’t seen any donuts or anything remotely donut-like since I got here; I tried to decipher the word on the package, but couldn’t figure out the name. It sure looked like donuts though. I decided to risk it and bought it. After I finished the chicken dinner, I opened the package and smelled the contents carefully. It smelled like donuts. It still looked like donuts. Time for the ultimate test; I cautiously bit into it. HOOOO-EEEY… it WAS a donut! Four of them to be precise! Custard éclairs to be even more precise. And they were gooooood éclairs as well. As I sat there stuffing my face full of sugar, I read the line under the one I had been struggling with at the store. It said “Eclairs.” Well, Duh!

After dinner, I wrote this blog report, and will finish the evening with more of “On The Road.” I expect I’ll be finishing that one tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest. I wonder what I’ll pick up next? It’d be great if I could find a nice used bookstore that carries books in English, but the chances of that are pretty low. I can’t even find new books in English. There are plenty of stale oldies here at the apartment, and if or when I get really desperate, I know Amazon.com will ship here (for a hefty price).

And that was Thursday. Tomorrow I have a morning meeting with one of the University professors up the mountain. I’ll be working with him on Mondays, but beyond that, I don’t know anything much to say yet. I’ll be posting this journal entry on Friday; remember that Monday is another holiday, so there won’t be any more blog updates until Tuesday morning. Actually, that might not be true; I could stop at the library on Saturday or Sunday if I want, but no promises. Sometime this weekend, maybe tomorrow afternoon, I am going to force myself to buy a pass and ride a bus. I don’t know where the buses go, but I want to know how they work in Okayama. I don’t have any special destination in mind, but not knowing how to ride the bus is bothering me, and I can’t have that!

Here are three slideshows of my recent adventures:

Downtown Okayama (The least of the three in my opinion):

Okayama Castle & Korukuem Gardens (My favorite of the three):

The Graveyard from a Previous Post (Neat music!):

September 19^th, 2007

Third Trip to Hiroshima

 I finally got it right!  Rode the bike to the little station, rode the train to the big station, rode the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, got on the right bus and made it to the kindergarten exactly on time. I would prefer to have a few minutes to recover from the walk in the sun after arriving, but that’s not in the schedule.

 
My idea for drawing faces that I explained in yesterday’s post worked very well for the 4 year old and the 5 year old classes. We started off with “Draw a big circle,” then moved on to “Draw a nose,” with appropriate repetitions and finger pointing. The all had different color crayons and traded papers every few steps, so all the pictures had different color “parts.” When we finished drawing I asked the group “Whose picture has RED HAIR?” “Whose picture has a PURPLE MOUTH?” Afterwards, the principal said it was a good idea and they enjoyed it. This was high praise from the man who specifically told Mrs. Y that I wasn’t prepared the first day.  For the 2-3 year old class, I had a bag of plastic fruit & vegetables that we talked about. We discussed the names of the food, the color of the food, and who liked which foods best.

 
I’m not going to say I’m looking forward to next week, but I did something that worked well this time, and I want to “push it” a little next time.  It seems that activities are OK, but it looks like my purchasing and bringing all the materials is probably the way to go.  I don’t really like having to buy stuff for my classes on what I am making here, but it’s not going to kill me; if it makes the classes go more smoothly so I can worry about it less, I’ll call it money well-spent.

 
During the afternoon adult class, one student didn’t show up, but there was a new first-time student, a retired man who took English courses in college 50 years ago and hadn’t used it since. Either he was being modest or he has a heck of a memory, cause his English was excellent. He kept up with the advanced students and even corrected some of their mistakes when we did a worksheet. I hope he comes back next week; today was just a “sit-in” day for him.

 
During my between-class afternoon break, I rushed down the road to Subway and bought a big turkey sub I ate it in the park. This town has so many parks it’s hard to describe it. It’s almost as if the town was built with tourists in mind. I started to count the taxi cabs compared to the number of regular cars and I think it came out to about one cab for every three cars. That’s a ot of cabs. In my three afternoons in Hiroshima, I have seen more foreigners (Americas/European-looking people) than I have in total everywhere else combined. Now that I think about it, I’ve only seen TWO Caucasian (is that the right word?) people in Okayama. Three if you count Marc.

 
After the quick lunch, I hurried back to the center and hooked my laptop up in their computer room. This was the first time I have been able to use MY computer on the net since I arrived. I uploaded three Youtube videos that I mad and got all my blog entries and emails current. From now on, I’m going to have to decide in the mornings whether to bring my camera or laptop along for the ride. I noticed on the way back the Shinkansen terminal had a sign that says “Internet Access.” Sheesh, all these ways of getting on the Internet, and I only have access to use them on my busiest day of the week!

 
For the evening class, one student didn’t show, so I only had two people to talk to. It was tough keeping a conversation going all that time with so few people. Next week, I’ll take some crosswords or something for “vocabulary building” ie, time-filler!

 On the ride back to the Shinkansen, the taxi driver took the slowest possible route and I missed my 8:20 train home. The next one arrived at 8:33, so that wasn’t a big deal. This train however, didn’t stop until it hit Okayama at 9:10.  My usual 8:20 train stops at all the stops along the way and gets to Okayama around 9:35.  So by waiting and leaving later, I actually get back to town faster due to making fewer stops. This sounds good, but there is a catch; the train to the little station from Okayama doesn’t leave until 9:45, so I’m not going to actually get home any sooner either way. So now I have a decision to make; hurry to the terminal and sit in the comfy and air-conditioned “slow” Shinkansen for an hour and twenty minutes reading or take my time, ride the “fast” Shinkansen and sit in the hot Okayama terminal, but walk slowly and take my time. At least I have choices!

Getting home around ten o’clock, the day is pretty much over for me, so it’s shower, time for a carrot (carrots here are GIGANTIC) and a peanut-butter sandwich, and off to bed.

September 18, 2007

Marc Goes Postal!

I got up at the usual time, trudged up the mountain, and bang! No Internet. I had a few ideas saved on my USB pen drive that I printed out for tomorrow’s class, but if I hadn’t gotten those last week, I’d be in big trouble right now. I didn’t even ask anyone there for help with the computer. They just buzz around that office like honeybees on speed; I never know if it’s safe to interrupt or not. I figure it’s a network problem that will clear itself up and decide to try again later.

This situation got me depressed pretty quickly. The high point of my days is posting my new blog material and reading the comments and emails, and I haven’t seen anything since Friday. It’s starting to feel like I’m here as much for my Internet readership as I am for myself, but that’s OK with me. It may be a goofy, screwed-up reason for getting through the day, but at least it’s a reason. This morning it just hit me the wrong way; if someone had been standing there with a plane ticket, I’d be on the way home right now.

After I had been moping and whining over the lack of Internet on this side of the world for about two hours, Marc finally gets out of bed and decides he has had it with the lack of Internet too. He decides it’s time to learn how to mail a letter. Geez, some people and their 18th century mentality. A letter! Geez! Have I run into that level of desperation yet? No, not yet. But since I have nothing better to do, I follow along on his quest for postal enlightenment. First we go to a little mom & pop stationery store right next to the little train station. They have a nice selection of everything and it’s pretty nicely priced. I picked up some small sheets of construction paper and some blank flashcards for around 230Y. He asks them if they sell stamps an they try to sell him a ruler. It’s not going to be that easy.

Next stop, the bookstore. Marc wants to buy some posters to decorate his room, but he’s been to every record store in town and none of them seem to carry posters. The bookstore is his next hope. We’ve passed this bookstore a dozen times already, since it’s on the way to Happy Town and everywhere past that, but have never gone in. Bookstores here depress me like nothing else. So many great looking educational and fun books, and I can’t even read the titles. If nothing else, I’ve had the value of literacy pounded into my head at least once an hour since arriving here, but I’ve probably already mentioned that. Marc finds a selection of anime calendars, but no posters. We both walk out empty handed.

Happy Town is the next stop on our route. We ask at the photo counter inside the front door, and they look at us like we’re crazy. We check out the electronics department and Marc buys a network cable for 299Y. That seemed like a good price for a cable, and if or when we ever go to the library, we need to bring our own cables. I have one that came in my desk here at the apartment. Unless something more important comes up, I plan to revisit the library on Friday. I would have gone today, but they were closed. They are normally closed on Mondays (open Sunday remember), but since yesterday was a holiday, they take today too.

Finally we check out the stationery department on the third floor of Happy Town. Marc grabs a packet of envelopes and points to the corner where a stamp would go. The girl at the counter figured it out and told him “Information desk second floor.” We zip down the escalator and sure enough, we see stamps in the information desk display case. Marc gets in line to buy his stamps, and I wait. There, is only on man ahead of him in line. After about 15 minutes, I leave him there, since the “mission” is all but over. I grab some McDonald’s to go and ride home. This was my first carryout order since arriving, but the cup-holder they gave me worked just fine in a bicycle basket.

I got home, ate (slowly!) and probably about 20 minutes later Marc straggled in. He’d been waiting all that time. Apparently the guy in front of him was applying for a “Happy Town Card” and the guy behind the counter didn’t know how to do it. Yup, that sure sounds familiar! Anyway, he tells me postage to mail a letter internationally is 190Y. There’s a cheaper option for lighter letters, but when talking about grams, I’d rather err on the side of caution and just pay the 190Y. I’m sure at some point, I will have a full size box to mail home (gifts or something), in which case I’ll have to go to the post office itself. I really don’t picture me mailing letters anytime soon. But it’s good to know how to do it, just in case.

So with that little adventure being over, it was time to get down to business. Tomorrow is the dreaded kindergarten, and it was time to prepare. I went through every book, every folder, and every desk drawer looking for ideas. I did manage to come up with a few. One page had an idea for a game that I like. Each student comes up and picks out one crayon and tells me the name of the color. Then I hand out pages with a big circle on it. Each student is told to draw a nose. Then they hand the paper to the student on their left, who is told to draw eyes. They continue handing the pages around and drawing face parts until they are done. Hen they are done, they will have a whole collection of funny faces, done in various colors and no two will be the same. Since one of the things they are learning is “face parts” this sounds perfect. The older children are doing “body parts,” so I can do something similar with them. For the youngest children, I found a bunch of plastic fruit in the closet here and I will go through the plastic food with them. What I’d really like to find are a bunch of plastic animal toys for a future class; they’re in all the dollar stores back home, but I haven’t spotted any here.

So anyway, the face & body activities require crayons and paper. There are about 30-40 children in these classes, so I need at least one crayon for each of them and paper too. I then ride all the way back to Happy Town to pick up what I need at the 100Y store there. Somehow, I don’t think I’m supposed to be spending my own money on supplies, but it’s cheap enough this time. This may sound silly, but I want to arrive with everything I need. I know they have paper and crayons at the kindergarten, but no one there has ever offered me the use of their materials or even given me a proper introduction to the place; it’s all rush in, then rush out. The kindergarten didn’t create my busy schedule, so it’s not really their fault, but it is my problem. Maybe by showing up with my own material & supplies, they’ll take a hint and actually tell me what I can and cannot do. Or maybe they’ll just take it for granted; we’ll see. Either way, I think I am impressively prepared for the classes tomorrow morning. Next week? God only knows.

By the time I returned from getting the shopping done, it’s after 4:00. The office at school closes at five, so I just give up on the Internet for today. Not having the Internet this morning means I wasn’t able to printout a news article for the adult class. They like to read an article and pick apart the vocabulary. Hopefully, I can find five copies of something in English tomorrow and use that. I’ll look for tourist brochures or something in English at the train stations. I dunno how that’ll work out, but I’m not too worried about it. These guys are advanced enough they can come up with their own questions.

September 17th, 2007

Monday Holiday: A Day Off

It’s Monday, it’s also a national holiday. Respect The Elders day. As far as I can tell, it’s sort of a combination of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Memorial Day. The library from yesterday is closed, but that’s about the only thing I really noticed that was different. That’s kind of unfortunate, because I probably would have spent the day there with the laptop if they hadn’t been closed. Maybe tomorrow.

I got a phone call from Mom today, and after hanging up, I checked my balance, and it cost me around $8.00 for the call. I THOUGHT incoming calls were supposed to be free. I know last week’s call from Ptuny in Canada didn’t cost me anything. I wonder what the difference is? At least I think the call cost me money, I know those minutes sure went away somehow. Maybe my calls the other day when I was lost in Hiroshima were more expensive than I thought. I’ll pay more attention to the next call. I am finding more and more places that sell the phone cards, so it’s less of a concern than it was a week or so ago. Still, $8.00 for a ten-minute phone call is a little high.

I’m a little worried about Wednesday’s kindergarten class. I haven’t done anything to prepare yet, and I really just don’t know what to do. Hopefully, someone will have a suggestion when I check my email tomorrow. The problem is that I’m just a “guest” of sorts in their classroom; if I were actually “the” teacher, I could think of plenty for them to do. As it is, the students sit in their chairs with me in front of them as if I were giving a lecture or something. I can’t have them color or move around or anything; they just sit there and watch while I “perform.” It’s hard to “perform” for a half an hour with a bunch of children who really don’t know what you’re saying. Even something as simple as reading them a story doesn’t work well, because they don’t know what I’m saying (and the fact that the selection of books in English here is pretty much zero doesn’t help either). If I could quit the kindergarten and keep everything else, I’d do it without a second thought. I do NOT like feeling this incompetent.

The high point of today was a trip to Happy Town for groceries. I finally found some large garbage bags. Before today, Marc and I had just been refilling our shopping bags with trash and they are quite small. Gnats were becoming a problem. We looked and looked and never found real trash bags until today. Now we can get our garbage organized at least.

I got caught up on laundry again. I still haven’t figured out how to make the thing wash with hot water, and my whites aren’t as white as they were when I got here. On the bright side, now I have a plan! I took a photo of the control panel, and will show it to the Japanese teacher on Thursday. She can explain what the labels on the buttons say. Doesn’t this sound like fun?

Actually, most of the day I’ve just been hanging around the house alternating between awful TV, the book (On The Road still), and eating. I guess it’s kind of a relaxing catch-up day. Tomorrow I have to go up the mountain and print off a few things for my Wednesday class, but after that, I may go to the library anyway. I just want to spend some time “playing” on the Internet without someone watching over my shoulder.

Wednesday is, of course, back to Hiroshima, then Thursday is my next Japanese lesson, and Friday I have a meeting with another teacher that I will be working with later on. So this week is still relatively easy, but it’s my last “starter” week. Next Monday is another holiday, but then the “serious” work schedule starts and I’ll have real classes every day as of Tuesday. Of all of them, the Kindergarten (I hesitate to call it “the stinking kindergarten” so soon) is the only one that I expect any real challenge with.

So Now What?

So as far as exploring Japan goes, I think I have done everything that was on my original “tourist list” with the sole exception of going to the ocean, but that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon; it’s just too far and too complicated to go there with the travel ability I currently have, and it won’t be any fun if I have to wait much longer. I plan to take my camera around Hiroshima on Wednesday, and again to Bichu-Takahashi next week. That’ll be fun and make for some good web-posts. Later in the year, when the big holidays roll around, I’ll probably do some longer-distance traveling (Tokyo? Kyoto?), but I won’t have time for much more than weekend expeditions until maybe New Years.

What would you guys like to know more about? For Example, now that I think about it, I want to hit some of the local Buddhist temples sometime soon for photos. Any thoughts on somewhere else to visit locally that I haven’t thought of? If you were me, what would YOU be doing next? Let me know. Better yet, just start asking me questions; it’ll give me something to write about on those days when it will be too easy to say “Nothing interesting happened,” and those days are probably going to be coming fairly soon.