'tis the season.

     I walked outside yesterday morning into a nasty, gray-sky day. It looked like it was going to rain, but the wind was blowing so violently that an umbrella would have been useless anyway, so I continued without one. Then, I heard the sirens. "Are those voices?," I thought, and I wondered what they were saying in Japanese. Naturally I assumed was a warning of some kind; what if the weather was getting so bad that the announcement was urging people to evacuate? Do they even have tornadoes in Japan? I looked for other people so I could see how the natives were reacting, but nobody was on the entire street. "Strange," I thought, as I found myself drawn to the rambling of the horns in the direction of the station. The speaker was very monotone; whatever he was saying, this was not a festival. The walk was about a mile, yet the horns sounded clear as day. In the distance I saw a large crowd of people, and I imagined the imperial Big Brother of Japan, loading buses full of willing passengers unsure where their government was taking them. To my surprise, upon reaching the crowd I noticed group of four old men in suits, standing atop a self-painted van, speaking to the crowd. They wore sashes adorned with their credentials and had a few news-teams recording their speech. I should have known; it's political season.

I definitely agree with Mr. So-and-So about that one point.

     Apparently in Japan it's legal to drive around town with a giant megaphone on the roof of your van and spout political nonsense. It makes me weary to think that there is a country with a more invasive campaign strategy than the United States, but Japan seems to be doing a pretty good job of intruding every half hour when they drive by in the cars again. The only other images I have of these mobile-audio propaganda machines is among the plighted countries going through revolutions, like in the movies about Nazi Germany. Sure, today, the Japanese people are probably saying, "please vote for better education funding!," but I imagine tomorrow it could be something along the lines of, "Find those Gaijin! They must be turned in to the police!"

3 Months in

Gamba-ppe, Ibaraki's slang for Ganbatte (Good luck)

When I look at my time in Japan it feels like I've just arrived, and yet at 3 months, I'm 1/4th through my contract already! I don't update this blog enough, and I never find the time to stop and appreciate my situation; the last thing I want is to finish my tenure here without a lot of great stories and details about Japan. So much about my life has transformed so rapidly, that I feel that I've done some things I never would have tolerated back home. Also, I enjoy lists. The following are things, after only a few months in Japan, that you'd be surprised to find yourself doing;

1)  Speaking in basic, plain, Japanese-coddled English to fully competent English speakers. Everybody I've met here does it, and the longer I'm in this country the less I find myself using big words or complex sentence patterns. After 8 hours a day of speaking in the most basic tongue to students and coworkers, it's difficult to switch back to the old vocabulary for some other Americans. Sometimes it's simple changes that make me sound dumb, like using "[subject], do you know?" instead of "have you heard about [subject]?" Another example is that every question must be asked with the keyword as the last word, inflected with enough stress to indicate a query, such as, "At university.... what did you study?" instead of "what did you study at university?". Typically you have to make this inversion for the Japanese students because they often can understand the beginning and the end of a sentence, yet fill in the middle; the second question would often register with them as "what... university." Needless to say, you just sound silly when you do it to someone who was a born and raised English speaker.

Look at that weirdo wearing the man-purse!

2) Buy or wear something you used to think was extremely gay. In my case, it was a small leather bag I could keep my personal items in. A man-purse. Japanese people are obsessed with bags and trinkets that they can individualize, and the same applies for the guys here. My theory is that because everyone walks everywhere here, you can't just keep your stuff in your car, and going sans-bag would be more of a hassle. It's super effeminate, but it's nice to have something to help carry my wallet and stuff. This rule, though, also applies to wearing bright neon clothing, hanging little stuffed animals off your cell phone, and getting really strange hats.

A traditional Japanese lunch. 

3) Start using a coin purse. Coins here are big! They take up a lot of space, and because the smallest paper bill is around 10-12 dollars in value, you'll be carrying a large amount of change at any time and unlike in the US you can't just throw them on the ground. Without a coin purse, these things will muck up your wallet and cut up the bills inside. Also, paying with change is really useful; there is rarely sales tax on things here, so very often you'll be able to pay in exact change.

A 20-minute special of a Panda fighting a Koala, MMA style.  In poor form, the koala paid off the ref and wouldn't make the count. 

4) Lose all respect for television. The other day at prime-time there was a super-live, commercial free showing of the Women's Doubles Ping-Pong championship. There were maybe 15 people in the crowd as 4 women played best-of-seven, 11-point games for three hours. Also, When you watch sports on the news, they will often show highlights of the Japanese players in the MLB. One time, I watched a replay of Ichiro dropping a ball in the outfield in a Mariners game five or six times, and yet the news didn't even say the final score of the game.

Golden week coming up...

A week from today (Friday through Friday) is Golden week. It's a week where almost everyone in Japan has a week off and it'll be my first chance to really get out and explore some of Japan. I'm thinking a Tokyo adventure is in order?

I really do want to go see Akihabara. It's supposed to be the capital of Japanese nerd-dom, complete with 12-story electronics stores, multi-level arcades, anime and manga cosplayers on a daily basis, and an AKB48 concert in the DonkiHote (wall-mart on lsd) every single day. The town even has a Robot store; I have to go there.

Back in Mito and "O" Hanami

After a three week vacation, I'm finally back in Mito. This is the first time I've been back to my apartment since the Earthquake, Lucky for me, the Cherry Blossoms were still in season.

Cherry blossoms line all the water in Mito

I didn't get to relax long before I went back to work, but Thursday I was lucky to spend a beautiful day in Kairaku-en with the cherry blossom trees and my gaijin friends. The Japanese literally call it O Hanami, or literally, "flower watching". Before well respected or revered words, the Japanese put an O to show respect for the historical significance of the item, such as O Gohan (rice), O Sake (delicious sake), or O Hashi (chopsticks). Hanami follows the same rules, where the Japanese sit together in nature and contemplate the beauty of Spring. Foreigners, however, traditionally use Hanami to take advantage of the great weather and lack of public drunkenness laws to get wasted.

Joel at Senba Lake

Our camping spot

The Shiba dog Tora, meaning Tiger

The Cherry Blossoms are beautiful, but the weather in Japan during this time of year is some of the best I've ever encountered. It's warm with a cool breeze, and not a cloud in the sky no matter what day of the week it is. As I rode my bicycle along the lakeside, lined with Sakura trees, a gust of wind would blow hundreds of tiny flower petals into the air and I was able to ride through them like they were snow. The sights and smells were amazing; It's hard to believe that this city was wrecked only a month before.

We finished the evening at a Korean Barbecue place. These places, called Yakiniku, have hot grills in the middle of the table where you can grill all sorts of raw meat and vegetables, and offer an all-you-can-eat Tabehodai for about 20 dollars. We would have combined it with all-you-can-drink, but the restaurant informed us that nobody in town was offering it, in reverence to the earthquake victims.

My Japanese friend, Yasu, laughed when I made the mount Fuji out of an onion like hibachi chefs at Shoguns do back home. He said that he's never seen that done before; who would have thought?

Status update

I'm posting this on my iPhone so forgive me for any weird spelling mistakes.

After three days in mito with no water, no food other than brown rice, and rotating power, I decided to ask the Amity to put me up at the Honbu (or headquarters) in Okayama where I trained. They accepted an Erica decided to come with. I had to take a bus to get out of town, since mito train station was closed and ibaraki airport demolished, but after a few stops we found a working train station and took the Shinkansen the rest of the way. The first few towns we saw the old familiar earthquake damage, including 30-40 car lines outside the gas stations and paper signs in the window of all the convince stores. Grocery stores that were open had lines of people wrapped around them, and I'm assuming by now their food has long run out other than the government sanctioned rice and water bags.

As we travelled further west, we saw less and less stores closed. After passing through Tokyo everthing seemed like normal life in japan, an after getting off the train in Okayama station I felt like the whole thing never happened. It is still filled with giggling schoolgirls who buy heart shaped waffles and late businessmen literally running back to work in their suits. The annex is like a skeleton apartment, but a hot shower and a full size bed felt great after all the travelling.

Where do I go from here, I wonder. Nobody has any idea when the school is open, and it seems like Japanese business etiquette is to run all decicions by the head head boss. The only reason I'm here in Okayama is because I asked to be, a
nd some great trainers helped push the word on to the higher ups. But the same beurocracy exists about reopening the school. Is there an official date? Will I still be getting paid? The biggest pain is that I'll probably get a call one day saying, "head back! School opens tomorrow." I would be happy to be home and working, if the city was, of course.

Earthquake 2011

I was walking back from lunch at this restaurant down the street from work yesterday when the earthquake hit. I didn't even notice it at first, but when Erica stopped me from walking under the overhang of a building nearby, I noticed this big locked freezer thing next to me shaking uncontrollably. It wasn't til a few seconds later when the ground started shaking pretty violently. We ran out into the street with a couple of pedestrians nearby and held on to each other, which didn't really help much. We were falling all over each other like you would if you stood up on a moving boat, but even worse was that I couldn't tell which direction the waves were coming from to try and keep myself from falling.

Eventually we had to squat down and just watch people flee from outside the buildings. The building I was originally under started to collapse, and a man ran out from underneath the overhang just as it came crashing down. Other people ran out of their apartments and offices screaming and crying; most of the people I talked to said it was the biggest earthquake they had ever felt. Afterwards, the damage to the sidewalks and the buildings was pretty severe, and sewage pipes burst and flooded water at almost every corner. Tons of people took refuge in the park until the news said it was clear to find shelter. For about 24 hours Jonan, my neighborhood of Mito, didn't have any power or water. I wish I would have taken more pictures.

We ended up sleeping at Amagai-Sensei's parents house in the country. They took great care of us! They gave us warm towels and cooked us curry and rice on their gas-powered stove. The house was gorgeous and since the power was out for miles and miles it was the first time I've seen that many stars since I was in Wyoming about 10 years ago. Overall it was a blessing, considering everyone else went to the high school and took shelter in the gym with hundreds of other displaced people. The tremors happened all night, but it was still much more comfortable than being at home. It's about 11:23 p.m. here now, about 33 hours after the big earthquake and we're still getting tremors every half an hour or so. Supposedly there have been about 125 small earthquakes since the huge one, over a dozen of which have been 6.0 or greater (a 6.0 earthquake on land could kill a ton of people, luckily for Japan all these earthquakes are taking place off-shore). 

Hopefully it goes without saying that I am safe from the Japan Earthquakes for now. The earthquake yesterday was a huge disaster here, and although the people of Mito are more inconvenienced than in danger, it was still one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. The actual shaking of the earth was more exhilarating than scary, and because I didn't get any tsunami's in Mito my life wasn't a living hell for the last two days, but I still catch myself wonder, "what if the tsunami was off the coast here, and not Sendai?" So far the news is saying about 1700 confirmed deaths in the regions to the north, but only 1 in my prefecture of Ibaraki... It's kinda useless to, but it leaves me asking, "why not here?" Luckily, I live to fight another day.

Uchihara Mall

This last Monday was pretty rainy, so Erica and I decided to take the train to the big mall in Uchihara. The train ride was only two stops away so it only cost us a couple bucks each way. The mall was bigger than any of the ones in St. Louis, and surprisingly had a ton of stores for both guys and girls. Until now, I've noticed far more girls' stores than boys' stores in Japanese "departo"s.

    In every big Japanese shopping area, there is always a hyper-pink arcade area that is only for girls full of Purikura, or roughly, photo booths. After taking a photo with your group of 5 or more girlfriends (or one super reluctant boyfriend), you get to use a touch-screen with a bunch of sticker and color options to make yourselves look glamorous. Most of them even have options to make your eyes bigger or your hair brighter. Afterwards, the device spits out a few tiny stickers that you can cut up and stick on your stuff. With how good digital cameras are these days, the whole thing seems really silly. I of course, did it anyway.... the secret to looking cute is to put cat ears on everything.

The food court was very asian, save for the McDonalds, Mr. Donut, and KFC that were there. I ate at a place called Pepper Lunch which serves you a steaming hot skillet of steak and vegetables that are cooked right there at the table.

Japan is into the "collect 'em all" mentality more than I ever could imagine. Each one of these machines costs $1-2 and drops out a little trinket for you to play with, and each machine has 5-10 different guys you have to collect from it, meaning that if you really like a show or a character, you have to keep dropping in money until you have all the little key-chains or trinkets that you want. Anyone who learned about Japan by playing Shenmue remembers the two machines from the arcade that you bought useless items from.... well in Japan there are way, way more than 2 machines.

I ended up buying a over-the-shoulder bag for when I go walking or biking around town. In the US this would be considered a purse, and I would be gay. For now I usually have big coat pockets, but in the Summer I will probably need more storage space for beer or something. 

The mall was fun but dangerous. I kept seeing useless stuff I wanted to buy, and everything in the mall seemed so much more expensive than what I've seen back home. The belt-buckle below cost around 25 bucks!