Watching the Hourglass

Hello everyone! I'm back for post numba 2!

First, an update. My lack of heat has been very thankfully solved. Turns out that the gas was off for some reason and, to fix it, all I had to do was press a button. Which was, of course, the only button on the gas box. *headdesk* There was, apparently, no need to suffer through three days of winter camping inside my own house.

Hot showers are awesome. That's all I'm sayin.

And it just snowed. Literally, as I was writing this, the staff room erupted into "sugoi! yuki!" and I turned around to discover that, indeed, there was much yuki falling from the sky.

Another update: I finally (FINALLY!) posted another video on youtube. This one is about the daimyo gyoretsu in Yakage that I went to about a month ago. As you can tell, I've been slightly lazy about editing and uploading it. Anyway, they moved really slow, so I sped up the video to 300% it's normal speed and cut out a lot of repetitive stuff. In totally, the raw video is just over 20 minutes while the edited video is about 3 minutes. I am ze master editor. (Watch out for Lauren's wiggle dance. It's fun times.)

Interestingly, I have apparently posted material that is copyrighted in Germany. They pounced on that thing. Literally, about two minutes after I uploaded the video to youtube, I got an email saying my video was blocked in Germany. Sad times. I apologize to all my (non-existent) German viewers. I promise to be more careful in the future... sort of.

Tomorrow I go home for Christmas/New Year's break. Do you know what that means? That means that I've been in Japan for four and a half months. That's insane! It feels like it's only been about a month. I mean, I only just arrived, right? How can I be going back already?

There's so much more that I still plan to do in Japan, it seems odd to suddenly take a break from it all. On the one hand, it'll be nice to eat some good pizza and have a real, North American style breakfast. On the other hand... Asia! Hell, I haven't even gotten out of Japan yet. And I've only been in three prefectures in Japan. The explorer in me is crying out for more. There's so much, SO much that I want to do and haven't gotten to yet.

Here's a short list of things not yet done. Let's call it my New Year's Wish List.
- Onsen
- Kobe beef
- Niimi caves
- Tottori sand dunes
- Skiing in Japan
- Spend a night in a love hotel
- Spend a night in a temple
- Discover the night life of Tokyo
- Buy a kimono
- Visit Beijing and see the Great Wall of China
- See the Forbidden Palace
- Witness the conversion of sunny sky to polluted sky in a Chinese city
- Spend a week on a Thai island in the sun
- Get a tattoo from a Buddhist temple in Thailand
- See the hill tribes of northern Thailand

It's a good thing that I still have 8 months more here after I come back.

~Jeffles

In The Frozen Tundra

Hi there everyone. Sorry for the lack of new post last Thursday. I do have a good reason, but I'll try to do two posts this week to make up for it.

What's my reason? Well, as I'm sure several readers know, there was a midyear conference to improve our teaching skillz. Did it work? Who knows. But then, it's not even midyear yet, so obviously the name is already a misnomer. Which means, of course, that the premise of the conference is suspect. If so, it follows that whether or not my teaching skillz improved may actually not matter. Emphasis on the possibility aspect.

Yeah, I know. That's a load of bull. Anyway, because of this conference I didn't have access to my computer last Thursday. You see, the conference lasted for three days (Wednesday to Friday), every evening of which involved a night time drinking adventure for me, and the last two evenings of which I didn't even make it back to my town. Try saying that sentence five times fast. Then, on Saturday, there was an end-of-year party hosted by one of my schools that I had to attend.

This all added up to an exhausted Jeffles with a liver pleading for mercy. I'm pretty sure the last couple weeks have knocked an equal number of years off my life. So yesterday was, essentially, a write off. Thus today is the first day I can actually post something here.

I'm trying to decide what to talk about now. The cold and my lack of heating? A story from the last four days? A deep account of how I feel separated from the world here? I don't know. So I'm gonna eenie-meenie-miney-moe it.

Here we go...

...

...The cold and my lack of heating it is!

This is going to sound like bitching, moaning, and general complaining. That's because it is. As probably anyone who knows me is aware, I'm a summer guy. Winter and cold times really aren't my thing. It is, in fact, the entire reason why I never want to live in Canada again. Enough of this winter crap, I'm ready for a lifelong summer. Starting now.

Of course, that's not going to happen. So my method of fighting off the winter is to crank up the heat at home, take lots of hot showers, and do my best to wear clothing that cuts the wind when I go outside. That and get drunk. Even if it does actually make you colder, it also makes you too numb to notice the cold.

But as I said, too much drinking lately, so that last option is currently out. And, thanks to god knows what, I am also unable to crank up the heat or take a hot shower. I arrived home after my short trip to Okayama City only to find that I had no working heater and no hot water. I don't understand why. They were both working fine before I left. They both use gas to heat up, though, so maybe something happened to the pipe? Froze over or something? I don't know. I'm gonna ask one of the office people about it tomorrow.

So after spending one night freezing my ass off, I went out yesterday to equip myself with the items necessary to use my kotatsu. For those who don't know, a kotatsu is basically a table, a heater, and a blanket to keep the heat in a limited space. Think of it as like turning your table into a pillow fort and keeping it heated inside. (Yes, that's what I'm thinking every time I use it.)

While I was still in the kotatsu, it was very nice. Very nice indeed. But then, of course, I eventually had to go to bed. That was okay, because I was still feeling quite toasty. But waking up in the morning was TERRIBLE. There was no escape. I could see my breath inside my own damn house. Nothing quite like getting changed into cold clothes when you're already cold.

For a little while, I was wondering just how I would shave. As many of you probably are aware, I'm kind of a hairy guy. If I go to work without shaving, that don't look good. Hell, even in high school my teachers wouldn't let me get away with not shaving for a day. And believe me, I tried. So this morning I boiled some water, poured it in the sink, and used a hand towel dipped in the sink to soften my face. It also worked pretty well for the razor (shaving with a cold razor SUCKS). So this is a good thing to keep in mind for the future.

I'm really hoping that this lack of heating and lack of hot water doesn't last all winter. I'd really like to take a shower at some point. Deodorant can only work for so long...

There ends my complaint. Japan is cool, but they need to get their winter equipment sorted out. I fear things are only going to go further downhill from here. But that may just because I have to leave this warm room and go back to a cold home in a few short minutes.

Sigh.

~Jeffles

P.S. Gonna try to put up a new video tonight. I'll edit that link in later.

Culture Shock or Increasing Awareness?

(I apologize in advance for this rant. Perhaps I actually am in stage 2! Oh the irony...)

When you're a new arrival to Japan, or a soon-to-be new arrival, people talk a lot about culture shock. It's described as a process that takes four stages.

The first one being Euphoria, or unending love with the country around you. This is basically the stage of touristic wonder. Then there's the second stage, which is when you start to notice all the quirky things that bug and annoy you. Soon you're gathering in dark, dank pubs, bitching about all the little things that have just been building up and up and up. Then there's the third stage: depression. This is when you start thinking that life in your new country is hopeless and you might as well give up and hop on a plane home 'cause it ain't gonna get any better. Finally, there's acceptance of your situation. That's when you basically say, "you know what, nothing's perfect and I'm just gonna make the best of what I've got."

Matador has a really good article describing the four stages.

The thing is, everyone says that it's impossible to avoid culture shock. It's just one of those things that's a given about any traveling experience. And the way everyone talks about it, it's something terrible, a horrible sensation that WILL come to you and WILL depress you. I don't agree with that.

Maybe I'm just weird, but when I came to Japan, I was not struck with a sense of how awesome the place was. If anything, I was a little disappointed with it. Since then, my sense of wonder has only continued to grow with every passing day. Yes, there are little things that bug me. Like my heater that refuses to stay on for more than five or ten minutes, or the lack of any good, flavorful wine or beer. But every time I read the news, I'm reminded of how much life sucks back in North America, too.

Between Occupy Wallstreet, a shitty economy, politicians that seem to have lost all connection with that actual population, a vast well of ignorance and prejudice that spans the country, and a winter that is almost certainly going to be colder than whatever I experience here, I really feel like I have nothing to complain about. Life here is good. It's interesting. I learn things, I meet people, I feel like I can actually accomplish things while I'm here.

So there's one of three options. One: my honeymoon stage is abnormal in its bitchy tendencies and is longer than normal and I'm going to soon be hit by a ton of bricks. Two: for some reason I simply skipped the first three stages and jumped straight to the last one. Three: it's not true that everyone always succumbs to culture shock.

In all fairness, I think I did get hit pretty hard by culture shock when I lived in Scotland. But there are lots of reasons for that, mainly the prevalent British attitude of "this is our isle and why would we care about anything from outside it?" Yes, I lived in Scotland, but more specifically I lived in Edinburgh, which is filled to the brim with British people. And I've spoken with lots of other foreigners who have lived in England - many of them have the same opinion. Nearly every Scottish person I met, though, was quite a bit more welcoming. Even when I couldn't understand half of what they were saying. I can only think of maybe two exceptions.

This is of course not to say that all English people are like that. In fact, many of them were initially warm and welcoming. And some English men and women were extremely friendly the entire time and I'm glad I could count them as among my friends. But alas, they were in the minority. And unlike many other foreigners there, mostly due to my living circumstances, I was only rarely not hanging out English or Scottish people, so I didn't have a foreigner group to vent with.

By the time I left Scotland, I was almost certainly in stage 3. I loved the land more and more and wanted to explore the rest of the British Isles and Europe, but I was really not keen on the population at large. In fact, after that year, I just wanted a break from Europe. That may be part of the reason I've ended up here.

At any rate, I wanted to suggest a different model for Japan. Something other than that normal culture shock model. I call it the model of Increasing Awareness. (Just came up with that now... it's a work in progress.) Maybe it could apply to other countries, too. I wouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, I don't think this focus on the positive and negative feelings about a country is accurate. What's more accurate, I think, it a focus on the gradually increasing awareness of what's happening around you. When you first arrive, you can only notice a few things here and there. You notice what aligns with your preconceptions and what runs against them. Then you start to notice a few more things that you didn't expect at all. Like when your colleague takes you out one night to eat live squid. Or when you finally learn your bike route to school and realize what the main roads are in your town. Then you notice some details, because you see some of the blank spots in your knowledge and start to investigate them. Then you notice more and more bits and bobs in increasingly fine detail. Eventually, you reach a point where all those bits and bobs, the good and the bad, become normal (i.e. you become desensitized).

The way you react to the increasing awareness of your surroundings, whether it's positive or negative, is a reflection of yourself, in my opinion. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances. Someone who has never lived away from home before is going to be feeling homesick, which may likely paint in a negative light all those bits and bobs they are increasingly noticing. Where you're living could actually be a hell hole and your coworkers could actually be utterly incompetent. But on the whole, the experience is not necessarily going to go through the negativity implied by culture shock. Whether or not that happens depends on your own mindset, not some unavoidable psychological process.

Just today, on the train, I noticed the gaijin bubble. To explain, the gaijin bubble is what happens when a foreigner enters a crowded area. All the Japanese people nearby will arrange themselves so that there is a little bubble of empty space around the foreigner. It doesn't really matter how crowded the train is, they will always attempt to form the bubble. Occasionally there is the Japanese person who pretends to not see the foreigner and simply stand there, as if they could simply wish your existence away. At any rate, I could either get upset at this apparent discrimination or not get upset at it. In fact, I'm somewhat thankful for it. Back in North America, I always found it annoying when people would stand unnecessarily close on the subway, or when there would be plenty of unoccupied seats on a bus and the passenger would come and sit right next to me. So now they give me my space and, you know, I'm cool with that.

People often ask me if I miss North America and if I want to go back. Honestly, I don't. I may have to go back due to extenuating circumstances, but I'm not particularly looking forward to it. This country is amazing. And there's so much more of Asia to see. I'm far from depressed about being so far from "home." Quite the opposite; it's depressing to think that I have to go back. Really, I just wanna explore.

~Jeffles

Where have all the humidities gone?

It's been getting chilly here. Kinda surprising how fast it happened, to be honest. I still remember quite vividly the heat and humidity of the summer. Hell, I wrote about it. You probably remember it. Seems like one week it was summer, then the next week the humidity was gone and the temperature just started rolling downhill from there. Every day is a degree colder. Every day I have to wear just that little bit more to stay at my ideal temperature.

Actually, in order to maintain that aforementioned ideal temperature with those aforementioned clothes that I have to wear, I recently went on a bit of a shopping spree. Uniqlo (a "budget" clothes store spread all throughout Japan that has Western sizes) was having a sale. And I needed new clothes. The loot is as follows

- lightweight, but excellently effective windbreaker/rain coat

- two pairs of black chinos (for work)

- a dark grey sweater (also for work)

- two long sleeve shirts (still for work)

And the total price was... I'm not telling. Even with everything on sale and it being a "budget" place, it was still all expensive enough that I'm almost ashamed to have spent that much. I did actually need that stuff, though. I didn't have enough long-sleeve shirts, I didn't have a single sweater or vest or warm thing I could wear to work, and all the black pants I brought with me are unusable. I did have one pair of pants that could have worked, but as they're half of a rather expensive suit, I wasn't very keen on using them.

Yes, that really is what I tell myself to justify the moneys.

Anyway, afterward I splurged on candy from the Sweet Factory (zomg real candy in Japan! real, squishy candies!). Then I headed downstairs to the new import store (sells foreign goods) and got a few Belgian beers and Californian wines. Expensive, but 100% worth it.

Why worth it? Well, because it's not that easy for me to get stuff that I was used to in North America. Like good wine and good beer, both of which I am absolutely a lover of. I can get the stuff, but it takes a fair amount of time and effort and travel. So when I do get it, I am quite pleased.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good substitutes. I'm learning to appreciate the different sake available. And I've learned that, for the most part, people don't really say sake. Sake is nihonshu (often translated to me as Japanese wine). It's made from rice and damn it goes down smooth. I prefer it cool or at room temperature rather than warmed up, personally. "Sake" is just a catch-all term for alcohol in general.

But there isn't just nihonshu, there's also shochu, which is a clear distilled beverage kind of like vodka with a lower proof. Well, sometimes it can be 40% like vodka, but it usually comes in at about 25%. Anyway, I mention shochu because it can be really hard to tell the difference between shochu and nihonshu without drinking it. The labels are confusing, because they often display the type of shochu or nihonshu without saying that it's shochu or nihonshu, and I don't already know the different types. So a lot of it ends up just as a guessing game at the supermarket.

Anyway, enough rambling about that. The point is that I have found other alcohols to explore and learn about so as to distract me from the lack of familiar alcohols. And the same goes for the lack of good pizza, good French food, good Chinese, etc. And yes, there really is a lack of good Chinese food. There isn't a single Chinese restaurant in my town and I have found a total of 1 Chinese restaurant in my prefecture. For shame, Japan. For shame.

At any rate, I have now acquired warm clothes and alcohol that I know something about. As far as I'm concerned, I'm all set for whatever Japan has to throw at me now. In fact, one of my fellow teachers mentioned that she knew of a good wine bar in nearby Fukuyama, so we will hopefully check that out soon. Hooray, wine! Hooray!

I am way too excited about this. I swear I'm not an alcoholic. I just appreciate quality drinks.

This weekend I'm headed to Nara. Actually, we couldn't find a place to stay in Nara itself, so we're staying in Osaka and then heading into Nara for day trips, but I'm okay with that. Looking forward to playing with some deer. :D

And that's about all I got. It's Thanksgiving in the US right now. My American friends here in Japan are all lamenting their missed holiday right about now, but I have to say, I've never really felt particularly attached to that holiday. It always felt like such an arbitrary, silly day to me. Why pick one day to be thankful? It's almost like an excuse to not be thankful the other 364 days of the year. And why that day? There were plenty of other thanksgiving feasts that were held at different times.

Re: History.com - "For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November."

Perhaps I'm just a weird Canadian/Mexican who doesn't believe in the value of nationalism. Or maybe Thanksgiving really is weird. I dunno. Here's my blog, you decide.

~Jeffles

On Writing and Speeches

I don't have a lot of time to write this blog post, so I'll keep it short. I only really have two things to talk about this time anyway. Though given my track record of waxing on and on about just one topic for an entire blog post, perhaps I'm actually being too ambitious. Who knows.

Point one: I am faltering in my commitment to NaNoWriMo. Well, perhaps I could phrase that better. My attempt at NaNoWriMo is faltering. I still really, really want to do it and desperately wish I could pound out the 50k by the end of the month. But unfortunately, I'm about 10k behind where I should be right now. And that's just following the 1666 words a day that they recommend, not the 2000 words a day I was aiming at.

Why has this happened? Well, to be frank, I got a little slammed by life. Spent multiple long nights preparing stuff for classes, then played host over a weekend to some visitors. Then there was the daimyo parade that I'd committed to go to a long time before. And then there was the speech that I had to give. All of this sort of took away any free time I had to do writing. Because, as it stands, I still have my normal work hours, during which I can't really write for the most part, and I have to go to Judo twice a week.

I did get a little writing done at work between classes on Friday, but Friday is the only day I can do that. Tuesday to Thursday, I don't have a computer at work and Monday I have classes back to back all day.

Okay, so I do have some time on Thursday (today) that I could be writing. My excuse for not writing is as follows: in spite of my long sleep last night, I'm still mentally exhausted and could not muster the effort to write prose. As well, my momentum has been completely shot. Which means that getting myself going on this writing thing every day is an uphill battle that I pretty much consistently lose. And today, all that effort has gone into this blog post.

On a happier note, though, this blog is writing. That means that I may be developing a little momentum that I can carry into the weekend. I have no big plans this weekend (except a short trip to the nearby mall that shouldn't interfere with writing), so I have the time. It's just a matter of getting the motivation and energy together to get it done.

Which brings me to Point Two: I mentioned it earlier, but I had to give a speech recently. It was... an interesting affair. Let me describe what happened.

About a week ago, a rather influential townsperson came into the office (my desk is in city hall) and asked the board of education to set aside some time for me to give a speech to the local rotary club. After they had agreed that I had the time to do it, they called me over and asked me to do it. Which meant, of course, that I had no choice in the matter as they had decided without me.

No matter, I would have agreed to do it anyway. But then it was strongly suggested that I do the speech in Japanese. Now, my Japanese is definitely not strong enough to give a decent speech. And on top of that, they said I could talk about anything I wanted. Yay lack of direction.

I ended up talking to another ALT in my town who had given such a speech already and she suggested I basically translate the statement of purpose I had written to get into the JET programme in the first place. So I looked at my statement of purpose, then promptly realized it would make a terrible speech and that I had no idea how to translate half the stuff in it anyway. So instead I stayed up writing something else until the wee hours of the morning, just a few hours before actually giving the speech. Basically, I wrote about internationalization and how I thought it was important. Whatever.

After my last class ended at my morning school, the aforementioned influential townsperson picked me up in her car and drove me to the rotary club. Now, I've never been to a rotary club before, so I didn't really know what to expect. I knew there would be lots of rich people. As far as I knew, the Rotary Club is just a club for rich people to gather and pretend they have a social life. Or something. I really don't know.

Turned out to be pretty much exactly that. It was 95% male and over 60. They all wore blazers and sat in their chair with an air of comfortable indifference. The meeting started with a chorus of voices singing the Rotary Club Anthem (or, what I'm guessing was the Rotary Club Anthem - it was in Japanese). That was kind of surprising. I tried (and largely failed) to follow along. Then we sat down, had an excellent and very typically Japanese bento lunch.

Then there was this other thing that I thought was kinda weird. Anyone who wanted to stand up and say what they were thankful for could do so, provided they pay 1000 yen (about $13). Pretty much everyone went for it. Totally don't understand what that was about, but whatever. Maybe it was just an excuse to donate money to the club? I don't know.

Anyway, after that, I gave me speech, answered a few questions, got paid, and left. Oh yeah, I got paid. That was cool. Kinda makes me wish I gave a better speech. Actually, makes me wish I wrote the speech in English because, guess what? There was a TRANSLATOR! Yay for telling me to speak Japanese when I could have done a better job in English! -_-

No, I'm not bitter. Not at all.

Haha, I kid. At the end of the day, I don't really care that much. But given that they paid to see me speak, I wish I could have done a better job. Oh well.

Time's up. I was going to post a translation of my speech, but I gotta go to my evening classes. Ciao!

~Jeffles

Epiphanizing

Howdy there. What's up? How's it going? Done anything cool since last we spoke? Yeaaah, I am pretty much amazing at icebreakers. I practice them every day in the mirror. Step out of the shower and BAM ICEBREAKER TIME. Can you tell?

So last week, I mentioned that I had come to some epiphanies. Really, there's one important one which has suddenly explained a lot of Japan to me. But a few weeks ago I had another epiphany which, on further reflection, turned out to be only a small epiphany that tied into a previously held belief. It did, however, reveal something else. So...

Epiphany #1: Japanese people out here in this part of the country are essentially just like small town, suburban people back home.

I came to this epiphany at the mall in Kurashiki. I'd gone down for the day to pick up a few important items for my home and life in general. An electric kettle, for instance, so that I didn't have to boil water in a pot on my stove every morning, which for some reason I find hugely unappealing. I also needed a light for my bike, because my previous light (a motion-sensor thingie that I don't pretend to understand) mysteriously stopped working

Anyway, I was walking around and I realized that it was a scene I had seen before. Though I didn't understand most of the words that people were saying around me, I did recognize the social dynamics, the tones of voice, even the underlying feeling in the way everyone was dressing. Parents were just like suburban moms and dads back in Canada/America and the kids were exactly like the kids I had known in high school. (Side note: my high school was in a small town that was sort of like the central hub for all the surrounding towns which were even smaller.)

This lead to the further understanding that I had been thinking of Japanese people first as Japanese and second as people. That might be understandable. The first thing you say to yourself when you get off a plane in Japan is "Sweet, I'm in Japan." The second thing you say is "Hey look, everything's in Japanese." And finally, you say to yourself, "Check it out, everyone's Japanese."

So when you are in this foreign country, you automatically distance yourself from it. You become an observer and everything around you becomes something like a reality TV show. This is fine, but when you distance yourself from the people around you, you create an Us And Them scenario that tends to dehumanize the Them. No longer are the people around you people, they're Them, the Japanese People.

This was something I had already known might happen, so I wasn't too surprised to notice it. Thus why Epiphany #1 is really only a small epiphany that builds on what I already know; people around the world are ultimately the same - they're just people.

I remember being about sixteen and speaking to an older friend of mine who was in the military, serving in Afghanistan at the time. He told me something that I've never forgotten, mostly because it is simply so true. "People in countries other than America aren't any less stupid than Americans, they just speak a different language."

Epiphany #2: The uniqueness of Japanese culture is derived from an obsession with details.

I came to this realization not too long ago and it explains so much about things that are considered to be traditionally Japanese. Kimonos, ikebana, calligraphy, karate, everything. It also extends to things like their reputation for being amazing at math, for producing consistently high quality electronic goods and cars, etc.

Now, before I'm accused of making a sweeping claim of an entire people, let me forestall you: I'm only talking about a cultural point of emphasis. I'm not saying that every Japanese person is detail-obsessed. I'm saying that most of the things that make Japanese things seem Japanese are all about being detail-oriented.

I don't know how to explain the logic behind this one other than making an a priori argument: it is simply what I see every day.

The other day, for example, I was inside a house that I regularly go to. This house is a marvelous work of traditional Japanese culture. The construction, the grounds, the garden, the decorations, everything about it is Japanese. In the genkan (entrance where you take off your shoes), there is a flower vase. It is quite well arranged and placed in a pot that is itself rather nice. So I asked the lady of the house if it was ikebana.

Her reply, which I admit I only partially understood, was that it was not ikebana. But the reason it wasn't ikebana was that the details were slightly off. The angle at which this stem sat, the number of flowers in it, the fact that there were plants instead of flowers, etc. She listed several reasons, all of which seemed to be saying "This is not ikebana because the details are wrong. Ikebana is not just the arrangement of flowers in whatever pretty formation, you ignorant lout."

Well, she didn't call me an ignorant lout. She was actually quite nice about the whole thing. But I started to look around realize that everything the Japanese do seems to emphasize getting the details right.

If you wear a kimono, you better damn well make sure that every fold is perfect. Make sure the left side crosses over the right side, or damn you to hell and back. Make sure the collar at the back of your neck exposes just the right amount of skin, or your life ain't worth one yen. And if you get the bow wrong in any way, God help us all.

Judo is seemingly slightly more lenient, but the emphasis is on slightly. (Oh My God, you mean there's more than one way to tie a Judo belt?) In practice, the main point is to use what you like, when you like. But, of course, whatever you choose to do must be done perfectly. Feet placed at the perfect angle, head turned just the right amount, torso twisting exactly to 15 degrees - any more and you'll fly off your feet, as I've embarrassingly done several times before. There are so many little details that have to be perfect, and I haven't even mentioned the greetings, the seat assignments, and even the way you're supposed to move between drills.

I could go through probably every Japanese cultural activity I mentioned and point out how detail obsessed it is. But I won't bore you with that. Look for yourself. It's more amusing that way.

Anyway, I can totally understand now why Japanese people are also so obsessed with the enkai (after work party). Every day, all day, they put their all into making sure every little detail is perfect. That has got to be exhausting. Never thought I'd say this, but thank God I'm not Japanese.

~Jeffles

Forming Habits

Forgive me if this blog post is a bit shorter than normal, I just squeezed out two thousand words of novel. If it sounds painful, that's probably because it was.

The last couple of days were actually quite good. I seemed to know what to write and where to go. Today I knew where I wanted to go, but had no idea what to write. I think there's just days like that. You just gotta push yourself and do it. Like any other habit you're trying to form. Speaking of which, I had a funny moment yesterday. It requires a little back story, though.

After the Halloween party on Friday, I found that I had become sick. What I have decided is that my body had actually been fighting something off for a while, then my deluge of fun times ruined all those efforts. Thus the disease won, my body lost, and the rest of my weekend can be described accurately as: snot, sleep, and holy crap gross.

Saturday and Sunday were definitely the worst days with Monday being pretty bad, but slightly better. Tuesday was pretty much the same as Monday. Luckily, I didn't have to go to any classes on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. (My schools were having culture festival things.) And then Thursday is a national holiday, so hooray. My sickness did not, in any meaningful way, affect my job. However, Tuesday is Judo day.

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. As I missed the previous practice on Friday due to the Halloween Party, I had fully intended to go on Tuesday. But alas, my body cried "no!" and I listened. So I tried to call my sensei, but for whatever reason he wasn't there. Well, I tried.

Or so I thought. Yesterday, my sensei actually called the office and told me to come to Judo. Oops! Anyway, I explained to my boss that I was sick and that was why I hadn't gone on Tuesday. Given that my voice sounds like something out of a horror movie, he had no doubt I was telling the truth. Even jokingly told me that my voice sounded sexy. Hah! Whoever said the Japanese don't know how to be sarcastic obviously never met my coworkers. :D

Anyway, he said he'd let my sensei know and I was able to relax, greatly relieved. Yet I also know that, should I slack off any more, I'm probably in for a world of hurt. Tomorrow is Friday, another Judo day. And my voice may have been replaced with that of some hellish demon's, but you can bet your butt that I'm going. No matter how I'm feeling. Which brings me back to my earlier point.

Feeling like crap? Who cares! Your habits are your responsibility. Take it seriously, yo.

At least, that seems to be the opinion here. I've seen it lots of other places, too. I can't talk about them, though, as they deal with stuff at the workplace and, as I said a while ago, I intend not to talk about that kinda stuff on the blog. Anyway, we foreigners get cut a little slack, but just a little. (Obviously.)

And that's all I've got for today. I've made a few observations, actually. Come to some epiphanies. That kinda thing. No drugs required, just Japan. But I don't feel like typing anymore today. So... have a good one.

~Jeffles

Food Is Culture

Food. It's why we manage to keep going as the day progresses. It's a spicy touch to our day, a bit of pleasantness if we're lucky. It reflects the culture of those around us and they way we eat it broadcasts our own personalities to those same people.

This is why, I believe, one of the most important things you can do when you travel is to eat. Of course, if you're traveling, you have to eat. If you're alive you have to eat. Unless you want to stop being alive, that is.

But we should pay attention to what we eat, why we eat it, where we eat it, who we eat it with, etc. Why? Because it's of the utmost important, especially when we're traveling. Food is one of the best ways to experience a culture. If you traveled to Italy and ended up just eating McDonald's hamburgers the entire time you were there, that would be the epitome of a travesty.

A little anecdote:

About seven or eight years ago I was in Paris with my mother. We were on vacation for a few days after a long work trip to England. As tourists in Paris, we of course did all the typical things. Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame. And, of course, we sampled the culinary delights of Paris. As I'm sure you know, France is known for it's amazing food. And nowhere is that more evident than in Paris' Latin Quarter. To this day, I still dream about the food there.

One day, after an exhausting afternoon spent wandering the streets, we ducked into a small cafe. Recuperation was, at that point, an absolute necessity. So we ordered a couple of drinks and reclined into our chairs. As we sat there, sinking into a wonderful bliss, we heard someone approaching. Someone who spoke English.

In through the door walked a family of five white Americans, each one fatter than the next. Two children, a mother, a father, and a grandmother. In a city of slim Europeans, this alone would be worthy of comment. If nothing else, we would laugh at the stereotype. But alas, the stereotype went even deeper than we thought. Apparently, this family had been in Paris for three days and hadn't managed to find a single good thing to eat. Apparently, even McDonald's had let them down. I'm fairly certain that I nearly choked on my drink at this point. Laughter always seems to sneak up on me at the most inopportune moments.

My mum and I were so shocked that we may have actually burst out laughing. To be honest, I don't quite remember. I do remember how pathetic we thought that family was, though. Perhaps we're being elitist, judgmental snobs. Or perhaps the way people interact with food is revealing of both themselves and the culture they're in.

So I have adopted the stance that, when I travel, I am an open book. At least as far as food is concerned. When I was a kid, I was the pickiest eater you can imagine. For a long time, breakfast, lunch and dinner all consisted of one staple: honey sandwiches.

Thankfully, I have since improved my diet. I still have a lot of problems with foods that have disagreeable textures (mostly mushy stuff that looks like it's supposed to be solid, which tends to provoke a reaction of "ew, it's rotten isn't it?"). But I make daily strides and am constantly increasing the number of things that I can not only eat, but also enjoy.

Since coming to Japan, as you might imagine, I have had several encounters with food that I would not normally choose to eat. Every Monday and Friday, for example, I eat lunch with the elementary school kids. Lunch is made by a central "authority" and distributed to all the schools in my town, so everyone eats the same thing (including me). And what Japanese school kids eat is definitely not what I would normally eat. Hell, I don't even know what I'm eating half the time. But eat it I do. And sometimes I even like it.

Sometimes I'm surprised. There are two examples off the top of my head.

First, I have eaten live squid sashimi (cut into strips and eaten raw). That may make no sense, but let me explain. The squid is spread out on a long rectangular dish. It is alive, but its nerves have been deadened. For the most part, it can't actually do anything, but every once in a while a tentacle flops around pathetically. If I were a more empathetic person, I might pity the creature. But no, I eat it. The shell that encases its head is cut up into strips beforehand and served on top of the creature as sashimi. With a pair of chopsticks, you pull the desired strip off, dip it in your soy sauce/wasabi mix, and eat it.

When I first learned about it, I had a hard time deciding whether or not to eat the meal. I may not be the most empathetic person around, but eating something while it is still alive is taking things to a new level. But then I reminded myself, I am here to experience Japan at its best. And if this is what they tell me is a good thing about Japan, I'm sure as hell going to try it. And damn them if they weren't right. That is the best squid sashimi that I have ever eaten. Even better, once you've finished the sashimi they take the rest of the squid away and cook it up for you. Nothing goes to waste and it's quite literally as fresh as it gets.

The second example that comes to mind is more recent. Last weekend I was in Osaka, as I mentioned in my last blog post. On my second night, the family I was staying with took me to a small restaurant that specialized in Okinawan cuisine. Awesome, I thought. I'd never had Okinawan cuisine. We ended up ordering a buffet of food on small dishes that the three of us picked at as we pleased.

And, of course, this buffet of food included sashimi'd pig ear. That's right, raw pig ear, cut up into small strips. It looks just like bacon, but the white streaks weren't fat. They were cartilage. Still, keeping in mind my maxim to try everything, I gleefully (okay, somewhat apprehensively) indulged. And surprise of surprises, it was actually delicious.

It had been sliced extremely thin, as thin as a slip of paper, so the strange texture of it was nearly negligible and I could really appreciate the taste. As well, it had been prepared in a peanut sauce. I love peanut sauce. I am of the opinion that almost anything prepared in peanut sauce will be delicious. So did I like the pig ear? Hell yes I did. And much to the shock of my gracious host, I ended up eating more of the dish than anyone else.

Would I order it again? Maybe not. But that's only because I would want to try something new.

So next time you find yourself in a new place, do yourself a favor and don't eat the same thing as you always eat. Why live in the same old shell all the time when there's so much outside of your shell that's interesting? Even if you don't like it, you'll have gained a unique experience. And what's the point in life if not gaining experiences? It's like pokemon, you know; gotta catch 'em all.

~Jeffles

Definitely the Electric Toilet

Hi again everyone. I'm a bit late this week, my apologies. But better late than never, right?

In fact, if you've been following my youtube channel, you may have noticed that I have a new video up! This one has seriously been a long time coming and for that I really am sorry. If you want to know what has really held me up, it's the video editing.

First, there's the fact that the video editing software seriously eats up my system resources, thus meaning that using the program to do finnicky things (like editing video) is really difficult. Fine control is virtually impossible. Second there's the fact that it simply takes a lot of time to edit video. You have to keep going over and over the same bit again to find the exact spot you want to cut/add in/fade/whatever and the time adds up. These reasons plus the fact that I'm usually already quite tired by the time I get home means that video editing often gets put on the back burner.

So yeah, video editing is really quite tiresome in many ways. It's rather rewarding in the sense that you could end up creating something really cool, but it kind of takes some work. This is, I strongly suspect, why so many people just upload their videos without any editing. I can't do that. My videos would look like complete and utter crap and no one would want to watch them. Hell, the editing I do isn't even that complicated. It's basically just cutting and trimming here and there.

Anyway, that's the reason why I've been slow at putting up videos. And with NaNoWriMo coming up, I'm probably going to continue to be slow at videos. Most of my energy is going to be going into my novel and I make no apologies for that. Blog entries will also probably get shorter. Alas, that's just the way it is.

Speaking of NaNo, I've been diving headfirst into that. Haven't started writing yet, of course (it's not yet November), but I've been doing lots of planning and practice. Need a lot more of both than I'm managing to do, but I'm doing my best. Almost done with some characterization questionaires for my two main characters and I've gotten a lot of ideas from that. Also, I have a much better grasp on my characters, which makes me happy. Yay.

It's interesting how much I've dived into this. At work, between classes, eating lunch, I'm always thinking about it or trying to get some planning and/or practice done. Even standing around in class sometimes, if I've been relegated to being a tape recorder, I often find my thoughts wandering off. What would Enos order for his last meal? Is Rachel one-dimensional? Where exactly should the novel start off?

Then I hear a "...Jeffu-sensei..." and suddenly it's back to reality and work. But strangely, it feels almost as if I've been ripped out of reality and into some strange place that I don't understand. Well, to be fair, this is Japan. It is a strange place that I don't completely understand. But that's beside the point. I'd have the same feeling if I were in the US or Canada.

Anyway, I expect things are only going to get worse over the next month and a half. Once I start actually writing the novel... well, it'll be interesting to see what happens, anyway.

*coughjoinmeinmynanocrazinesscough*

This weekend I'm heading back to Osaka for a couple days. I've been invited into a Japanese family's home for dinner and such and there's no way in hell I can decline an invitation like that. Really, it's not that common of a thing to happen. Hell, my host took a day off work to spend the day cooking dinner for when I arrive tonight. So we'll see how that goes. We were supposed to go to Kyoto for the Jidai Matsuri this weekend, but it's going to rain. My host said that, as a result, we probably won't go. Sad times.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. Talk to you next week.

~Jeffles

P.S. I feel like passing along a question asked by one of my younger students. Mostly because it's too strange not to. What's your favorite electric appliance in Japan?

Kyoto Days and Kyoto Nights

Last weekend was yet another long weekend and, as I mentioned, I went to Kyoto. As a result, I have decided to blog about it. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to begin.

My friend told me to begin at the beginning. Fair enough, I said, but where does the beginning begin? Is it when I arrived in Kyoto? Is it when I boarded the Shinkansen in Fukuyama? Is it when I rushed out the office door in hopes that I would make it to my train on time? Or perhaps it begins with my blog post last Thursday, when I expressed my hopes for momiji in Kyoto?

For that matter, where does it end? I did far, far too much over the course of my weekend to divulge information on every single occurrence. And besides that, this is a public blog, you know. Some things are probably better left unsaid. Perhaps you're thinking "He must be exaggerating. How much can you do in just a few days?" If so, you've probably never been to Kyoto.

Okay, I've decided. I'm going to take the path of the wanderer, probably the one most apt for me. That is, I'm just going to say whatever comes to me as it comes to me. Let me begin with my last blog post, because that's where I last left you off and I'm not cruel enough to simply leave you hanging around like some lost little kitten.

There was no momiji in Kyoto. I had been misled. Not by anyone else, of course; no, I'd been misled by myself and my own experiences. That's the one thing you have to remember when you go to a new country and it's the one thing that I, of course, forgot. When you're halfway across the world, you cannot expect things to work in the same way. By now, back in Canada and the Northern US, leaves are probably changing colors. By halfway through November, the trees will be nearly bare. At that time, the first cold breaths of winter will be yawning after a long summer's nap. Not in Japan.

Here in Japan, the rice may be ripe and the humidity may have left us far behind, but the trees are not yet ready to change. True, a few select trees are now clad in a glorious red like the setting sun, but they are the exception, not the rule. While in Kyoto, I was told by my friend that momiji will be in its fullest splendor sometime in mid-November. Given the previous paragraph, you are probably not surprised that this was not what I expected. So, no momiji for me.

But that was probably the only disappointment of the trip. Well, that and the fact that I didn't see any geisha. But that doesn't really count, because Geisha are not a once-a-year occurrence and I will almost certainly be going back.

In truth, I may have seen a pair of Geisha and simply not remembered it. You see, my friend and I, along with a group of other foreigners that we met up with, decided to indulge in a little karaoke. But the price of nomihoudai (all you can drink) plus karaoke was a bit high, so we decided to bring our own drinks in with us. And I think you can see where this is going, so I will stop there. This is a public blog, after all. Who knows who could be reading it. Hell, my mother could be reading it... Hi Mum.

Anyway, the point is, I didn't see any Geisha. But I did get to sing Sum41, Beastie Boys, and Queen, so it all balances out in the end.

But let me talk a little bit about the cultural aspect of Kyoto, because it really is quite something. It is, after all, the city of a thousand temples. And I do mean that literally. In fact, it is so amazing that the president of the United States during WWII ensured that Kyoto was taking off the list of bombing targets. Neither regular nor atomic bomb touched the city at any point in the war. Military importance be damned, Kyoto would not be harmed.

Of all the temples that I saw, I would have to say that Sanjusangendo was probably my favorite. (It translates roughly to 33-length-hall, but I'd say it's something more like The Hall of 33 Spaces In-Between... not that that makes much more sense unless you've seen it.) Anyway, Sanjusangendo is famous due to its 1001 Buddha statues. But just saying it like that fails to paint much of a picture, so let me describe my experience.

First, I walked into the hall and looked to my right. I saw something like a set of wooden bleachers, upon which stood several shiny statues. As I came around to the front, I realized that these statues, each one of which was life size, had been lacquered in gold. And more over, every one of them was different in little ways. The angle of their hand, the slant of their eye, and often something major like what they held in their hand would be different from every other statue. You could practically taste the effort the original artisans had put into creating these statues.

So there I was, walking along, looking at these gorgeous creations. In front of them were 28 guardian dieties, the two most prominent of which are Fujin and Raijin. The inner nerd in me rejoiced to see those two dieties in particular. You see, I am a fan of the Final Fantasy games and Final Fantasy 8 features two characters named Fujin and Raijin. And now I have first-hand experience of the inspiration for these characters, who are far and away two of my favorite characters in the game. Anyway, enough of that.

I could go on and on about the deities represented in this hall. Fujin and Raijin, for example, are the gods of wind and thunder respectively and some of the oldest gods in the Shinto pantheon. They are feared and respected and almost always seem to come together. The statues in the Sanjusangendo are particularly important statues of them, as they date back very far and are some of the most detailed, unique, and well crafted versions of them. In fact, a great many subsequent statues of the gods were little more than copies of these two originals.

But it's probably better if you just research it yourself. There's far too much to say. It is important to mention, though, that the 1001 statues are all statues of Kannon, a very, very important god in Buddhism.

So there I was, in the midst of an intellectual amazement. I looked down the hall a bit and saw that the block of statues had an ending point soon. But as I walked a bit farther, I realized that this was not the end. No, not at all. In fact, the hallway went down even further than I thought. I reached the end of that first block of Kannon statues - it must have been about 500 - and was gobsmacked by a gigantic statue of Buddha. It was probably the size of 100 of the other statues. Its eyes were gigantic crystals, its cheeks were jolly, and yes, it too was lacquered entirely in gold. More importantly, I was only halfway through the hall.

Eventually, I reached the real end of the hallway. At that point I learned that in the Edo era (1600 - 1868), the hallway behind all the statues (which was just as long, I assure you) was used for a famous archery competition. The archer would sit down at one end of the hall and, for 24 hours, fire as many shots as possible at the far end of the hall. Mind. Officially. Blown.

After a short recovery period, we headed off for Kiyomizu temple to watch the sunset and meet up with some foreigners who were coming up from Osaka. The night was just beginning.

I could give you the highlights for the rest of the trip, but highlights are boring. Highlights are vague, non-descriptive entities for the lazy. I could tell you I played with monkeys, but that would leave out any description of the view from the top of the mountain, or the fact that we initially didn't even climb the right mountain. It would leave out the koi fish pond and the children's playground beside the monkey haven. I could tell you that I saw the kinkaku-ji temple, also known as the Golden Pavilion. But that would leave out a description of the reflection pool in front of it. That wouldn't mention the historical importance of the temple, the fact that it was designed as a zen retreat, the fact that only the most splendid of the temples has survived to the current day, and that even that most splendid of temples was actually burnt down in 1950 by a crazy monk/student guy, then rebuilt in 1955.

So I'm going to leave it at that. If you're reading this and you have not seen Kyoto, believe me when I say that you are missing out. I don't say that a lot, because I think that people should be happy with the choices they've made. But seriously, you need to see Kyoto.

~Jeffles

The Daily Bread

Hey, been a while. How's things? Wife and kids doing alright? Good, good...

Good god. Let there never be a day when I actually say those things in earnest.

It's interesting that when I sit down to write these blog entries, I often find it difficult to actually think of things to write about. This is interesting because it's not as if I have nothing to write about. Quite literally, every single day is packed. I don't have one weekend to myself this month and I haven't had a weekend to myself since coming to Japan two months ago. Already, next month's weekends are getting taken up.

Yeah, that last one's gonna be a bit of a problem. You see, I've been planning for a while to take part in NaNoWriMo. For those of you too lazy to click though the link, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. Frankly, the name is a bit of a misnomer; it's actually quite international.

At any rate, the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (that's November 1st to November 30th). Whip out your calculator, please. Yes, you are quite correct, those numbers mean that any bright-eyed NaNoWriMo Writer must churn out a paltry 1,667 words a day. Me being the busy bee that I am, I'm aiming for 2000 words a day. That should give me a buffer of 5 days to slack off-- I mean, 5 days in case of emergency.

Alternatively, I could just write an extra 10,000 words. But let's be serious here.

This word count means that time is of the essence. It's not easy to write 2000 words a day. And it's even more difficult to write 2000 good words a day. That takes time, which the prospective writer does not exactly have a lot of. When, further, weekends and weeknights are being snatched from the writer's grasp by hungry socialites, life suddenly becomes very difficult.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Perhaps I just wish to illustrate the insanity involved in this task. Perhaps I'm indulging in a bit of that self-loathing that I keep hearing people like to sometimes do. Well! Enough of that. I will conquer this task and I will become the next Earnest Hemingway and Luke, I am your father.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

Recently, the temperature has dropped significantly. I'm talking 20 degrees, plus the sudden absence of humidity, and just within the last two weeks. Suddenly I'm wearing sweaters, long pants, and jackets to work. It feels like just yesterday I was sweating through both my undershirt and work shirt without even moving. As I am a staunch opponent of cold weather, this is frightening to me. But the bright side of this is momiji (the autumn change of the leaves' color).

This weekend is a long weekend due to that most sacrosanct of Japanese holidays: Health and Sports Day. As a result, I'm heading to Kyoto with a fellow ALT from my town. Kyoto, the cultural center of Japan, is particularly known for its momiji. Around here, the world is still largely a verdant green. But there are signs of change. The rice fields have turned into a thousand pools of sunny yellow. Scattered across the bike paths are dead, fallen leaves. Things are changing. My hope is that in Kyoto, momiji has begun.

I'll let you know later how it goes. 'Till then, take care. And don't forget to feed the children. They need their daily bread, you know.

~Jeffles

Expectations

Japan has spoken and I have listened.

"Jeffles! Stop trying to predict me!"

Ah yes, Japan. I hear you loud and clear. How could I not? Your voice surrounds me, quite literally.

A week ago, the forecast claimed that it would be raining in Okayama and Osaka until further notice. It did indeed rain the first day. And at first glance, I thought the second day might follow suit. Instead, however, the skies cleared and I sweated my proverbial skin off.

You see, a typhoon was headed for Japan. And based on the predicted path, it would be slamming straight into Okayama. (I was planning a vacation to Osaka that weekend and took the liberty of actually researching this.) Of course, the typhoon soon changed its mind, took a breath, and slammed into the eastern half of Japan instead. You have may heard about it. In fact, it is apparently still throwing up rain in parts of Japan. Here in Okayama, though, it's been all sunshine and peaches.

That's not exactly true. The temperature has dropped some 10 - 13 degrees Celsius and winds are stronger than normal. But on the balance of things, that's not so bad.

And for those who are wondering, yes I did go to Osaka! And yes, it was wonderful. Wonderfully wonderful, in fact. I shall be heading back at a later date. I had the confusing experience of getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and ants in the middle of the city, but otherwise I quite enjoyed it. There was a danjiri festival, which I of course took copious photos of. There was the eating of shaved ice. There was shopping in a store where all the employees were dressed as ninjas. And much more! I didn't make it to the castle or the Shinto shrine which is said to be the oldest in Japan, but I am planning to be back in Osaka later in October. At that time, the leaves should be changing color and I quite look forward to it.

This weekend is another three day weekend. That's right, two three day weekends in a row. Praise be to Japanese holidays. My plan is to go to Miyajima (an island with the famous red floating torii gate) for Friday and then Shiraishi Island on Sunday for the Moooo Bar's end-of-season party. Yay island time.

That's all for now. Off to the night-class! Wheeeee~

~Jeffles

The Day of the Insects

Before coming to Japan, I was warned. The country, especially in the south, had a problem with bugs. That is to say, bugs of the worst sort claim the country as their own. The fact that there are also humans nearly everywhere has apparently been no deterrent. One might even say that it encouraged them.

Where I live, the south, is prime territory for an encounter. For instance, in the entrance to my apartment (the outside entrance, not the inside) are three large spider webs. And I seriously mean large. Each web is the size of a grade school child. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that such a child hasn't previously been caught in one of these webs. I allow them to live, however, because they are preferable to the hordes of flies and mosquitoes that the webs' residents consume every day.

There are two bugs in particular that I was warned about: the mukade and the suzumebachi. Each one is devilish in its own way. The first, the mukade, literally looks like a demon. It's a giant, red centipede with pincer-like horns (in addition to its actual pincers) and a black exoskeleton that looks like demonic armor plating. I have not yet met with one of these creatures and I hope that I never will.

Here in Japan, summers are hot. Really hot. Mostly, it's the humidity that gets you, but things are made even worse by the fact that use of air conditioning is frowned upon. At home, I don't care. I use it anyway, or else I would be constantly sitting in a pool of sweat. I love the heat, truly I do. But I don't love sitting in a pool of my own sweat, soaking through my shirt, chair, and rug. I've been in hot places before, even hotter places than Japan, but I've never sweat so much in my life. It's like being in a sauna everywhere you go.

Anyway, all of this is to say that classrooms, with around 30 hot bodies in them, get very hot in the summer without air conditioning. So people tend to keep the windows open and make liberal use of fans. The idea is to get a cross-breeze going.

Bugs often will fly in and out of the room. Butterflies seem to be the most common of these. A couple days ago, though, something else entirely flew in. And worse yet, it couldn't seem to find its way out again.

At first, I thought it was a bee. Every bug that you know of back home is larger in Japan, so it was probably just a large bee. So went my thought process. And, I figured, it was probably just passing through. Wait a minute and it would be gone. Well, three minutes later, it wasn't gone. Worse still, the entire class had ground to a halt. The teacher seemed paralyzed and the students, well, the students had essentially become a screaming mob.

I realized that, just like the teacher and the students, I was doing nothing about the situation. Was I going to be scared of a creature that I am 1000x the size of? Was I no different from a third grader? Well, put like that, I decided it was time for action, time for a gaijin smash. There didn't seem to be a fly swatter of any sort, so I grabbed the text book. I would have used my hand, but I wanted to avoid getting stung. This turned out to be a smart idea.

The bug flew near me and I swung my textbook, but missed. The students screamed as one as they realized what I was doing. "Stupid gaijin, aggravating the giant insect!" they seemed to say. Well, I thought, if I don't do it, then it ain't gonna leave. So I chased it to a window on the other side of the class room. As I continued to swat at what I thought was a giant bee, I finally understood the babbling of the students. They had been saying "suzumebachi."

Now, let's pause here for a moment and head over to wikipedia. What does it have to say about the suzumebachi? First of all, it clearly points out that this insect is not a bee, it is a hornet. An Asian Giant Hornet, to be exact. More importantly, however, it says that "Each year in Japan, the human death toll caused by Asian giant hornet stings exceeds that of all other venomous and non-venomous wild animals combined, including wild bears and venomous snakes." Yeah, that's right, the suzumebachi is deadlier than wild bears and venomous snakes.

A few more points from the wikipedia page for your perusal:

1) Its venom is potent enough to kill you even if you're not allergic to it.

2) Its venom is potent enough to dissolve human tissue.

3) Due to the fact that its mandibles are so incredibly large, it can bite and sting you at the same time.

4) It is a hornet, so it can sting you as many times at it wants, just in case it wasn't satisfied the first time around.

5) When it stings you, the chemicals in its venom attract other suzumebachi, so now you get to deal with a whole horde of them instead of just one.

So I think you'll understand why, when I heard the word "suzumebachi," I dropped the textbook and went for a weapon with a slightly larger reach. A fellow teacher passed me a broom and I wondered why no one had given me one earlier. I guess fear is to blame for that, too. Anyway, I eventually managed to trap the killer hornet behind a glass pane and slowly push it outside.

I returned to the front of the class, unharmed and a hero to thirty-odd third graders. Later that day, I noticed that my preying mantis friend had returned to my bike basket. It made me glad to know that he was safe. After all, suzumebachi like to eat those guys too.

~Jeffles

When One Week is Two and Typhoons Ruin ALL Your Fun, Blog About It!

I've been teaching now for about a week, but somehow, it already feels longer. I have to wonder why this is? Perhaps it's been so boring that I feel like I've been thrust into some sort of rut from which I can't get out? After all, they say that time flies when you're having fun, and obviously time is not flying.

I don't think that's it, though. After all, I'm not bored. Seriously, not even in the least. In fact, I feel almost as if I've been run off my feet. Every class I've been to is completely different from the others and requires a different approach. Add that on to the fact that I have eight different schools and hundreds of kids' faces and names to memorize. Whoever said that Japanese kids are all the same obviously had no idea what he or she was talking about. And then there's the travel time (by bike, of course) between schools and Judo classes on top of that. It's exhausting.

Furthermore, contrary to my earlier statement, time actually does fly. In class, I can't help but feel as if I don't have anywhere near enough time to present everything. As well, I constantly feel as if I need more time to prepare myself for class, both mentally and physically. And I'm always wondering if I'm going to actually make it to class in time. It's as if I actually don't have enough time in the day.

Yet, when I'm lying on the floor at home, I look back on everything that happened and I think to myself, "Wow, that was a long day." I think about how much I accomplished and wonder if it all really happened in only a few hours. I think it is this that my sense of an elongated work week is derived from. I am doing so many things that it seems as if each day was actually two days. Apply this to a week full of wide-eyed first-encounters and we end up with an exhausted Jeffles who feels as if two weeks have been packed into one. Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't see this coming.

In other news, a typhoon passed through the country over last weekend. As it's Thursday, this is old news. But it hasn't been mentioned on this blog, so it ain't old news here! Also, it was my first typhoon, so it deserves mention.

The storm landed on Friday morning. Friday was also my first day of school. Because of the typhoon, though, they crammed all my classes into the morning and told me to head on home after lunch. First day and things are already interesting! (I'm also fairly certain that I fended off two kancho attempts, speaking of interesting.)

The bike ride home, normally a 20 minute affair, took nearly twice as long due to the wind and rain. I had to stop two times, just to catch my breath, and am fairly certain that I would have actually made it home faster if I were walking. Thanks to that ride, I decided that there was no way I was leaving my home until the storm had passed. As it turns out, I had actually been biking home at what was essentially the worst time of day to be out.

I wasn't so lucky as to actually be able to stay inside all weekend, though. I couldn't even stay inside all day. That night was the welcome party for the new ALTs in my town (of which I am obviously one). So out I went again, though luckily the wind and rain had temporarily died down. Thinking luck was on my side, I decided to bike to the meeting spot. Bad decision.

The party itself was great. We each gave short speeches in broken Japanese to much applause, then proceeded to consume vast quantities of both food and booze. I personally spent much of the night attempting to communicate with my fellow Japanese workers to varying degrees of success. When the first party finished, we then moved on to the second location, a karaoke lounge that apparently the party had rented out. The fooding and boozing continued, of course, until I was well past tipsy.

This is when my bad decision became obvious. During the course of 5 or so hours, the typhoon's fury had returned. I had a choice to make; either bike back through the wind and rain and drunken haze, or leave my bike out in the elements and have to go pick it up the next day, when the typhoon was expected to be ever stronger and I would be in the full grip of a terrible hang over. It was a lose-lose situation.

"Let's get this over with," I thought, and proceeded to bike home. As I don't actually remember the bike ride home, I would like to believe that I made the right decision. After all, what you can't remember can't hurt you, right? Ahem...

Anyway, I stayed inside for the rest of the weekend. We ALTs had been planning to take part in a tea ceremony on Saturday, but seriously? Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

By Sunday morning, the typhoon had gone and taken all its bad juju with it. Since then, the skies have been clear and the winds have been delightfully light. The mornings and evenings are starting to get cool, though. It looks like Fall is on its way.

~Jeffles

Farewell, Dear August

I have been in Japan for a month. I know this because August has ended and when I arrived, August had only just begun. This also means that summer is over.

For the last week or so, I've had a regular companion on my way to work. I was half-way to work one morning when I realized that there, on my bike's front basket, sat a preying mantis. At first I thought it was just a withered, curled up leaf. In fact, that leaf was two preying mantises (mantisi?), gettin' it on in the summer heat. That's right, my bike was defiled with insectoid love juices.

The next time I saw the "withered, curled up leaf," it was without its special friend. I've heard that a preying mantis will eat its lover after sex. So when I saw my lonely companion, I was a little concerned. What happened to the other one? I never found out.

The remaining preying mantis joined me on my morning bike rides to work a total of six times. By the sixth time, it was almost a friendly sight. Twice it had climbed up towards the handlebars, as if seeking comfort in my proximity. Now, I wouldn't call myself particularly squeamish, but I'm also not that fond of bugs. So even though I felt I was getting on somewhat friendly terms with this preying mantis, I was also well aware of its warrior reputation. Sadly, I must report that I rebuffed both of its advances and did not allow it to climb upon my hand.

This morning I noticed a brown, curled up leaf lying at the bottom of the staircase, twiggy legs sticking up into the air, motionless.

I have read that a preying mantis only lives for 8 or 9 months, so I won't mourn the little fella's passing. It was probably his/her time. It did, however, make me feel even stronger that something was coming to an end. I usually get this feeling at the end of the summer, but this time it seems a little bit different. This time it seems as if I'll never have a real summer again. My guess: that's because I won't.

Today I am the only person in the office. The other ALTs in my town have all started teaching at their schools, but I start tomorrow. As we have spent the last month, all of us, sitting here in this office, our sudden separation is undoubtedly fueling my sense of the "end times."

On the positive side, I expect that tomorrow I will have a renewed sense of adventure. Tomorrow I begin to teach. It will be a new experience for me and I fully expect to be both freaked out and completely immersed in my surroundings.

But for now, things are ending and that's a little sad.

~Jeffles

How To Get Killer Abs in 365 Days... or More!

So I guess this is a once a week thing now? Something like that, I suppose. Though it's only been 5 days since the last post... Whatever. Schedules were never my thing anyway.

I've decided that I'm going to become super fit by the end of my year (or two?) in Japan. This isn't because I set out to become fit or anything like that. This is simply a side effect of my life here. There are two reasons for this: 1) Biking 2) Judo.

1) Biking. I don't particularly have a choice in the matter here. I have to bike everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I'm quite happy to bike. It sure as hell beats walking, and I don't have a driver's license so even if I was allowed to drive, I wouldn't be able to. However, the majority of my schools are a 20 to 30 minute bike ride away. That means that on a near daily basis, I'll be biking for an hour in semi-hilly terrain. Wind, rain, snow, whatever, I'll be biking through it. I expect that is going to burn off quite a few calories.

2) Judo. About two years ago I decided I was finally going to start a martial art. This was, coincidentally, when I began a study-abroad year in Scotland. I checked out the various clubs and Judo seemed like the coolest. After talking with my sensei over the course of the year, I heard tales from her about what it was like to train in Japan. It made me really, really want to do it myself.

Flash forward to now. Since knowing that I was going to go to Japan, it has been my goal to join a Judo club. Again, this is not because I want to get fit. This is because I love Judo. I'm actually pretty bad at the sport, but that doesn't really matter to me. I do my best and I want to experience the way the Japanese teach it. After all, they invented the sport and they are still the best in the world at it. That's gotta say something. So twice a week I bike to the dojo (another 20 minute bike ride up a hill), train for an hour and a half, and bike back home. And yes, it is exhausting. That DEFINITELY burns a few calories.

A little bit about the Judo club. As I've said, I live in the inaka. Not the super inaka where towns only have a population of like 1000, but still pretty inaka. That means that there's not a lot of people here, so it's hard to have a serious Judo club. The one that is run in my town (and seems to be the only one for quite a wide area) is therefore aimed not at serious Judo practitioners, but at kids. Serious Judo practitioners would move to the serious Judo dojos, which are in the larger cities. The purpose of this club, as far as I can tell, is to instill a love of the sport in the community. As well, it is a way for the community to get together.

The structure of the lesson goes something like this. First, the kids warm up. This begins with a jog around the room. I, being the big ol' gaijin, naturally chase them around the mats while they yell their heads off out of fear at what I'll do when I catch them. Pyohoho. Then they do stretches, push ups, and sit ups. I join them in this. Then they do some floor crawling - pulling yourself across the mats using only your forearms. It sounds easy, but it's actually quite hard after the first 40 feet or so.

Next, thoroughly warmed up, we practice the forms for throwing (this is called uchikomi). At this point I separate from the kids. Makes sense, right? Why would I be practicing how to throw a 10 year old? So I get paired up with one of the sensei and they instruct me while I desperately try to understand what they're saying. It takes a little while, but it works. The good thing is that they can usually show me what they're talking about. Body language, hooray!

Finally, we go into randori. This is where my real weakness shows. Booooo. See, I don't have the stamina built up yet to do constant randori like they do. Yes, even the kids are able to do more randori than I am. I know, shameful. What is randori, you ask? Basically, it's where we go full strength at each other for three minutes straight, then switch partners and do it again. This happens about 5 or 6 times. You want tiring? Try doing ANYTHING at absolutely full strength for 15 to 18 minutes straight. Keep in mind that you also have an opponent who is matching you in strength. In my case, they're matching my strength and WAY surpassing my technique. So yeah, kind of an uphill battle.

And then it's over. Today they brought out a box full of Aquarius after practice. Aquarius is like a sport's drink. Think gatorade, but a little less sweet and with only one flavor, which I have no idea how to describe. It's kind of like... yeah, I have no idea. Sugary water with a dash of lemon, minus the bitterness? Maybe. Anyway, it's good.

So yeah, if this training routine doesn't get me fit within a year, I don't think anything will.

~Jeffles

The Land of Sunshine

I've been in Japan for three weeks now and every single day has had the following routine: wake up, look outside, see the sun, feel the heat, drown in the humidity, turn on the AC. Of course, since I actually can't get enough of the heat and humidity, I should probably be using verbs that indicate the pleasure I have been lucky enough to experience over the last three weeks. In my ideal world, I would be living in a tropical paradise for thirteen months out of the year. Yes, you read that right. Thirteen months out of the year.

Speaking of tropical paradise, you may recall me mentioning Shiraishi island. There's also a little bit about Shiraishi on my youtube channel. Please excuse the shameless self-promotion. Anyway, when I was on Shiraishi with the Okayama Orientation group, I made plans with another JET (whom I shall call Snowman) to go back to the island. We were only there for a few hours, you see, and because we were technically still on the clock, we weren't allowed to drink alcohol. So it made sense to return at a later date.

The date we picked was the weekend of the 20th and 21st of August. It was the first free weekend we had, fell right after payday, and was still summertime. It was, we agreed, ideal. So a few days later, I sent off an email and made reservations with a minshoku hotel near the beach (and the bar).

And then, about four days ago, I checked the weather forecast. Would you guess it? It was forecasted to be raining all weekend long. Of course, it would start Saturday morning and finish Sunday evening. Three weeks of no rain and suddenly, right when I want to actually use the sunshine, this happens.

As it so happens, the weatherman was right on. It came down on us like a game of whack-a-mole. And then, half an hour after arriving back in the apartment that I call home, the rain stopped. Sigh.

Snowman did not particularly enjoy the rain. In fact, I would say that it put something of a damper on his entire weekend. I didn't particularly enjoy the rain either, but I wouldn't say that it completely ruined the weekend. Sure, I didn't get to sit in the sun, go kayaking, or play frisbee in the water. But I did get to sit at the bar and crack jokes with fellow foreigners until the sun went down. I did get to see the islands of the Seto Inland Sea wreathed in a fog. And I did get to watch fireflies glow like tiny, blue LEDs as the nighttime waves rolled in.

I noticed, too, that the locals seemed not to care much that the world had suddenly turned grey. Snowman and I went to a place for lunch that served cheese curry. By the way, cheese curry is delicious. Especially for all you Poutine lovers out there, I highly recommend it. At any rate, the place is run by a family that goes to Shiraishi for the summer, but lives in Tokyo during the rest of the year.

The family had a cat and their cat was hilarious. Not that it actually did anything to warrant that descriptor; I'm calling it hilarious because of its face. It was completely flat and disproportionately tiny, especially in comparison to its eyes. After seeing those eyes, I understand anime so much better. Even more hilariously, though, it had what looked like a bushy white mustache. Most of its fur was grey and shaggy, except for its muzzle, which was bright white. The whole package reminded me of a perennially startled, disheveled professor. Probably a professor of Confucian philosophy, but don't quote me on that.

Discounting the cat, which surely belongs to a group of its own, the family consisted of a mother, a daughter, and a son (though the son may have been a boyfriend, I'm not too sure). Not one of them showed a single sign of displeasure at the weather. In fact, I can't think of a moment when there wasn't at least one person smiling at something. Most of the time, they chatted jovially, smoked on their porch, and played with the cat. Even Snowman and I were drawn in as we consumed their cheesy curry-goodness. For the time we were in that ramshackle little building, negativity had no place.

If there's one thing I can take from my weekend, it's this: don't waste time being negative. If something unexpected happens, oh well. There's fun things to be found, too. Look to those things and enjoy them. I haven't been in Japan very long, so I can't say for certain, but that attitude seems very prevalent and I'd like to imagine I can attain it too.

Thus: the rain was unexpected, yes, but I did enjoy my time on Shiraishi. In fact, the owners of the Moo Bar mentioned an end-of-the-season party in which attendees would have the task of drinking the bar dry. It's supposed to take place on the last weekend of September. So I expect I'll be back again, rain or shine... though a little bit of shine would nice.

~Jeffles

A Glimpse Into the Future?

Konnichiwa! Hisashiburi da ne?

(Google it if you don't understand.)

I would apologize for not having been around, but I have been around. Just, I've been on youtube. That's right, I have two new videos up! Watch 'em, love 'em, spread 'em around like hot butter on a slab of toast.

You can find them here and here respectively. The intro is new. Is it too long? Not enough sparkly transitions? Need more nearly-naked cat-girls? Let me know what you think.

So, I've covered a lot in the videos, but there's just no way to cover it all. That's what this here blog is for.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, my days have been so completely filled up that I honestly have no free time. That hasn't changed much. I think it will start to calm down a bit starting tomorrow, but only be for a short while. Once school starts up in September, I'm going to be crazy busy. I have eight different schools to go to, the majority of which require at least a half-hour bike ride...

Anyway, last weekend was yet another festival. It was really quite cool. I did take video of it and will be uploading another youtube jvlog soon, but there are some things that weren't captured on camera.

One of the previous ALTs, a successor of ours, came back to town for the evening. You see, he still had some things left here and needed to pick them up. He also was going to go to the Milky Way festival with us. So as a result, we all got to meet him.

I mention this because it is interesting to me. The majority of foreigners that I have met here in Japan have been people who are themselves new to Japan. We commiserate over our lack of Japanese language ability. We try to muddle through designing our first lesson. We come face-to-face, time and time again, with strange and weird Japanese customs. I won't even go into trying to navigate the train system. Then here comes this guy.

It's hard to explain what it was like to meet him for the first time. His hair, the color of granite, had been buzzed close to his head. Half his fingers were adorned with huge, intricate rings. Each one was different from the next, yet all were the size of small boulders. Around his neck hung a steampunk stopwatch that he said he picked up in Tokyo (or was it Osaka?) for about ￥2500. That it didn't work hardly seemed to matter.

Yet that doesn't really describe him either. He was a bundle of energy, but carried himself as if consciously subduing an inner beast that really, at the end of the day, just wanted to play. The first time I heard him speak, there were three young kids literally hanging off him to try and get the basketball in his hands. Without skipping a beat, he introduced himself to us, dislodged the children, and swished the ball.

As night fell and a dinner of somen noodles and incredible local fruit ended, we arrived at the festival. It was a bit of a drive as it was taking place up in the hills and we all lived in the town, but none of us really minded. It was something different, after all. Who doesn't like a little change of pace?

The minute we stepped onto the festival grounds, the scene transformed from one where we were simply strangers to one where gaggles of school children were swarming on our ring-clad sempai. What did he do? He reveled. Group after group after group came clambering over to him. He, cool as a a breeze on a hot summer day, dealt with them one by one, the smile never leaving his face. He took their energy and threw it right back at them. He challenged them to speak to us and they accepted the challenge, because it was he that posed it to them. They asked for pictures. They talked about their summers. They couldn't get enough.

And then he stepped away and left us. There were photos to take and he had to take them. Alone, we explored the festival grounds.

No one approached us. No one ran at us, shouting our names with glee. I bought some fried pork on a stick and chewed it thoughtfully, getting little more than a curious glance as the seller realized I was a gaijin. This man, our sempai, had only been here a year and had already garnered such a following. I supposed it was only natural. Kids are kids and they love strange things. He certainly was strange. And now he had moved on to bigger and better things. There was some sort of quasi-Christian, Buddhist sect in Kyoto that he said he was staying with. Soon they'd be sending him to Korea to further their mission of world peace. It sounded almost fictional.

Fireworks and a bonfire of paper lanterns plus tree brought the festival to an end. We returned to town. Our sempai took two of us out for drinks where, in spite of running on three hours of sleep, he displayed yet more of his genki self. At one point, he was so caught up in the story he was telling that he found it necessary to stand on his chair while he waved his hands and filled the one-room bar with his voice. No doubt drawn in by his energy, some guys at the bar top treated us to okonomiyaki and some dried squid thing (it was actually quite delicious). Finally, fatigue overtook us and we went our separate ways. He displayed one last act of generosity and paid for the entire night.

As I biked home down my narrow little street, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of man I would become in a year.

~Jeffles

Jeffles In Inaka

It's been a while. Honestly, I've been too busy to post much. Besides that, I don't actually have internet at home yet and there's no place with public internet access nearby. I have work, but well, it's work. Anyway, I figure it's okay for now. I get internet at home tomorrow apparently, so it's not like I'll be making a habit of this.

Right, I should explain. I'm living in Japan now. My blog title is finally accurate!

My town is a tiny place on the western border of Okayama prefecture. Well, I say tiny, but there are definitely smaller places. Out of all the inaka (middle-of-nowhere/rural places), we're probably one of the largest locations. Even so, it's pretty rural. I live in town, but the majority of the region is little more than hills upon rice fields upon yet more hills. It is absolutely gorgeous. I've already said that a thousand times to nearly everyone, but it bears repeating.

The street I live on is very much in the old Japanese style. It is a single lane (though traffic goes both ways, of course) that winds in something that may have been trying to approximate a straight line. The buildings on either side are largely wooden buildings with sliding door entrances. Nothing is larger than two stories and hidden alleyways lurk everywhere. Biking down the street is... well, feels a bit dangerous, but I haven't been hit yet. This is promising. I just have to ignore all the times I've almost been hit. :D

Next door to my apartment building is a Buddhist temple. If you're on my facebook, there's a picture of it there in my mobile uploads. I'm not sure what sect of Buddhism it is, though... to be honest, I'm a little intimidated by the place. I have yet to actually see anyone on the temple grounds. I could just pull out the gaijin card and wander in, but I'm trying to be a good neighbor!

Directly behind my apartment is what I've been told is a bar. I have to say that it looks pretty cool. It's kind of like a shed, the sort of thing that boys build in their backyard and claim as their fort. There are a couple shrines that surround it, too, and a small but well-tended yard in front. Some of the other ALTs and I have made plans to invade it at some later point... hopefully soon. It's another place I feel intimidated by...

I'm using a lot of ellipses today... I should cut down on that. Anyway, I hope that gives you a decent picture of where I'm living. My apartment itself is actually quite spacious. There's the genkan (entrance-way where you take off your shoes), a short hallway (about 15 feet long) with bathroom, washroom, and toilet room off to the side (each a separate room). Then there's a fairly large kitchen, a living room of equal size, and a Japanese-style tatami room of equal size. In Japanese measurements, it's a 6-mat room. For Americans/Canadians, I think that's about 9' x 9' for each room. It is, as I said, quite spacious.

As of tomorrow, I'll have been here for one week. It feels like twice as long, though, as every day has just been so full. Literally, every single day I've been busy. The first day we arrived, we had only enough time to get into our apartments and check out our bikes before we had to find our way to a nearby izakaya for our welcome party. Then the next day we had to set up our bank stuff and our phones (which took two days) and had another dinner out. The next day we went on a shopping trip for house items, finished getting our phones, and were granted an office-time trip to the art museum next door. That night was our first free night. I just went to sleep.

After that was the weekend and the summer festival (natsu matsuri). We had the days off to explore the town, but night time was reserved for the festival itself. The first night was the odori, or festival dance. As employees of city hall, we were expected to participate. That meant dancing in the streets for two or more hours. I lost track of time after a while. Because the dancers can't explore the festival stalls, though, we were all given booze and food for an hour before the dance began. The idea was: get drunk and dance. And yes, many people took full advantage. My alcohol tolerance didn't allow me to get super drunk, but I definitely appreciated the gesture. By the time the odori finished, I was completely exhausted. I checked out the remaining stalls and bought some yakiniku on a stick (which was so stringy - but delicious - that I nearly choked on it), hopped on my bike, and went home to sleep.

The next day was the hanabi (fireworks). It was also our sempai ALT's birthday (the ALT remaining from last year). So the town's local, unofficial, representative took us all out for some korean BBQ, which apparently is called yakiniku here (which confuses me immensely). Yakiniku means fried meat, which I thought was reserved entirely for fried beef, but I guess also refers to Korean BBQ. Anyway, that was super delicious and we headed out for the fireworks after. The fireworks were pretty spectacular themselves and I tried to take some video of it. Most of it turned out pretty blurry, but I think some of it might be usable. Apparently my camera is terrible at night-stuff. Sadness.

That marked the end of the natsu matsuri and the weekend. Yesterday I thought we would get some time just sitting around the office, but it turned out that we were off on a trip to the mountainous part of the area. One of us new ALTs has a house up there and will be teaching at schools in that area, so the bossman took us on a field trip. The mountainous area is, as is to be expected, even more rural and more beautiful. We drove around for a few hours and then got some ice cream, which was amazing. The day ended, I returned home, and I went to sleep again. Somehow, even that relatively easy day wore me out.

That was yesterday. Today has been much quieter. Our sempai ALT has gone back to the US for a few weeks. Apparently it's a big time for marriages. Go figure. I discovered that my washing machine doesn't work, so I got some help from one of the people around the office here and we went to my place to fix my washing machine. Hooray! Now I can have clean clothes! Super exciting, da ne? It was pretty funny watching him work. My Japanese isn't very good, so it ended up with him basically mumbling to himself and fiddling with things for an hour while I stood around like a scratching post. In the end everything worked out, though, and I am now eternally grateful. I was not looking forward to wearing curry-stained shirts to work.

That should more or less bring the internet world up to date. I could expand on any of the above points and illustrate the entire story, but this blog post is already long enough and there is just too much to cover!

Tomorrow the Okayama prefectural orientation begins. From what I've heard, it is not entirely useful, but I don't mind. I want to see Okayama City. And the final day we're going to Shiraishi, which is an island that has been described to me on several occasions as "a tropical paradise." I am quite looking forward to that. And it'll be cool to see how the other new JETs are doing. As I said, it's only been a week, but it feels like I've already been here for much longer.

~Jeffles