On the Shimanami Kaido

Hello again, sorry for the absence last Thursday. I wish I had an explanation, but I can't actually think of why I didn't post anything. Probably just got too caught up in life.

At any rate, I have an adventure to relate to you. That shall the meat of today.

But first, a little geography lesson. If you look at a map of Japan, you will notice that Japan is, in fact, not a single island. It is four islands. From north to south, they are Hokkaido (北海道), Honshu (本州), Shikoku (四国), and Kyushu (九州).

Japan.

You may also notice that there are four large bodies of water surrounding Japan. The Sea of Japan, the Pacific Ocean, the Philippine Sea, and the East China Sea. However, there is one sea which has not been mentioned or marked on the map: the Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海 Seto Naikai). The Seto Inland Sea, as you can observe on the wikipedia page I linked, is the body of water which lies between the large island of Honshu and the smaller island of Shikoku.

Last weekend, I attempted to bike across this sea.

No, I am not Jesus. There happens to be a route called the Shimanami Kaido that hops from island to island, taking you from Onomichi City (in Hiroshima prefecture on Honshu) to Imabari City (in Ehime prefecture on Shikoku). In between the two cities are six bridges, six islands, and approximately 80 kilometers. As the page I linked to you shows, you can also go from Shikoku to Honshu; it's a two way route. As my home prefecture happens to be on Honshu, we decided to start on Honshu and work our way south.

In my examination of the route in the days leading up to the adventure, I was put under the impression that the route was an easy and fast one. I also discovered that the average biker travels at a speed of 18 to 24 km/h. That means, assuming I travel on the low end I should have been able to complete the 80 km route in just over four hours. And indeed, I had read that people traveling at a leisurely pace had completed it in 8 hours. Definitely something that could be done in a day.

Or so I thought.

Turns out it was a much tougher bike ride than I'd been expecting. Part of the problem was, I think, that I was unfamiliar with the kind of bike I was riding. It was too small for me (a common problem here in Japan) and had these things called "gears" that I couldn't figure out. Add to that several long slopes, a very hot sun, and killer pollen... the bike ride took longer than I thought it would.

More or less exactly how I felt.

We met at the train station in Onomichi at about 10:30 in the morning, grabbed a couple of sandwiches, and set off for the bike rental shop. (We did not bring our bikes with us on the train. And I wouldn't want to anyway, because my personal bike for getting around town is frankly a piece of crap.)

The shop itself was very conveniently located. It was, in fact, pretty much right next to the dock. (You have to take a ferry to get from Onomichi to the first island. The only available bridge is for cars only.) To get there from the train station, you first take a right on exiting the station. Then follow the road on your left hand side (there will be buses galore) until you can't walk any further without crossing a road. Cross the road and turn right. Keep walking until you see a parking lot on your left-hand side. In the parking lot, at the opposite end, is the bike rental shop. For a ￥500 (~$6) fee plus a ￥1000 (~$12) deposit, you can rent any bike you like for a day.

But be warned, the bikes are a little bit on the small side. If I placed my foot on the pedal such that the middle of my foot was on the pedal, then turning the front wheel would actually jam the wheel onto my foot. As a result, I ended up biking with the balls of my feet for pretty much the whole way. Sigh.

Other than that, though, I was quite happy with the bikes. Mine had 8 gears and a solid feel. The seat was a bit narrow for my comfort, but it was no big deal, and if I'd been paying attention, I certainly could have chosen a bike with a wider seat.

So, by the time we bought our sandwiches, rented our bikes, got on the ferry, arrived at the first island, and got off the ferry, we had killed a full forty-five minutes. It was now about 11:15 and we were just getting started. This may have been the real reason we didn't make it as far as we'd hoped.

Nonetheless, convinced of our own prowess, we hopped on our bikes and went. The first thing that struck us was how incredibly gorgeous the island was. Especially once we got out of the center of the island and to the shore. The sea opened up before our eyes and before I knew it, I had my video camera in hand and the record button pressed beneath my thumb. Hopefully, I can find the time to put together a video, because that place was... stunning.

Biking on the shimanami kaido.

After the first bridge, which took us to Innoshima, we stopped near a giant dinosaur statue and had our lunch on the beach. No, I'm not joking. When you get off the bridge and go down the hill to your right, you'll soon see a large, white brontosaurus rising off in the distance. It stares at the sea, seemingly dreaming of a day when it will lift its plaster feet and walk among the waves. In the meantime, however, it contents itself with letting children climb all over it.

Having scarfed down our food and had a giggle at the Japanese people diving into the water in their underwear, we decided it was time to get back on the road. Well, mostly I decided. My eyes had turned into tiny balls of pure itchiness and my nose wouldn't stop sneezing. For whatever reason, though, my hayfever seems to disappear once I get moving. So back to the bike it was. By this time, it was about 1 PM.

We continued biking for another two hours, crossing the kuchi bridge and finding ourselves craving ice cream on ikuchujima. Thankfully, my ever trusty travel companion Clara happens to possess something akin to a radar for ice cream. When its presence is near, a blip goes off in her head and her eyes take on the glow of far-off starlight. She guided us to our ice cream and, again with much sneezing, my hunger was sated.

By this point, it was about 3:00 PM. We continued along the island road and found ourselves at a museum called the Ikuo Hirayama Museum of Art. This is a museum dedicated entirely to the work of a single artist: Ikuo Hirayama. It was a pretty nice museum, but nothing too spectacular in my opinion. I was far more captivated by the Kosanji Temple and Hill of Hope.

The temple.

I have seen nothing like this in Japan. The temple is clearly Japanese, yet there are so many Chinese influences at the same time. It's full of incredible colors and exquisite detail. Every part of every structure is adorned with decoration and everywhere you look, there is vibrancy.

Then, at the top of the complex, is this extraordinarily peculiar environment. The hilltop is covered in carved marble blocks. The whiteness of it is so bright I actually had to wear my sunglasses just to watch where I was walking.

The Hill of Hope.

I feel like my words don't do the place justice. Well, perhaps there are no words that can do the place justice. It is simply that astonishing.

After wandering around the complex for about 45 minutes, we decided that the best thing we could do at this point was catch a ferry home. It was only 4 PM, but with the ferry ride and the train ride, the return trip home would easily add several hours to that. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but it was a Sunday and I had to go to work the next day. In fact, I didn't end up getting home until after 9 PM. Oh, the joys of living in the inaka.

So I didn't quite make it across the Seto Inland Sea. But I made it about half way and, all considered, I'm pretty happy with that. I got a nice (farmer's) tan out of the adventure, too.

If I have the chance, I would like to try and do it again. Maybe spend the night on one of the islands and then finish the trip the next day. And if you get the chance, I would highly recommend you give it a go. For the scenery, if nothing else, give it a go.

That's it for this week. See you later.

~Jeffles

Golden Week: Part 1

(This post is rather long. Also early, because I won't be able to write a post tomorrow. I do it because I love you. <3)

It's now halfway through Golden Week and I feel like I'm just getting going. Hard to believe, really, when I consider just how much has happened since last Friday.

Fridays are one of two days in the week when I am sent on a half-hour bike ride to an Elementary school. The other day is Monday, which bookends my weeks nicely. This Friday, however, I was more concerned with whether or not I'd be able to make my train in time.

Luckily, it happened to be a week of home-visits. Every day last week, school would end after lunch and the students would head home. Shortly after, the teachers would stream out of the teacher room clad in identical black suits, carrying identical black briefcases, heading to their students' homes for a heart-to-heart with their students' parents. What that meant for me specifically, as a mere assistant teacher, was that I could finish up early and head to the Board of Education. From there, it's only 5 minutes by bicycle and I'm home.

I took full advantage of this fact. As soon as the clock hit 4:15, I ran down to my bike and turned a five minute ride into two minutes. At home, I rammed a long weekend's worth of clothes and toiletries into my backpack, and hopped back on my bike to head to the train station.

All in all, the entire procedure - BOE to home, packing, and home to train station - took about half an hour. And all I forgot was a tooth brush, which I soon found a ￥50 (~$0.60 USD) replacement for. Not too shabby.

Once in the great city of Okayama, the merriment began.

Our merry band

The plan was this: First, we would find a place to consume foods. Second, we would acquire the liquid beverages necessary to make the night perfectly forgettable. Finally, we would mosey on down to the club where our common friend was to execute his DJ skillz. At some point, presumably, we would have to emerge into the night/dawn and find something to do with ourselves. But we would cross that bridge when we got to it. And in the mean time, we could always book a capsule hotel.

As it so happened, we were bogged down from the first step. Our initial hopes of chowing down on a rooftop patio were beaten into nothing by the fact that Japan wasn't yet in "rooftop patio season." Instead, we ended up at a ridiculously over priced buffet restaurant that would later prove to be our downfall. You see, not only was it overpriced, it was also pretty much disgusting. In general, I'm not that picky when it comes to food quality. I have some picky habits (no bananas, thank you very much, and keep those raw tomatoes away from me), but if it's cooked, I'm usually okay with it. Still, I was admittedly daunted by what lay before me.

The fare was simple enough: fried rice and sushi, fried chicken and sausages, that sort of thing. But even the pasta was stale and seemed like it was, in fact, yesterday's dinner microwaved and presented today. Which made me suspicious of the sushi. Others, braver than me, tried the sushi and paid the price.

But that wouldn't come into play until later. In the mean time, we finished up our meal and headed out for the bar. It was time to take things to the next level. On the way we stopped into a konbini and bought ourselves a few chu-hais and canned beers. I know, real classy.

At the bar, we enlargened our group by about double. Possibly more, I'm not totally sure. We also consumed several more, slightly classier, drinks. Well, at least they weren't in cans. And I did have a glass of wine, which is definitely in a classier category than chu-hai.

Anyway, to cut a long list of drinks and drunken acts short, we got out of the bar after about an hour and a half, then headed to the club. As it turns out, the "club" was more like a private party for us. Not intended to be, I'm sure, but as we constituted about half the patrons, the club pretty much belonged to us.

Well, that's okay. I had expected it to be a small place.

Here, check out this video. It captures, in complete detail, the experience.

Seriously, I don't recommend watching the whole thing.

Sometime around 4 AM myself and a small remaining group stumbled out of the club. That small group then split into two and one group (mine) went to the capsule hotel while the other group went God knows where. Probably somewhere with more booze, if I were to guess.

As you might imagine, the following morning was something awful. I woke up after a fitful four hours of sleep and crammed some food into my mouth. An hour later, I was joined by two of my fellows and we plotted when to catch the train to Ise. One more person was supposed to join us, but the buffet food and booze had laid waste to his stomach and, quite frankly, he wasn't going to make it. He would try, he said, to catch a later train, but I wasn't holding my breath.

That day, not a whole lot was accomplished. Partly because our train didn't get into Ise until 2 PM. Mostly because actually doing things was not compatible with our current condition. To point: the first thing we did upon arriving in Ise was take a nap.

Us upon arrival.

Eventually we roused ourselves enough to make our way to a late lunch. We asked the hostelier for a recommendation and he pointed us in the way of Cafe Jamise. (You can see a picture of us here.) It turned out to be a truly awesome, chill spot. We seemed to be the only paying customers there, but we weren't alone. There was also some guy, apparently quite famous, playing a box-drum thing.

You know what, that description really doesn't do him justice. Let me try again.

There was also some guy, apparently quite famous, who introduced himself as Poutine. The entire time whilst we were talking, a constant drumming could be heard erupting from Mr. Poutine's direction - I quickly learned that this was a nearly unconscious act of his. The man's fingers drummed. It was their essence, their raison d'etre. A little bit later, he brought a Cajón out from his car and treated us all to a half hour of drum beats and finger rhythms that I could barely even follow with my eyes.

Suffice to say, he was pretty awesome.

We rounded out the rest of the day with some snacks by the river, an hour long game of 20 questions (highlights included "Under my bed" and "Air"), and shabu shabu. Just after sunset, we were joined by our final companion, who had finally ridden his stomach of all the vileness of the night before.

The next day could be an entire blog post in its own right. But as this post is already getting long, I'll sum it up in point form, chronological style.

• 10:00 AM - Awaken to our host playing super chill ambient music on his electric guitar.
• 10:30 AM - Wander into a konbini for breakfast, rush to the train station and barely make it onto the train for Futami and the Wedded Rocks.
• 10:45 AM - Arrive at the Wedded Rocks and wander about. Enjoy the ocean. Discover a several awesome frog statues. Collect sea shells and sea glass. Be happy.
• 11:45 AM - Catch train back to Ise.
• 12:00 noon - Arrive in Ise. Be disappointed at the fact that all the bikes have been rented. Decide instead to taxi it to the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu.
• 12:20 PM - Arrive at Inner Shrine, wallet feeling somewhat lighter. Eat lunch. Wander the grounds. Get told off by security guards twice for failed attempts at Gaijin Smashing. Be rather impressed by the whole thing.
• 2:30 PM - Take a taxi back to the hostel. Check out, inspect bags, be cool. Drop off one of our number who is feeling rather exhausted. Walk to Outer Shrine of Ise Jingu. Encounter Power Rangers.
• 3:00 PM - Arrive at Outer Shrine. Walk around, realize that many of its buildings are exactly the same as the Inner Shrine, except that the whole thing is rather smaller and less pretentious. Be pleased.
• 3:45 PM - Walk back to hostel, pick up exhausted companion, walk to the train station and catch a train to Osaka.
• 5:45 PM - Arrive in Osaka. Drop things off at capsule hotel. Visit a record shop and be blown away by the cheap and awesome selections. Make our way to El Pancho. Be full of food and joy.
• 9:30 PM - Go to L&L, a tiny shisha bar in Shinsaibashi. Apparently it is also a favorite hangout of Boys2Men and "The Green Jedi". We decided the guy meant Liam Neeson. Be impressed. Also amused.
• 11:00 PM - Finally decide on a club to go to.
• 11:30 PM - Arrive at said club, only to be told we have to wait another fifteen minutes. We go to get another chu-hai from the nearby konbini.
• 11:45 PM - Enter the club, only to discover that, including the three of us, there are a total of 12 patrons. But it's okay, because it's so full of fake fog that we can barely even see each other. Proceed to dance. Witness the Great Circle Dancer. Drink. Be happy and exhausted.
• 3:00 AM - Finally exit the club and head back to the capsule hotel to get some sleep. Be amused at the porn playing on tv in the hallway, climb into capsule, fall asleep.

The next and final day of the first half of Golden Week (Monday, if you've managed to follow thus far) was a much slower day. We ended up just perusing some shops, catching a showing of Dirty Harry in northern Osaka, and finally taking the bus back home.

Since then, I've been in my inaka little town. Yesterday and today I had classes to teach. But now, that's all over. This evening, Golden Week resumes.

I'm comin' for ya, Fukuoka.

~Jeffles

China: Part 3

Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final act is about to begin. If you would be so kind as to return to your assigned spots, we may commence. Thank you for your cooperation.

Please be warned that this is the longest of the three acts. If you require a bathroom break or a drink, please take care of that now. One the act begins, there will be no stopping.

And here we go in 3...

2...

1...

*



Let's fast forward now to my final full day in China. It was a Monday, a fairly normal Monday. A curtain of smog hung over the city, though its threat level hovered only at a mild "unhealthy" rating. Certainly manageable. Nonetheless, I had no plans to bother managing it.

I had booked a ticket to the Great Wall.

It's said that when a person goes to Beijing, there are two things he must do: eat Peking Duck and see the Great Wall. I'd managed the Peking Duck the previous night and it was time to his the second item on the list. The question was, where to start?

Lucky for me, my hostel had a Great Wall tour on offer. In fact, they had two. Seeing as how I was feeling a little tight - 900 yuan in cell phone rental fees will do that to you - I opted for the cheaper one. Nonetheless, it looked pretty cool. I'd been told to avoid the tourist trap otherwise known as Badaling and this tour quite clearly went somewhere else. Good enough for me.

(For the curious, my destination to-be was Jinshanling.)

The girl behind the front desk informed me of the price and the pick-up time. 6:20 AM. My first thought: "Damn, that's early." But it was a full day at the Great Wall that I'd wanted and it was a full day that I got. This information was followed up by a reminder that it took three to four hours to drive to the Great Wall, thus the early pick-up time. We wouldn't be back until five or six in the evening.

I happily told the girl that would fine and wandered up to my room to read my book and get some early shut eye.

6:20 rolled around and with it a knock on my door.

"Coming!" I replied. The lack of response suggested I was not dealing with an English speaker. Opening the door confirmed that yes, the man outside was Chinese and spoke no English.

I raised two fingers. Two minutes and I'll be ready, I was trying to say. Sign-language was never a strong suit of mine, but he nodded and headed downstairs. I hurriedly slipped on my jacket and hat, swung my bag around my shoulder, and headed out the door. No time to shave, but that was okay; I could think of no particular need to make myself presentable.

When I arrived downstairs, I noted a distinct lack of people. There was only myself, the desk girl, and the Chinese man who was, I presumed, my guide. Perhaps everyone else was already on the bus, I thought.

Following the man outside, however, showed me that there in fact was no bus. We walked to a black car parked along the curb. It was in relatively decent condition. Corrosion from rust was limited to the edges of the car's frame and nothing too serious. I climbed into the back seat.

Well, I guess it's just me, I thought to myself.

My driver opened his door and sat down. He fiddled with the radio for a moment before selecting a Mandarin talk-radio station. At the same time, I searched for a seat belt, which I quickly realized was a futile search.

Then we were off, driving through the center of the city, around the Drum Tower, down the street, then onto the second ring road. For those who don't know, Beijing's walls were knocked down in the cultural revolution to be replaced by the second ring road. While a convenient road for transportation, it is also a reminder of what the city has lost.

After driving for about half an hour, we stopped at a light. Crossing the road in front of us was a group of nearly thirty tourists (exactly 28, I later learned). Oh, I thought. Maybe they're going to the Great Wall, too. Clearly they were headed for one of the buses parked just to the side.

As it turns out, my guess was dead on.

The man driving the car executed a U-turn as the light turned green and drove to a stop in front of the bus. I was, I suddenly realized, not alone. And this man was certainly not my tour guide. He'd simply been asked by the hostel to take me to the tour.

The light bulbs, they flicker in my head.

I gathered up my bag and rushed onto the bus. Just in time, as it turned out. They were ready to leave.

Three hours later, the duration of which time I had been crammed into a tiny space between my arm rest and a large German man, we arrived. Only one stop had been required on the way, a bathroom break.

I note this because the tourists coming back on the bus made several incredulous noises relating to the dirt-hole nature of the bathroom. I barely suppressed my own incredulous noise; what exactly had they been expecting, I wondered? Just how romanticized were their views of rural China?

At any rate, we arrived at Jinshanling with no further incidents.

We got off the bus and had our first real glimpse of the Wall. The road we were on winded up the hills on the Northern side. On the highest hills in the distance, rising above the rest, was a lone tower. It was brownish in color and squat-looking, but clearly formidable. Off its sides ran two long, jagged lines, like the flattened wings of a ragged bird. Somehow, it was smaller than I had expected. But I also knew it was still quite far away and would seem much bigger soon enough.

What was exactly as expected was the crowd of local villagers trying to foist their assorted coke bottles and snickers bars onto us. Thanks to my unshaven face and dark sunglasses, they didn't seem to bother much with me. Still, a few people did approach me with offers. I simply shook my head in response and turned my face in another direction.

We continued on the road to the wall and discovered another group waiting for us. I took this group in stride, too. The same routine followed.

"Snicker? Snickers?" A chorus of 'no' erupts in response. "Water? Coca cola?" This time a few low chuckles are mixed in with the 'no.'

The group gets through, more or less unscathed.

After this second assault, we regroup in front of a map of the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. Our tour guide informs us that we are to be back at that sign by 1:30 for lunch. Our bus will depart at 2. He drives this point home a few more times, then sends us on our way.

The way to the Great Wall consists of three parts. First is the bus to the entrance. Second is the road from the entrance to the trail. This bit has to be walked. Third, and finally, is a slim, ice-covered trail up the hillside from the road and onto the wall itself. Each part has its own group of vendors attempting to sell you various snacks and drinks. Mostly snickers bars, water, and coca cola. A few also offered beer, but whether anyone has ever actually bought that, I have no idea.

As we came up to the final third of the approach to the wall, the expectant group of vendors was waiting. They chatted among each other and seemed generally more jovial than the previous two groups. They were also all women.

When the trail, it was impossible to not also approach them. They had positioned themselves directly between us and the trail head. Frustrating though it was, I put my head down and tromped on through.

Something interesting was happening this time, though. Unlike the previous two groups, these women were following us up the trail. It sounded like they were propositioning us with goods, but I didn't hear any of the previous goods mentioned at all. No snickers, no water, no coca cola. In fact, the more I listened, the more I realized that the chatter I had been tuning out was actually chatter between the women. They weren't even talking to us.

I began to wonder what was going on. Was this another, domestic tour group? Their friendliness seemed to push this proposition forward. For instance, I slipped on a patch of black ice at one point and heard an accented voice behind me say "Be careful!" A light chuckle followed. These did not seem like the attitudes of saleswomen.

And yet they were sticking awfully close to us and some of them did not appear to be very well off. I couldn't decide what was going on for the first few minutes of walking on the trail. Who were these women?

Finally, once we were actually on top of the Great Wall itself, surrounded by a ring of these women, who were seemingly just waiting for us to move, I realized what was happening. Our tour guide, who had essentially disappeared, was not our real guide. These women were. And they were going to expect some sort of reward at the end.

I didn't like this very much. I had paid for a guide and I wanted the guide I had paid for. Either that, or I was going to be on my own. So, determined, I set off. It wasn't long before I was clearly in the lead, outpacing most of my fellow tourists.

It was also clear that I had a acquired a guide. She managed to stay a few steps ahead of me the entire time. At first, she offered to show me a route through some of the more difficult terrain, but those offers soon disappeared as she realized I didn't actually need that sort of guidance. Instead, she started explaining little features about the wall. Things like how you can tell which side is North, which are the newer sections, and which sections are 500 years old. Before long, I started to find I actually liked the woman.

We talked a little bit about where I was from and where she was from. Turns out she had been doing this every day for the past 10 years, that she was actually a farmer from over the hills, that she had two sons. Most shockingly to me, she said she was 37 ("old" by her reckoning). When I first saw her, I had estimated her age to be at least ten years older. Whether she was telling me the truth about her life of not, she clearly had had a difficult time.

The hike took me about an hour and a half each way. My guide and I were both sweating and panting by the time we reached the end. I had pushed her hard. Even though she had essentially forced herself onto me, I decided in the end that she had earned her souvenir. The prices were steep, but I didn't bother to haggle. I bought a book and a shirt and said farewell.

Lunch was an interesting affair, mostly because the food was not that interesting. Nearly all my other meals in China were delicious and very noteworthy, but this one was not. There was a lot of it, though, so I filled up and climbed on the bus.

On the way back, I discussed my hatred of Twilight with a French woman who was also part of the trip. And, as promised, I was back at the hostel by six that evening.

The next day, I woke up bright and early, climbed on a plane, and made my way back to Japan. And here I am, once again, Jeffles in Japan.

~Jeffles

China: Part 2

Welcome back. Please, take off your shoes, grab a cup of tea, and relax for a little while. Take any seat you like; they're all there for you, baby.

*

When I got off the plane, I had to suppress a wave of disgust threatening to rise from deep inside me. Apparently, the Chinese had taken a 'throw them in the deep end' position on tourists. Rather than connect the plane directly to the inside of the airport via walkway, we new arrivals exited from the plane into the smog-filled landscape that is Beijing. Our goal: a grey bus lined extensively on either side with windows.

Awareness of a previously unknown stench crept in like a family of cockroaches climbing through the kitchen pipes. Even when I reached the bus, I couldn't escape it; the doors had been thrown open to the world. It was all I could to to stand, gloved hand gripping a pole to steady myself, and wonder what sort of place I had brought myself to.

The smog never lifted. As I waited for a taxi to take me to my hostel, it was there. As we drove down the third ring road, winding our way through desiccated forests and looming high-rise buildings, it was there. When, a couple hours later, I found myself wandering through one of Beijing's aged hutong districts, still it was there.

In fact, it only got worse.

After a deliciously massive lunch of unknown meat, noodles of equally unknown size, and various tiny, red hot peppers, after walking the grey streets of Beijing for two hours in an attempt to gain some sort of rudimentary understanding of this incredible city, I returned, exhausted, to my hostel. It was approximately four in the afternoon. Maybe four thirty.

Sixteen hours later, I woke up. Usually, when traveling alone, I stay in a hostel's dorm style rooms. This is for a very simple reason: it's a damn good way to meet people. To this day, I've only had one item go missing and that was because I left it out in a communal area as if anyone could use it. My guess? Someone thought it belonged to the hostel and, you know, used it.

This time I decided to spring the cash for a personal room. And thank god I did, because I never would have rested so well in a dorm-style room.

The room itself was on the second floor, yet most of the surrounding buildings were only one story, so its two south-facing windows presented a view of the entire city. Or it should have.

When I woke the next morning, even the building next door, a place all of five feet from my window, was obscured by smog. Just the idea that I would be able to view the entire city from my window was so ridiculous at that moment that I wondered if I shouldn't have my head examined. After all, who was I to expect to be able to see the city I had come to sight-see in? Obviously I was going about this all wrong.

The smog stayed all day. Around noon I called an acquaintance of mine in the city to meet up for lunch. During the call, he quietly informed me that the air quality monitor on the US embassy in Beijing was reporting Beijing to currently be "very unhealthy."

You know what that is? That's one step below "hazardous." And children were playing in the streets. They may as well have been playing in a smoker's lounge. Hell, they may as well have been smokers.

"There should be a ban on anyone under the age of 18 entering the city," I thought. My eye fell on five children in their school uniforms, each child no more than ten years old, kicking around a soccer ball. I wanted to shake them, tell them to go home as quick as they can and stay indoors. Instead I averted my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts.

Nonetheless, I was determined to see Beijing.

I'll continue in my next blog post.

An Excusable Absence

Sorry! I haven't been around in a while, I know. I actually have legit reasons this time, though.

Last week, I was in China! Yeah, that's right. That country with the billions of people and one-child policy and communist crazies. And as China has a firewall that blocks blogger, I couldn't blog.

Then, last night, my computer pretty much exploded. At first it started smoking, then the power plug started shooting sparks into my hand as I tried to unplug the cord. So I shut it down and today ordered a new computer. It should arrive in two weeks.

Each one of these things constitutes several blogs in themselves, but I only have about half an hour left in the work day before I have to return home. Where I have no computer. For the weekend.

So I just wanted to let you know what was up.

There will be multiple blog posts next week to cover these topics. This is because I have no classes right now and am basically just sitting around at my desk with nothing to do. Hooray spring break! Maybe I'll talk about that a little bit, too.

For now, a little anecdote about China.

It was Friday morning and my plane was arriving in Beijing. The flight had only been a short three hours, a mere hop and a skip from Osaka. As the plane descended and I thought about how it seemed to be landing altogether too soon, I thought back to Japan.

"To tell the truth, I've never been to a foreign country," admitted one teacher of mine. She's in her late 40s and exactly like a depressingly large number of her fellow countrymen and women.

But it's not just foreign countries. Japanese adults seem to rarely take any vacation time at all. Not because they don't have vacation time; they do have vacation time, though from what I understand it may only be as little as 6 days. No, it's because they'd feel bad if they left work. Vacation is, from a Japanese perspective, selfish.

This is one thing I'll never understand. Vacation is enlightening. It makes us more well rounded people. And most importantly for a business, it refreshes an reinvigorates us.

I thought about all of this as the wheels dislodged themselves from the body of the airplane. They were accompanied with a clunking sound like boiling water crashing through an old radiator. Nothing to worry about, though. This was hardly my first time on a plane and sounds like that are pretty well par for the course. If anything, it's a sign that all is well and working. Next to me, a Japanese man bobs his head in his sleep, his mouth making a funny little pout.

We had been enveloped in clouds for about five or ten minutes when the ground appeared beneath us, rising toward us like the back of a gargantuan whale. Then, with a jolt, we were down. The wheels of the plane raced across the asphalt, great gusts of air pushing on the wing flaps, trying to force them back down.

As the aircraft, now little more than an over-sized bus, finally slowed down, I took a look outside.

Beijing looked grey. The sky was invisible. Nothing was up there except static, like a tv at two in the morning on mute. Off in the distance, I thought I could make out the outlines of tall buildings. They were pretty obscured, though. Well, Beijing is a pretty polluted city, I thought. Everyone's heard the stories.

"Welcome to Beijing," chimed a flight attendant's voice over the intercom. "You may notice that the air quality is a little different from Osaka."

I took another look outside the window. Damn. Talk about an understatement. "A little different?"

Those weren't buildings I had seen in the distance. Those were trees. And they weren't so distant, more like sitting on the edge of the runway. Somehow, they had been so obscured, I thought they were far off buildings.

I was no longer in Japan.

~Jeffles

[Ramble]

So I lied. French is not the answer. Spanish is the answer!

Haha, yeah. I keep changing it. But this time is for reals! Seriously! It would be super useful (the US is full of Spanish speakers), I have tons of resources (both my parents are fluent), I definitely have motivation (half my family speaks Spanish and some of them don't speak English), and there's much Spanish literature to discover. Truthfully, my initial dip into the world of Spanish literature didn't go very well. Got just over halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude and couldn't go any further. This was after about two years of effort.

I've got it! The book is mean to TAKE a hundred years to read, and then only if you're placed in solitude the entire time! Man, I am a genius.

Har har. No, I know, I have to give the book another chance. And there's gotta be lots of good books by Spanish-speaking authors out there. Actually, if you're reading this now and know of some such books, let me know!

In the meantime, I've been trying to figure out how I want to spend the rest of my time here in Japan. I want to travel, that much is clear. But I need to travel cheap, because I've sorta been hit by a bunch of unexpected costs recently. So how can I do that? I may have discovered the answer.

I remembered last night that I have a ton of Aeroplan points, which work for any airlines in Star Alliance. That's a lot of airlines! Best part, I have enough points to swing a free round-trip flight to pretty much anywhere in Asia. Huzzah. The question now is where?

The only time I really have to do such a trip is going to be in August. I reeeeeeally want to go to Southeast Asia, but there's a problem: August is monsoon season. Practically the WORST time of year to travel there. It looks like Malaysia is relatively dry during that time, though. So maybe I'll go to Singapore, then travel around to Malaysia and Indonesia, then back to Singapore to catch my return flight to Japan. I dunno. Could work. Might be fun. I hear that's a relatively cheap part of the world, too, so maybe it wouldn't be too expensive.

Sigh.

In case you didn't figure it out, I have nothing to do these days. I just sit around at the office and wait to go home. Much thinking and plotting (dreaming) is involved.

Well, okay, I guess I've done a few things. I finally made it back to Judo after three months. That was two days ago. I'm still sore. (Reminder to self: don't skip Judo for that long again!) I've also managed to learn about 100 words in Spanish in the last three days. So that's something. And I wouldn't exactly call myself bored. It's hard to be bored in a place like this, where there's always something happening somewhere. I'm just... not stretched enough. Yeah. Need more stretching!

[/ramble]

~Jeffles

Remembering the Red Men

Just a short post today. I don't have a lot of time, just wanna update you on the Saidaiji Naked Man Festival (Hadaka Matsuri).

To put it shortly, the festival was amazing. If you come to Japan and are here while it is going on, you MUST see it. There's nothing like it anywhere. At least, not that I know of.

It was admittedly pretty chilly outside, as it was nighttime in the middle of February. Given, though, that there were 4000 men wearing nothing but a loincloth (fundoushi), a pair of socks, and the skin they were born with, I decided not to comment on the weather. Hidden beneath four layers of fleece and windproof jackets, I really was in no position to complain.

Then I saw what they had to go through. While preparing to make the run into the temple, the men joined arms and had to run through a series of locations where shop owners, passersby, and firemen threw ice cold water at them. In a show of manliness, though, they simply turned that freezing water into steam as soon as it touched them. Alternatively, it may have been a show of drunkenness and simple body heat, but my bet is on manliness.

Finally, after charging through an ice cold pool that (I suppose) is meant to purify you before you enter the temple, the thousands of men converged. The result was a fleshy mound of butts, hands, and fundoushi. For the better part of an hour, they swayed along the stone temple steps, sometimes falling down the aforementioned steps in horrendously painful-looking avalanches. At one point early on, the police were needed and somehow, using what looked to me like Roman centurion tactics, forced their way into the center of the throng to retrieve a man. From what I've been told, he was either a trouble-maker or an casualty of the unrestrained masculine forces surrounding him. He looked like he could barely move as they pulled him out, so I'm guessing it was the latter of the two options.

Eventually, once the holy sticks had been retrieved and liberated from the killing grounds, they red men trickled away. That was the sign for us to begin our true drinking. Much of the remaining night is now a black haze for me. I know there were at least two bars and karaoke was involved. I also know that nihonshu is now my nemesis. Alternatively, it may be my kryptonite. A nemesis can be defeated, but I don't think this is a battle I could ever win.

At any rate, I trust the night was a good one. Best of all, more goodness is yet to come. Such is life in Japan.

~Jeffles

A Night in an "Internet Cafe"

Last weekend I went to Kobe. That was kinda interesting. I saw a Chinatown for the first time since coming to Japan, walked by a weird fountain of dead babies clutching a pumpkin, and purchased an extremely fashionable bow-tie. But I kept thinking how much more awesome it would have been if it was warmer out. So when it's warmer, I'm gonna head back again and give it another try.

And then there was the whole lack of finding a place to sleep thing.

After a full day of wandering about from spot to spot, the six of us settled in for some food and beverage consumption. As per normal, this then progressed to a second bar. And from the second bar, we then went on to karaoke and two hours of all-you-can-drink, all-you-can-sing awesomeness. Before we knew it, it was 3 AM, we were all drunk (for the most part), and we were all exhausted. So we hopped on over to the nearby manga cafe, as planned, and set about reserving a spot for the night.

Oh. Hm. Maybe I need to explain something. Japan, just like most countries, has internet cafes. But they do them a little different here. In most countries, an internet cafe is just a bunch of desks with computers and chairs and you pay something like $1 or $2 for half an hour. Sometimes you get fancy internet cafes that cater to gamers who need a place to be their hardcore selves. In places like that, the lighting might be a bit different; they might have sodas for sale; the computers are top notch gaming beasts; and, of course, you can become a member and pay special member rates.

In Japan, that would be considered a half-hearted internet cafe. At most internet cafes here, there are multiple levels of computer environment that you can reserve. The most basic of environments in which you can rent a computer for a time is the standard that I just described above for specialty gamer cafes. From there, it only goes up. At most levels up from there, you essentially rent a small, enclosed booth in which you can do whatever you want. And yes, people really do whatever they want. When I went to Kyoto, I stayed in the massage booth. The massage booths were slightly larger than normal booths, situated in a private, dimmed area, had blazing fast computers, and most notably, were equipped with obscenely comfortable, leather massage chairs. My friend and I rented ours for five hours, went to sleep, and woke up ready to face the day.

But there's more. In Japan, they're not called "internet cafes." They're called "manga cafes." That's because, on top of the computer cubicles, they also have rows upon rows of manga (Japanese comics). They also usually have unlimited free beverages, hot meals you can buy from vending machines, showers, and sometimes a spa room. In Japan, an internet cafe is not just an internet cafe, it's a fucking luxury retreat.

So this is what we thought we were getting in Kobe. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The place had been completely booked up, except for three rooms, which we let the three girls take. Then us remaining three guys wandered about the city, searching for a place to rest our heads. The first stop was a capsule hotel, but they were completely full, too. Then we found another internet cafe, but they were totally full, too. Then we found yet another internet cafe. THEY were full, TOO! Except, wait! No, they did have a spot for us, if we didn't mind it...

"What is it? What is it?" We were pretty much desperate by this point.

It was... the basic option. The one that's just a long table with a bunch of computers and some chairs. Basic as it comes.

Fuck it. There wasn't anywhere else to go. Or, at least, we couldn't push ourselves to keep looking. So instead of a snazzy, cool place that you can't find anywhere else in the world, we actually slept in an internet cafe.

We put in our two hours, then got up and grabbed the first train back to Okayama.

And here I am. Been here ever since. Just whiling the time away until I've got someplace else to go to. I was going to go to Naoshima Island next weekend, but I just can't be bothered. Too cold and trying to figure out how to get there and back in time is too much of a pain. So I think I'm just gonna hang around town, study some Mandarin, maybe some economics. When it's warm again, that's when I think I'll start getting out and about.

I should be honest, it's not that cold. Even compared to Toronto, probably one of the warmest places in Canada, it's not that cold. The temperature hasn't gone below -8 Celsius, as far as I can remember, and even then it was night time. There's just something about Japan that makes it feel so much colder...

This time last year, I was getting ready for my JET interview. I remember that. I had just bought a new suit and was trying to figure out how to get to the interview without getting salt stains all over my suit from the snow drifts. Eventually I just tucked my pant legs into my boots and hoped for the best. I never have to worry about that kind of cold here. I haven't even had a moment where I thought "I need boots." It snows occasionally, but it certainly never sticks to the ground.

I guess I'm just a winter wimp. And you know what? I'm okay with that.

~Jeffles

P.S. My suit was fine. It survived the snowy encounter with nary a salt stain to be seen.

The Saga Continues: Part 2

Ah, relaxation. It's good, isn't it?

Consider this a follow-up post to my last post.

As I mentioned in the aforementioned post, I spent last weekend in Beppu. And you know what? It was amazing. It was everything I needed. What was it exactly that I needed? Well, let me tell you. Onsens, warmer weather, alcohol, beautiful views, and no responsibilities. And let me tell you, I got all of that.

Beppu is, in fact, known for onsen and going into an onsen is something that has always been on my list of things to do in Japan. Because many (most?) onsen do not allow people with tattoos in, though, this has proven to be a bit difficult. Thankfully, as I just said, Beppu is known for onsen. That means that much of its income relies on tourists coming to use their onsen. If they rejected people with tattoos there, they would probably be rejecting quite a few tourists who may have gone to Beppu only because of the onsen. Then those people would probably be upset and and say bad things about the city and blah blah blah... Anyway, I figured my chances of getting into an onsen were highest in Beppu. And apparently I was right - no one had any problems with me at any point.

I went to three different onsen while in Beppu. The first was one that had been recommended to us by the guy who worked at our hostel. Given that he was a resident of the city and had named the spot as his favorite in Beppu, we figured it would be pretty good. And, in my opinion, it was.

The place was right next to a couple of the Jigoku. ("Hells" - particularly hot and strange hot springs for which the city is famous. Note that you don't actually go into these Hells, they're just cool things to look at.) This meant it was placed in a fairly touristy area but, surprisingly to me, there were not actually that many people in the onsen. Maybe it was the time of day that we went or maybe it was something else, but there were only two or three other people (besides us) in the guys' side and, from what I was told, no one else in the girls' side.

There were three different baths available at this onsen. The first was an indoors bath, with glass screens to look outside. Because it was indoors, both the part of you under the water and the part of you above the water were warm. The second was an outdoor bath on the first floor. There was a greater contrast of warm/cold in this bath because, guess what, it's winter and winter air is cold. The third bath was another outdoor bath on the second floor. It was supposed to have a scenic view, but in reality was just a spot that was slightly colder above water due to a light breeze. The "scene" was, well, meh.

Anyway, something about the place really jived with me. It felt cozy: not like a bathing complex with a bunch of rooms, but like someone's personal onsen mansion. And maybe it's because it was my first one, but all my nerves and tensions were essentially wiped away by the time I finished with the place. In truth, I felt kind of like a limp noodle - a fact that I regularly brought up - due to just how relaxed my muscles had become. It was a feeling I could get used to. In total, the experience cost only ￥600. An awesome deal.

Anyway, after that we took a short break, had a beer, and rested up at the hostel. Then we headed to our second onsen, which was really a rather different place.

First, to get to this place, we had to walk through what was clearly the red light district. Between Honey Bee and Universal Babes, it was quite obvious what normally went down there. There were some playful elbow jabs, jokes, and other efforts made in the name of relieving the tension of being in such an odd place. Then, we rounded a corner and encountered a truly massive wooden building built in an old Japanese style.

I should explain something. The reason we had picked this place was because it was apparently known for doing sand baths. As you might imagine, most onsen do not have a sand bath. Even rarer is the mud bath, but that comes later.

Anyway, we purchased our tickets for sand bath & onsen and proceeded into the change area. We put on our yukata, walked by the bath that was our "onsen" and into the sand room. There, we were instructed to lay down and not move. Meanwhile, the attendants shoveled mound after mound of warm sand on top of us. I've been told that the sand was supposed to be hot, that it's supposed to make us sweat like mad. Unfortunately, the sand was not really hot and I certainly was not sweating. It just felt like someone had put a really heavy blanket around me.

I gazed at the ceiling, wiggled my toes, thought about how nice a beer would be after all this. To me left, I watched one of my fellows get buried as well by a rather serious looking attendant. Then the guy to my right, another one of my fellow onsen-goers, mentioned that he could feel his pulse in his legs and could I feel mine, too? Well damn if he wasn't right. I really could. And it was weird. Ba-dum, ba-dum. I returned my thoughts to the ceiling, trying to distract myself.

Then, before I knew it, ten minutes was up and I was instructed to go shower myself off. I did so, then climbed into the bath tub (holy crap it was hot). There was a Japanese guy in there who spoke some English, so we had the conversation that I always have when meeting a Japanese person for the first time.

"Where are you from?"

"Canada. These guys are from England, though."

"I see. So, do you like Japan?"

"I love it! Actually, we live here."

"Eeeh? Truly?"

"Yes, we're English teachers in Okayama."

"Ah, is that so... Where in Okayama?"

"A tiny town, you probably don't know it. It's called ."

"Ah, I see. No, I don't know that town."

"Where are you from?"

"Oh, I'm from ."

I've probably had this conversation a hundred times. Anyway, we talked with him a bit. Turned out he had traveled to Canada before, so that was cool. He left about five minutes later and the two other guys and I relaxed in the tub and chatted a bit. Strangely, the attendants kept poking their heads into the room, as if worried that we crazy gaijin were going to fuck everything up. I say strangely, because the attendants were all women and this was clearly the guys' section. Ah well. Nobody goes to an onsen expecting privacy. The whole point is public nudity, after all.

After a little while, we climbed out, dried off and got changed. The rest of the night was spent drinking and doing karaoke. That night alone could be an entire blog post. Suffice to say, since I only have about 10 more minutes to write this and the post is already getting quite long, it was an eventful night.

The next day we trekked out to the mud bath place. The mud bath place, we later learned from a lady who interviewed us as we exited, was quite a rarity. The word she used was "special," but you get the gist.

This place was huge. Like the other two, it was split into a male and female section. Each section had an indoor regular bath, and outdoor "falling" bath (it had a stream of water that fell into the bath from about two meters up - you were supposed to sit under it and let the falling stream massage your back), a steam room, and an outdoor and indoor mud bath. Well, I say both sections had all this, but I don't actually know if the female section also had all that. But I'm pretty sure it did.

Anyway, we wandered about from spot to spot, covering ourselves when possible, and just generally trying to get the full experience of each area. I should mention that the outdoor mud bath was mixed while all the others were separated by gender. For the outdoor bath, though, the girls had a curtained off area where they could enter the water without exposing themselves to the men. The guys, of course, had no such thing. They simply had to enter the mud bath and not care that all the girls were likely to see their package.

I thought the mud was kind of weird. Not my thing, I guess. The baths were really just regular onsen with a grey, muddy floor. The mud diluted the water so that it was all opaque, but the only thick mud was on the floor. In my opinion, it was just some slimey stuff. I rubbed a little over my tattoo, thinking myself intelligent for finding a way to cover it, then remembered that the water would wash it off as soon as I put it under water. So that didn't really make much difference.

After a while we moved to the indoor mud bath, which was pretty much the same. Amusingly, a group of older women wandered into the guy's indoor mud bath and stood about tittering when they realized they had entered the wrong bath area. After then left, we went back to the indoor onsen for a couple minutes, then decided enough was enough and exited.

All in all, I've decided that onsen are awesome. I'm planning another trip next month to explore one on Naoshima Island, which isn't too far away. I'll let you know how that goes afterwards.

Alright, I'm out of time. Hope you have a good one and I'll see you again next week. Ciao, bella.

~Jeffles

The Saga Continues

Hello! It's been a little while, but I haven't forgotten you, I promise. You probably want an explanation of some sort. Well, the truth is that I didn't particularly have anything to write about. Why? Because I was in North America! For just over three weeks, I was in the New World, and how can I post as Jeffles in Japan if I'm not in Japan?

I know, it's a poor excuse. I'll go slam my head into the wall of shame now.

Actually, that can wait until after this post. I only have about half an hour to write and a ton to say. I have been gone for a while, you know. (I should warn you, this post turned out pretty long. Beware, yo.)

First things first. I added a new link under the Other Cool People's Blogs section to the right: Hyperbole and a Half. I just discovered this blog thanks to my awesome friend Ela and you should all read it. It's seriously hilarious and I really want a pet Alot now.

On to the rest of the blog.

Something somewhat strange has happened to me, something certainly unexpected. As you may recall from my last blog post, I was not exactly keen to go back "home" for the holidays. And there was really a simple reason for that; I wasn't done with Japan yet. I'd done a lot, but there was still a lot left to be done.

Well, after I got home, I basically rolled around in bed for a while, wondering why I was waking up before the sun every morning and then reminding myself that I was on the other side of the world now, so that actually kind of made sense. To be honest, I don't remember much that happened in those first few days. Lots of eating, that much is clear. After a few days of vegging about and probably doing little other than watch crappy daytime television, I think I remembered the existence of English books. The New Year rolled around and I flew down to Florida to visit a friend for a few days before returning back North. Before I knew it, it was time to go back to Japan.

Summarized like that, it seems as if nothing happened and happened quickly. An unbiased observer might think, based on that description, that I was raging inside to go back. But as I said, a strange thing happened. As more and more time passed, I became more and more comfortable where I was. I noticed more and more things that I had missed while I was in Japan. Bookstores, for instance. And an actual variety of ethnic foods. And, of course, all the people back home that I haven't seen in a long time and won't see for an even longer time.

Some bad things stood out to me a lot more, too, but for the first time in my life, I think I actually started to feel a little homesick. By the time my little vacation was coming to an end, I was actually beginning to question what the hell I was doing. Why would I want to go back to Japan? Why would I want to leave all this behind? There are people there, good friends of mine, that I will likely not see again for years. For some reason, that bothers me now.

That probably sounded a little cold. Maybe it is. Maybe I'm just a cold mofo with emotions like steel.

No, that's not right. I've just been traveling for a long time. Flying and moving house across the continent (and continents) on my own since I was thirteen and with the rest of my nuclear family even before that. Something you learn when you're moving all the time is that people lose touch with you. It's totally natural. And even if you do stay in some semblance of touch, the number of times you talk to each other will almost necessarily become smaller and smaller until you talk maybe once or twice a year. Why? Because people have lives. People have things to do and, if you're not around, then eventually you will be reduced to a minimal or non-existent part of their life. And they will be the same to you.

That sounds really bad, but it's not, really. Imagine spending the rest of your life pining after the things you've left behind. Now imagine being able to move on and live your life, unburdened by what you left behind. I think it's pretty clear which is the healthier alternative. And this is why, after about the age of eleven, I stopped bothering with homesickness.

Yet here I am, feeling the closest to homesick that I can remember feeling in a long, long time. It's fucking weird and I'm not sure I like it. But I also know that I don't want to lose what I've had there and I'm almost certain that I will. I think I like that even less. And given how little I even wanted to return home just a few weeks ago, that's really, really strange.

Still, as I said, it's healthier not to be pining, so I've developed a plan of action. I will, every single weekend, see the sights, be social, and enjoy the good things here. What matters is where I direct my focus and my focus should be forward. A backwards focus leads to that aforementioned pining, which is totally uncool. Do you think Blade has a backwards focus? Nuh-uh. No way. That dude is way too cool to pine.

So tomorrow I'm going to Beppu for the weekend, which is this cool little town on the eastern shore of the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. That was a complicated description. Just click on the link, you'll see what I'm talking about. Anyway, it's famous for onsen (hot springs) and that's something I've been wanting to do since before I came to Japan, so I'm gonna bloody do it and I'm gonna bloody enjoy it.

As for the saga of the heater, there have been continued developments. Basically, my heater has continued to not really work. It goes on for about five to fifteen minutes, then shuts off and flashes lights at me. I've been told that when those lights flash in that particular combination and rhythm, that indicates that the seventh layer of Hell has been penetrated and-- wait, no, that's something completely different. It just means that it's shutting off for safety reasons. The question, then, is what reason and how can it be fixed.

So after a couple months of putting up with that nonsense, I asked the office to do something about it. They sent over a guy last night who basically took the lid off, banged the crap out of the regulator box outside with his wrench, put the lid back on, and called it fixed. Apparently not enough gas was getting through the pipes, so he had to force the pipes back into place so that the gas could flow properly. Thus the bang-bang-bang of the wrench on the pipes. Though at the time it looked more like a caveman toying with a bomb in the only way a caveman could: with violence.

Anyway, much to my surprise, it seemed to be working. I stood around for about an hour and the heater was still running. Hurray! I quickly scrambled to facebook and declared my victory. But alas, I was premature. After running for about two hours, the damn heater stopped again. I promptly curled into an angry, grumbly, little ball and went to sleep.

In the morning I tried it again. At first it was back to its normal five or ten minutes of working and then stopping. After a couple tries, it stayed on for another two hours of glory. But this time I was wary. I knew better. I eyed the machine and let it run, thinking it might stop on its own. But it didn't. It just kept going. I wondered if maybe it really was fixed and just happened to need a little time. So I did a stupid thing then and tried to change the temperature. It was actually getting hot in my room and I wanted to turn the thing down. Apparently "down" means "off," though, because the bloody thing stopped working altogether. It is now back to going on and then off again every five or so minutes and I am back to rage.

Seriously. I am not made for cold weather. Whoever decided I should be Canadian made a grave error.

The next step in this saga is to go retrieve a large kerosene space heater from another foreigner living in town. I have approximately an hour and a half to accomplish this before I go to class and then to sleep and then to class again and then to Beppu. In other words, I have an hour and a half to accomplish this. The office has given up on my heater. It's fifteen years old and a piece of shit and they know it. The best they can now offer is a consolation prize of a heater that is probably going to be even more of a pain in the ass.

Why is that? Because the thing about kerosene heaters is that you can't just run them. You can't leave them on while you're sleeping and you can't leave them on while you're out. And every hour or so, you have to air out the room, thus letting all the cold air back in. This is because kerosene is toxic and will KILL YOU if you don't. Also, I get to go through the fun of finding out where I can buy kerosene, how much I need to buy, and what kind I need to buy, all in Japanese. Yay! I love winter!

I'll let you know how the rest of this saga unfolds.

~Jeffles (of the rage)

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

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

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?