you lucky bastards! It hasn't come down yet in town. Whether (weather?) or not you love it or hate is, enjoy a taste of the winter as it is for me.
Build a snowman or ten for me...or a Kamakura, aka snowfort...well really more of an igloo. Also enjoy semi-unreasonably priced christmas lights...as compared to the insanely unreasonably priced ones here. $80 for 3 metres. ugh. I'll stay dark for now.
Speaking of what's his name's (Santa right?) birthday, I'll be home for Christmas. Not as long as I was in summer, but back never the less. I'll have to make sure to buy cheep-ass boxing day lights to bring back to Japan. I can also enjoy not having to explain Boxing Day to anyone either...neither the Japanese nor the Americans really get it...but then again to any Canadians really understand it either? I should probably spend my time brushing up on my own culture, too eh?
Well for more deep thoughts from the shallow end tune in sometime in the future.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
It's long, and long awaited
Well hello everyone who still checks this site from time to time. I know it has been a horribly long time since I have updated this. I have given you pretty much nothing new since I came back to Japan. Well hopefully some people still check because there’s a lot to tell. I mean a lot. You might want to read this in installments. And I refuse to write a table of contents, although I probably should.
My second year has been surprisingly different from my first year. As was to be expected there was not so much adjustment as with my initial arrival in Japan. That being said, there have been some marked changes that have changed the routine of my life here.
First off is the big one, the reason I am even here: work. This year the city cut back from four AETs (Assistant English Teachers) to three. That doesn’t seem too ground shaking, but when you consider that there are four junior high schools, it makes a big difference. This year we are on a two month routine. Of every eight weeks, we each spend six at our base school (Kosha for me) and the other two weeks are at Nakano Daira JHS. The loss of Devin has also meant that there are more elementary schools to visit. So now I have four elementary schools. This indeed makes for a lot of running around, and even more time spent doing preparations for various classes. It’s enough to make me feel a little lost sometimes.
Besides the musical schools routine, school life has been really good this year. At Kosha I am starting to feel like a real teacher, not just the foreigner on a working holiday. I was asked to coach a student on an English speech, I helped train a class for a group skip rope competition at the school festival (my area of expertise don’t you know), and I have given the go ahead to start implementing some of my own ideas on marking and running class. It really feels wonderful. I think the teachers all look at me a little differently now. The English teachers have always liked me, but now I feel like I get respect from all the other teachers.
Outside of school things have not been anymore hectic. That isn’t to say I haven’t had plenty of free time, it’s just that it has been less abundant this fall. The main reason for this is that on top of the Tuesday night class Brandon and I teach, I am also teaching a Thursday beginner class at a different community centre. This class has been both a source of frustration and joy.
To start, I wanted a night class for ‘Beginner Conversation’ not ‘Beginner English.’ The purpose of the course is Eikaiwa (or English conversation). When asked to start the course I firmly stated that everyone must have a basic grasp of English, something I feel is a necessity for conversation. Well something was lost in that world called translation, and it was marketed as a beginner basics class. To compound the problems, half of the students are or have been regulars at the other night class. They speak wonderful English, and I could really help them excel. The others are pretty much beginners. I had one old bastard complain 3 times to the community hall that the class was too hard. I was teaching ‘I am’ and ‘You are’…I can see how very confusing that can be. Ha! So in the end is was just a matter of getting into a routine and making a curriculum that is fun review for the advanced speakers and not over the top difficult for the beginners. To my joy, the old fart dropped out, but didn’t tell anyone so I continued to teach really basic stuff for three more weeks until I gave up on him. Good riddance to…well you get the picture.
When I am not going half mad trying to find and create activities for a night class or elementary school, I have been making a real effort to go to the gym. A year ago a big new fitness centre went up right near my house. It is beautiful. There is a weight room with machines, free weights, and a thwack of cardio gear. There’s an aerobics studio, and here’s the kicker: there is a pool! I have been trying to get in 2 or 3 days a week and I have been pretty good about it. It is hard to procrastinate about going when the monthly fee is upwards of $80 CDN. Yeah you read that right. Thank whatever deity you believe in that my job pays well. I have lost a few kilos, namely the ones I put on last year, and I feel less like a…tatami potato.
There have been some changes in my social life this year as well. Brandon and Rich both have girlfriends now. Riches gal lives close by, but Brandon’s is from Chiba (out past Tokyo). That should say she was from Chiba. She now lives next door with Brandon. All this has lead to me seeing my friends less, so I have started hanging out with my Japanese friends more. Now the main dudes are Jun, Ken, and Tatsubon. They are the coolest Japanese people ever. They run a back country snowboarding company, they are friends with all the Japanese pro boarders, and they all met in Gastown while they were living in Canada a number of years back. They all have a good command over English. They tell me that they learned in Canada by hanging out with Canadians, so it’s mostly Japanese when we hangout. And damn, my Japanese is improving. That being said, they are all from Kansai (the region near Osaka and Kyoto) and they speak a regional dialect known as Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben. This is by far the coolest sounding Japanese. Everyone in Japan knows it, and save the Tokyo folks, they all think it’s super cool. Needless to say I am now the weird Gaijin who drops Kansai-ben whenever he can.
My knee. It’s still there, between my ankle and hip. Thankfully my hip doesn’t hurt, but I can’t say the same of my ankle and knee. My ankle is tight and sore often. I try to stretch it out and keep it warm, but winter is just around the corner and the days are too cold to keep it loose. My knees is good most of the time, but I still notice some weakness and pain from time to time. I have been to a third hospital, had another MRI, about 25 more Xrays, and started physio.
This is all lead up for spring break. March is the month, and my knee is the focus. That’s when I make my move into the hospital for a month. That’s right, I’m going under the knife to get a new ACL. It will be made of a piece of my hamstring. If you want the full details ask me, or google it. It’s a little too gory for everyone to hear. After the knife is a week of nothing…not even standing. Hell. I don’t know exactly how I’ll go to the bathroom then, but I am pretty sure I can’t actually go to the bathroom which leaves only one very uncomfortable option. The rest of my stay will be the road to recovery. Daily rehab and strengthening exercises will be my life for a month. And the worst part is this: the hospital is an hour and a half drive from home, and my operation is in the spring stages of the snowboard season. In other words I am pretty sure I am going to have a very lonely month.
Now it’s time for the best news of all. For those of you who stuck it our and read all the way to here, congrats. For those who skipped and skimmed, you are people after my own heart. For those of you who stopped reading a while ago…well I guess it doesn’t matter if I say anything to you or not. Drum roll please…
I got a cat, a kitten actually. She is the most adorable little thing. She is all black, Makuro (jet black) is what my Japanese friends call the colour. She is a native species of Japan…we’re pretty sure…well the Vet is pretty sure. See when I adopted her it was a bit of a strange situation so I don’t really know what bread she is. I had been searching for kittens for a while, but I hadn’t found anything. I tired the humane society (run around) and the newspapers (dogs dogs dogs) but nothing came up. In the end I mentioned it at school, and within a week a student had found a kitten.
She was tiny, and pretty scared. He had found her in a park between the school and his house. Her mom had been living there, but she died shortly after birthing. So I became the proud parent of a little sharp black ball of fur. I mentioned that we think she is a Japanese breed, which is due to the fact that her tail is curly like a pig tail. That being said it is not sensitive, so the Vet thinks it is natural. There is a species of Japanese cat with a strange tail like that, so that’s our best guess.
I called her Taisho SentoNeko Kunoichi. That means General Kunoichi Battlecat. She is the Japanese cousin of Kenan and Sam’s cats, the Canadian Battlecat family. I call her Kuno or Kunoichi, which was the name for female ninjas. Fitting for an all black Japanese female cat, eh? She lives up to the name for sure. She has terrorized my house. The rice paper Shoji doors were shredded, plants have been eaten or beaten, and my bed was the site of a few little box training issues. Well that’s not really fair. She was fully litter trained (kinda) when she came to my house (at like 6 week of age). She just decided to tell me when she felt her litter box was in need of cleaning. She did this by pissing on my bed. Needless to say, she is banished from my bedroom. Sucks for her, but if I have to go to the Laundromat with my comforters again I am going to lose it.
Kuno has made my evenings very exciting. I hang out and play with her. She is psychotic, and one hell of a hunter. She is going to be a great stalker when she can finally go outside in 3 weeks. Although I am not sure she’ll want to be out when the snow starts coming down. She is vaccinated and just needs one last shot and she will be ready for the great big world, and also good to go for a life in Canada. I am making sure to get her all she needs to immigrate when I do. All those Canadian cats better watch out; when Kuno comes to town it is all over!
Well that’s the update. I am sure I have left something out; although I am also sure everyone will be happy if I stop writing soon…or a few paragraphs ago. I apologize for not updating this sooner, and for not staying in touch with people who have been emailing. I will endeavour to be better at updating this site and also replying to emails. Thanks for the email, the parcels, or just the thoughts. Hope all is well back in Once-Again-Did-You-Ever-Doubt-It-Rainy-Vancouver. Boil your water…or something.
My second year has been surprisingly different from my first year. As was to be expected there was not so much adjustment as with my initial arrival in Japan. That being said, there have been some marked changes that have changed the routine of my life here.
First off is the big one, the reason I am even here: work. This year the city cut back from four AETs (Assistant English Teachers) to three. That doesn’t seem too ground shaking, but when you consider that there are four junior high schools, it makes a big difference. This year we are on a two month routine. Of every eight weeks, we each spend six at our base school (Kosha for me) and the other two weeks are at Nakano Daira JHS. The loss of Devin has also meant that there are more elementary schools to visit. So now I have four elementary schools. This indeed makes for a lot of running around, and even more time spent doing preparations for various classes. It’s enough to make me feel a little lost sometimes.
Besides the musical schools routine, school life has been really good this year. At Kosha I am starting to feel like a real teacher, not just the foreigner on a working holiday. I was asked to coach a student on an English speech, I helped train a class for a group skip rope competition at the school festival (my area of expertise don’t you know), and I have given the go ahead to start implementing some of my own ideas on marking and running class. It really feels wonderful. I think the teachers all look at me a little differently now. The English teachers have always liked me, but now I feel like I get respect from all the other teachers.
Outside of school things have not been anymore hectic. That isn’t to say I haven’t had plenty of free time, it’s just that it has been less abundant this fall. The main reason for this is that on top of the Tuesday night class Brandon and I teach, I am also teaching a Thursday beginner class at a different community centre. This class has been both a source of frustration and joy.
To start, I wanted a night class for ‘Beginner Conversation’ not ‘Beginner English.’ The purpose of the course is Eikaiwa (or English conversation). When asked to start the course I firmly stated that everyone must have a basic grasp of English, something I feel is a necessity for conversation. Well something was lost in that world called translation, and it was marketed as a beginner basics class. To compound the problems, half of the students are or have been regulars at the other night class. They speak wonderful English, and I could really help them excel. The others are pretty much beginners. I had one old bastard complain 3 times to the community hall that the class was too hard. I was teaching ‘I am’ and ‘You are’…I can see how very confusing that can be. Ha! So in the end is was just a matter of getting into a routine and making a curriculum that is fun review for the advanced speakers and not over the top difficult for the beginners. To my joy, the old fart dropped out, but didn’t tell anyone so I continued to teach really basic stuff for three more weeks until I gave up on him. Good riddance to…well you get the picture.
When I am not going half mad trying to find and create activities for a night class or elementary school, I have been making a real effort to go to the gym. A year ago a big new fitness centre went up right near my house. It is beautiful. There is a weight room with machines, free weights, and a thwack of cardio gear. There’s an aerobics studio, and here’s the kicker: there is a pool! I have been trying to get in 2 or 3 days a week and I have been pretty good about it. It is hard to procrastinate about going when the monthly fee is upwards of $80 CDN. Yeah you read that right. Thank whatever deity you believe in that my job pays well. I have lost a few kilos, namely the ones I put on last year, and I feel less like a…tatami potato.
There have been some changes in my social life this year as well. Brandon and Rich both have girlfriends now. Riches gal lives close by, but Brandon’s is from Chiba (out past Tokyo). That should say she was from Chiba. She now lives next door with Brandon. All this has lead to me seeing my friends less, so I have started hanging out with my Japanese friends more. Now the main dudes are Jun, Ken, and Tatsubon. They are the coolest Japanese people ever. They run a back country snowboarding company, they are friends with all the Japanese pro boarders, and they all met in Gastown while they were living in Canada a number of years back. They all have a good command over English. They tell me that they learned in Canada by hanging out with Canadians, so it’s mostly Japanese when we hangout. And damn, my Japanese is improving. That being said, they are all from Kansai (the region near Osaka and Kyoto) and they speak a regional dialect known as Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben. This is by far the coolest sounding Japanese. Everyone in Japan knows it, and save the Tokyo folks, they all think it’s super cool. Needless to say I am now the weird Gaijin who drops Kansai-ben whenever he can.
My knee. It’s still there, between my ankle and hip. Thankfully my hip doesn’t hurt, but I can’t say the same of my ankle and knee. My ankle is tight and sore often. I try to stretch it out and keep it warm, but winter is just around the corner and the days are too cold to keep it loose. My knees is good most of the time, but I still notice some weakness and pain from time to time. I have been to a third hospital, had another MRI, about 25 more Xrays, and started physio.
This is all lead up for spring break. March is the month, and my knee is the focus. That’s when I make my move into the hospital for a month. That’s right, I’m going under the knife to get a new ACL. It will be made of a piece of my hamstring. If you want the full details ask me, or google it. It’s a little too gory for everyone to hear. After the knife is a week of nothing…not even standing. Hell. I don’t know exactly how I’ll go to the bathroom then, but I am pretty sure I can’t actually go to the bathroom which leaves only one very uncomfortable option. The rest of my stay will be the road to recovery. Daily rehab and strengthening exercises will be my life for a month. And the worst part is this: the hospital is an hour and a half drive from home, and my operation is in the spring stages of the snowboard season. In other words I am pretty sure I am going to have a very lonely month.
Now it’s time for the best news of all. For those of you who stuck it our and read all the way to here, congrats. For those who skipped and skimmed, you are people after my own heart. For those of you who stopped reading a while ago…well I guess it doesn’t matter if I say anything to you or not. Drum roll please…
I got a cat, a kitten actually. She is the most adorable little thing. She is all black, Makuro (jet black) is what my Japanese friends call the colour. She is a native species of Japan…we’re pretty sure…well the Vet is pretty sure. See when I adopted her it was a bit of a strange situation so I don’t really know what bread she is. I had been searching for kittens for a while, but I hadn’t found anything. I tired the humane society (run around) and the newspapers (dogs dogs dogs) but nothing came up. In the end I mentioned it at school, and within a week a student had found a kitten.
She was tiny, and pretty scared. He had found her in a park between the school and his house. Her mom had been living there, but she died shortly after birthing. So I became the proud parent of a little sharp black ball of fur. I mentioned that we think she is a Japanese breed, which is due to the fact that her tail is curly like a pig tail. That being said it is not sensitive, so the Vet thinks it is natural. There is a species of Japanese cat with a strange tail like that, so that’s our best guess.
I called her Taisho SentoNeko Kunoichi. That means General Kunoichi Battlecat. She is the Japanese cousin of Kenan and Sam’s cats, the Canadian Battlecat family. I call her Kuno or Kunoichi, which was the name for female ninjas. Fitting for an all black Japanese female cat, eh? She lives up to the name for sure. She has terrorized my house. The rice paper Shoji doors were shredded, plants have been eaten or beaten, and my bed was the site of a few little box training issues. Well that’s not really fair. She was fully litter trained (kinda) when she came to my house (at like 6 week of age). She just decided to tell me when she felt her litter box was in need of cleaning. She did this by pissing on my bed. Needless to say, she is banished from my bedroom. Sucks for her, but if I have to go to the Laundromat with my comforters again I am going to lose it.
Kuno has made my evenings very exciting. I hang out and play with her. She is psychotic, and one hell of a hunter. She is going to be a great stalker when she can finally go outside in 3 weeks. Although I am not sure she’ll want to be out when the snow starts coming down. She is vaccinated and just needs one last shot and she will be ready for the great big world, and also good to go for a life in Canada. I am making sure to get her all she needs to immigrate when I do. All those Canadian cats better watch out; when Kuno comes to town it is all over!
Well that’s the update. I am sure I have left something out; although I am also sure everyone will be happy if I stop writing soon…or a few paragraphs ago. I apologize for not updating this sooner, and for not staying in touch with people who have been emailing. I will endeavour to be better at updating this site and also replying to emails. Thanks for the email, the parcels, or just the thoughts. Hope all is well back in Once-Again-Did-You-Ever-Doubt-It-Rainy-Vancouver. Boil your water…or something.
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