Welcome to Neverland

Up And Running!

2007-10-01T10:20:00.000+09:00

Say goodbye to Japan and hello to the second-most Japanese place in the world.
We are now up and running at http://www.chrisjenny.blogspot.com
See you there!

I'm working on it!

2007-09-22T12:43:00.000+09:00

Thanks for the comments, you guys. Sorry again that it's taking so long! The thing is, every time I sit at the computer I find a new job that I want to apply to and then I have to spend the whole day writing cover letters and checking them over and over and over! Also, I have a LOT of pictures from Altona and Germany to upload and a LOT of cool stories to write.

So just for an update, this job hunt is pretty much starting to drive me nuts. That, and staying at home all the time without any money to spend on decorating our totally grey apartment. Someone had better call me soon. I have mad skills!!

... right?

Hmmm. Basically what I need is a lot of encouragement right now. Chris will attest to the fact that I've been starting to feel quite worthless. So any prayers would be appreciated.

Thanks. And keep checking back!

The Blog Collective

2007-09-19T07:24:00.000+09:00

Hello there, anyone who is still reading this thing! And thanks for all the well-wishes during our move! We’re really comfortable in our new place so far and Chris is really liking his Masters program. Like I said before, we’ve both got some old friends around here, so it’s been fun! There’s also a lot of Japanese food and even proper karaoke, so we’re feeling quite at home ;)

But speaking of feeling at home, that’s also exactly my problem :( After two weeks I still don’t have a job! Boooo. I know it’s not a huge period of time and there’s lots of stuff out there for me, but I guess it's just making me terribly restless having to stay at home all day! Steph? I know you hear me!

There are a lot of factors here, I guess. See, I know that I could walk right into the nearest grocery store and tell them I remember practically every single vegetable code and they’d be like ‘see you on Monday’ but that’s not the kind of thing I’m after at this point. First of all, we’ve got enough saved so as not to make me desperate, and I’ve also got my degree now. The first thing I did was teach in Japan and that was really great. Now, I’ve applied to a bunch of government positions and also administrative support positions with the Olympics and things like that. But unfortunately, these aren’t just ‘see you on Monday’ type of jobs!

So this is probably how it's going to work: after I email these “Human Resources” people all my letters and resumes and documents and things, they’re going to wait until the application deadline (some of which are still a week away!) then, they’re going to pull it all out and take their sweet time reading over everythingl. And then some committee is going to take two weeks to decide on whether or not to call me. Then, if they call, I’m going to go in for an interview and then, after making some kind of psychoanalysis of my answers to their questions, they’re going to send me home and call my references. Then, they’re going to take two weeks to psychoanalyze everyone else, and then another two weeks to decide which of us eager beavers is going to get the job (providing there isn’t a second interrview or police record check or whatever else). And hopefully that eager beaver will be me.

But here’s to hoping. If it eventually comes down to ‘beep beep beep that’ll be $29.35 please, would you like a bag?’ I wouldn’t be terribly upset, but like you guys have been saying, I’m also sure something great is out there waiting just for me.

So as for this blog… It’s been japanamazing, but it’s time to move on. We’re not in Japan anymore, are we? So between filling out all manner of online applications until my eyes want to fall out onto the keyboard (please, God not a computer job), I’ve also managed to create a new blog! It’s going to be way different and way cooler than this one, of course. I’m just getting our summer pictures ready to upload right now, so to any of you who are still reading this, stay tuned and in the next post (hopefully in the next few days) I’ll put the new address up here and link to it and say goodbye to Neverland forever. See you then!

The Hunt

2007-07-14T06:19:00.000+09:00

About a week and a half ago we decided to stop getting up at noon, stop using jetlag as an excuse, and really get down to business here in Vancouver. As you know, we recently left all the hard-earned comforts of job and home in Japan and came back to Canada. Which means job- and home-hunting had to start all over again. Since we'd been staying till now with the "in-laws", the home-hunt had to come first. I'm sure you've heard people saying all kinds of things about the housing market in Vancouver and I'm here to tell you that they're true. My parents have a one-bedroom basement suite in Altona, the exact size of what we were looking for out here, and as far as I know they rent it for between $200 and $300 a month. In Vancouver this thing would be at least $1000 a month. Believe me, we've seen at least 20 ads for them. And you'd have to pay for laundry and utilities on top of it. If you're near the university, you're in the ritzy neighborhood so the price will go even higher, and if you're near the beach or downtown, it'll be expensive, plus old, dirty and the landlord will probably be an idiot. And everyone is still in the market! There were these dirty places with pre-arranged showings where 30 or 40 people would be lined up outside.

We were starting to think we were being too picky because we didn't take the suite with the oven next to the bedroom door. Or the place with the oven and the sink in completely different rooms. Or the place with the bedroom you had to walk through the bedroom to get to. Or the place whose balcony was about 6 inches away from a concrete wall. Or the place with the 5 1/2 foot ceilings. Or the place with the mouldy bathroom and padlocked back door! We were getting worried. Is there nothing decent in our price range? We were starting to hate this city!

But then Grace came along. Our saving Grace. Her ad was simple, on the internet. A two bedroom main-floor suite owned by a quiet, young professional couple. (two bedroom??? main floor???) How is she renting two bedrooms for such a low price, we thought? We'd been through a lot at this point. We were starting to think, maybe it doesn't have windows or something. (There are people here who would try to rent an apartment without windows, believe me) So anyway, since we only had a week left before going to Manitoba and were basically calling anyone in this God-forsaken city who was offering something in our price range, we arranged an appointment.

Firstly, we were very impressed that she called back. (We'd probably been having about a 30% call-back rate in terms of the messages we left.) So the house is actually less than two years old, it does have 2 bedrooms and each room has a very decently sized window. It's a little further away from the school than we'd wanted, but still on a major bus route. We were met at the door by a 4-ish month pregnant very beautiful young Chinese woman. This was Grace. She showed us the suite, it even has heated ceramic tiles and a security alarm (no padlocks? wow!). She was very nice. We were extremely nice. We put on our very best faces for this one. She said that over 20 people had come to see the suite already and the calls were still rolling in. And we became unfathomably nice.

We told her we'd lived in Japan. Apparently she taught English in Hong Kong! We told her Chris was studying at UBC. Apparently she and her husband had gone there too! We told her we were getting married next year, she introduced us to her husband etc. etc... (Now, we'd had one of these couple-in-common moments at a previous place and it was really promising until we'd got a call the next day saying that they'd rented it to someone else.) So that night we immediately emailed her and thanked her for the tour. We said we loved it and we'd take it in an instant. We filled out her email questionnaire with the utmost care and returned it without delay.

For the next day and a half, we kept trekking into the city, viewing suites and apartments all over the place, for the most part total pieces of crap, halfheartedly filling out other application forms, the whole time crossing our fingers and toes to hear back from Grace.

And then... (in case you haven't caught the thread of this email)... we did. It was ours if we wanted it. We went back that very evening to sign the contract.

So we now have a place in Vancouver t0 call home. What an experience. I really hope we won't have to move again for quite a while. Pictures to come in September.

P.S.
When we were out there signing the contract yesterday, I managed to have a chat with one of the current tenants who was home. I'd noticed she had a couple Bible verses hanging around in the kitchen and I asked her if she went to a church around there.

I go to a church, she said, but it's about 30 minutes away by bus. The pastor's really nice.
Pastor? So it's not Catholic? What kind of church is it?
It's a Mennonite Bretheren church.
(!!! surprised gasping sounds)
I'm from Kitchener Waterloo, my maiden name is Gingrich
(!!! more sounds)

So in the midst of my surprise, I managed to tell her that I was also a Mennonite, from Manitoba and I'd also lived in Kitchener-Waterloo. Ha!
So she showed me the church's website and told me a little more about it and so on.
Crazy, huh? Yeah, we'd actually been praying a lot about finding a good place to call home out here and talking to this lady pretty much sealed the deal for me. Willingdon MB Church in Burnaby - here I come!

The Toliet Seats Are Really Cold Here!

2007-06-28T10:30:00.001+09:00

We're home!
Yup, just so you know, we're here and we're OK! We flew out of Osaka at about 3pm on Tuesday, transferred in San Francisco, and arrived safely in Vancouver at... about 3pm on Tuesday. We were welcomed in first-class style, first by America's finest immigration officer himself, Mr. Stockman - who had just finished his shift at the airport, and then by the rest of the beaming Stockman family at the arrivals gate.

I gotta say I felt rather like crap that afternoon, but we were made to feel very comfortable in their house, and after some snacks, naps and dinner, we were in perfect shape again. We even slept the whole night through until 10:30am. So I'm thinking we might have beat jetlag this time!

Anyway, we're not really thinking about it yet, but we do have a lot of stuff to get done while we're here, so once the family goes back to work and we've got some time again, we'll probalby have to get down to business with school, work, house and wedding stuff. *phew!*

I also have a few more pictures and anecdotes about Japan to post. So hopefully I'll get that stuff on here soon as well - at least before it leaves my brain completely! Being back here at times, it almost feels like we never went anywhere at all! (Japan, what?)

So keep checking! And you guys in Vanvouver - you know who you are: email me and let me know when you can hang out :)

The Journey's End

2007-06-24T08:36:00.000+09:00

Well, that’s it! We went to work for one last time yesterday. Chris had the early shift and mine was later. It was a regular day, I guess. I mean, I didn’t really spread the news that I was leaving or anything. Usually our Japanese sales staff will put out a card for students to write little messages on a few weeks before a teacher’s last day, so the students kind of get the idea that they’re leaving. I’ve seen a bunch of guys get them. But as my last day approached I kept secretly checking the front desk, but no card. The things is, I wasn’t supposed to go and ask for one, was I? And I certainly didn't want to have to mention to every student in every lesson that I was going back to Canada in a week! So what's a girl to do? Well anyway, that last day in the office, a card mysteriously appeared on the front desk, a few students who happened to be there that day signed it, and the rest of them came up to me with really surprised looks on their faces, saying “You’re leaving? I didn’t know!”

“Yeah, not many people knew…”

(aka “The staff never got me a damn card”)

It wasn’t so bad, really. The other teachers knew I was going, at least. At lunch time in the teacher’s room, Audrey and Joe turned up with flowers and balloons for me. It was so sweet of them!

Joe: “Wonder why you didn’t get a card from the staff, Jen?”

Audrey: “Well, I guess they’ve been preoccupied with that company lawsuit and everything.”

Jen: “Oh yeah, and I thought it was just ‘cause I didn’t have a penis… but I guess that’s not really the case anymore.”

(Disclaimer: that balloon was a complete surprise to all parties – apparently it was just in an innocent-looking package. My apologies for any offence to readers.)

Chris’ day began a little earlier than mine and included a load more presents. See, the middle-aged ladies seem to like him for some reason ;) Anyway, these types of ladies generally have a lot of time (and often money) on their hands – especially the ones who take English conversation lessons on Friday mornings. And Japanese people really, really like to give gifts. So that night when Audrey and I met Chris on the train, he was toting all kinds of bags and wrappings and inside was everything from picture frames to Godiva chocolates!

He didn’t have a card, though. Hah.

That night *sniff* was our last in which we’d see dear Audrey so we decided to skip the last subway home and grab some food and drink near the station. Would you believe Chris and I hadn’t been to a Japanese style bar yet at all? Haha, we are so cool. But Audrey was kind enough to show us the ropes. We got some beer and loads of snack food, told a lot of jokes involving penguins and had a really good time.

On Sunday we’ll be seeing our ‘other girlfriend’ Lisa for one last curry lunch in Kyoto. She’s actually leaving Japan this week, too! We all started out together back in September in the same cockroach-infested apartment block. Audrey’s going to stick it out for a few more months yet. But what a ride, hey girls!?!

Oh yeah, and on Sunday that’ll be it for contact! In the morning, while everyone in Manitoba is at the “Martens’ Family Fun Reunion”, Chris and I will be canceling both internet service and cell phones. So don’t try to call when you get home, guys! We’ll let you know when we get to Vancouver on Tuesday!

All in all, we’ve got a few more things to pack and a few more things to clean, but moving out really hasn’t been that overwhelming. I guess we were pretty lucky to find people to move into our little place and take our furniture. All we’ve got are a few more souvenirs to buy and a few more people to see for dinner and then that’s it! 12-hour flight, here we come. I’ll be posting more pictures once we get back, so keep checking the blog. But thanks for reading about our Japanese journey, everyone. See you soon!

The Last Week

2007-06-23T13:27:00.000+09:00

This, being our last week in the office, I decided to get a few shots of my kids. I guess I've said it before, but we teach 4 different age groups, from 3 years old to 12. For the most part, they are the cutest, most evil beings you can imagine.

These are my youngest, I taught them pretty much all year. One graduated to the next level recently and another one (the smartest) wasn't there this day, unfortunately.

It's actually kind of strange to see them standing still and their faces not contorted with screaming laughter.

These are the sweeter-than-sweet girls in my other class. The boys, on the other hand, have a little more energy.

And here's the whole class. A very representative shot, I'd say!

If I could, I'd want to take the camera into every class I had. Some of my students wanted pictures with me, though, and I hope they'll email them. So aside from the kids and the students, there's the other teachers, of course!

Here we are, in what is arguably the smallest office in this company. Working together in perfect harmony, of course. I'll miss you guys!

As for Chris' office, they threw a farewell party for him at a beer garden on the top floor of their office building last Sunday. It was kind of a swanky place, but I guess they just knew Chris only settles for the best ;)

It was a cool place. I didn't talk to many people cuz I was really tired. (I should tell you later about the "midnight motorcycle") Anyway, so I just sat around and played with the cellphone camera.

Somehow, all my pictures ended up looking like some kind of beautiful-people-only-party vodka ad.

Good Morning?

2007-06-22T10:42:00.000+09:00

The sun rose at 4:43am today.
4:43am!!

I was awake by 5:30 and tonight I have to work until 9.
I miss daylight savings.

Oishii!

2007-06-15T10:03:00.000+09:00

Might be tryin' me some of this today.

Going once... going twice...

2007-06-11T10:01:00.001+09:00

Sold to the couple from Argentina!

Yup, we're happy to say we got rid of our apartment. We had a girl come over and see the place on Wednesday and by Friday she and her husband had worked everything out with the landlord. They're moving in as soon as we leave, and they want all of our stuff! Their names are Anna and Greg, they're Spanish teachers in Kyoto and they're really really nice. (I've honestly never met anyone from South America who wasn't extremely cool) . Chris said it's almost too bad we're leaving or we could hang out with them!

Anyway, of course it's a huge load off our backs to not have to worry about moving stuff out and getting rid of furniture and everything. Do you remember how empty this place was when we moved in?? So yeah, we've promised our double futon to Joe and Tiff already, but now since we can keep our extra single futons in the apartment, we don't have to camp out somewhere else the night before we leave. We'll just fold them up and go!

Not that we're counting down or anything, but we're leaving in 15 days and working for only 10 of them. See you soon, everyone!

And You Act Like One Too!

2007-06-04T12:18:00.000+09:00

Why not take two extra days off for your birthday? Especially if the weather’s really beautiful and you want to use up your paid vacation days before you leave Japan in another month!

It was only logical, so yes we just took a four-and-a-half day weekend with no plans whatsoever, except to celebrate my quarter-century of existence.

Priority one: finding a book. Having more than half a week off with nothing up, for me, necessitates a very fat, preferably interesting book. And since on the last train ride to work that morning, I’d polished off the one I’d borrowed from Audrey (The House of Sand and Fog; well written but with some seriously annoying characters), it was time to pay a visit to the English bookstore. I prefer libraries, in general, primarily due to the free-ness of the books… but when you can’t read Japanese, you have to make do.

Anyway, the bookstore always ends up being at least a half-hour affair, seeing as we both find it necessary to read every single title on the “English Paperbacks Bargain” shelf before choosing one to take home. I had it narrowed down to a handful of science fiction books (which I was kind of in the mood for after my little rendezvous with Oprah’s Book Club), but then it occurred to me that the Lord of the Rings bandwagon had slowed down enough for me to maybe try jumping on. After being forced to watch the movies a couple of years ago (ahem… 110) I decided I liked the stories after all. So I checked out the Tolkein section and pulled out The Hobbit. And then my brain shut down. Between all the Enders, Dunes, Arthur C Clarkes, The Hobbit, and a romance novel called Talk Nerdy To Me which *for some reason* piqued my interest… I just couldn’t decide.

Long story short, Chris helped me out by listing the ones I might be able to borrow from his mom, etc. and I ended up putting all of them back and grabbing a 500 page Gen X-type memoir about a guy whose parents both died of cancer. It’s good.

But allow me to get to the point of this story. You see, when we came home that day toting our newly found books and ready for an extra long weekend, we checked the mailbox and there was a curiously book-shaped package inside, addressed to yours truly, from the incredible Adam Feiner in Ottawa. It was wrapped in blue paper with yellow ducks on it. And inside was none other than The Hobbit. Does he read minds? I think he very well might.

Thanks again, dude!

On the actual birthday-day we didn’t do much, really. Seeing as Chris’ parents are a little more time-zone savvy than mine, they called me bright and early in the morning with the song and everything. We spent the afternoon at the lake playing Frisbee and reading, and in the evening we went out for okonomiyaki and ice cream with the girls Lisa and Audrey (sweetheart, who brought me a bouquet). And as though reading my mind and sending me a present weren’t already cool, Adam called me that night too! It was so great to hear from him. And finally, at about 11pm that night when we were full of okonomiyaki and getting ready for bed, and as the dawn was breaking in Altona, I suppose Dad finally calculated that it was going to be my birthday in Japan for one more hour and he called as well :)

I don’t look a day over 25…

So amidst sitting around and reading, going out for frappuccinos, playing Frisbee and watching Macgyver, we did actually go out and do something worthwhile that weekend. We’d been meaning to go to Nara for a long time already, an area south of Kyoto famous for it’s huge temple-laden park with gorgeous scenery and tame deer just like in Miyajima. We went there on Monday which just happened to be the most beautiful day you can imagine.

Our train was full of school kids, as is often the case on weekdays on trains heading for popular historical or sightseeing destinations. These ones were especially loud for some reason. School kids are a strange breed, but I’ll save my impression for another time. Anyway, when we arrived in Nara the place was big enough to dilute the noise and they dispersed and left us in peace. We had a tasty sandwich-and-coffee lunch and then just walked around the rest of the day. The place was huge, all we did was walk. We took the obligatory ice-cream break, petted the deer, pranced around in the open spaces as though we were in the Sound of Music and went home. Here are the pictures:

I’ve got the vantage point over the school kids…

These are some kind of excavated temple foundations that they found here and are restoring.

Here’s the same pagoda again. The park had lots of lakes and ponds and things, and lots of cute turtles!

These ones are either schatzes or the one is trying to claw the other’s eyes out. The lines blur at times, believe me.

Only the most gorgeous picture of all time.

Japanese drinking fountains don’t squirt in an arc like in Canada. Their trajectory is much steeper.

And speaking of squirting…

The hills are alive!!!

p.s. zoom in on Chris’ face in this one if you can.

This is from the shrine where we eavesdropped on a German tour group for a few minutes only to find that they were making fun of Japanese architecture.

Can’t do without the orange.

This is the largest wooden building in the world. There is a huge Buddha inside. We didn’t pay the 5 bucks to go in.

And of course the deer!

You could buy deer cookies to feed them. The kids loved the deer.

Well, maybe it was more of a love-hate relationship.

On the train home from Nara we met a really nice girl from Thailand/France who had just spent a year studying Law at UBC! How random? She was really fun to talk to.

So yeah, the weekend was really nice! We managed to pick up a new suitcase to replace the one that was ravaged by United Airlines, and also found some cute summer casual clothes (let’s hear it for Uniqlo!), since, of course, we’re expecting the summer to be very, very casual.

Since things are winding down at work I think we’re also starting to relax and enjoy teaching more. This may or may not have something to do with the resignations of certain coworkers, but it might just be the weather or wanting to enjoy the short time we have left. We’ve even signed up for a bunch of overtime to compensate for having to take an earlier flight home.

So yeah, things are going alright! Still trying to get rid of this apartment, though so if you’re in the market, the rent is cheap, the location is great, the landlord is really nice and speaks English and there is no lease. Oh yeah, and free dishes.

Crazy Canadians

2007-05-25T10:21:00.000+09:00

The family has been gone for just over two weeks now. I just finished the vacation blog the other day, in case you haven’t noticed yet (scroll down and read it first, if you have time!) Going back to work was kind of a bummer, of course, but we really don’t have that much time left anyway! As of tomorrow, we’re flying out in exactly one month! So what’s keeping us busy right now is basically just looking into canceling things and getting rid of things. (Anyone looking for an apartment in Kyoto?)

During our two vacation weeks, the weather seemed to literally transform into summer. And now it’s here to stay for a while, I think. Luckily, it’s not too humid yet – I think the Japanese people still call this “spring” – but we’ve been hitting 26 and 27 degrees recently, and it’s just been awesome. So on our weekends now, instead of venturing into shopping centers, we’ve been exploring some more sunny and sandy locations. Last weekend we went out to the big lake Biwa in Shiga prefecture. On the west shore there is gorgeous little mountain range and at the bottom is kind of a long, thin beach called Omi Maiko.

These are the mountains from the train window.

We got there at about noon and had a little picnic on the beach, which was practically deserted. Maybe it's not hot enough for the Japanese people yet. Maybe we're just crazy cold-blooded Canadians. So it's true the water was just barely too cold to swim, but the sun was warm, and we had a really great afternoon just lying around and splashing around in the waves with our feet.

Once in while that afternoon, the wind would really pick up and we’d have a mini-sandstorm and a few bigger waves crashing up on the beach. It was kind of fun.

It’s a bird, it’s plane…!

Let’s see, what else is going on? Oh yeah – we went out on Sunday night. Yes, the non-partying hermits Chris and Jen actually had dinner with other people for once. One of Chris’ new coworkers, Edward, is from BC so they hit it off, I guess. It’s kind of a long story but he has a Japanese girlfriend who he met in Canada and they’ve come here to live in her family’s old house in Shiga. Anyway, they invited us over for sushi!

So after work on Sunday we all met on the train and headed on over to their place. Imagine make-your-own tacos… only you’re working with rice and seaweed. Yeah, it was really fun, all of us sitting aound the table and making our own custom sushi rolls. We had green tea and miso soup, of course, and it was all really delicious. We just hung out after that, chatting and watching videos of Ed’s bathtub races in Canada. (look it up). At the train station we even played hackeysack as we waited. I hadn’t played hackeysack in so long! It kind of made me miss Waterloo, but it was awesome.

The rest of that weekend, we spent mostly organizing stuff but we still made some time to head out to the lake again (a closer spot this time) for a big Starbucks frappucino and some serious Frisbee-playing in the park.

I guess that’s the most excitement we’ve had lately. But since we’re leaving in a month, we still have four more paid holidays to use. We’re taking two days off this coming weekend for my birthday, actually. So after working this afternoon, we’ll be off for the next four days again! I’m hoping for more beach-type weather ;)

Caucasian Alert!

2007-05-22T17:39:00.000+09:00

Well, they’ve come and gone and now our apartment seems really, really big.

What a wild vacation!

Even though we’d been living here for 7 months already, having the family out here was like experiencing everything again for the first time! In two weeks, we saw everything from Hiroshima to Tokyo, the Sea of Japan to the Pacific Ocean. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to go to work every day :) Am I right, you guys?

So both Dad and Steph have photos posted on their blogs and facebooks and whatnot already, so it looks like I’m a little behind! But better late than never, I guess. During the trip we had 5 digital cameras going all at once, and I wasn’t even using one! The result after two weeks was literally thousands of pictures – and we have copies of them all on our computer! There are just endless things to take pictures of in this country. So I think I’ll just use a few of everyone’s shots!

According to Mom, Dad is still brimming with Japan stories every day, and an extended-family slide show is in the making. Of course the stuff we did in the whole two weeks would take ages to talk about. But it’s almost like I have a duty to write about this major event on the japanamazing blog! I’ll try to keep it short, but I can’t make any promises ;)

* * *

Day 1 - Arrival

We were super-eager for them to arrive. We’d spent the entire previous day cleaning the house. After stocking the fridge in the morning, we headed straight for the airport and were there well before their flight landed in the afternoon.

We’re ready for ya!

Waiting at Arrivals seemed like an eternity, but finally our three backpacked family members emerged, waving and smiling! After all that watching, I hadn’t even noticed them come out! We immediately got their Japan Rail Passes in order and then presented them with their “welcome to Japan gift bags”, filled with all kinds of samples of Japanese goodies. For example, one of our favorites called “onigiri”: triangular rice balls filled with fish, etc. and wrapped with seaweed. Dad promptly started calling them and every other Japanese food that we subsequently encountered “omnigory”.

They’re heeeere!

Welcome to Japan, Dad!

We waited for the train a little while and heard all about their 24-hour stopover in San Francisco where they even got in a tour of Alcatraz. Soon we were on the train back to Kyoto. We had to change trains in Kyoto station, but everyone was so amazed with the building that we took a bit of an escalator-tour before finally arriving home in the evening for Ramen noodles and bed.

Day 2 - Flea Marketing

Needless to say, our weary travelers didn’t waste much time getting to bed, nor getting up the next day. I still don’t know why, (and I don’t think they do either) but they opted for the Japanese-style breakfast at the Stockman-Giesbrecht Bed and Breakfast at which they were staying. It consisted of miso (fermented soybean) soup and rice. And the day’s cultural experiences didn’t stop there. First on the itinerary was Kyoto’s monthly flea market at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, complete with lunch of fried octopus balls, Japanese beer and dried fish snacks.

An impressive selection.

Lunchtime!

Trevor and his octopus!

It’s also the first place that Dad tried Japanese coffee, hot, in an aluminum can, and straight from the vending machine. And he was hooked.

After we’d been flea-marketed out, the next stop was the very famous Kinkakuji Temple – the Golden Pavilion, which looks a lot better now than it did in January when we were there with Erin.

We took a leisurely bus ride home in the evening, had a more familiar pasta-style dinner a la Jen at home and went to bed early again. Tomorrow the pace was going to pick up: Off to Hiroshima, starting at 6am!

Day 3 - Hiroshima Here We Come

Getting up was actually pretty easy, probably because of all the excitement, and we were in Kyoto waiting for the Shinkansen (bullet train) by 7:30am and in Hiroshima by 9:30. I remember Mom called us during our early lunch in Hiroshima’s Hondori shopping arcade and Dad was very excited to tell her about the delicious raw bacon sandwich he was currently eating.

This was the train that caused all the excitement.

Hello from Hiroshima!

This is where we had lunch.

That day we hit the Peace Memorial Park in the center of the city, complete with the Peace Memorial Museum and the A-bomb dome – a building whose structure survived the blast in 1945 and has been preserved in its damaged state as a memorial.

The museum was really well done and of course very moving. My favorites, though, were actually all the little memorials throughout the park, like the big bell you can ring to pronounce peace to the world, and the big collection of paper cranes made by Japanese school students in memory of one little girl who died of radiation-related leukemia.

Here’s a group of kids probably getting a school lecture in view of the dome.

Oh, and speaking of Japanese school students, it seemed we had a group of 3 or 4 of them approaching us every ten minutes that day. It was actually quite amusing. “Where are you from?” they would ask, along with something like “How do you like Japan?” and then they would get us to sign our names on papers they were carrying and pose for pictures with us. They must have been doing some kind of English project.

The best was when one little girl came right up to Trevor and asked him “Do you like Japanese food?”.

What, you never heard of Altona?

We spent most of the afternoon in the park and the museum, but we also managed to see Hiroshima Castle.

A nice view of Hiroshima castle.

Inside the castle, the Janzes had the opportunity to try on some traditional clothing.

After the castle, we took a short walk and checked into our Ryokan – this time a real Japanese style bed-and-breakfast complete with tatami straw flooring, yukata robes, tiny slippers to wear and futons to sleep on.

Comfy, guys?

We couldn’t get dinner at the inn for some reason, so we went back into town for Hiroshima’s famous okonomiyaki. The shop we wanted didn’t seem to exist, though, so we settled for omelette-rice, a hearty stolen-from-China dinner feast of ketchup-rice wrapped in egg.

Dinner time! I think Dad had the one with the green sauce.

Day 4 - Hiking Miyajima

This morning the family opted for the “Western Style” breakfast, considering that the Japanese one consisted of a raw egg and more fermented beans among other things.

This, our second day in Hiroshima, was dedicated to Miyajima Island, about 20 minutes away via train and ferry, and home of the famous floating torii gate (see: our blog’s profile picture). Basically Miyajima is just a big green mountain jutting 530 meters out of the sea. It’s total area is only about 20 square kilometers, so after walking around by the shrine for a bit, we just started climbing to the top! Of course the Japanese have built an adorable and rustic stone staircase the entire length of the path. I’m assuming they did this to make the climb more convenient, but I’m not sure they realized that climbing 530 meters of stairs (pretty much the CN Tower) is a heck of a lot more strenuous than climbing 530 meters of sloping, mountain path. At least that’s my experience. Thank you, Japan.

The bottom of the island was crawling with really tame deer. Hey! Stay away from my sister!

The tide was also out that afternoon, so we could practically walk right up to the gate.

The whole hike was really beautiful.

Anyway, we came across only two or three people on the long hike up, but as we neared the peak, we began to hear something of a dull roar. See, there’s also a cable car that brings people up to the top, and before we knew it, we found ourselves inside a giant mob of Junior High School students, all smartly dressed in their field-trip tracksuits.

Where’s Lloydo?

Most of the places we visited are pretty popular, especially in the springtime. So there were a lot of tourists around, but still most of them were Japanese. Occasionally, we'd see some white people milling about in the crowd and whenever Dad noticed them, he'd nudge one of us and say "Caucasian alert" out of the side of his mouth. It was hilarious. Anyways, I wonder what that would translate to in Japanese... because I bet it's what those kids were saying.

Ummm. Oh yes. Miyajima. The view from the top was nice, although the weather was a little hazy. We stayed up there for a good while, taking pictures and stuff… and when we were done we took the cable car back down. I think we’d all had enough of the stairs and the canyon man insisted that going down was going to hurt more than going up. We took his word for it.

Here we are on the cable car!

At the bottom, near the entrance to the park we found an adorable outdoor noodle shop, where we all plopped down for a delicious and much-needed lunch.

The evening consisted of another ferry-ride back to the mainland, a dinner at McDonalds in some food court (McPork, anyone? … or maybe a Shrimp Burger?), and then a nice, relaxing Shinkansen ride back to Kyoto.

Day 5 - The Kyoto Highlights

I think we slept in a little longer this day after our big Hiroshima journey, but it didn’t stop us from taking Kyoto by storm. Back in old, familiar Kyoto we had a nice, big, “normal” breakfast at home. Dad claimed he had no jet lag at all and sure enough he was up every day at least half an hour before everyone else. Pretty soon he’d made a habit of going next door to the convenience store for a hot can of coffee and some sign-language conversation with the cashier. The store is called “Circle K” but he insisted the sign outside was more reminiscent of “Kroeker Seeds” back home, so each morning he’d mention that he was just “going to Kroeker’s for coffee”.

Anyway, on this Kyoto day the lovely Chris left to do all the family’s laundry while I took them on a little tour of the mountain canal and the Nanzenji Temple. We met up with Chris later at the Heian Shrine. As we walked up to the entrance, two university students came up to us and said they were from some kind of “Free English Tours Club” and they’d like to tell us about the shrine. They were really cute and taught us a lot of things we never knew.

The rest of us were too cheap to pay admission, but Dad went up to the top of the giant gate leading into the temple grounds. He took this cute picture from up there.

These were our tour guides.

We had a hearty Italian lunch in Kyoto at one of our favorite places that afternoon, and then we wandered around in the Gion district and shopped for souvenirs, stared at Geishas, etc.

Here we are again! I really don’t know if these are the same girls we keep seeing in the city. One thing I did see that day, however, was a girl in the very same kimono that Erin wore in January. So I know at least one came from the makeover studio :)

We also stopped for a bit at the Kansai Blues Festival!

I think some time after that we ended up in the shopping arcades downtown so by then their heads might have been spinning pretty close to full speed. We had Mos Burgers (a chili-tomato burger… not moss) for dinner that night subwayed back home for bed.

Day 6 - Off to Osaka

Although there was plenty left to see in Kyoto, our guests still had Japan Rail Passes to use, so having seen the Kyoto highlights, it was time for Osaka. Breakfast was at home and then three trains and just over an hour later, we were staring up at Osaka castle.

Here’s my “big” brother-in-law on the way there. Looking a little more awake than the rest.

Here’s my “little” sister sitting on the castle wall.

Big place.

These guys were playing in the park behind the castle. I was very amused.

We spent the adequate picture-taking time there, but it was nearing lunchtime so we were soon on the train back to Osaka Station and the dining Mecca on the 8^th floor of the Yodobashi Camera building. Mmmmm, bread buffet.

Although the electronics were beckoning, we managed to resist their call for a few more hours and after lunch we made a stop at the Osaka Sky building. We’d been meaning to go up here for a while now, and I’m glad we finally did. I also didn’t know it had a waterfall-garden-courtyard in front of it. I liked that part a lot.

The building itself looks really cool, too, and if you ride the combination of elevator and floating escalator to the top, you can actually get to the circular rooftop observation deck and see the entire city, 360 degrees.

Up we go!

Next, we headed back to Yodobashi to allow the boys their drool-fest. Steph stuck around with them and she and Trevor actually picked up a new digital camera that evening! (That’s where number 5 came in). Dad and I chose to go out for coffee and wander around in the sweets shops.

That evening, back in Yamashina, we had the okonomiyaki for dinner that we hadn’t been able to find in Hiroshima. I’ll bet it was just as good.

Day 7 - Bridge to Heaven

What? They’ve been here for a week already? Today the adventure continues in Amanohashidate. North of Kyoto on the Sea of Japan, it’s the site of a 3.6km long sandbar that is pretty famous (out here) for it’s beautiful scenery. Amanohashidate actually means “bridge to heaven” because from the top of the small mountains on either end, when you look at it upside down, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. We took an express train all the way up there in the morning, had more noodles for lunch when we arrived and then proceeded to walk across.

Get your energy up with kippered herring noodle soup!

Mom called right when we got to the sandbar. It was nice to hear from her so often this week. It was almost like the family was all together!

It was a gorgeous day and we took our time. On the other side, we found the chairlift: a long line of yellow and blue and red single-chairs, each with its own little umbrella, slowly riding up and down the mountainside along to elevator music. It was the cheesiest, cutest, and funnest thing ever. Very Japanese.

Here’s the sandbar, the viewing platform, and a demonstration of the proper viewing position.

And viola! The bridge to heaven!

At the top we had ice cream and looked upside-down with our heads between our legs to see the “bridge”. We took the chairlift back down and Chris and I walked back down along the sandy beach while Dad treated Steph and Trevor took a speedboat ride and we all met on the other side. Apparently there were some wild Japanese girls on the boat with them.

It was a beautiful day but by the late afternoon we were beat by all the sun. We hung around in the train station and had convenience store snacks, then took the train back into Kyoto and at home we just had more snacks and went to bed.

Day 8 - To Tokyo for Lunch

This was supposed to be our Kobe day, but it rained. So since Dad had become so fond of the Shinkansen trains, he decided he wanted to visit Tokyo… just for the afternoon! So we did! What happened was Trevor gave me his Rail Pass to use, while he and Chris went to Osaka to indulge in more electronics. So Dad ended up taking his girls out for lunch in Tokyo.

Are we there yet?

The train ride was about 3 hours (at 275 km an hour, of course). There was lots of space on the train and we were quite comfy. We really didn’t have a plan once we got to Tokyo; it was really windy and rainy so we just wandered. The area around Tokyo station is basically full of massive skyscrapers, some kind of financial district called Ginza. We saw exclusively young people in black suits. We finally found a very modern-looking café with a nice lunch deal of roast beef-and-bean-salad sandwiches. After lunch we walked around outside of the imperial palace grounds with our umbrellas in the rain. We also saw a cool fountain-park-thing.

”Tokyo Station”

Skyscrapers and the huge fountain.

The glimpse we had of the Imperial Palace.

By 3:30 we were back on the train, speeding towards Kyoto. We met Chris and Trevor at the apartment and I think this was the night we made chicken fajitas at home, which were thoroughly enjoyed.

Day 9 - The Kobe Experience

And now we’ve come upon the last day of validity for the family’s Japan Rail Passes. Which means we had to visit Kobe. First stop: the Disaster Reduction Museum (aka the Great Hanshin Earthquake Museum). Dad and Steph and Trevor went in. We’d been there before, and it’s really not somewhere you go twice, so after sent them on their way and Chris and I went to the mall ;) We had a decent lunch at a Japanese-style spaghetti restaurant and tried a bunch of stuff on in the stores.

But we finally got a picture of this place ourselves.

Later on in the afternoon, we met them at the waterfront behind the museum and slowly took the long walk into Kobe Harbor. We stopped for coffee in a fancy café in the old European district in Kobe and after a little more walking we found ourselves at the earthquake memorial in the Kobe’s harbor park. This was something we hadn’t managed to find in either of our previous visits and it was nice to finally see it.

A preserved section of Meriken park.

That’s a double-decker freeway in the background.

Just taking pictures in the harbor.

And the sun went down…

Then it was Steph and Trevor’s turn to go shopping. Even Dad bought a new T-shirt in our favorite clothing chain, Uniqlo, whose biggest store is located right there in Kobe Harbor. Dad and I met this really friendly Japanese guy who worked there – who suddenly started speaking English to us with a perfect New Zealand accent! We were impressed.

We had dinner at the restaurant complex where we went for the giant seafood buffet last time. This time we ate outside, though, at a steak/pizza/salad kind of place. The food was mediocre, but the view of Kobe Tower and the Maritime museum was awesome!

After dinner we explored the mini amusement park right there on the harbor. I forget who it was that got all excited about the ferris wheel (I’m guessing… Dad?), but in the end all 5 of us ended up on board, taking in a beautiful night view of Kobe from the top.

And last but not least, the ferris wheel.

Day 10 - Mieko Obasan's English Cafe featuring Lloyd Giesbrecht and Co.

This day started with a little trip into the Shiga prefecture (where we work). One of Chris’ higher-level students runs a small English conversation café in one of the country towns out there and she and Chris had long arranged that our whole clan would visit on this day. So we took the train for about 20 minutes, then we boarded one of the local buses bound for the middle of nowhere. On the bus were the 5 of us, the driver, and about 15 junior high school boys carrying sports bags. I think each party was quite amused by the other.

Anyway, Chris’ student, a dear little 60-ish year old lady named Mieko, met us at the bus stop and walked us up to her home. Along the way we got the usual small-town tour. “This is the police station… This is Mr. Takada’s house… this is the Elementary school…” At her house there were 5 other Japanese guests waiting for us and we all sat together on half-sized sofas around a huge coffee table.

I think this is the only shot we have of all 5 of us together. It’s in one of the house’s tatami rooms.

First, came the coffee, then the assortment of homemade cakes. Then she gave us a little tour of her gorgeous traditional-style Japanese house. After that, began some serious living room conversation, led by none other than Mr. Giesbrecht himself. We all decided he’d make a great English teacher! Our plans for the afternoon were to go back to Kyoto station and have a quick lunch before heading out to Arashiyama and the bamboo forest. But like any good hostess, Mieko suddenly pulls out enough homemade Japanese lunch for the entire group of us. It was a very interesting and very tasty meal. At one point Trevor asked Stephanie to pass him more of “the black stuff” (a kind of bean salad with pickled seaweed). Mieko and all the Japanese guests got a huge kick out of this, they even started calling it “the black stuff” themselves.

Nothing like black stuff with chopsticks, hey guys?

After our delicious surprise lunch, two of the ladies even offered rides back to the train station so we wouldn’t have to take the bus again. And this was the opportunity for Dad and Trevor to sit in the passenger (left) side of a Japanese car. A truly eerie experience, when you’re so used to having a steering wheel in front of you, but there’s only a glove box!

We still made it to Arashiyama that afternoon with plenty of time to spare. We saw the temples, the river, the valley, and last but not least, the bamboo forest, which is always really fun.

There were all manner of boat rentals around that day.

Hello? Anyone home?

Beautiful!

And by the time that was finished, we were ready for another culinary adventure, so with reservations made, we dined in true style at Ajanta, our favorite of favorites, the best Indian restaurant in Kyoto. I think this place might have ended up being Steph’s favorite, too.

Day 11 - Work a Day

In order to preserve some of our holidays for later use, Chris and I had decided to work this day. Friday mornings aren’t usually busy and the family wanted to see where we worked anyway. So after wowing the family and posing for pictures in our snappy business attire, we all boarded the train together and left for work.

Just bringin’ home the bacon.

We dropped Chris off at the halfway point and the family accompanied me the rest of the way to my office. As I taught, Dad spent the whole day people-watching and drinking coffee on the raised crosswalk and Steph and Trevor went souvenir-crazy in the department store.

You were wondering? This is where I work.

The day went by incredibly quickly and at the end of it Chris took the train up to meet us and we all did dinner Korean fast-food style at the ultra-delicious “bibimba” stand across from the McDonalds. Each serving came in a hot stone bowl with a sizzling raw egg cracked on top. Steph and Trevor were as skeptical as ever, but we reassured them. Don’t worry, the bowl is hot enough to cook the egg… just stir it a little… here, try this sauce… that’s right. See? And sure enough, everyone’s bowl was spotless at the end.

On the train ride home, Dad made some new best friends. Us kids took all the other seats so he had to sit across the aisle from us. Then he noticed the Harley Davidson mechanic uniforms on the guys he was sitting with. Turns out their English wasn’t bad at all!

Day 12 - Fushimi and Falafel

Only two days left in Japan! What are we going to do? Well this was the most sweltering day so far – but not even that bad by summer standards – so we went for another hike! This time to my favorite of all of Japan’s shrines, Fushimi Inari. We got off to a late start in the morning, (apparently the past week had left us quite sleepy!) But we still managed to pack some light lunches and take the short trip down to the shrine in southern Kyoto.

Welcome to Fushimi Inari, I’ll be your guide this afternoon…

The lovely vermillion-colored torii gates welcomed us there, and after Miyajima island last week, the broad, flat staircase leading under the gates and up the mountain were a piece of cake. We had our bag lunches in the observation ’clearing’, and continued our hike around the back side and down again.

Another really beautiful day.

They’re everywhere!

Is this the same cat we saw in September?

These guys were really entertaining as well. Somebody was throwing breadcrumbs to the koi fish in the water and there were turtles, ducks and pigeons all fighting for them.

Down by the station we did a bunch more souvenir browsing and then took the train back into the city. After a bit more souvenir /samurai sword shopping in the Gion district, it was time to eat. Today, dinner was in honor of our Isreal-traveling mother. We ate at none other than the Falafel Garden, an adorable and slightly out-of-the-way place specializing in, you guessed it, falafel, but also pita, hummus, babaganoosh, etc. We even got to relax and eat in their comfy little courtyard area.

What’s with all this international food, you ask? Well, after living here for 8 months and so often having to stare your dinner in the face… you find these places. Plus the international food here is just so good!

Anyway, to get home we strolled part way along the river, foregoing the subway transfer. We saw some guys setting up fireworks on the peninsula, so we sat and waited to see if they’d set them off, but long after dark we were still sitting there, but we were getting tired so we finally decided to just keep strolling along.

Day 13 - Anniversary Karaoke

Happy 1^st anniversary, Steph and Trevor! To think, one year ago today we were in Altona, on a sunny, warm day cruising around in a Chrysler 300 and eating ham and baked potatoes. Let’s see… today we’re walking through Kyoto, Japan in the rain hopping in and out of a wild Japanese shopping arcade.

We had kind of wanted to do something special for the big day, so we left it as a “surprise” on their itinerary. The truth is, we hadn’t really planned anything. We thought maybe a trip to the hot springs… but then again the nakedness might be a problem. Then we thought maybe Korean barbecue… but we didn’t know of any places nearby. Finally, when the time came, we all figured it would best to just use this second last day in Japan to pick up some remaining souvenirs. It still ended up being quite an experience, though.

Last day for sister time!

We’d tried to beat the shopping crowds by getting our stuff done earlier in the morning, and that proved to be a wise decision. We passed up a sushi-train lunch in favor of some more pasta/rice/beef type food at another cafe. And that just left the afternoon free for none other than the world famous Japanese pastime: Karaoke.

Feeling very Japanese already. Can’t wait to get in there!

At the Super Jankara Karaoke Room we had to wait in line among gaggles of Japanese school girls and the random group of uber-cool thugs. It wasn’t long, though, before us 5 big white people were on our way up to our private Karaoke room on the 4^th floor. We stayed an hour and of course the time flew. There were a few skeptics among us again, but by the end of the hour everyone in that room had had their moment in the spotlight. “American Woman” was sung soulfully by our very own Dad, followed by a “Barbie Girl” duet by the anniversary couple themselves. The Schatzes preformed “99 Luftballoons” with impressive fluency, and finally the whole gang concluded with a shattering rendition of the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah; a big surprise to find in the Japanese karaoke book, you can be sure.

Hallelujah….

… and raise a little Hell.

After Karaoke it was time for the next favorite of Japanese school girl activities, the print club, or “purikura”, as they say. For those of you not down with the lingo, purikura is basically a glorified version of the passport-photo booth. Only it’s about 4 times the size so you can cram like 10 people inside if you want, and after your photo session you have to use a special touch-screen to decorate your photos with all kinds of cartoons and designs. Steph and I are very proud of our work on these.

Our photos safely printed and stowed away from the rain, we stopped one more time on our way home for take-out dessert crepes. Another popular indulgence for the average young shopper, you can get these things with an endless variety of fillings. Mmmm, chocolate and rice flour balls… eh, Schatz?

That night at home, Chris and I sequestered ourselves in the kitchen to prepare a one-burner gourmet special anniversary dinner for the happy couple. Back in the living room, I think there was some serious suitcase-packing going on. Dinner was a huge success, complete with Chilean chardonnay and Japanese shochou (kind of like schnapps).

Day 14 - Back to Canada

So that was two weeks! What an adventure!

This morning we just had a nice breakfast at home, loaded up the luggage and jumped on the train one last time. We stopped in Kyoto station to get the special tourist passes that got the 3 of them to the airport for cheaper. It was nice to ride out to the airport-island on a much less hazy day than the one we had two weeks ago. We accompanied them all the way to the check-in where we had the privilege of witnessing the security guard pull 3 replica samurai swords out of Trevor’s suitcase, confirm that they were fakes, bow to Trevor and pack them neatly back in. They got their boarding passes, we found the gates, after a couple of big, big hugs our 3 visitors disappeared through security. In 29 hours they’d be in San Francisco, Denver, and finally Winnipeg, being picked up by our lonely Mom.

The two of us wandered around in the airport for a while after that, all the time fascinated that we were on a huge man-made island. We had lunch at the Starbucks there and then, using Steph’s and Trevor’s 24-hour tourist passes they’ picked up that morning we made our way… … to Kobe!

Like… shopping!

Haha! Yeah, even after all the excitement of those two weeks, we still weren’t going to pass up some free transportation. Besides, we were still on vacation for another day and a half! So we went back to the giant Uniqlo and picked up a bunch more much-needed summer clothes. We picked up some omnigori and leisurely took the train home (for free) in the evening, and over dinner discussed what a wonderful two weeks we’d had, how much we were looking forward to seeing them all again in the summer, and how urgently we needed to clean our little apartment again.

Think Pink

2007-04-21T10:40:00.000+09:00

Hi there! Sorry again that it’s taken so long to update this thing. The weather has been getting so much nicer lately and we just hate to spend the weekends inside at the computer! Anyways, my shift was changed today so now I have a little time this morning to bring everyone up to speed.

At this point, we’re looking at only two more days of work until we’re off for holidays – and we haven’t even shown our last pictures yet! The cherry blossoms! So cherry blossoms are a bit of an obsession for this country. They bloom for maybe 2 weeks in the spring and they’re absolutely everywhere. Pretty much every piece of Japanese artwork that you’ve ever seen will have incorporated cherry blossoms of some kind. These trees are usually about medium sized and actually quite gross and snarly looking in the winter. But during these two weeks in the spring they are completely covered with light pink blossoms. I’ve tried to ask my students if they ever eat the cherries, but I usually just get a sort of “does not compute” expression in response. So apparently cherry blossoms have nothing to do with fruit. And I’m the weird one for thinking they might.

Anyways, our days off landed on a beautiful couple days and we basically spent the whole weekend touring the city on foot. Turns out Kyoto is actually a pretty famous place for these things! Since there’s not much more to it than that, I’ll just throw some of the better pictures up here and let you take a look!

This was our first view of the real stuff.

Yes, these guys had giant baskets on their heads. We have no idea why.

This is the Path of Philosophy again. The canal runs down the middle and above it for the entire way is a canopy of blossoms. Thre were a lot of people out there, but it was gorgeous!

This is a mutant cherry blossom tree.

Just like in fall, where the girls put on their red and orange kimonos to match the leaves, in the spring they haul out the pink ones and walk around. Kawaii, ne!

So after the Pilosopher’s path we hit the Falafel Garden for lunch. It’s always such a long walk to get up there, but always well worth it. From there we headed north along the river, also completely lined with blossoms.

There weren’t so many people out here. The riverbanks are actually pretty huge. Although it’s kind of where all the freaks go. Like the people that live under tarps and stuff. In this picture on the left you can see a couple in mid-clench. At first we thought she was injured somehow, but maybe she was just sleepy. I’m starting to think it’s what they do instead of making out. Anyway on the right is Mr. Fitness himself, he was kind of half-jogging, half-dancing in one spot all the while holding on to his ears. Priceless, eh.

Ok… I think we have to turn left at the giant brass horns…

So where do the cherries come from, exactly?

What do you think of this one for the Christmas Card?

So that completes day 1 of Chris and Jen’s Cherry Blossom Weekend. You’d think we would do something else on the second day, but nope! We headed out again, this time to Maruyama park and the Gion district. So Maruyama park has this one really famous cherry blossom tree in the middle of it…

And yeah, it was quite nice.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about the cherry blossom traditions in Japan. Well, basically everyone goes and has a picnic. The more cherry blossoms you can have above your picnic, the better. So in that case everyone in the city will go and picnic in the same places. And that’s a lot of picnicking. So what the city does is lay tarps all over the dirt on the ground (grass is usually nonexistent here, even in parks) for people to have their picnics on and so that garbage doesn’t scatter. And so what you have is quite a scene. You see, drinking in public is totally legal here, and drinking sake is also a requirement for your cherry blossom picnic. And then after drinking your sake and eating your lunch on such a nice, warm spring day you want to lie down. And then you want to sleep.

So basically if you want to visit the park at this time of year, what you’ll probably walk in on is a bunch of drunk people sleeping on dirty tarps with food remnants scattered about them.

Chris was kind of grossed out, but we just kept on looking at the trees.

The weird thing is, that eating food in public is considered kind of uncouth in Japan because it looks ‘dirty’. Of course when there are flowers on the trees, it doesn’t seem to be an issue!

This place had cute little tables. Much nicer.

Wandering around that day, we came across a few more kimonos, only these ones had geishas inside of them. Or Geishas-in-training which are called Maiko… or maybe just fake geishas altogether that the city sends out from Erin’s studio to give the tourists something to take pictures of. No way of knowing, really.

There were a lot of people out at the olde Kiyomizu temple. We’d never seen so many white people outside of work. But we got a few shots in minus the tourists.

And some more of these girls. The tourists went nuts for them.

So that’s it for the cherry blossoms! They only last about two weeks in the spring, if that. One student said that people really don’t plant them on private property because the blossoms are a kind of symbol of a short life. Anyways, Chris still wants to plant one at home ;)

Let’s see. What else is new? We’ve experienced one more weekend since then. On the first day we headed out to Joe and Tiff’s place, we had lunch with them and then went to pick up some extra bedding for the big visit next week. It was kind of funny. On the train Chris mentioned, “It’s weird… I think we’re getting stared at less today, even though we’re carrying this giant rolled-up futon. Maybe it’s because it’s Japanese bedding”. Haha! Sure, whatever!

On the next day we wandered around in the city again, went out for a cute and yummy Asian-style lunch with Lisa and then proceeded to shop till we dropped. We need vacation clothes, after all! And supplies and presents for our visitors of course… good times! Oh yeah, and I got a bit of a sinus cold and/or infection, which sucked. But after a good 3 days straight of nose-blowing, I think I’m clearing up. And Chris thinks the cherry blossoms gave him phlegm. We’re such old people sometimes.

Then in the evening we settled in and watched The Passon of the Christ which we had downloaded and meant to watch on Easter Sunday. It was… gross. But I’m glad to have finally seen it. It was pretty well made, I guess.

Alrighty, let me just take this chance to say Mom got back from Israel okay and her pictures and stories are extremely cool. This may also be the last blog before Steph and Trevor and Dad arrive in this crazy country… but you can be sure we’ll have plenty of stories about THAT!

“See you soon!”

The Top Stories

2007-04-03T20:50:00.000+09:00

I guess you could say we go through phases. Most of the time we’re like “oh we have such huge loans at home so we should be really cheap”. But usually about once a month the idea comes over us that “oh we’re actually millionaires (in Japanese Yen, that is) and we won’t be here for that long so we should go out and eat and have fun and take lots of pictures”… and I guess those are the ideas that keep this blog going!

The Trip

Alright I’m going to have to think a couple weeks back, here. Our trip to Kobe was really still the most interesting thing we’ve done recently, so you haven’t missed much. Good thing I uploaded the best shots of that trip before the harddriveicide.

If I remember correctly we had an extra day off towards the end of March, so we decided to get all our chores done early and spend the next whole day visiting Kobe. We’d been there once to the Disaster Reduction Museum (Earthquake Museum) and to the Chinatown but there was still a lot more we hadn’t seen.

We even took a different rail line into the city. It was cute and actually a lot cheaper than the JR.

Another search for Jen… (having fun yet?)

The weather was supposed to be overcast in Kobe that day but there was zero percent chance of rain. But it rained, though.

We were bummed.

As we exited the major downtown station in Kobe, we had to spend a bit of time orienting ourselves. Maps are pretty useful, except when they don’t resemble the city at all. We are continuously surprised at how mashed together the buildings in this country can be. The word that keeps coming up is “ramshackle”.

Hey that sign really makes me want to patronize that establishment.

Anyway, we stopped for lunch at a French bistro with a very annoying and pushy albeit English-speaking waiter. Chris had pasta and half a bottle of Pernod. I had a sandwich made of really good baguette with a microscopic piece of pork inside. It was a cute place.

After lunch we ventured out into the rain again, a little higher up the hillside that the city’s built on. Chris was searching for some famous houses that had been built by European traders back in the day.

This one was called “Rhine House” I guess it was built by a German. It was the only one that was free to go into. It reminded me of the Schwarz House in Altona.

We wandered further up the hill to find some house with siding that was supposed to look like fish scales, but before we could even catch a glimpse, there was a lady in a booth demanding, like, 20 bucks to get inside. No thanks. Believe it or not, we’ve actually seen plenty of European-style houses in our day.

On our way back down the mountain we came across this one called the “Weathercock house” because of the weathervane on the roof. I think it must be the most famous one in the area. It had started raining again at this point but they also wanted admission here so we just sat down to rest on some covered park benches in the courtyard and took pictures from there.

Also in the courtyard were bronze people and animals sitting on benches. I always love these things.

They had really nice public bathrooms up there, by the way.

Umm, so when the rain stopped we started back down the hill toward the harbor. We were halfheartedly looking for a snack to make up for the breadwich I had for lunch, but no luck. After a decent walk, we found ourselves cold and hungry and down by the harbor. Oh, but on the way we took some fun pictures. Funny, how some things can remind you of home!

What’s on the menu, eh?

I didn’t see a forklift in the driveway of this one.

Back down by the railroad we found this piece of work. It was some kind of shopping plaza, I think. It looked like somebody took a plain, concrete building and dunked the one corner in colorful plaster. It was called “Mediterasse”. I kind of liked it. But ‘only in Japan’ was all we could say.

This groovy mirror-ball was outside of a bank. We tried to take lots of artsy pictures with it but it was kind of sitting in the middle of a big pool of water so this is as close as we could get.

After the trek down to the water, I was spent. I sat down on a bench to re-energize with some of the chocolate easter-egg rations that I’d smuggled from our kitchen in the morning while Chris wandered around with the camera some more.

Now we were at Kobe Harbor, though. Unfortunately we didn’t really see any huge ships pulling in, but it was kind of cool to be a relatively big, open space for once. It was pretty cold and wet so there weren’t any people around either. All in all, it made for some nice shots!

You’ll probably recognize that red tower.

There’s also a pirate ship! Okay, it’s probably not really from pirates, but that’s what we’re calling it.

We weren’t sure if this was a hotel or a ship. But it lights up at night.

What a trooper. This picture is also awesome.

But somebody else managed to humble the master photographer by taking this one.

And then there’s the famous tower again. We took this one from across the bay where we ended up eating dinner.

We ate at a really cute 3-story seaside village-style shopping and restaurant complex called Mosaic. It reminded Chris of Granville Island. I don’t really remember Granville, so I can’t say.

It even had a little amusement park.

Anyway, even though we were quite weary with hunger, we still managed to explore the whole place and consider, like, 50 different and equally adorable restaurants before we decided on the biggest of them all – a giant seafood buffet called the Fisherman’s Market.

And I mean giant. There might have been about 50 people eating there when we came in, but there was probably enough room for 500 on two levels. They basically sat us down at a totally bare table and pointed at the buffet that ran the length of the restaurant. A feeding trough, was more like it. I mean, it was pretty fancy food, and we had fun sampling a lot of weird stuff, but the amounts that we saw some people eat was insane. You know how the little Japanese guy always wins those disgusting American hot-dog eating contests? Well…. yeah.

These two had about 6 plates on their table at once, not counting trips to the dessert wing with the chocolate fountain and gelato selection. They'd arrived after, and left before we did. I’d had my eye on them, you know… and sure enough, when the server came to clean up all their plates after they’d left, she found the check still there. By the looks of the gathering group of servers at that table, I was right. They dashed!

But you know, I ate about 1 and a half plates of food at that place. That’s a lot of fish and I was sure feeling it. If those people really ate as much as I thought they did, well… they’ll get what’s coming to them.

So dinner was exciting. The train ride home was pretty long cuz we had to transfer a few times, but we still didn’t get home terribly late. And we’d satisfied our little need for the adventure-of-the-month!

Okay so that was Kobe. I could finish the blog here, but why not just fill in the last few weeks while I’m at it?

The Package

Yeah, so I think it was in the morning before we left on our Kobe adventure that we got a ring on the doorbell-phone. People try to call up a lot and sell us stuff, so we usually just pick it up and yammer on in English until they leave. But this time after my hearty English “hello?” I was greeted with “Japanese post-o office MAN!” It was so cute! I think he’d made it up the stairs to our floor in around 3 seconds and I opened the door to find him standing there beaming and holding a giant box and a pen. So I signed for it and he gave it to me. Man it was heavy!

From mommy and daddy!

Okay so this can’t be what’s making it so heavy.

Ah yes. 4 tubes of toothpaste, a giant bottle of vitamins and about 40 pounds of candy. I guess they just want to make sure we’re leading a balanced lifestyle.

We were really happy about the toothpaste because you can’t get proper toothpaste with fluoride here! (And let me tell you, it shows). They also don’t really have a market for deodorant. Don’t ask me why, but I also think it would be a useful thing to have available! Well, at least I can be happy we have some in our house again.

So thank you Stockmans! The quality of your souvenirs is steadily growing ;)

The Quake

Okay, and next on the list, I promised an earthquake story, didn’t I? Well, I was in the office on Sunday morning with one other teacher. We were just chatting and getting our lessons ready for the day when, quite slowly, the bulletin board I was looking at started to sway back and forth on the wall. At first I thought someone had hit the wall on the other side. Then I started to lose my balance and felt dizzy – my sinuses do that to me sometimes. But then I grabbed the shelf and I looked up to see the other teacher also standing there wide-eyed with both arms stretched out for balance. And then it donned on me that the whole building was swaying back and forth. We’d had an earthquake! It really didn’t last long and we were on the third floor of a pretty huge department store so I guess we didn’t feel much of what was actually happening on the ground.

Not 10 seconds later my phone rang and it was Chris. ‘Is the ground moving where you are?’ Haha.Yes. Apparently he’d been the first at his office to notice it and when he off-handedly asked his coworkers if they felt the floor moving, he got a pretty good reaction.

So first of all, don’t worry, we’re ok. It was actually a pretty strong earthquake, though, but its centre was pretty far away from where we live here. You can read about it all here. Apparently a bunch of houses collapsed and one woman died when a stone lantern fell on her in her garden.

The Murder

And while we’re talking about the news, I may as well share our latest development out here in Japan. Now, I don’t want to scare any of you parents out there, but a girl that worked for our company in Tokyo was murdered last weekend. She had been giving a man private English lessons on the side and after one of their lessons in a café he’d taken her back to his apartment… Her body was found in a bathtub full of sand that was sitting on his balcony. Apparently she’d been hurt a lot and her head had been shaved. The police have a picture of the guy and they’re still looking for him. So yeah. It’s a terrible story. Her name was Lindsay Hawker and she was from England. I didn't find a decent news story to link to, but I don't think details would be so hard to find if you really wanted to.

But just so nobody worries about us, when we’re not working Chris and I usually spend every waking moment together. We also don’t teach any private lessons. It would cut into all of our romantic sightseeing and dining! All we can do is hope the police catch the guy, I guess. And leave our thoughts and prayers with Lindsay’s family.

And with that I believe I’ve come to the end of this blog entry. Sorry again for all the negativity. But I’ll fill it up with some awesome stories again as soon as I hear from my mom and her wild adventures in Israel!

Another bug

2007-03-30T09:15:00.000+09:00

Hi there. Sorry to leave you with such a depressing message on here for so long. I'm much better now, in case you were wondering. The reason we haven't written anything new lately is actually because the computer decided to get sick! As far as I know, the hard drive in the laptop decided to physically break inside the computer. So we went and got a new one. Then it took a few days to get all the screws out of the old hard drive (that were glued-in for some reason!), and now we're basically just trying to install things again and make everything boot up properly... which is also proving to take a while.

But here I am, on the internet again. So if you sent me emails, don't worry, I've read them now, and if you didn't send me emails, please do!

More news about Japan, Kobe Harbor, cherry blossoms, and an earthquake soon!

Under the Weather

2007-03-15T18:19:00.000+09:00

What luck I have. I was feeling a bit feverish at work in the evening yesterday, and sure enough, last night I was up at all hours sweating, hanging out in the bathroom and just feeling like crap. Today we usually catch the train to work at about noon, so we didn’t set any alarm. I was just happy to finally stop sweating last night and I had no idea what time it was when I actually fell asleep. Turns out it must have been pretty late cuz we both only opened our eyes at about 11:15. Oh man, when did it get so late? I gotta shower! So then I jumped out of bed, forgetting I’d been sick at all last night, and after about 3 minutes in the shower I just about blacked out again and I just barely made it back to the futon. Uh-oh, said Chris, maybe we should call you in sick today. So he called the head office for me, but of course they had to speak to me personally, so there I was, curled up and shivering on a half-folded up futon in my towel, trying to explain why I couldn’t come to work. And then it came time for me to be informed that I’d missed the 11:00 call-in-sick deadline, and so in addition to not being paid for today, I would be deducted a quarter day’s work from my monthly salary. Is that even legal?

They’ll always tell us: this is the culture and it’s just how a Japanese company works. Ok fine, but then at least let me hear it from a Japanese person and not some Australian guy who probably thinks I’m hungover like everyone else! You know I think it just feels better when someone from a different culture treats you like crap. Why am I getting flashbacks to Germany?

Anyway, so here I am at home, typing away and feeling quite a bit better, but in the grand scheme of things, feeling worse than ever because now I feel like I should be at work. I’m going to have to try eating some lunch soon, I guess. Crackers and apple juice, anyone…?

* * *

Ahem. Hi it’s sick girl again. I’ve had lunch now, and as a matter of fact I’ve also watched a movie. It’s already starting to get dark. All I have to do now is not fall asleep. If I do, who knows if I’ll sleep tonight at all! The working man is coming home at 10 so I’ve got a little time before making dinner. Why don’t I continue with this blog?

Let’s see… oh yes! It was Saturday night. We usually don’t do much on Saturday except enjoy an evening at home and get ready to go right back to work on Sunday morning. But a student of Chris’ had mentioned that there was supposed to be some kind of fire festival in one of the lakeside towns that’s on our way home. We figured since we were off early, why not check it out? There was also supposed to be a nice German restaurant in the general vicinity, so that pretty much sealed the deal.

We got off at the station and started walking. First things first: dinner. It took us about half an hour, but sure enough, we came across a big, adorable German house, with beams and stucco and everything. It was called the “Würzburg” Restaurant. This had to be the place. But what is that going on? Behind the restaurant there is the lake and a big rocky beach crowded with people… and an orange glow is coming from the lake….

Yup, there was the fire festival too, right behind the restaurant! We decided dinner could wait and started walking down to the beach. Once we got down there, we didn’t really find many people at all. It was pretty cold and drizzly so maybe that was why. What we did find were a lot of 2-meter tall bunches of reeds, standing on end, lined up along the lakeshore for the entire length of the town (maybe a kilometer?).

Yes and they were all on fire. It seems we’d come just in time because they were just starting to burn. We were strolling along in the rain, taking crappy pictures with our cell phones, when this guy came up to us and started saying “thank you… thank you” and bowing sideways like they do when they’re bowing and walking at the same time. Then he pointed to his watch, pointed back to the crowd of people, and made a music-playing motion. Oh yeah, said Chris. My student said he’d be playing drums here or something. “Thank you” we said, and bowed sideways back to the guy, and once we we’d reached the end of the beach, we turned around and headed back to the people.

We made it back just in time for the show! You know those Japanese-style drum shows? With the big drum mounted up high and the one guy plays it with his back to the audience while the others jump around with little drums and yell? I saw one when I was working at the conference center in Mannheim. Anyway, I guess this was a local group who did that sort of thing. I don’t know about the traditions or anything, but the show was really neat, especially with all the burning torches and the lake in the background. Chris kept saying it was creepy and it felt like something was about to be sacrificed. But he’s been reading the Old Testament recently, so I understand.

Once the show was over and most of the fires had burned out, it was definitely time for dinner. We checked out the menu for the German place and it seemed a little fancy, but there was really no where else to go at this point. It also smelled exactly like Christmas dinner at Grandma’s in there, so guten appetit!

Chris ordered the sausage.

And, well… he got sausage.

Turns out you have to order the fried potatoes separately in Japan.

And bread. What a rip! These meat-only entrees were costing plenty already. We ordered the 6-dollar breadbasket halfway through, though, in order to have somewhat of a balanced meal. It was really good bread. Well we weren't exactly full, but we managed to keep it under 50 bucks and it was still fun.

Oh, and the beer was pretty good and German-sized at that.

After dinner and “auf wiedersehens” we strolled back to the train station in the rain and made it home for a decent bedtime, stopping only for convenience-store dessert along the way.

Alright so that’s what happened on Saturday night. We’ve had another couple days off since then and we went to Kobe again! Gotta get those pictures loaded yet but stay tuned for some really nice stuff.

"big" mountain

2007-03-12T14:15:00.000+09:00

So here we are on the top of a mountain.

How did we get there, you ask?

Well, we walked!

After a not-so-long week at work (remember that extra day off last week?) we decided that since the weather had become so nice, it was time to head up into the hills again. Saturday and Sunday had been the most beautiful days we’ve seen in this country so far. Unfortunately, Monday (our day off) turned cold again and it rained all day. We watched movies at home. On Tuesday it was still pretty cold but the sun had come out again and we figured we’d still be able to make the hike.

And it was awesome! We got up in the morning, and after the ritual weekend phone calls from the parentals, we made some killer tuna sandwiches, donned our walking shoes and started uphill.

Let’s giver!

The first place we stopped was the same place we’d got to last time.

This is the view to the south. A little better than the cell phone, eh? We stopped to eat some of our lunch here.

Remember that day we got snow? And I went to take pictures of the temple by the canal? Well this is the mountain-goat’s-eye-view of that temple.

Hiking along, we came across various interesting things. Giant ferns, for example, and big volcanic rocks and also a bunch of teenage guys camping out, right in the middle of nowhere!

Jaffer? Is that you?

The mountain man returns!

After another half hour or so, we came to a second lookout, still looking over Yamashina to the south, only from way higher up!

Did we miss the elevator?

Along the way up to the top, we started noticing all these trees with pink flowers on them, which I always just call hibiscus, even though I’m not exactly sure what they are. A lot of them had fallen off the trees, too, and were lying all over the ground in some places. They were so pretty!

The kinds of trees were always changing as we walked along. At first, there was a lot of bamboo, which is always fun. (You can grab them and really make the whole thing shake.) And for the higher portions, a lot of the time we just felt like we were on the west coast in Vancouver!

Where’s Jen again?

And then…

As we were just walking along the winding paths as we had been for the past two hours, we wound around one more corner and then BAM! All of a sudden we were in a small clearing looking down at this:

That’s Yamashina there on the left, and on the right is the entire east side of Kyoto. It was so amazing to see both cities at once.

And if we zoomed in, way in the distance we could even see the skyscrapers in Osaka!

So apparently that was the peak of Daimonji mountain. 466 meters up, if our map is correct. We ate the rest of our lunch up there.

After our lunch break and taking about a million pictures, we were on our way again. (If you want to see more, just ask!) On the Kyoto-facing slope of the Daimonji mountain there is something that I guess you could call a fire monument. They’ve cleared a big open space, maybe about 100m square and set up a bunch of stone fire pits arranged in the shape of the Japanese symbol ”大” (daimon). I think it means “big”. We’d lost Yamashina at this point, but the view of Kyoto from here was incredible! As we came over the top, we were basically blasted with a cold, west wind. I think the wind had blown away most of the city haze, though, so the view was really clear. Anyways, we basically entered the clearing on the slope at the top of this symbol. The fires weren’t lit or anything. Apparently they only do the fire thing once a year. Up there were the most people we’d seen all day. At the base of this mountain is the Philosopher’s Path so I guess tourists sometimes make their way up the mountain as well. Something told me, however, that they weren’t planning on climbing down the other side and ending up at our house. But who knows!

This was the top fire pit.

Here’s part of the view. It was so clear!

After we’d taken all the pictures we could handle up there, we proceeded to stumble our way back down the water-worn paths. After about 15 minutes we were right in the city again, in the midst of a bunch of tourists, right outside the Ginkakuji (Silver Pavillion) at the end of the Philosopher’s path. We thought we might check it out, but the 500 yen admission made us decide to wait until spring. Then it was time for some seriously hot coffee and relaxing.

On the way into town. It’s nice to see little Christian has found himself a girlfriend.

We stopped at a spaghetti-and-cake restaurant (what better combination could you make?) that we’d passed a few times during our treks into the northeastern part of the city. We found some really nice couches in there, had some hot drinks and yummy cake, and I don’t think we got up until the dinner crowds started.

That put us into the mood for spaghetti, of course, so that’s what we made when we got home. Only we made it Japanese-style, (or random-style if you prefer) with pumpkin, bacon, zucchini and garlic! Oishii dess ne!

Okay, I’m a nerd.

But this is where we went!

The red dot is our house, on the left is the entire eastern half of the city of Kyoto. The yellow circle is the peak of the Daimonji mountain. The whole thing up and down including lunches took us about 2.5 hours. And I think my legs hurt for about 2.5 days.

So, if it’s not too hot in May, you guys, want to give Daimonji a try?

Goodbye February, Hello Spring!

2007-03-01T18:34:00.000+09:00

Boy, that was quite a month! Looking back, we spent the whole month of February without anything that resembled a weekend. Sure, we had at least one day off a week, sometimes two in random places, and if we were lucky we got to spend them together! It was starting to remind me of the Waterloo Inn. Some of it was due to overtime, and the rest was due to shifts that we traded with friends for various reasons. Anyhow, one of those traded shifts has finally given us a more-or-less 3 day weekend now, at the end of the month.

First things first! After our last shift on Sunday (and a rather crappy day, at that) we decided to celebrate the end of this crazy month by going out for dinner! Later, with our bellies full of curry and naan we settled in for some serious MacGyver watching and an early bedtime.

By the next morning we were all ready to giver again! Before lunch we were already in Osaka, climbing out of the train station and orientating ourselves with respect to Osaka Castle and the Osaka History Museum. But first, lunch!

Okay, that wasn’t our lunch. That was some tofu that accidentally froze in our powerful refrigerator.

Okay and this wasn’t our lunch either. It’s a cute kid looking out of the train window. This was our lunch:

We had sandwiches and assorted salads from this cute bookstore café in a department store.

Chris had a salmon bagel. It was really good. Two of my sandwiches were filled with fish and two had apple pie filling. Who would have guessed?

The view from our table was also quite enjoyable.

After our lovely lunch it was time to hit the Osaka History Museum around the corner, our day’s objective. Of course we got a little distracted along the way.

What I wouldn’t give for some new make.

This was our first glimpse of Osaka Castle. More about that later. We were about halfway to the musuem when we began to feel the ground shaking a little beneath our feet. Then in the distance we heard a dull chorus of squealing. And before we knew it, we were surrounded by an entire herd of uniformed schoolchildren, all running at full speed down the sidewalk and each and every one looking up at us just long enough to yell "HELLO!!!" in perfect English before they disappeared around the corner behind us.

Well, we regathered our wits and kept on walking, on one side of us the stone-walled moat of the Osaka castle and on the other side looming skyscrapers. As we finally reached the edge of the castle grounds and filtered through the skyscrapers, we came to our destination:

The Osaka History Museum is on the left. It is attached to the NHK (Japanese National Television) building by that giant glass… uhh… ball.

The museum was alright. There was very little English, but the displays were educational enough.

The top floor was a partial recreation of a giant temple called “Naniwa”, the first thing that was established on the site that is now Osaka (after the native people were fought away, of course) in the 7^th century. There were giant windows on this floor that also looked down onto the actual temple site which has now been preserved and made into a park.

Then we went down to the next generation of the community of “Naniwa” in the middle ages.

There was a lot more water back then, apparently. Osaka’s shoreline has dried up a lot since then and has also been developed for kilometers out into the sea. Which brings us to the modern period when they began foreign trade and all that. This is when Japanese culture developed as it is pretty much known today. Did you know they didn’t even have rice or green tea until somebody brought it over from China?

They even had subway cars:

…and they also perfected the art of plastic food. Mmm...sashimi!

That’s about it for the museum. There was another kids activity center and the lobby was really big and nice. We also popped into the NHK building just in time to watch a kids news program being filmed. It was so cute. We clapped for them.

After the museum, we walked right back over to the Osaka Castle, which had been taunting us through the windows all day. Like I said before, the castle is surrounded by two layers of stone-walled moats. They were huge. The walls surrounding the castle itself were pretty enormous, too. They apparently it was samurai clans who built them with these massive stones.

This was the biggest one.

The grounds were actually pretty big themselves. As Chris said, if there were no castle here, there would probably be about 80 skyscrapers. But luckily enough, somebody decided to preserve the castle grounds. There were a couple other buildings up there, one that used to be a museum, your usual souvenir shops and some gardens. The castle is pretty much a reconstruction with a museum inside. I think it’s 5 stories high, with two underneath a base of… you guessed it… giant rocks. We strolled around the back of the castle, crossed over the inner moat again and found ourselves in a sprawling plum orchard in full bloom! Now this is where all the action was! Japanese people are crazy about all the tree seasons. Remember maple-leaf season? Anyway, apparently we stumbled upon plum blossom season. It is a time for strolling among trees, taking pictures of your girlfriends in front of them, and buying fake plum-blossom paraphernalia. Next is cherry blossom season, apparently. They say it gets crazy.

This building used to be the museum before they built that eyeball-shaped skyscraper we went to.

This is the castle, of course.

A little close-up of the detail.

Looking out over the city across the fortifications.

Let’s gather in the orchards, shall we?

Well, now wasn’t that delightful? Let us now adjourn to the parlour.

Uncanny, isn’t it?

As the sun began to set, we walked back up to the castle for some more pictures.

This manly man scaled the wall for a new camera angle. Only to find a staircase leading down the other side.

As the sun crept below the horizon, we walked through the castle grounds and exited the other side again. From there we walked through a public park of really neat bottle-shaped trees which seemed to be entirely populated by homeless people and their intricate-yet-ramshackle blue-tarp dwellings. We didn’t stop there long enough to take pictures. We jumped onto the nearest subway and rode on down to the Namba building. Remember “To the Herbs!”? Well, there’s another pretty cool restaurant right beside it. A deluxe Hamburger chain from Hawaii called Kua’aina. We actually had a hard time choosing between the two last time. So of course we had to come back and try it. And 0f course it was awesome. They even had bubble tea!

So that was Monday! Only the first day of our weekend! Well, Tuesday was a home-day. We actually got into a major house cleaning mood and we scrubbed the entire place and did all the laundry. In the evening we had our friend and old neighbor and occasional coworker Lisa over for crepes. She brought us Nutella. From heaven, probably.

On Wednesday we chatted with Steph and Trevor in the morning for a bit and spent a lot of time discussing their trip out here! We worked Wednesday evening, but that wasn’t the end of our weekend, oh no. Because we helped some friends out earlier in the month, Chris and I both had Thursday off as well! Now what to do with ourselves?? Well, we had thought of doing some more hiking, but some other things took precedence. Namely using the printer at the International Community House and going out for Italian food. Not quite as good for you as hiking, but we did walk all the way there! After lunch our day consisted of having dessert and coffee and intensely discussing plans for the family’s visit. Before we knew it, it was 5:00 and we were only taking the subway home from lunch! Later on in the evening, we decided to try our hands at making okonomiyaki, since I’d found the special sauce in the store a few days before. Now to only find dried fish flakes… hmmm..

Okay this is a picture of one from the restaurant. But I swear mine looked exactly the same!

So it’s finally Friday and Chris is already gone to work for real. I’ll be leaving in a couple hours for the evening shift. March will be a little messed up in terms of our schedules as well, but not as bad as February. Plus, the weather is starting to get really nice :) Talk to you soon!

Deutsch in Japania

2007-02-23T09:39:00.000+09:00

Just wanted to say hi again. Not much is new out here at the moment, although the weather is steadily becoming more spring-like. The days seem to be hovering around 10 or 15 as opposed to 0 or 5 like they were last month. They say the seasons change here as though somebody is flicking a light switch. And I say spring can get switched on as soon as it wants. Even after this short, pathetic winter which I, as a Canadian, have no right to complain about, (we were still wearing shorts in November, if I recall) the slightly warmer weather just has just lightened our moods. I don't know, it just makes me smile to be able to leave my wool coat at home in the morning. We also have a 31/2 day weekend coming up and we're planning to spend some serious time outdoors.

So other than that, let me see. We're steadily putting together the family's Japanamazing Itinerary, looking up train fares and all that stuff. Wow, is the bullet train expensive! But there are a few passes that you guys will be able to get to cover a lot of that stuff. We'll let you know. Basically we're just getting ourselves all excited about it. Now to just find places for everyone to sleep...!

Oh yeah, and I had quite the interesting experience last week as well. So as you know we are instructors in a big conversation school chain. For the most part, the company teaches English, but they actually offer a bunch of other language classes like Chinese and French and Spanish... and German! So before the student buys a lesson package, some instructor has to interview them and assess their ability so they can put them in the right class level. The lowest is 7 (showing no language ability at all) and the highest is 1 (equivalent to a first-language speaker). The highest that most of our schools teach is level 3, if that. (Because you wouldn't really need us at any point above that, it seems). Anyway, all year I'd been really curious what my German level would be after all this time! Of course we don't have any German teachers in our branch, but all of our schools are connected via this video-conferencing type network to a special language center in Osaka where they have teachers of all kinds. So one of our Japanese staff members was kind enough to book me a 20-minute video appointment to check my German level.

So the day came and she ushered me into the little cubicle with a TV and a headset. I was strangely nervous. Before long I was looking at a frozen-frame of this skinny brown-haired guy and hearing "Hallo!" in my ears. "Hallo" I said back, and we proceeded with basic introductions. (Level 7: check and pass! Haha). Anyways, we kept talking, he asked me to tell a story, he asked me to describe a problem and we did a roleplay. The story was alright, although the whole time he just kept uttering "ja..... ja.... mmhmm... ja ... ja". It was painfully obvious that he didn't give a flying crap about what I was saying. I could also hear him typing in the background. Okay I know he needs to type and I'll admit, we usually don't care a whole lot about what our students eat for breakfast either, but at least we are capable of acting like we do! It was at this point that I remembered I'd never been so frustrated in my life as when I tried to communicate with a German person. But anyway, back to my test. When it came time for the roleplay I think he was hitting the higher levels because we basically had to act out a high-pressure business situation. Of course for him it was a regular scenario, but for me or anyone else from a socially competent society, it was like a hailstorm in a slaughterhouse. Let's just say he really got into the role of the angry boss. And I was nervous in the first place. I couldn't even imagine some little Japanese school girl in that chair. He was even interrupting me all the time! Now, I really don't know how that's going to help you assess my ability, buddy.

Well, when all was said and done I had to go back to work myself. I was extra nice to the students that day, you can be sure. After my first lesson I found a sheet on the desk with my name on it in Japanese, some more Japanese and big number 4. As a matter of fact, it was more like a 4-H (meaning level 4-high). I guess that won't mean much to you guys at home, but the people in the office were pretty impressed, and I was happy. Now all we have to do is get Chris into the video booth!

Be My Valentine, Richard Dean Anderson

2007-02-15T19:13:00.000+09:00

Halli-Hallo as they say in good old Deutschland.
Hey, have I mentioned that we're leaving Japan early and going to Germany for almost a month to see Chris' Opa and eat Doeners? Yeah! We're probably even going to stop in Altona for a couple weeks just in time for the Sunflower Festival. Best childhood ever. Insha-Allah, of course, but we're really looking forward to the upcoming summer.

I'll get into all the details some other day. Let's get back to blogging. So how about Chris' recent post, eh? He's just turning into a little writer, now, isn't he? There may even come a day when he won't ask me to read it over and insert all the cute and funny things. Maybe ;)

Ahem. The blog.

Yes. Today was very odd for me, actually. For some undisclosed reason the particular department store where my office is located was closed today, the 15th of February. Maybe they were cleaning the place after yesterday's mad rush for Valentine's chocolate. I don't know, but long story short, I didn't have to work. Not that they would just let us have an extra day off, though, I most certainly have to make up this shift on my next weekend, but I'm off today nonetheless.

The reason today is so odd for me isn't really cuz I'm not working. It's that Chris just isn't here! It was about mid-afternoon when I realized that since we've come out here 6 months ago, I haven't had an entire day off work without having him around too. Isn't that crazy? I mean, we do have the same schedule for the most part, but talk about codependent! Haha. Well, I got loads of stuff done today. I think I used the subway 6 times altogether and the train twice. I wasn't lonely or anything, either. I guess the weirdness of it all just reminded me of how thankful I am that we really don't get sick of each other. Ever. Even living in a 10x12 one-room apartment in a foreign country. I think that might be a good sign. Can anyone hear that ringing in the distance? I think they might be some sort of bells...

Oh yes, and that brings me to Valentine's Day. I won't get into the psychology of it all, but in Japan on Valentine's Day the women buy some kind of chocolate for the men in their lives. Men always come first in Japanese culture. In fact, one student told me that traditionally the good Japanese wife should always walk 10 feet behind her husband, and when her sons are grown, she should walk behind them, too. I could get into more details, but the point is we are not Japanese, and I can prove it:

These were all for ME yesterday morning.

Big surprise, you can be sure. Fererro Rocher for breakfast. Oishii! And, of course, Chris, as the resident chocoholic, had no trouble diving in himself. I wasn't really expecting anything at all, which you may be able to deduce from the fact that I hadn't bought anything for him. (...yet. I'd intended to pick something up that evening at work, but it seemed kind of useless at this point, seeing as we both had enough chocolate now to last until Christmas).

So that was nice. But what about the Japanese women, you ask? Well, there is actually a reciprocal holiday for them, called "White Day" exactly one month later in March. On this day, the men are supposed to buy gifts for the women. And the more expensive than his Valentine's chocolate was, the better. So that's how it works. I guess two holidays are better than one at any rate. I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I might like some fresh flowers "for the apartment" in and around mid-February. After our chocolate breakfast yesterday, Chris brought that idea up again and mentioned that "I" might be able to buy flowers "for him" on White Day next month. Works for me!

Oh, and did you know that chocolate reacts with sulfuric acid to form a resilient gluey substance suitable for stopping dangerous leakages of acid into the groundwater? I didn't! But you know who did? MacGyver, you can be sure. That's right, we just discovered a boatload of unwatched MacGyver episodes on Chris' external hard drive. Bring it on!

Fire and Illness and Dinner and...Oh My!

2007-02-14T13:09:00.001+09:00

So we’re almost halfway through February and it’s already pretty balmy, so much so that I haven’t worn a touque or gloves in awhile. The humidity is a big factor, and if it’s any indication, this summer will be pretty hot. Right now it’s still comfortable and very spring-like, though I’m being told that a change in seasons is at least another month away…but I’ve also heard the seasons go on and off like a light switch in Japan, so we’ll have to wait and see. In any case, it’s nice and dry…

…and that makes it a lot easier for things to catch fire, which is exactly what happened early Saturday morning. We hear sirens all the time because our apartment building practically backs onto the busiest street in Kyoto, but this time was different. The sirens, as usual, brought us into a semi-conscious state at about 6:45am, and we realized they were louder than ever before and, in fact, were stopping directly outside our apartment building…definitely not good. And so Jen struggled out of bed to see what was going on. “Holy crap, come check it out!” she said. And that’s when I saw this…

Four fire trucks, police, gawking pedestrians, the works…the building on fire was a two-storey, detached (i.e. 6 inches away from the next house) dwelling smack in the middle of all the other houses gathered in the picture (i.e. no street on any side of it). I don’t know how they managed to get any water in there, but within about 10-15 minutes we were relieved to see steam appearing, but not before we heard the roof collapse and we saw firefighters rush two people out on stretchers.

The steam. A few ashes flew onto our balcony, but thank goodness it wasn’t a windy day. Like I said, those houses are literally 6 inches apart, they’re all made of wood, they have straw mat flooring and the people inside are more than likely all using portable gas ranges and electric space heaters. Tell me again? How many Japanese cities have burned to the ground in recent history?

What a way to start the morning! Being thrown out of bed at 6:45am wasn’t exactly ideal, especially since we value every bit of sleep we can get on the weekend because we have to be at the office at 10AM. I wasn’t thrilled because the disturbance and the early morning air weren’t going to do anything to my cold, except possibly make it worse.

Yes, this year’s annual “cold” has been a real doozy! It all began last last Wednesday evening, with my throat slowly deteriorating and me helpless to do anything. By Friday morning I had almost no voice, which for a conversational English teacher might as well be a death sentence. I felt totally fine, except for whatever was hindering my speech. But I’m the only one teaching Friday mornings, and since I felt fine, I went to work, not knowing how I was going to teach. Most of my classes that day were conducted in a whisper, because trying to talk normally made my voice crack like a pubescent male. The Japanese students were very understanding, since they’re always expected to go to work when they’re sick here (though usually they wear face masks. I think either it’s because a) they think it will protect other people from catching their cold, b) they think it will help them get better more quickly, or c) they just think it looks so darn cool.)

Anyway, my voice slowly came back from the dead and by the end of the day no less than three people told me my rasp was “sexy.” I was also able to somehow do an almost perfect impression of the Emperor from Star Wars…”Gooood, feel the hate flowing through you!”

My voice steadily improved throughout the week, and by Sunday my sexiness had decreased almost back to its normal level. Good thing, because we were invited over for dinner by Jen’s coworker Joe and his wife, Tiffany. Joe and Tiff are from Minnesota and have very nice family and friends who send them all sorts of North American goodies (i.e. Cadbury chocolate eggs, taco seasoning, marshmallows…), of which we became benefactors as well. After work, I took the train up to Omihachiman to meet Jen, Joe and Tiff. They took us down a couple of shady side streets to their cute 2LDK (2 rooms + living, dining, kitchen) apartment which they’ve made quite cozy, and we were treated to tacos with wine and real American grasshopper pie. We enjoyed talking about our work, about home and mostly about what we’ve been up to while in Japan. After dinner and a bit of friendly conversation, it was getting pretty late (9:30pm!), and we had yet to catch the train all the way back home and then the subway. We stumbled into our apartment at about an hour later and with our bellies full of tacos and chocolate, we virtually collapsed into bed.

The Hills are Alive

2007-02-05T12:23:00.000+09:00

Well, now that our exciting friend Erin has safely arrived back in Canada, we’ve just gone back to our normal old-people type lives. We worked all week, of course, and then on the next weekend, we decided to take a walk. Remember that old path beside the canal in the side of the mountain? Well, we went back up there and walked it until the path quit and the canal went underground. Then we saw some other little wooden signs with the name of the neighboring Kyoto-suburb on them, which we decided to follow. After a little while on a small house-lined street, the path seemed to disappear right into the steep, wooded mountainside. When we looked closer, there seemed to be some makeshift stairs in the dirt, like the kind that form when hikers follow each other, one by one, using the same footing to get up the hill. The canal-path hadn’t actually taken us very far yet and it was still early, so we decided to just keep on going!

Before we knew it, we were standing in a little clearing around some kind of electricity tower, panting, with our winter jackets tied around our waists, downing the last of our water, and looking down at a giant panorama of the valley below.

This is only a cell-phone picture. Of course it doesn’t really do the view justice.

We actually found a bit of a network of mountain paths up there and using our English map we were eventually able to figure out where all the little signposts were pointing to. We generally stuck to the path leading into the next city suburb, though, basically because we hadn’t expected to be hiking at all, and here we were still in our jeans and nice coats. After winding our way along the hilltops, the path eventually led us back down into the city on a wide, concrete staircase with giant evergreens towering over it on both sides.

That staircase actually brought us right down into the old water-treatment plant area where we’d been a bunch of times before. From there we were able to follow the canal again and we just kept walking all the way to the Nanzenji temple (the one with the aqueduct) and even further along the whole Path of Philosophy, where we’d also been in the fall. And after that, we kept following the street past the university and right into the doors of the good old Falafel Garden restaurant, where we were finally able to rest our weary little feet and fill our empty little stomachs.

What a trip! Aside from hiking to the the top of the mountain, we'd also covered a quarter of the city! Man, we were pooped. After our late lunch we headed downtown to the place we call “the brownie bakery” – a bake shop in the Kyoto Shiyakusho-mae underground shopping mall where a couple of weeks ago we found the only chocolate brownies we’ve seen in Japan so far, which may also be the best we’ve ever actually tasted anywhere. So we got some coffee and goodies in there, strolled around the stores a bit and then just rode the subway home and collapsed. I think we rented some movies that night. Oh yeah - The Terminal. It was cute.

So since I’d had to trade shifts with someone last Sunday in order to spend the day with Erin, it was my turn to work this weekend, and on Tuesday night, Chris also picked up some overtime and we both headed back to work a day early.

And that was the beginning of last week. All 6 days of working seem to me now like one long blurry mess of crowded offices, screaming kids and broken sentences. One highlight of the week, however, was on Friday, when the whole entire country got some of this:

Since on Friday I work the late shift, when Chris left in the morning, I grabbed the camera and headed straight back up into the hills.

On the way through the neighborhood. Poor palm trees!

A little vantage point from the canal path.

Trees stretched out over the canal.

At one random point along the canal, there’s a bright orange bridge that leads up the Honkokuji temple, where we hadn’t actually been yet. So with the camera nestled away in my coat and hunks of snow falling from the trees all around me, I ventured up there.

It’s huge!

At one point the clouds got really dark. It was so cool. Especially since the temple grounds were entirely deserted.

Except for this guy… nice hat!

This place was just really pretty with all the trees and the snow. And there were absolutely no people. Snow also seems to make things seem so much quieter. My footsteps on the gravel sounded like thunder to me and the clicking of the camera seemed to echo off the sides of the hills.

I could have stayed up there all day. But of course I had to go to work. So I climbed back down just as the sun was peeking out. I looked up at the hills when I got back down and realized that a lot of the snow had actually melted in the past hour. Lucky I went up when I did!

The snow melted pretty quickly out here in the city, but my office is up in the country to the northeast. When I got there I saw they’d gotten a lot more snow than we did, even. As a matter of fact, it didn’t quit snowing there all day. And then I remembered how much I hated wet socks.

So I hit the town with a Geisha this weekend

2007-01-30T14:21:00.000+09:00

Sugoi!

Okay okay, for those of you who haven’t already recognized her, that’s not really a Geisha girl, it’s my oldest of the old skool friends, former Jeneric Club and Panic Button member, Erin. Seeing as she had another friend from Vancouver currently studying at a university in Tokyo, and seeing as her hot new government job seems to be virtually throwing vacation days at her, and seeing as she is simply crazy about everything Japanese, she just decided to up and come to Japan for two weeks and pay us all a visit!

Our adventures began before she even arrived. It was Saturday evening, and Chris and I were making our way home from work on the train as usual. Erin was supposed to call me from a payphone as soon as she got into Kyoto and we would go and pick her up. But after we’d hung around and waited at home for a while, and then started to make dinner, we thought maybe something might be wrong. So I checked my email to make sure I’d given her the wrong phone number – which is actually what had happened. But before I could find that particular message, I had a handful of borderline-panicky messages from Erin herself staring me down.

So it turns out she had come all the way to our station from Kyoto but my number wasn’t working. (My very definite bad) So she’d gone back to Kyoto and found some seedy internet café and started writing me messages that she was coming back to our station in the next half hour. Luckily we got those messages in time and after rushing out the door and bolting up the subway stairs in Yamashina, we found her right where she said she’d be.

After apologizing profusely, we all made our way back and that night we hunkered down at home with some good old fashioned Chickin Ramen and then hit the sack.

The next day was a big one. I’d even traded my shift away so I could witness it all. Unfortunately Chris still had to work but us girls still had a boatload of fun in Kyoto’s old Gion district. Now I won’t bore you with the sightseeing details again, seeing as Chris and I have already reported on that particular attraction. We took pretty much the same route, since that way I’d know for sure where to go. We took most of the same pictures too, only we stopped to eat lunch as well.

It just tastes better when you’re sitting on the floor.

And we came across this lady at the Kiyomizu…

Erin got an awesome shot of some fake Geishas…

We thought this guy was cute…

Oh! And we also just randomly came across this Shinto wedding processional at the Yasaka Shrine. No big deal at all!!

Yup, just a regular Sunday morning in Kyoto. In the afternoon things picked up, however. When we finished our deliciously expensive floor-sitting noodle bowls at the Kiyomizu, we wound our way back through the streets of old Gion to the studio where Erin had made an appointment to get dressed up like a Geisha girl. No lie.

And it was awesome. Of course I followed along the whole way with my camera, sneaking in shots of the dressing room and such, in the midst of shifty glances from the makeup artists and various comments of “no pikushaa!” I’m sorry ladies, but my friend has come all the way from Canada to do this and it’s extremely hilarious. I’m taking pictures.

So here goes! (Oh, and sorry but I made them a little smaller so Erin wouldn’t freak out too badly at this giant collection of pictures of her on our website). So where do we begin?

After coming in and confirming the appointment, the receptionist led us into a big locker room in the back where we stashed our stuff and Erin donned a thin cotton robe. From there we headed on into the makeup room.

Voila!

Now we have to choose a kimono…

But first, you need all the Geisha underlayers.

And finally, the hair!

After she was all ready, she got a turn in the photo studio and of course I followed. “Pikushaa no”. Yeah yeah, wakarimashta. She has the professional shots. They were part of the package deal. But after the photo session, we were allowed to go out back for a couple minutes and have some fun!

First, let’s do a before and after.

Now, that is the baddest-ass geisha I’ve ever seen. Notice the tattoos?

And of course you can’t forget the ridiculous shoes. Hah, she must have been like 6’2”

Cleaning all that makeup off took a heck of a while, but what a blast!
And with that under our obis we made our way downtown to the shopping arcades. Not much in the mood for shopping, we wandered for a while and then stopped at a café called “God Mountain” of all things to kick back and wait for Chris to come meet us for dinner. When he got there we went and loaded up on Italian food and before we knew it, it was already 9pm and, wasted, we headed for home.

Day II: The Golden Pavillion

We all slept in the next day, nice and late. Then we all bought subway day passes and got out of the house in time for lunch at the best Indian place in town. Then we jumped back on the subway and took it about halfway to the Golden Pavillion, a really famous old temple waaay in Kyoto’s west side. We hoofed it the rest of the way. While Mr. Long Legs and Ms. Power Walker didn’t seem to mind the distance, I was quite pooped by the time we got there. It was really gorgeous, nonetheless. Can’t wait to come back in the spring with the fam.

I was just taking some stupid pictures of those two on the single-row seats in the train when this random middle-aged Japanese man gave me the universal “I can take a picture of all of you” gesture. Why not?

To get to the restaurant, we took this little street: the historical “gay district” of Kyoto.

Are we there yet?

Here we are! The Kinkaku-ji or Golden Pavillion. Erin had seen a Kabuki theatre production in Tokyo that was set at this temple, so she was really pumped to see it.

The moss was nice.

The three layers of the temple are actually three different architectural styles. But don’t ask me what they are. Oh yeah, and the top two are covered with gold. But don’t ask me if it’s really gold.

And people threw coins at stones. Mmhm.

To my delight, when we were done with the temple, and the sun was all but gone, we hopped on a bus that took us all the way back and down to the Kyoto Station. We wandered around in the underground malls for a bit and stopped to eat again. Then we just rode the escalators all the way up the west side of the station, traversed the skywalk at the top and rode back down the east side. It was actually really cool to do it at night.
Oh, but just a word of caution: it seems that skywalk is also a popular place for Japanese teenage couples to… clench together in what look like motionless balls on the floor. Don’t ask me what they were doing. Just try not to trip on them.

By then it was pretty late in the evening... but did we go home? Nope. There was one more thing on our schedule, the timeless Japanese pastime: karaoke. This was the first time for Chris and I as well. I mean, we’d been to a few bars in Germany with karaoke machines, but in Japan it’s the other way around. These places are giant karaoke machines with bars.

So we took the subway back downtown and made our way into the huge neon-lit lobby of the karaoke place on the corner. Miraculously, as usual, we managed to communicate that we really only wanted to try it out for half an hour. Oh, and which free watered-down alcoholic beverages did we want? Umm.. let me see…
Then we were given a small plastic basket with a drinks-and-food menu, some kind of touch-screen device with a stylus attached to it and a giant remote-control-looking device with plastic buttons. We were shown into a little room that looked like a 3-sided restaurant booth with a TV in the fourth wall. And that was it! Well, we fiddled with the buttons on both of the little machines for a while, but to no avail. We were starting to get worried that our 30 minutes would run out before we even figured out how to work the thing! But luckily within 5 minutes the girl with the free drinks arrived and we elicited her help. She basically pointed out the giant book of English songs sitting beside the table and told us to point the remote control at a VCR-looking machine mounted near the ceiling. And there we went! Before we could even burn through half of the Avril Lavigne songs we had started on, we were getting our 10-minute warning. And when Chris broke out the Backstreet Boys, we promptly booked another 30 minutes. What a blast. Too bad we didn’t get any good pictures. By the end of that hour I think our voices were pretty shot. I was even dizzy. What kind of drink did I order again? Oh, Japan.

Day III: Shopaholics

Needless to say, we slept in again the next day. We trekked out to the southwest side of the city for lunch in the Diamond City department store and then shopped around there for a while. We didn’t really have any major plan for this, Erin’s last day in Kyoto. After our late lunch it was a little late to see Nijo castle (turns out it closes at 4), so we headed out into Shiga Prefecture to visit the big lake Biwa and some more funky department stores. Since we’d hardly eaten any Japanese food all weekend, for dinner we decided to finally get some Okonomiyaki in Yamashina. The restaurant was also really neat and, even though we didn’t get floor-seats, the food was awesome.

We crashed pretty hard that night, too, and the next day Erin left bright and early to catch her train back to Tokyo. That was the most exciting weekend we’d had for a long time.

Oh, and since Chris and I probably won’t make the journey to Tokyo at all, we thought we’d include some of Erin’s awesome pictures of that crazy city:

We had lots of fun, doods! Hope your trip home was safe and see you in Vancouver!

No Earthquake Here!

2007-01-15T16:26:00.000+09:00

Dear Michaela or anyone else who is worried about that earthquake,
I don't think it was anywhere near us. In fact, I had to check to the news just to find out that there was one. Turns out it was north of the country somewhere in the ocean. Oh, and I talked to Julian a couple weeks before Christmas, I think. Don't know if that helps!

2007: Shrines, Shopping and Spaghetti

2007-01-10T15:09:00.000+09:00

Let it be known that the holidays are officially over. As Friday rolled around again, we found ourselves back in the old routine: commuting-working-commuting-sleeping… Luckily, however, the first day back had a shortened schedule, plus we were really only there for 3 days until our regular weekend swung round again. Which takes me to the present. We just finished the weekend and Chris’ shift was bumped up to the morning today, and since I still only start at 5, I went about chores this morning. I’m happy to say I’m writing to you from a freshly swept apartment full of clean clothes, towels and dishes.

So that’s what I’m up to at the moment. The real purpose of this entry, however, is to finish off the reports of our holiday adventures, so here goes!

After Kobe and Osaka right after each other, we took it easy for a bit and decided to spend New Years Eve in the comfort of our own little home. And as should be the case during the holidays, we did some major relaxing. That involved, of course, a lot of eating and watching of old movies. We even ended up getting membership at a movie rental chain store where we picked up a bunch of classics like Casablanca, From Here to Eternity, and various Marilyn Monroe comedys.

Having skipped the traditional temple-bell-ringing ceremonies on New Year’s Eve in favor of our relatively warm little apartment, we decided to venture out the next day to Kyoto to see what was happening at the Heian Shrine.

In Japan during the 3 final days of winter holidays, January 1st, 2nd and 3rd, it’s traditional for people to do the “first shrine visit of the year” where they go and pile into various shrines and get their fortunes told for the coming year. There are also a lot of food vendors and it’s a pretty festive atmosphere. Some of the women dress up in bright kimono for these occasions, often with something like a big fur boa wrapped around their shoulders.

It was a cloudy day, but we managed to get a few good shots of the party.

Instead of the downtown area, we decided to walk along the river to get there. (It wasn’t cloudy yet at this point)

Okay starting to get cloudy…

Hey, can anybody point us to the shrine?

I’m not sure if those people were lining up in order to ring the bell or get their fortune told. There was another place to get your fortune printed out for you on paper. Then you had to tie it to the tree or the fence around the shrine for some reason. We didn’t get fortunres or anything, but all the little papers looked kind of neat.

These canisters were full of long sticks. The people shook them and then turned them over so one stick would fall out. They would read what was written on it and then I think use that information to get their fortune somehow.

I wonder what her fortune was?

Happy New Year!

Oh, and on the way home Chris had to use the potty so we decided to go and warm our chilly bones and use the bathrooms in the Westin Miyako hotel. Don’t ask me what’s with us and wandering into random hotels. I don’t know. But it was pretty nice in there. We actually sat on the second floor conference lobby for a while, just relaxing and looking at this giant metal fountain.

So that was New Year’s. Sorry I’m so ignorant about the traditions and such. It’s not like I can read anything. I sometimes try to ask my students about their holiday traditions but they usually can’t find the English words to describe them. I guess I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

Osaka II

After New Year’s we were starting to get cabin fever again, so on the 3rd we ventured out into Osaka again, into the other downtown core called Namba. We took the JR train to Osaka station again, but this time we transferred immediately onto the Osaka Loop, which is a giant network of trains that basically makes a loop around the entire central city area.

It took us a few minutes to figure out which one to hop on… Two heads are definitely better than one in Osaka.

We ended up on an above-ground rail in a pretty empty train car so we got a good view of everything we passed.

Did you know that you can get hot coffee in a can from a vending machine here? I still haven't worked up the nerve to buy one.

McDonalds: exactly the same as anywhere. Only better service. And the interior decor is about 100 times more stylish.

We got off at a certain stop along the loop and transferred to yet another train which only made the one-stop trip to the Namba station.

This one-stop station was actually the nicest and newest we’ve seen around here.

They even had moving sidewalks and fiber-optics displays on the ceiling.

As we enter the shopping arcade, on your right, please notice the 19th century European artwork (!?)

That is… if you’re lucky enough to see over everyone’s heads (Chris!)

That shopping arcade was incredibly long. It passed through at least two more subway stations before we encountered fresh air again. And as we emerged, we found ourselves in what else, but another series of department stores. We basically just walked around wide-eyed, not really shopping for anything and just trying to go with the flow of people. At what seemed like the end of the road we came across the newest and most trendy-looking of all the shopping centres so far: an 8-floor work of art called Namba Parks. The whole place was a series of swirly oblong-ish shapes, with each level set back a little more to allow for a cascading rooftop garden that you could either climb up from the outside, or exit onto from each floor.

We decided to check out the garden while we still had some daylight left. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as we entered a place without escalators or things for sale, all the people seemed to disappear. It was quite nice up there.

Where’s Jen again?

View from the top. Same old, same old.

Oh, and looming above the whole department store garden structure was this. The landmark Namba Parks Tower. At least I think that’s what it was called.

Anyways, so we walked around for a while, in and out, exploring each floor to the best of our lazy non-shopper ability, and finally decided to do the best thing of all: eat. These newer department stores always have the coolest restaurants on the top floors, and this place was no exception. In keeping with our traditional non-Japanese diet, we ended up trying to choose between a Hawaiian hamburger place and a cute Italian place called “To the Herbs”. Well, I guess you could say that name was what won us over.

And the plastic food, as always.

This is how the restaurant looked form the roof.

And, settling in for a lovely Italian dinner, to some very cool jazz music, we raised our water glasses “To the Herbs!”

Going to Shopping in Osaka

2007-01-02T18:55:00.000+09:00

Chris: “So Shinichi, what did you do this weekend?”
Shinichi: “I…go…to…shopping.”

This exchange is just one of the things NOVA instructors hear on a daily basis. Jen and I have heard it so often that we decided to “go to shopping” ourselves to see if we could discover what an epiphany this experience must be. So the day after Kyoto we headed to Osaka – Japan’s second-largest city – to explore the Umeda shopping district, a veritable Mecca of materialism. And we found that shopping takes on a whole new realm of the imagination here in the land of the rising sun.

Here we are!

Okay: I spy with my little eye… something… green…

… oh, woops.

In this treeless and ramshackle metropolis, our first challenge was exiting the main train station, a maze of tunnels and passages crowded with people. Somehow we found our way out alive and were faced with the choice of which [expensive brand-name only] department store to enter first, so we just crossed the street on the overhead walkway and ended up in what looked something like an 8-floor Sears. It didn’t impress us very much. Even the “rooftop garden” was half-occupied by really junky looking childrens’ amusement area surrounded by enough barbed wire to keep Chuck Norris at bay.

The walkway, above an intersection almost as big.

The rooftop garden: please come back in the summer.

Okay, now who’s turn is it to jump rope with the barbed wire?

By this time we were ready for lunch, so we headed back across the walkway, down through the station to the other side, where we found the Yodobashi Camera Umeda building, an eight story electronic store that probably consumes more electricity on an hourly basis than the entire Town of Altona does in a day. This place makes Best Buy look like a Radio Shack. Trevor, I’m talking to you. Picture anything you could ever dream of (and some things you couldn’t even imagine) and you’ve got Yodobashi Camera. Between the heat generated by all of this “stuff” and the Boxing Day-volume of people, as well as wave upon wave of brightly colored, fluorescent lit, seizure-inducing advertisements, we were soon feeling a bit nauseous. And so we left the store to cower in the fresh air, but not before procuring a brand-new Nikon Camera bag. Happy Birthday to me! :)

"Wow, that seizure was totally worth it!"

So, it looks like we aren’t immune to the shopping bug after all. For us, though, I’m still not sure if our purchase was caused by the shopping bug or the bright lights and masses of people were wearing our nerves so thin that we just wanted to buy something and get out! Then again, maybe that’s exactly how the Japanese people feel too – and they’re not so engrossed by shopping in herds after all!

Anyhow, I still think shopping goes beyond national recreation and is definitely an ingrained part of the Japanese psyche. For a country with so little physical space, we’re always amazed at how much consumption occurs. Aside from the regular purchases of new stuff, we have started to wonder what happens to the old stuff (because there really aren’t that many thrift shops or flea markets), and also what happens to the vast quantities of plastic garbage that’s generated by the (other psychologically questionable) need to package everything individually three or four times and then put it all in a brand-name shopping bag.

So in the end, we had a great lunch up in the top floor community of hip restaurants and had a delightfully exhausting day in Osaka – or at least in the 500m around the train station…

We also decided that shopping is dangerous, and can’t wait to come home and spend a nice quiet day in Radio Shack.

Let the Holidays Begin!

2007-01-02T13:01:00.000+09:00

In Japan, Christmas is a time to go on dates with your boyfriend and eat strawberry shortcake and KFC chicken. The hype is still pretty big, but the time when people actually get holidays is New Year’s. The last two or three days in December followed by the first two or three days in January, it seems, is when most people have got time off around here, and we are no exception. As I may or may not have mentioned, our offices are giving us an entire week off as well. Now, we thought, is time for all the sightseeing we’ve been wishing to do the entire time we’ve been slaving away teaching English.

Unfortunately, though, the people at all the big museums and places also seem to be on holidays and most of them are closed until the very day we go back to work. So much for that! There are a lot of castles and parks and gardens we still wanted to see, but it’s starting to get really dreary now in the winter months and for the most part we thought it would be best to wait until spring for that stuff.

Look it’s snowing! That’s it – I’m staying home.

So… skiing is too expensive and all the hot springs seem to be booked. So what’s left to do? I’ll give you a hint: it almost seems to be a national pastime around here… it starts with “sh” and it rhymes with “hopping”.

Wow! What a deal…

But more about that later from Chris. In the couple days before the new year, however, we did manage to find an open museum, one that we’d actually been wanting to visit for a while: The Disaster Reduction Museum in Kobe. As you may or may not remember, in January 1995 a giant (7.3 magnitude) earthquake destroyed much of the city. More than 5000 people were killed either by collapsed buildings, the fire that burned for two days afterward, or the flooding that came up through the broken ground.

The museum was incredibly interesting, of course. Immediately after we arrived, we were led into a small, dark theatre with what looked like a shattered movie screen. With deafening speakers rumbling through both the walls and the floor, we watched a bunch of clips of actual footage of the earthquake that came from security cameras and such; things like buildings falling over, highways and railways collapsing. It was very intense.

We emerged from the theatre with exceptionally wide eyes, I can imagine. Then we walked through a recreation of a dark, residential street as it would have looked in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. From there we entered a second, more regular-looking theatre and watched a lot of rescue footage and listened to a little girl’s story about losing her sister. The next couple floors held more museum-y type stuff; lots of pictures, captions, maps and models. There was information about the rescue and volunteer efforts, the shelters, the temporary housing and so on. We read whatever we could find in English and this old man, the museum’s designated English-speaker of the day, led us around and helped us a lot as well.

Oh, and the building was really neat as well. I think it was mostly solar powered. It looked like a white cube with a bigger glass cube of solar panels around it. It was surrounded by water on all sides – I guess you could call it a moat. We figured it helped reflect the sunlight up to the solar glass. Anyway, we spent so much time in there, the sun was almost down by the time we left. We went to the department store across the street for some coffee and then headed back to the train station.

But we didn’t go home. Even though we were pretty tired from the museum, we were still pumped for our holidays and the fact that we traveled almost an hour to get to Kobe.

Here’s the museum itself. The camera wasn’t working right in the morning so this picture is stolen from a website somewhere.

After some coffee, Chris figured out that some switch on the camera had to be flicked, so he started to click again.

So we decided to do some more sightseeing. First stop, Chinatown!

Haha, apparently Kobe was the first of Japan’s ports to be open to international trading way back in the day. So a lot of Chinese and American settlers came there at one point and now all that’s left is a big China town which has basically been turned into one long pedestrian street of exclusively Chinese restaurants. It was cute, of course and we’re glad we could see it at night.

China still seems to be using that excess of red paint it has.

After a few trips up and down, we settled on one averagely priced place for dinner, which ended up being quite tasty. After dinner, a little ways down the road we came across the closest thing to bubble tea that we’ve encountered here so far. Hot coconut milk with black tapioca pearls inside. It was delicious as well.

Mmmmm, greasy.

Of course, after we were spewed out the other end of Chinatown, we found ourselves in a bustling district of shopping arcades, which we strolled though at an easy after-dinner pace. We stopped here and there (and once to run back and pick up Chris’ bag which we’d forgotten at the bubble tea place) looking at random things and eventually found ourselves at another train station, from where we navigated our way back home again.

Oh, and Chris’ photography seemed to have been inspired a little by the earthquake museum…

Next stop: shopping!

The Old Man Writes Again

2006-12-26T14:07:00.000+09:00

Part I The Rental

Japan is just one of those places where you should really have a video camera mounted on your forehead at all times.

How many Japanese video store staff does it take to explain to you how to use your membership card? One…Two…Three…Three Japanese video store staff…aah-aah-aah!

It was Christmas Eve, just after work, and we were supposed to go Christmas caroling with the rest of the people from work, but we forewent that activity. By the time we got home, changed, went grocery shopping, cooked, ate and cleaned up, it was already past 10PM and this grandpa and grandma were getting tired, so we opted instead to settle in for a little dinner, television, snack, reading and to bed ;)

But I digress...
On the way back from the grocery store, we decided to spend Christmas Day in our cozy little apartment, cooking, relaxing and watching one of our favorite movies, Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical behemoth The Ten Commandments. And so we headed on over to the local video chain store, Tsutaya, to pick up a copy. Finding it was surprisingly easy – given the lack of any coherent organization of movies at these places – which was fortunate as we were both burdened with grocery bags and not intent on spending too much time searching. But then we realized we didn’t have a rental card, and feared we’d have to go through something similar to what happened when we tried to order the internet: a bureaucratic process that sometimes puts even the Germans to shame. Luckily for us, we somehow were able to communicate to the cute little Japanese cashier that it was our first time, and she promptly walked us over to the booth where we filled out the application for a video rental card. Quick and painless – the bureaucracy gods weren’t out to get us today after all.

Or so we thought…
Getting the card was easy enough. But in Japan, the video store staff are obligated to explain absolutely everything about the card to you. And so the cute little cashier disappeared around the corner and in a short time returned with with another girl, whose English was broken enough that we were able to discern that our card was valid for one year; that we could use our card to collect points at other retailers, but only after two weeks; and that we were not responsible if the DVD was broken (a pretty good deal if you ask me). At least that’s what we think she was trying to tell us. Between her, the first girl, and this other clumsy fellow who insisted we read the Japanese language-only brochure, we were quite thoroughly serviced customers.

We’re sure they would have explained to us the chemical composition of the plastic the card was made of if they had had the chance and the vocabulary, but they had explained the basics, which was good enough for them, and for us. Our bags were getting heavy, and we were tired. So these three jean-shirted staff packed up the Moses DVD, the brochure, our card and receipts (yes there were more than one), and neatly presented it to us in a nylon and Velcro carrying case; and we got to keep it all for one whole week for ¥370. I’m sure they would have come over to our apartment, put the DVD in the player and hit play if we’d asked them to.

All in all it was a thoroughly amusing and entertaining experience. I think next time I want to see if I can set a new record – maybe 12 Japanese people trying to explain something to me at once. But for that I’d probably have to buy a big-ticket item, like a car.

Part II Japan-knees

I used to think that Riverdance dancers didn’t have any knees, just elastic connecting their upper and lower legs. Having been in Japan for almost four months now, I’m convinced Japanese women are of the same stock, except that their knees aren’t made of rubber. Japan-knees, as I like to call them, are actually conductors of heat…

On any given winter day, you can see sundry Japanese women strolling about, wearing a hat, scarf, fur coat, high-heeled shoes…and shorts. Unofficial research indicated that this has something to do with the fact that women don’t think they can lose heat through their legs. So here they are, bundled up snugly except for a four-inch gap at the legs, unless they are still in high school, in which case the gap widens to about twelve inches. It’s quite a sight actually. I think between the Japan-knees and other randomly dressed and entertaining people, one could definitely get in a fair amount of people watching in this country. Lloyd, I’m talking to you.

Just for the record, these skirts are actually quite long.
And also just for the record, this picture was taken by Jen.

You must be this tall to ride the Yasaka Shrine

2006-12-25T13:20:00.000+09:00

Okay get ready! We got out the camera again last weekend! That was just one of the more entertaining shots from our trip to the Gion district of Kyoto, the historical stomping grounds of the those famous Japanese not-quite-prostitutes-but-what-else-can-you-call-them, the Geisha.

But before that, we spent a day at home talking on the phone and doing chores.

In the evening we decided we should really get some fresh air so we decided to go down to the lake again. On the way out the door we found something in the mailbox.

What’s this? It looks like the Giesbrechts took notice and decided to play the role of the faraway parents as well. Only it doesn’t look like they’ve heard of bubble envelopes

The contents – mostly from Grandma, actually. A little crumbly but still very edible.

Down by the lake it was a little chilly but luckily we’d bought some nice touques and as the sun set it made for a nice quiet walk.

After about half an hour of strolling, we strolled right up to the Otsu Prince Hotel. This place is like a giant half-cylinder and a giant landmark visible for miles on either side of the lake. We decided that, as foreigners, we probably wouldn’t get any trouble if we went in and explored a little, so we did! There were a lot of cute Christmas displays around in the lobby – in and amongst various water fountains and boutiques. We headed up the escalators to the conference floors and used the bathrooms. Then into the elevator, we headed for floor 38 (out of 40 – the top two of which are probably private suites...) to check out the view and the menu of the French Restaurant which is up there.

The view was pretty good.

And of course after that we were hungry so we walked back into town and to the Italian restaurant in the big department store – the same place where we went that day the money got stolen from our mailbox! I guess we were determined to prove to ourselves that we were over it. That, or the food is just really good.

Bellissimo!

Alright, and now to the good stuff. You’ve probably been skimming all this ever since I mentioned prostitutes, anyaway ;) But first things first.

It was a beautiful, sunny Kyoto day. Right out of the subway, we walked along a willow-lined canal with various little bridges and potted flowers alongside it.

Careful, ladies! Apparently there have been women here who’ve climbed Mt Fuji in high heels. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.

Chris loved this setup. “Umm – could I get you to move your car?”

Okay, we’ve reached the end of the canal. First stop – the Yasaka Shrine.

“Now, just ring the little bell while mommy and daddy pray, okay?

On one side, the peaceful shrine – on the other, Shijo Street. Such contrasts in this country.

Oh, and these are two really old ladies who were pulling weeds in the bushes. They kind of scared me.

Next stop – Maruyama park. This place was really cute. I’m sure it’s much better in the spring or summer, but the dead winter atmosphere made it kind of interesting as well.

We haven’t decided yet whether the crows here are giant, or they just look big in relation to everything else.

This one guy was feeding them on the bridge. They were jumping up like dogs to catch the breadcrumbs. Very creepy.

This one guy decided to feed the pidgeons and they basically attacked him. It was kind of funny – I’m sure Hitchcock would have loved this place.

Hitchcock or Tim Burton – take your pick.

Chris actually crossed this stream by jumping from one rock to another. All while he was holding our 900-dollar camera. I closed my eyes.

The back of the park led uphill, it was really nice

We climbed up those stairs and were led to a whole other series of hillside temple compounds. We visited whatever was free. I think this one was called Chorakuji. I wish I could have recorded the chanting monks you could hear inside.

I’m sorry, your feet must be this small to enter the temple.

Some funeral must have happened there in the afternoon because there were a lot of flowers in this outdoor chapel(?). If I could have somehow recorded the smell of the incense, I would have done it too.

How do I know it was a funeral, do you ask? We didn’t really know at first, but as we headed out the opposite gate, we came across this

In case you haven’t guessed, it’s a cemetery. The biggest one I’ve ever seen. There were maps and signs posted everywhere so you didn’t get lost. We started at the bottom, and, of course, climbed as high as we could go.

Can you find Jen?

Can you?

There she is!

Please don’t smite me... I was just sweeping!

That was really the coolest place of the day, but we had to move on. From there it was just a short walk to the touristyist of touristy places in Kyoto – Gion.

Of course touristy places are usually touristy for a reason, so they're usually also still pretty cool, and this was. Incredibly cute, of course. I’m pretty sure that “Memoirs of a Geisha” was filmed here. And we actually saw Geisha too – four of them, all together with bright red kimonos, white makeup, ridiculous platform sandals and everything. Of course they could have just been regular girls dressed up for shits and giggles and we’d never know the difference. I want to believe they were real Geisha so I will. I mean they were acting really proper and stuff so it was good enough for me. We didn’t take pictures, figured it would have been a little rude, but it was still really cool.

Other than that, the most fun we had was going in and out of the souvenir shops.

“Mi-ya-sa-ma mi-ya-sa-ma o-no-ma-no-may-a-nee”

There were people all over the place and the shops were handing out all kinds of samples. This was one of the more disgusting ones:

Yes, those are really tiny dried fish.

I still don’t know why I did it. Luckily they were handing out cinnamon sweets and black tea just around the corner so I recovered quickly from that.

And last but not least, at the end of tourist-road we arrived at the pride and joy of Kyoto, the Kiyomizu temple. We didn’t pay to go inside or anything and we were too tired by this point walk around the back side, but the sun was going down so we just sat and watched it from up on the hill. We’ll come back with the family and see the rest.

And that was last weekend in a (pretty big and photo-filled) nutshell. After one more rather grueling week of teaching, we’re off again and officially on holidays until January 4th! Today actually happens to be Christmas Day and by the time most of you read this it will be Christmas for you too. So Merry Christmas – and more about that next time.

Another Week, Another Weekend

2006-12-12T20:10:00.000+09:00

Here's another post for you. This time really just to say hi.
Not much exciting to post about this weekend - we didn't even take any pictures of anything! *gasp* Yeah, since our new resolution to not spend loads of money this weekend, Monday just consisted of talking to home on the phone, cleaning house, washing our stinky futon covers at the laundromat, making dinner and busting out a new season of 24 to watch. It was a good day!

The next day it was gloomy and rainy. For once, exactly what I hoped for. Why, do you ask, would I hope for rain? So I wouldn't feel bad about spending half the afternoon indoors at the Museum of Modern Art, that's why! We paid the cheap price just to see the permanent collection without the special exhibitions but it was alright. Nothing to rave about but also not uninteresting. Quite random, actually - but we're learning not to expect anything less from this county. There were a couple Picassos, some strange photography, modern sculptures and also some very cultural Japanese watercolors.

After finishing up there and unlocking our umbrellas, we strolled on over to the international grocery store to pick up some of my dear babies - black olives - as well as some herbal tea. On the way home we picked up some Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon (yes - at the convenience store) and had a very delicious evening of that and bacon and mushroom carbonara a la Jen. I must say, I outdid myself with this one.

And that brings me right up to the present moment, sitting on the newly clean futon, with my tummy full of pasta and my head full of wine. As soon as I'm finihsed with the computer here we'll probably sit back with some tea and a few from our stash of never-ending German Christmas cookies to see what crazy antics our beloved Jack Bauer will be up to in the next couple hours. Tomorrow I'm going in a little early to work and the week will begin once again. We're really just counting the days until everyone comes to visit in April, you know... or at least until January when Erin and Jean are stopping in... or until Christmas vacation... or at least until payday...

Ahh, there's always something to look forward to, isn't there?
Talk to you later!

A Consoling Stroll on the Path of Philosophy

2006-12-10T20:17:00.000+09:00

So to take our minds off the missing-rent problem, the next day after Chris got back from the police station, we decided to go into the city and take the “Philosopher’s walk”. It’s a beautiful little path that runs for about 1 kilometer along an old water canal on the side of the hill. Because of all the morning’s activities (Chris – talking to police, me – talking on MSN) we only set out later in the afternoon, when the sun was already on its way down. It was actually quite cold but still fun, and the lighting made for some great pictures.

Here’s the canal. On one side you have the water and the other side about a 40ft cliff – and no railings. How do you say “lawsuit” in Japanese?

At the end of the path there was this big aqueduct-type of structure along with a few temples. Together with the fall leaves it was really gorgeous.

More fall leaves – I think we have thousands of these pictures…

And the sun slowly went down…

This was my favorite shot of the day.

Chris decided he wanted to live in this house one day.

And here’s a giant yellow temple. I’m sorry – there are really a million of these things and I really can’t remember names anymore. It doesn’t make them any less nice.

A big incense pot beside the temple. Chris kept calling me sacrilegious for going and smelling it :(

After our long walk, we were quite chilled and quite ready for some food. So we headed down to our favorite Indian place where we usually get the lunch deal, and decided to spring for a big dinner. I think the guys that work there are starting to recognize us… Anyway, it’s the best curry ever. They always play Bollywood music videos in there on this big screen too, which are super fun to watch. So we had finished our meal and were basically just sitting at the table going through the photos of the day and lethargically reflecting on our gluttony, when something caught Chris’ eye on the screen. A blue railing… and a set of railroad tracks… and a pier… YES – it was Marine Drive in White Rock BC – the exact place where Chris’ family lives.

Sure enough, there was a real bejeweled and beguiled Bollywood couple, dancing wildly along the exact place where we strolled with the in-laws only 4 short months ago. It was a pretty old film, we thought. That, or the camera was just vintage, but it was still definitely White Rock. Anyhow, we started laughing really loud and pointing at the screen. The waiter and the chef both turned around to see what was going on, and we cheerily told them that that was our home town on the screen in their music video. I think they got a kick out of it too.

And now that we've managed to console ourselves with curry and more or less come to terms with the mailbox incident, we've decided to forego eating out next weekend and settle for some cheaper activities like cooking at home, going for more walks and watching DVDs. The Modern Art museum is calling me, though – so we might squeeze that in as well. We'll see - whatever we do, It's always going to be some kind of adventure in this country.

The Disappearance

2006-12-08T10:20:00.000+09:00

It’s been probably four years since some of my friends began blogging, and in that time many have encouraged me to do so. That I never did seems to have been almost criminal, so it seems fitting that my first blog entry ever (in case you haven’t figured out this is Chris posting, for a change) should be about my visit to the local police station, or Koban, as it’s called around here…

You’re probably asking yourself, why is Chris at the Japanese police station?

Well it all started Monday…

Jen and I were leaving to go shopping, and we decided to take the rent money with us to pay the doctor (our landlord is a dermatologist). As we had been chatting with Jen’s parents over the webcam in the morning, we didn’t end up leaving until after noon, and had forgotten that the doc’s office is closed from 12 until 3 for lunch. So we decide to leave the rent money in the envelope in our combination secured mailbox until we returned in the evening – at which point we would pay – instead of going all the way back up three flights of stairs.

So we went shopping in Zeze (more about that later), and actually ended up coming back home after 8, which is when the doctor’s office closes. No worries, we thought, we’d just take the envelope back up and try again tomorrow. My jaw just about hit the floor when I opened the mailbox and didn’t see the envelope, which by the way had been lying flat on the floor of the box, and would, therefore, me out of reach for almost anyone save for a small North American child, or probably any Japanese person.

No big deal. The doctor, who had given us the combination and showed us how the mailbox works, probably came and collected it at some point, right? Except that he didn’t, nor did his secretary, and we really have no reason to doubt them either.

So, at some point between 12 and 8 on Monday morning, ¥55200 was stolen from our secured mailbox?!?!

And so here I was, sitting at the local Koban, fielding questions about everything from whether or not I was drunk to what my blood type was, in addition to the generic name, birthdate and phone number scheiss. This on top of calling back and forth between NOVA headquarters so the police could ascertain what exactly had occurred, as well as probably trying to explain in Japanese why we were so lazy as to not walk up a few steps in order to put the envelope with the money back in our apartment. All so they could fill out a police report which I would then fingerprint four times, just four good measure. Not that we really believe the money will ever turn up, but it’s better than doing nothing I suppose.

Ultimately, I suppose it could have been much worse, though it still sucks to be out 550 bucks. We’re trying to just not think about the loss. It sucks, but you really can’t do much about it after the fact. In order to lessen the blow on our bank accounts, we’ve decided that we’re going to make it up by working a couple days of overtime each in January, which wasn’t planned, but won’t kill us either.

Oh, and we also won’t ever be so careless with money again…well at least not until we end up shelling out about 300 grand four a house, but I think we’ve still got a couple years to mentally prepare for that.

What is this?

2006-12-02T21:26:00.000+09:00

Check it out!

What is this? Apparently the mailman had come by the other day and he left a little paper in our box. This paper led us to the main post office, and on Wednesday morning, while I was chilling out at the laundromat, Chris went to pick up whatever-it-was. He brought it back to the laundromat and we opened it on the spot.

Jackpot!
This 7lb 13oz box was filled not only with a giant selection of exquisite and actual German Christmas cookies, but also 7 different Christmas CDs and a few pages from a local Vancouver newspaper.

And in case you were wondering, yes. These cookies had already been imported to Canada from Germany, and from there, purchased by Chris' mom and sent all the way to Japan. We were wondering if we should post a few of them to Germany again - just to complete their round-the-world journey.

Thank you, Stockmans!!!!

'Tis the Season?

2006-12-01T09:42:00.000+09:00

Sure enough! The weather improved and we went leafing!

We went to a really popular park called Arishyama, just west of Kyoto. The train was pretty full and so were the temple grounds and such, but there was still enough space for everyone. We spent the whole day, just wandering around in the hills and down by the river, breathing the fresh air and taking lots of pictures. We even brought a picnic lunch.

One thing that just struck me is that it’s already December and the leaves are only just in the middle of changing here. That’s pretty neat, I guess. Anyway, here is a very small selection of pictures from our day trip. Pictures of leaves are pictures of leaves, you know, but if you want to see more (I think we have about 200), just send me an email!

Dad, this rickshaw’s got your name on it!

I think these guys were just people-watching today.

We climbed up to an observation deck and got this view.

This was the way up – it was actually pretty slippery!

And here we are in the Arishyama bamboo forest. Oh, the tourists. So this is what the Exodus felt like!

The forest was actually really neat. Apparently when the wind blows, the bamboo makes really creepy noises.

So that’s it for today! I don’t really have time for any more stories. It’s the first day of the month, so I’ve got to go pick up my new subway pass. And there are Christmas cards to be sent! Talk to you later!

Universe House

2006-11-27T23:03:00.000+09:00

Well, it’s been a couple weeks now, and we think we’ve got the place pretty much how we want it. We haven’t hung much up on the walls aside from tourist maps, but it’s good enough for now. Anyway, come on over and take a look at the new apartment!!!

Here’s the front side. It faces east and Sanjo street runs along the right side. The doctor’s office is on the main floor.

And for all you googlers, this is our view to the south east...

... and to the south west. It's all we got this time!

This is the south side of the building where our apartment is. Which one is ours? I’ll give you a hint: we like fresh air.

And now it's my turn to model the balcony.

Why don’t you park your bike and come inside?

“Maison Cosmos” that’s the building’s name. It’s actually French, and as far as I savoir, it means ‘Universe House’.

First, we come to the mailboxes again. This place is nicer already! But do you see any numbers missing? Did you know that the number 4 in Japan is unlucky? Often buildings won’t have a 4th floor or a parking space 4 or 14 or 24 or even 104!

Up, up the stairs and you’ll find lovely 307, home of Chris and Jen.

Please come in! This man is very proud of the shoe shelf he built. It’s all about making use of space in here.

Immediately to your right (and I mean immediately) you will find the shower, and next to that is the toilet – still with the sink-tank of course.

Across the “hall”, you’ll find the kitchen(ette?)

Fire up the electric burner, we’re eating in tonight!

But enough about the kitchen, let’s wander over to the livingroom/bedroom/diningroom!

Have a seat!

So here’s my proof: One closet – two wardrobes.
Chris! Get back in the kitchen!

And here’s the TV/Computer/tomato-and-kiwi-ripening corner.

Which brings us to the balcony once again, complete with the shoe-shelf-making master himself.

So that’s it! I hope you liked the tour. We are actually much happier here, despite the size. Like I said, it’s incredibly cozy. And who needs furniture?

Although it may sound like it, we really haven’t only been sitting at home and reveling in our new apartment. The past few weekends have actually been pretty exciting! Basically, we’re still making our way through the city of Kyoto and we usually just spend a lot of time in search of various temples and gardens and restaurants and so on.

The area around the city, with all its trees and hills, is very beautiful this time of year. If the weather improves we plan to join the majority of Japanese old ladies in some serious leaf-viewing.

Apparently, they use this particular temple in a lot of historical television dramas. And these were only the parts that you didn’t have to pay to see.

We also went to another flea market! This one happens on the 21st of every month, and to our luck, this month the 21st fell on a Monday, which was our day off! Unfortunately, we slept in this time and we didn’t get there as early as we’d have liked. There was quite a crowd, but sometimes that just adds to the experience. It was a beautiful day, and I was in a “crowded” type of mood, anyway, if that makes sense. I’m not so sure about Chris, though. At one point, he uttered the words “I’m flea-marketed out!” within earshot of two older American ladies, who couldn’t help but giggle, causing Chris to turn a little red. But I know he had fun as well. Looking back, we really should have bought this 85 year old map of Kyoto that we found. But we didn’t bring much cash with us, which is probably also a good thing, because I would probably end up with all kinds of bowls and statues and things, which we would never fit in our suitcases. So we just take pictures.

Welcome to the Toji Temple grounds!

Can you make your way through the crowd? Just keep your eye on the giant pagoda and you’ll be fine.

Or you could just follow this guy.

Bonsai, anyone?

Or maybe some persimmons?

I’ve got my eye on the Marilyn Monroe.

How cute!

How cute again! There were three of these girls playing these (insert proper Japanese name) instruments outside the station that day. It was really neat. We actually stopped to listen for quite a while.

That afternoon, we found a great Italian restaurant with an unlimited salad buffet and lunch special. It was a great meal after a busy morning and I think we must have stayed there until 4pm, just drinking coffee and chilling out.

This was the restaurant parking lot.

I know what you’re thinking. You guys are in Japan, what are you doing eating Italian food and Indian food all the time?? Well to tell you the truth, Japanese food sucks. Well, okay there are a bunch of things that we’ve discovered that are quite tasty, but honestly when we want a nice big dinner, things like seaweed and soybean soup and octopus legs just don’t come to mind, okay?! Plus, Japanese people are incredibly anal about making good imitations of stuff. In fact, some of the “Western” style food that we’ve eaten here has been even better than what we’ve had at home!

Alright, and speaking of Western style food, on Thursday we made our way back to our old apartment building to see our good old neighbors Audrey and Lisa for good old American Thanksgiving! Like I said before, their apartment was just below ours, so it was exactly the same size (remember Chris sitting at the table?), but they must have had more than 15 people in there that night, with more than enough food for us all (including chicken, stuffing, and 3 amazing kinds of mashed potatoes – all cooked on two electric burners – very impressive). They even conjured up some kind of yummy imitation sangria that put us all in the holiday spirit ;) Thanks, girls!

Okay let me see, I guess the next week at work was pretty uneventful. The students are still great, the staff is still annoying. Last night we ended up going bowling with a bunch of them, though. Playing was fun, I guess, although the amount of nicotine in the air that night might have killed a small dog. Nobody really ended up saying or doing anything intelligent, as per usual. Fortunately, Chris and I caught the train back to our station, but we ended up missing the last subway by about 2 minutes and we had to walk home from there in the rain. I was not very impressed, but at least it gave our jackets a chance to air out.

Here’s the bowling master himself. Notice the pink and purple Velcro.

Anyway it’s still raining today, so the sightseeing plans have been sacrificed for some quality sleeping in, a big breakfast, cleaning the house and writing in the blog.

And now that I’ve summarized our recent doings, please allow me to share what I’ve been saving for the end. We got a really big surprise the other day. Maybe the people that this surprise relates to are the only ones that actually read this blog, so then it wouldn’t really be a surprise after all… but allow me to announce it anyway. Ahem. Steph AND Trevor AND Dad have all got plane tickets to come see us out here!! The last week of April and the first week of May. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I’m also still trying to wrap my head around how we are all going to live in our 9x12 foot apartment for 2 weeks. Or how we’re going to make our way around Japan during the series of biggest national holidays (travel days) of the year. But that is all entirely secondary to the fact that I get to see my dad and my little sis and my little bro-in-law again, and let them get a load of this otherworldly country. I hoped the pictures helped you guys get some idea of what you’re getting into. You see that space under the shoe-shelf beside the door? Yeah, that’s where you’ll all be sleeping. Hehe.

Get Moving!

2006-11-20T13:09:00.000+09:00

What crazy times. The week before we moved, Chris and I both worked an extra day of overtime, so we’d barely had time to put our feet up before we were back at work again. So by the time moving day rolled around it basically felt like we’d been working for two weeks straight already, and it’s not like we were going to get any breaks this weekend either.

Of course, we always do manage to relax some. We always make time to cuddle up in front of some good quality Japanese TV, or the latest of Trevor’s downloads. We’ve also been finding some really fun places to eat, and those are all the better when your kitchen is in total upheaval.

So, that being said, after sleeping in nice and late on Monday, Oct. 30, we started the move. The new place wasn’t really that far away. But, of course, we don’t have a car. And seeing as trying to drive on the left side of the road with a rental car full of suitcases and futons may have been a little hazardous to our health, we just decided to drag it all over on the subway. The new apartment is literally on top of the subway station, so that was a big plus. The worst part, however, was dragging all that stuff up the 15 minutes uphill to the first subway stop that was closest to our old place. I wanted to hire a taxi for the heavy stuff. But Chris hates taxis and he said he insisted that we could handle it, which we did, more or less.

And you wanted to take a taxi. Hah.

It was quite the job, but, yes, we handled it. Originally, I thought – how much stuff do we really have? We came here with a couple suitcases, that’s all, so that’s all we’ll end up moving, right? Wrong. I still don’t know where it all came from, but it took a good two days to get that apartment emptied out. Remember, we bought that futon set and TV from the guy in the other place, we had to empty the cupboards and the fridge, of course, and we also realized that a lot of the dishes and utensils that were in our apartment when we arrived weren’t actually on the “apartment inventory list” so they were up for grabs. Including the old futon sets, it turns out. But we have an even better futon set now, I said. Chris wouldn’t stand for it, though. We aren’t leaving anything in this apartment that doesn’t absolutely have to stay, he said, I don’t care if we already have one. The company’s just going to have to buy new ones for the next suckers.

Of course, altogether, that meant a bunch of extra subway trips. Even with a little help from our old neighbors, in-between packing, traveling, unpacking and traveling again, it took all weekend to get settled in. And due to a broken suitcase wheel and a lot of heavy backpacks, we were just plain tired by the end of it. Once it was all in, we really should have gone back and given the old place a good scrubbing. But we’ll do it next weekend, we said. Let it decompose for a week.

And that’s the end of our apartment. I realize now that I haven't even posted pictures of it here. Here are a couple of pictures to remember it by.

You’ve seen all the views from our balcony, but you haven’t seen the actual building yet, so here you go. Which one is ours???

There it is!

Please come in, this is the mailbox.

Just follow me up the stairs…

… up to the front door.

Come on in! That is… if you can fit.

Here’s the first room on the right. It was called the “Western style room” because it had carpet and curtains and a swinging door. We mostly kept junk in there.

On the left, you’ll notice the “bathroom”, consisting of a washing machine, a giant water heater, a vanity and a shower room.

Hmm… I wonder if there’s a toilet in here…

Here you go, dad. You asked for toilet pictures. When you flush, the new water comes up through a faucet first, and you can wash your hands with it before it drains into the toilet tank. Genius.

Then, through the front hallway door, we enter the living and dining area.

If you turn 180 degrees, you’ll find yourself in the kitchen. If you bend over 90 degrees, you might be able to use the sink.

The atmosphere improves as you get deeper into the apartment. This is one of the bedrooms we used as a dressing area.

The flooring in the bedrooms was made of traditional Japanese straw mats called “tatmi”. Although ours were kind of old, they were actually pretty neat.

And this is the other bedroom. Quite cozy, actually. We folded up our futons every day like good Japanese people. Each of these sliding doors also has a bug screen layer, a glass layer, and a paper screen layer. Just a little tip: you can’t vacuum the paper screens.

Last but not least, the balcony. And you know the rest!

***

At this point we’ve been in the new apartment for about three weeks already and it feels quite like home. I don’t know if I mentioned that the whole place is about the same size as our old apartment’s dining area, but we are really finding that it’s all we need. We don’t need to buy furniture because it doesn’t feel empty, which is really good for saving money. It’s also a lot cleaner and newer than the company apartment and we really don’t miss the old place one bit. Anyways, now that we finally have the internet, I should get back to telling the story of it all.

***

So here’s a sample picture of the new place.

And that’s about it! There’s a toilet and shower and kitchenette when you first come in, and then there’s this room. Once we have it exactly how we like it, there will definitely be more pictures.

Oh, and this is our first meal there. We forgot to ask for two sets of chopsticks at the convenience store :(

Anyway, perhaps the most exciting part of the whole weekend was the arrival of our new fridge on Tuesday afternoon! That’s one thing we couldn’t bring from the old place, of course, but, thank goodness, that also meant we didn’t end up dragging it onto the subway. No, we’d ordered a brand new Japanese-style fridge from the internet, and it was promptly delivered. I went down to meet the delivery truck, and out came this little man who jumped up into the back of the truck, grabbed this box that was almost as big as he was, heaved it up into his arms, and proceeded to carry it up all three flights of our elevator-less apartment block. I was impressed.

And, so far, we are also very impressed with the new fridge. Why did we get a brand new one, you’re wondering? Well, when we signed up for the internet a couple weeks prior, we basically got what would equal a hundred dollars store credit from the electronics place. So we decided to use it on a new fridge. We figure it was a really good deal, and, like I said, the fridge is awesome. Oh, and so is the box.

And here she is. The “Nice Partner” from Sharp. With a freezer on the bottom. Very nice, indeed.

And that was moving. Throughout the next work week, we stuck to the new apartment, mostly. We’d organize bits and pieces of it after work, and as the weekend quickly approached again, we ventured into furniture. Just let me take this opportunity to mention that your basic home furnishings are much smaller in Japan, and you can get a lot of stuff pretty cheap. Since our new apartment was the smallest and cheapest one we could find, we thought it only right to get the smallest and cheapest furniture as well! Don’t worry, though, it’s not all plastic. At least it doesn’t look like plastic. Believe me, we’d gotten our fill of pink plastic and polyester at the old apartment!

We knew there would be a good amount of up-front costs involved in moving. We’d budgeted about the equivalent to a thousand dollars for bedding, shelving, appliances and all that. These places don’t even come with light fixtures! But so far, buying all that stuff and even extra dishes and plants has only cost us around five hundred! Turns out filling a one-room apartment really doesn’t take much! The 100 yen store also deserves a lot of credit, here. In the end, as well, paying less than half the rent we used to pay will be well worth it all.

So that’s about it! We’re still working on making use of storage space. How can a kitchen have no cupboards? I don’t know, but I guess I’m going to find out. Can two peoples’ wardrobes fit in one closet? The answer is yes, along with three suitcases and two extra futons. How can you make decent food with only one element and no oven? What’s it like to eat dinner sitting on the floor? These and many other questions will hopefully be answered in the next couple of months, so keep reading! Bye for now!

We're Not in Gnadenfeld Anymore

2006-10-23T20:59:00.000+09:00

Since dusting off the old laptop to use the internet again, I also just came across some pictures we took when we first got here in September. So for all of you who were praying for us those first few days or even just wondering how we were doing, here’s a small glimpse.

Well, first let me remind you of where we came from:

And how the towns look:

Serene, isn’t it?

Now take a look at where we arrived.

Not exactly Plum Coulee.

Yeah, that’s the view from our apartment balcony looking north. Would you believe it's actually a pretty quiet neighborhood. The place where we are moving is on a busier street, but it’s a little higher up on that hill in the distance there, and the view of the hills is pretty nice.

Anyways, back to our journey. Like I said, the flight was just excruciating. This is me, and we’d only just gotten to San Fransisco.

I was definitely not looking forward to spending another 11 hours on THIS.

But of course, we made it. We were exhausted, but we arrived in Neverland with time to spare. Our very first picture in this country was on the train platform.

Dreamy, isn’t it?

And our luggage, it seemed, had been through about as much as we had.

As you know, our first meal was from 7-11 of all places. Still, it was pretty neat. This is called "onigiri".

It’s basically rice packed into the shape of a triangle with fish inside and wrapped in seaweed. As long as you get the ones with tuna or salmon inside, they’re quite good. These will also help you learn the hard way how to spell “nasty fish eggs” in Japanese.

And speaking of food, this was the very first meal I cooked in Japan.

A little chicken, a little tofu, green onions and buckwheat noodles. It was really good. I hope the fact that I got a stomach illness the next day had to do with something else.

So enough about the trip. I have a bunch more really cool photos here that I found. Just random stuff from our daily adventures out here.

You saw the northern view from our apartment, but this is what we see out the front door to the West. Chris took the picture at night with a long exposure. I think it’s really cool.

And this is the view looking from the balcony to the East. We’ve watched good tennis games at this community youth centre.

We venture into the big city just about every weekend. Our first impression of it was the Kyoto main station. This place is huge and amazing. I don’t think we have any pictures that do it justice, however this one is ok.

We think there may have been some German influence in the construction of one of the station’s underground shopping centres…

And then there’s the Kyoto Tower, which I think actually looks kind of lame, but it still makes for nice pictures.

It’s just across from the station.

Here’s a typical Kyoto street. Everybody loves Starbucks!

When you get out into the downtown area, the shopping gets really interesting. Look out, Japan, here I come!!

So that’s Kyoto in a nutshell. We work in the other direction from the city, though, so we’ve seen a lot of other stuff too. Here’s just a random few other pictures.

This is the view from the station Chris uses to get to work.

A sampling of the Indian food we love so dearly.

Bamboo. Bamboo. I like that word…. Bamboooooo.

Sunset at a temple.

Sometimes I think all women here are in love with the movie Pretty Woman, only they’ve never actually understood a word from the film. Especially not the word “prostitute”. This was taken at the post office.

One fun food we tried was called “okonomiyaki” It’s like a cabbage-and-egg pancake with dried fish flakes on top and some kind of barbecue sauce. At this place the guy cooked it right at our table

Bon Appetit! (How do you eat these things?)

Oh, and I really think they pump sleeping gas through the trains. As a rule, when Japanese people climb onto trains, they are out cold within 5 minutes. That or they work too hard. I’ve yet to find out.

So that’s the good stuff for now. Stay tuned for an “old apartment – new apartment” segment. Keep warm, everyone. Bye for now.

Dear Anonymous,

2006-10-23T18:59:00.000+09:00

Again, I forgot to allow free comments in this blog. Sorry! But I've enabled it now, so in case you've been trying to say something - come try again!!

More Water Damage

2006-10-20T09:54:00.000+09:00

So basically what happened to my cell phone has to do with the fact that our favorite burger place suddenly closed down. That in itself had nothing to do with my actual cell phone, really, but then we walked over to the next best burger place. Where we had a good meal, and where I used the bathroom, only to have my brand new cell phone drop right out of my pants pocket and into the toilet!

So the long and short of it is that even after fishing it out *eww! and holding it under the hand dryer for a good 10 minutes, it was just busted. So when that happened, we basically put all our touristy plans on hold and headed back over to the cell-phone place where they sold me a new phone for a good discount. So I have a different phone now, and it’s actually a bit less bulky than the other one, so hopefully I can get a better grip on it.

But enough about the phone. We have another weekend under our belts now. We did real load of walking around this weekend, we covered literally a quarter of the whole city! On our journey, we found some free Japanese classes that we’ll probably start after we move, we found a nice little gift for our new landlord, we found yet another Indian restaurant to try, and best of all – we shared a massive sundae at the Haagen Dazs store! Other than that stuff, our minds are basically filled with moving into the new apartment. I think once we decide on a fridge and a table to buy and get our stuff moved up into there, we’re really going to start feeling at home. It’s still kind of frustrating that we have to move in the first place, but it will also just be relieving somehow, to reduce our attachment to this company.

We’ve also gotten to know the city a little better lately and we have a lot of plans. Once we’re confident that rent isn’t sucking us dry anymore, we have a lot of things we want to do, and we’re really looking forward to getting out and seeing more things.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the weather here is still hovering around 25 degrees during the day. So how's Canada? ;)

The Hunt is Over

2006-10-20T09:48:00.000+09:00

So we found a new place!
After about two weeks of poring over ads and nonchalantly asking absolutely everybody we knew, we finally found a decent place at a decent location at a decent price. We ditched the real estate agent, by the way. He was great, but we actually had more luck asking around at the office. So two different people at Chris’ office mentioned that places in their buildings were vacant – and that each of their landlords spoke English and was used to dealing with foreigners. Score! So we made an appointment with the first guy and went to see the place on Tuesday morning. The guy was nice enough, he even met us at the subway station. But then he started to lead us to the apartment. Five minutes past the subway stop, we started going uphill, mostly on rickety wooden steps with thick, bamboo forest on both sides. Then, we arrived at a nice, modern-looking house. “This is my house”, he said, as he took us around back to where a small, dirty apartment block was. We went up to the second floor and met the Japanese guy who was moving out. He was really cool and he’d even lived in Vancouver before! As a matter of fact, he was leaving because he was moving back to Canada! So he showed us his place. It was kind of grungy, but the perfect size for two people. It didn’t have a balcony, but the front entrance was kind of a big veranda where you could hang clothes. The kitchen was just gross, though. Tiny as could be, right beside the front door, and painted a kind of barfy pink color. We would have even lived with that, actually. But the veranda was also really junky, and by that I mean that in front of each person’s door there were individual piles of junk, and often washing machines too. According to Chris, this guy’s washing machine looked more like the bottom of an old boat than a household appliance.

So Chris didn’t like the place much. I can put up with a little more dirt than he can, but I still didn’t like the dark uphill jungle climb. So when the landlord said he was going to charge us 100 bucks more than he originally said, we basically took off.
We didn’t have another appointment that day, but what we did know was that Chris’ dearie coworker Amy from England lived right above the subway and there was a place available in her building too. So we tried calling her. But apparently her phone was off. Can’t blame her, it was her day off too. So we took a stroll around the area. That’s when we noticed the doctor’s office. Amy had said she lived above a doctor’s office…. Hmmm. So sure enough! We went into the lobby and there was a big sign on the mailbox for apartment number 307 – For Rent! We still didn’t know who to talk to and we also couldn’t get ahold of Amy so we basically just walked right into the clinic, wrote the number 307 on a paper and showed it to the receptionist.

She understood what we wanted immediately, and went and got the doctor. His English was reasonable and we got him to tell us what kinds of costs we were looking at. Then he took us right up to the place himself and showed us around. It was beautiful. A little smaller than the first place, but it was just gorgeous. Super clean, with brand new walls, hardwood floors (or at least really nice laminate – I couldn’t tell) and a balcony. And the price was even less than the other guy’s. He even let us sign a lease for only 8 months, in case we end up leaving before the summer gets really hot again. We’re going to have to buy a fridge and maybe a washing machine, but those things are much smaller and cheaper out here than they are at home. So compared to our current apartment, we’re probably going to save the equivalent of about $4000 in this new place.

Oh, and that evening we went back to the Vancouver guy and accepted his offer to sell us his iron, his TV, his double futon and his mirror for what would be about $75 total. He even piled all the stuff into his van and drove us home.

So all in all, it was a very chaotic and tiring, but successful day! At least better than yesterday. But I’ll tell my horrific cell phone story another time. But right now, all I want to say is good riddance company housing! Hello brand new apartment!

My Inner Tourist

2006-10-20T09:24:00.000+09:00

So that was September in a nutshell, I guess. Here I am again, and it’s already October 3rd. We’ve survived almost three whole weeks of work since those grueling days of being trained, and I must say, the job is going at least a bit better than first expected. The location where Chris is working is a 15 minute train ride away from our station, and mine is another 15 minutes beyond his on the same rail line. So far, commuting ½ an hour has really not been that bad. I just think trains are the greatest things in the world. The last part of my ride even goes through some slightly-less-than-normally populated areas, where I can sometimes catch a few glimpses of the countryside.

So now that we’re settled into the routine, let me tell you more about the actual job. We work for a very large English-teaching company that has many locations all around Japan. Students basically come at random and pay for a 40-minute lesson with a native English speaker (like yours truly) in a class of no more than 4 people. The students will most often buy packages of anywhere between 80 and 600 lessons, so many of the people we see come on a regular basis. Our job is to first choose an appropriate lesson for the current group of students, then follow a basic 40-minute lesson plan, the content of which will vary depending on their skill level. After every lesson we evaluate each student, report any progress, and then do it all over again for the next group. Chris and I teach 4 lessons on Wednesdays and 8 lessons a day Thursday – Sunday.

Like I said, we're basically just doing the dirty work for a big company trying to make big money, so we’re not all that excited about the way we’re treated or how things are managed, but the job itself is actually really neat. The best part of all has got to be the students. Japanese people are just super interesting, not to mention really polite and talented and quirky, all at the same time. And we don’t just teach kids, either. There are special kids classes, sure, but the bulk of our clientele are just regular people, office workers, homemakers, high school kids, engineers, lawyers, you name it. They all have their own reasons for studying English and meeting them all is just really cool.

Another reason I don’t mind the ½ hour ride to work is that my coworkers are also pretty decent. One of the American girls from our building works with me out there. I guess “pleasant” is the word I would use to describe her. She’s lived in Europe before, just like us, and she’s really smart and into art and history and stuff too. As for the rest of them, I work with one other hockey-player-type Canadian guy, a couple of nerdy Americans, and a whole bunch of raucous, foul-mouthed Australian guys, one of which is the supervisor ;) So yeah, out there in the country, things are pretty cool, pretty laid back. I couldn’t tell you yet if I fit in or not, but I do like it there.

Like I said before, we’re also settling into our apartment nicely.
It’s just too bad we’re thinking about moving!
Yeah. Although the place is nice, it’s still company housing. And with this company that means even though you’re living as a couple, you each have to pay rent. So essentially, Chris and I are paying double the rent of a normal apartment here. Seriously, we looked it up. There is actually a place in our very same building that’s being advertised for exactly half of what we’re paying for the sublease. We’ve been crunching a lot of numbers, and we’ve realized that even if we have to buy a whole new set of major appliances and furniture, we’d still save money if we moved out of this place. So we’re in the market. We have an English-speaking agent looking around for us at the moment. Obviously, we’d prefer not to buy all new appliances and furniture (what would we do with it all when we left??) and we do want to stay in the same area close to the train station, so our requests narrow the search down quite a bit. So nothing is for sure at the moment, and depending on what kind of upfront costs are involved ( eg. insurance, security deposits, agent fees…) the margin of savings might not be worth the hassle, but we’re still open to anything.

But enough about the apartment.
We’re in Japan! There is loads of cool stuff to see and do! In our 2 ½ days off every week, inbetween cleaning house, buying groceries and apartment hunting, we do manage to get out and see some awesome things. Last weekend, for example, we took the subway right down into the heart of Kyoto. After having some delightful Indian food, we found ourselves in a giant “shopping arcade” in the Shijo area. We wandered around in there for at least an hour. We found the best 100-yen store (same as a dollar store) we’ve seen so far, and some really insane clothing stores. Japanese people will wear just about anything it seems, but what they especially love are English words – whether they make any sense or not. It’s usually not that hard to find some girl walking around in a green camouflage mini-dress with something to the tune of “Danger life is to live. In to my wonderland of ingenuity”. Yeah. This place needs English teachers. The more we walk around, the more we are realizing our mission in this country. Oh, and said girl will probably also be sporting some golden thigh-high boots with 3-inch heels and a pink leather belt with a Hello Kitty buckle. We still haven’t figured out what we’d be able to do about that.

Anyhow, so we found some interesting shops that one weekend. Just last weekend, though, we did a very amazing thing. We climbed the Fushimi Inari shrine just south of Kyoto. You’ve seen pictures of this place, I’m sure. I didn’t know what it was called either when we got here, but I soon found out. It’s that tunnel of orange and black pillars – you see it all the travel books and also in the Memoirs of a Geisha movie. Well, it’s very cool. It’s actually a whole series of gates called “torii” and they wind all the way up one of the mountains that border the city. It took about an hour or so to climb, it loops around the top of the mountain and before you know it, you’re on your way back down again. There have to be hundreds of them. And in random places along the climb there are little temples and statues and all kinds of other stuff – all tucked away in the forested hillside. We climbed it on the most beautiful day you could imagine. We even took some snacks up and had a picnic on the top. And, of course, we took loads of pictures.

This was the first thing we saw as we left the train station.

It was huge!

A little further up the road, there was this.

But we had to purify our hands before we went any further.

Hey, did you guys purify??

Okay, up we go!

And up...

And up...

We saw a lot of cool stuff on the way.

The temple playground?

This was in somebody's front yard. It was, like, 12 feet tall.

People love these things.

Did I mention it was a beautiful day?

And there's Kyoto!

September 19th, The First Day Off

2006-10-20T09:22:00.000+09:00

19 Sept. 2006
Our first stint working was only two days, because we were already scheduled for Monday-Tuesday weekends on a regular basis. I think actually getting down to work and getting to know other people really helped us in terms of our homesickness. I must say, going abroad to study and going abroad to work are to very different experiences. There are a couple really nice American girls in the apartment under ours that felt the same way. They were really homesick the first couple days too, they said, more than they had ever been when they traveled before. We thought maybe it’s just because the company was being kind of dumb or maybe it’s just that this planet Neverland is just so entirely different from home, but all combined, we realized we had a lot more adjusting to do than we first thought.

But we’re getting there. Like I said, on this first little weekend, we were already feeling a lot more comfortable. And making ourselves at home, too. Our bathroom repairs had just finished and our place was starting to smell a lot better. On Monday we cleaned and vacuumed each and every room, did all our laundry and organized the apartment like we wanted. We got a good supply of grocery items, that, over the past week we’d learned tasted half-decent, hung stuff up on the walls and bought some plants. We even hooked up the computer to the TV, picked up some cheap speakers and had a comfy evening of dinner and Family Guy, just like old times.

Let the Blogging Begin!

2006-10-20T09:14:00.000+09:00

So where DO I begin?

I suppose it only makes sense to pick up where I left off in the last blog! That same Sunday evening in BC, after a yet another luxurious dinner a la Chris’ dad, the four of us kids randomly decided to go bowling, as one last event for Chris’ sister Karoline’s birthday. I didn’t think I had the energy to go out after dinner, but I came along anyway and I’m glad I did, because we had a lot of fun and I actually won a few games at the end!

The next day was our last in Canada. We spent our last hours in BC, basically packing and picking up those last few essentials and just plain old stressing out. I have no idea how many hours we slept that night, but by 4am the entire family was the way to the airport.

It was a groggy sort of goodbye on my part, at least. I don’t know how Chris was feeling at the time, but all I can really remember is just fumbling my way through the gauntlet that is American customs, simply looking forward to sitting my sleepy bum back down again at the departure gate.

But not long thereafter, I managed to wake up and realize that we were really on our way! Before we could even say good-bye to Tim Horton’s, we were touching down in San Francisco. And then, before we could even say goodbye to absolutely everything else that has ever seemed familiar to us in our lives... we were touching down in Osaka, Japan.

Well, okay. Flying over the Pacific may have seemed a little longer than “before we knew it”. As a matter of fact, it was excruciating. But we made it. 11 hours, 3 movies, 2 in-flight meals, and 3 Gravols later, we made it. Even our bags made it. Boy, were we happy to get off of that plane.

Well, until we got off the plane, that is, and got hit in the face by a stifling wall of humidity. Not that I would have gotten back on that plane for a million bucks, but after chilly BC, the heat was a bit of a shocker. And now, after 11 hours breathing recycled air, we had to walk through about a mile of humid airport, take a shuttle train to another terminal, stand in line at Japanese customs, and haul all of our suitcases off the luggage carousel, all without being able to carry around drinkable liquids. Damn security. But, with the help of a little tap water from the public bathrooms, we made it through that, too.

Since our flight wasn’t one of the company’s regularly scheduled group flights, we had to wait for about an hour for someone to meet us, but they eventually showed up. After that, we handed our big luggage off to a courier (courtesy of the company), and were left to wait yet another hour and a half for the train that would take us to our neighborhood. After spending another hour and 17 minutes on that train, we were met by our very own area manager who walked the remaining 10 minutes with us up to our apartment. It must have been about 9 or 10 pm Wednesday (Japan time) when we finally arrived at our place, which would have made it 5am in BC, which means we had been on the go for the last 25 hours.
Needless to say, when we arrived at our new place, we were tired, but even moreso, we were hungry. So since it was so late, we just headed to the 7-11 around the corner from our place (yes, 7-11) and got some instant tofu-and-noodle-type dinner substances. I think we were sleeping before we even put down the chopsticks.

The next few days kind of sucked, I’ll admit. I mean, Japan is really really neat, but it was all kind of shocking at first. Our apartment was still being worked on due to water damage in the bathroom. Also, it had not been lived in for the past couple months, so basically what it smelled like was loads of mildew and stale air. Not to mention it was still sweltering and humid outside. We did a few things, we made a trip to the grocery store (which must closely resemble shopping for groceries on Kronos), we managed to visit the city office and register our address, but otherwise we just stuck around in our apartment, in the room with the air conditioner, sleeping at random times of the day and night.

And then I stopped eating. Or, I guess I should say I just stopped feeling hungry, and whenever I tried to eat food, I’d just feel disgusting and want to go back to bed. So after two days of drinking OJ and eating vitamins, I had pretty much no energy left and I was starting to feel worse, not to mention quite depressed and homesick, so on Sunday we braved the heat once more and went to the hospital around the corner.

The Japanese nurses were super-accommodating and compassionate, and when it turned out the only English-speaking doctor there had already left for the day, they were so sorry and they even got me into a cab to the next clinic down the road. And there I met with a really nice doctor who told me that I had something called Acute Gastritis – some kind of stomach thing. He gave me a prescription and told me to avoid caffeine and spices and such for a while and said I would recover in a few days. Man, was I glad to hear that.

So Sunday came and went and by Monday afternoon, I had already eaten a whole small-sized meal and I was back on my feet. Which is pretty lucky, considering that Monday afternoon we had started Orientation at work!

And thus began our experience of working in Japan. But, to start off, I have to say that Orientation didn’t really make us feel any less depressed or homesick. We had a short info session to start with, in which we were told we could ask any questions we had about our accommodations and bank accounts and such. Only this so-called orientation turned out to be only about 20 minutes of us handing over our passports and getting told what the company rules were by the Australian female version of Bill Lumberg. And before we could ask any questions about cell phones or internet or even transportation, we were in a training session.

And then for the next three days we were trained to teach English. Which was also excruciating. To start with, our trainer was this obtuse and butchy American girl who thought she was the best English teacher to ever walk the planet. She treated us like little kids, never assuming that maybe some of us might have taught English (or anything, for that matter) before in our lives. We kept asking basic questions about the actual curriculum, but she would just ignore them and act like we weren’t ready to know that stuff yet.

Those first few days of training, we would wake up in the morning, and just lay in bed, getting more and more homesick and just dreading the day ahead of us. But Friday finally rolled around and both the weather and our nerves had a chance to cool down. On that Friday we had a day off before our shifts started on Saturday and we ventured out into the big city of Kyoto (we live in the suburb of Yamashina, which is actually separated from Kyoto city by a small but quite beautiful set of mountains) where we managed to open bank accounts and spend the entire rest of the day poring over the different cellular phones and plans, before finally signing some fancy new contracts.

That was a big step, you know. Until then, we had been pretty much just avoided establishing ourselves here at all, because things were just turning out so crappy. But signing cellular contracts was making a commitment! I still don’t remember why we went through with it that day, maybe we were just having cellphone withdrawal, maybe we just wanted nifty Japanese phones, or maybe we were starting to warm up to the place. One thing for sure, is that after having McDonalds on that previous night, my stomach (believe it or not) was finally back on track :)

On Saturday we started actually working at our respective branches. Poor Chris is working at that same branch where we had training and his supervisor is that same American girl. But he’s doing alright. I won’t say anything else about him, because he’s supposed to post on this blog too ;)

As for me, I’m actually working quite a bit further from home than he is. I’m on the train for more than 30min one way, but I’d say it’s worth it. In case you want to google it, my branch is in a city called “Omihachiman” and it’s just northeast of Kyoto, following the underside of Lake Biwa. I ride through some cute countryside to get there, and instead of a big office building like Chris, my school is actually on the top floor of a really funky department store. It’s really close to the train station, and the people I work with are mostly a bunch of hilariously foul-mouthed Australians, with a cool guy from Edmonton and a couple of nerdy Americans thrown in. I like it a lot. One of the Japanese secretaries there was even in Germany the same year that I was – and she speaks fluent German! How crazy is that?

The best part, however, has got to be the students. I have learned so much about Japanese people already in these past few weeks, but let me tell you that it’s all really positive. I could go on and on about how extremely polite and accommodating they are, even to bumbling foreigners like us, how creative and stylish(?) they are, or how talented they are at everything from breakdancing to baking, but I just want to say that it’s definitely the students that make my day. Some are really studious, others are just there for kicks, but they’re all really interesting to talk to. I really do feel sorry that I have to teach them these lame cookie-cutter lessons and that we really aren’t given enough time to give them proper evaluations during the day. I guess they're used to that kind of thing here, too, though, but all in all, they're the best part of the workday.