Finally an update!

So, I'm back in Japan... actually I've been back since the 10th but I was severely jet-lagged that first weekend (and severely lazy the second) so if I had written anything it would have made even less sense than usual.  Monday the 14th was a holiday (Coming of Age Day) and on the 15th and 16th I was in Sendai for the Miyagi JET Skills Development Conference.  I had to present during a workshop this year so I was kinda stressed out beforehand.  Risa-sensei was slated to present with me but she was even more stressed out than I was so we ended up splitting the work so that she was the one to prepare all the handouts while I did the presenting.  The presentation itself went OK, I mean I was only presenting to around 25 people so it wasn't too nerve-wracking... I felt bad though since this year at the conference the participants didn't get to pick which workshops they attended so I think there were several people in my workshop who wouldn't have chosen to sign up for it.

I may write more about the conference later but for now I wanted to post a few leftover pictures from the fall.

Sam's finally here!  This is from the first time I saw "Froot Loops" in Japan.  Apparently they've changed the name but coincidentally the name they chose is the same as an off-brand variety common in Massachusetts.  Also, why is it "ring" and not "rings"?  Is there only one in there?

I took the following picture quite a while ago when it was still pretty warm out.  Back in the spring people were expecting the summer to be tough due to an energy shortage from the shutdown of most of Japan's nuclear power plants.  Thus in the spring many people bought vine plants to grow over their windows to naturally bring in shade (and cooler air) without using a fan or A/C.  Most of my schools had vines growing on nets outside and one of the most popular types of vine was from the 鉈豆 「なたまめ」or "sword bean" plant.

 

 I put in the red pen for perspective.  Pretty amazing, right?

 One day while I was at school one of the elementary teachers put a small plate of pink stuff in front of me and told me I had to try it since it's a traditional fall specialty of Japan.  It turned out that it was pickled flowers (they weren't very good but I felt obligated to eat them all).

 Here are some pickled flowers on sale at the supermarket (you can see some peppers to the left).

And now, for a special edition of Let's Learn Engrish!

 The small text reads:
"Cherry Cookie [written in cursive that surprisingly does have the letters connected]
It is a cookie baked in brown by using enough fruits that fully bathe in the blessing of the sun.  delicious to you..."

Wow, they tried hard for this one but their attempt to be poetic kind of backfired.  Is it the dried fruit that is supposed to be the "brown"?  Also "delicious" should be capitalized.  I think I would change the first "in" to "until" also there should be an indication of past tense in the part of the sentence about bathing in the sun since the sentence started out by using "baked."  After that it would be better but still kind of odd English.

The picture is a bit blurry but to the bottom left of the label over the "Crispy Gaufrette" section it says, "Pudding-Flavor Cream Sand" this will probably make more sense if I tell you that the Japanese abbreviation for sandwich is サンド "sando" so hopefully this treat is in fact a pudding-flavored cream sandwich and not just some flavored sand.

Finally, what might be my favorite can of food ever... technically it's a can of 「マフィンタイプ」"muffin-type" bread that lasts for many years and can be saved for emergencies.  This is actually the one can of food that fell off the shelf during that earthquake last month.

Can you read the tab?  It says, "Hi, MIDGET"  I had to get Anne to read it to verify that I wasn't just seeing things...  I'm not sure what to say about this one since I have no idea what they were trying to say... haha.

Anyway, have a good week!

Going Home and Flight Difficulties

So yeah, I'm currently in the process of going home for Christmas.  My journey began yesterday (almost a full 24 hours ago now) when Anne drove me to Tome so that I could catch the 7:30 PM bus to Sendai.  That bus arrived in Sendai around 9 PM and I spent my time waiting for my next bus (an overnight bus) by looking around a bookstore.  I caught that one at 10:30 PM and it drove through the night.  We arrived at Narita Airport in Tokyo around 6:30 AM.  Unfortunately my flight wasn't scheduled until 5:30 PM (as I'm writing it's already 5:49 PM and we haven't entered the aircraft yet) so I had quite a bit of time in the airport...  You may wonder why I decided to take the overnight bus this time around and the reason is simple - it's about half the price of the shinkansen (bullet train).

My day in the airport wasn't too bad actually.  I spent the morning going around the different shops and doing a bit more Christmas shopping.  Next from 1 PM - 4 PM I scheduled time in a "nap" room (technically it's called a Day Room) - you can probably guess what I did there.  It had a twin-sized bed I could take a nap in and there was a shower I could use as well (there wasn't a toilet in the room for some reason though).  Anyway, I attempted to take a nap for a couple of hours and also charged my laptop and whatnot at the same time.

As I mentioned, my flight was scheduled for around 5:30 PM but I found out that there was a delay as soon as I showed up after using the nap room.  My connecting flight in San Francisco was already cutting it close in terms of connection time (especially since I'll have to go through customs once I'm in the US).  So they called me up to the desk and basically told me that there was no way that I would make the connection and offered to reserve a seat in the next SF to Boston flight.  So at least the airlines (ANA - All Nippon Airways) is being nice about it.  I feel bad though since my mom had offered to pick me up and with the new flight I'll probably arrive in Boston around 11:30 PM... (sorry Mom!).

Anyway, in other news, here are some things that have happened recently:

I saw Santa Claus at the local Aeon (mall), he was even speaking English, but his accent was pretty bad so I couldn't really understand him. 

It reminded me a little of the KFC guy (see pictures below).

Yup, they have KFC in Japan (are you secretly amazed or does this just make you worry about the state of the world?)

 But I think that the colonel looks a bit different than he does in the US (maybe it's just me).  But the Santa I saw at Aeon looked a bit like this guy.

 The teachers and students at my school received some chocolate bars from a charity organization in the US.  They turned out to be Hershey bars and they had a special Christmas message on the front.

 Here's the message.

I heard a couple of teachers at my school wondering about it when one of them said something like, "Oh, wait, I see.  It says, 'Joy to the Earth!'"  I chuckled a bit but decided not to correct him (I mean, it's very close isn't it?).  Basically, I can forgive something like that, but not something like this:

Grrr.

Anyway, we're finally boarding now so I guess I'm off!

Autumn and school happenings

The leaves have been changing and now most of them have fallen.  The area still looks fairly green though due to the swaths of evergreen trees on the hills; many of the trees that died after being exposed to the salt water of the tsunami have been cut down as well.

I took some pictures of the trees that still had colored leaves a few weeks ago so I figured that I should post them.

A tree near the middle school in the area.

I do love maple trees in the fall.

Japanese maple trees tend to have purplish-red leaves in the summer but in the fall they become even more beautiful.

This bug's camouflage isn't working so well for him on the concrete.  Then again, with all the green leaves disappearing from the area I suppose being on a tree wouldn't be very good either.

More buildings have been taken down over the past few months (though this one seemed to have been in pretty good condition, considering).

Recently the cleanup has also been focusing on the foundations of houses and other buildings; most houses in Japan don't have basements but they do have concrete foundations.  When the tsunami destroyed and washed away the houses often the only thing remaining to show that a house had been there was the foundation.  The de-construction workers (as I call them) use a machine similar to a digger (those ones with the long arm with a shovel at the end) but instead of a shovel they have a large metal pick that is similar to a jackhammer at the end.  The long-armed jackhammer is used to break up the foundations, leaving just a pile of rubble behind.

The sun has been setting around 4:15- 4:30 PM so when I'm driving home from school I can see the sunset.  On the day I took this picture the high tide had partially flooded the coastal area (and the road) near my place.

Actually it flurried a bit last week... so we changed over to our winter tires on Friday.  It's illegal to be within 50 meters of snow without snow tires on your car (or something like that), haha.  We also got some thermal curtains for the apartment; they have a layer of aluminum foil inside of them.  Supposedly there will be a 7 degree Celsius difference between using the thermal curtains and using plain cloth curtains.

Speaking of curtains, that reminds me of a funny thing that happened at the middle school about a month ago.  At the time it was a bit chilly outside but not cold enough to turn on the heater; in fact, the window was open and bright afternoon sunlight was streaming in.  The English teacher was explaining a new grammar point and I was walking around the room making sure everyone was paying attention.  I heard a whispered conversation going on in the back of the classroom near the windows so I headed over to see what the problem was.  A few of the boys seemed to be having a conversation about English (of all things); I heard one boy say, "Use 'Can I'," then another boy said, "No, 'May I'."  As I watched, the boy closest to the window abruptly raised his hand.

Shingo-sensei: Yes?
Student: May I close the window?
Shingo-sensei:  Nice English.  Yes, you may.
(the student closes the curtain)
Shingo-sensei: ... That wasn't the window, that was the curtain.
(he has the students repeat the new word several times)
Shingo-sensei:  But good job.  One point!
Student: Yes!

(I give the student a sticker)

Actually in this particular class I have been passing out rather plain stickers that are round with a gold star in the center.  The same student who asked the question is obsessed with collecting them because he says that they are like Dragon Balls.  Dragon Ball was an incredibly popular manga/anime series that ran for many years.  I remember watching some of the dubbed episodes back in the early 90's. 

Meanwhile at Hayai Elementary I had lunch with the first graders (always a treat).  This particular class asked me some of the usual questions and then asked a question using a word I was unfamiliar with.

Student A: 好きな生き物何ですか。             (What's your favorite ikimono?)
Me:  いきもの？                                             (Ikimono?)
Student A: はい、好きな生き物何ですか。  (Yes, what's your favorite?)
Me:「いきもの」は何ですか。                     (What's an 'ikimono'?)
(at this point the teacher was listening in but decided to wait and see if the kids would be able to explain the word to me)
Student A:  生き物は。。。                            (An ikimono is...)
Student B:   動物です。                                   (It's an animal.)

I looked it up later and apparently an ikimono is a 'living thing'.  I know it can be hard for little kids to explain new words to people, so I was happy that the teacher let the kids try to explain the word to me.

After asking me some more questions the class became obsessed with my (completely plain and uninteresting) earrings; as I've mentioned before, pierced ears are not very common in Japan and schools often have bans on students wearing real or clip-on earrings.  As a result many of the girls (and boys) in the class ended up poking my ears quite a few times and asking me questions about them.  The girls asked if they hurt (at the time a boy was tugging on one, which did kind of hurt) so I said "Not usually" as I swatted the boy's hand away.  They next asked me about my eye color (whether it was gray or blue) and I said blue.  I told them that my dad has brown eyes but my mom and sister and I have blue eyes and my brother has green eyes.  They were completely shocked and asked me to verify several times with questions like, "Does your dad really have brown eyes???"  I suppose family members having different eye colors is a... foreign... concept to them, haha.  A few periods later the first grade teacher came up to me in the hallway and said that even after I left the students wouldn't stop talking about eye color.

And now, it's time for Let's Learn Engrish!

'Engrish' is what happens when you take a statement in Japanese (or other East Asian languages) and plug it through an automatic translator (or just look up the words individually in the dictionary) but then don't have a fluent English speaker check the results.  For humorous examples see this site.  Though I guess it's similar to American t-shirts or jewelry pieces with 'Chinese characters' on them that probably sound equally strange (or nonsensical) to Chinese-speakers.

Today's example is fairly tame (with two things I find strange about it) but since only two words are printed, that's actually quite impressive...

1.  It sounds like it's a cookie made of squid (it was just a sugar cookie)
2.  There was only one cookie

I would change it to: Squid-Shaped Cookie or I would make the wrapped clear (so you can see it's not made of squid) and call it a Squid Cookie.

That's all for now.

Osaka- it's okay! (big trip part 4)

On Wednesday, August 8th after visiting the monkeys we grabbed a local train from Kyoto station to Osaka and walked to our next hostel.  By that time it was around 2 in the afternoon so we were able to check-in and relax for a little while.  I mentioned to Mikey that our hostel offered an izakaya (bar) tour at 7 PM where we could meet some fellow travelers from the hostel and hear stories from one of the hostel employees so we decided to sign up for that.  In this way we met Mr. Yano, an older guy who does maintenance at the hostel and loves to drink with foreigners and practice his English.  When we arrived at the izakaya we went upstairs to a private room that had been set aside for us (maybe the izakaya owners don't want too many crazy, sake-drinking foreigners to be making a ruckus downstairs).  At first Mikey and I were the only guests there but Mr. Yano assured us that some other guests from the hostel would stop by later.  Mr. Yano proceeded to give us a slip of paper with convenient Osaka-ben (Osaka-area dialect/words) written on it. 

Such phrases included:
maido = "hello" (differs from Tokyo-area "konnichiwa")
ohkini = "thank you" (differs from Tokyo-area "arigatou")
beppin = "beautiful woman" (differs from Tokyo-area "bijin")
nambo = "How much?" (differs from Tokyo-area "ikura")

Mr. Yano also gave us both a funny sticker that had a picture of his face on it along with his favorite English phrase "It's okay!"...  I can't even guess how many times Mikey and I heard that phrase that night...  Apparently Mr. Yano has only been learning English for a few years so he relied heavily on hand-gestures to get his meanings across (he was quite skilled at that though so it wasn't too bad).  He asked us where we had visited in Japan and whether we had been to Nara Park (which is famous for its beauty and for the many deer that roam it).  The deer are supposedly very pushy there.  People are allowed to feed them deer-food so the deer will pretty much mug you trying to see if you have any (Mr. Yano's impression of the deer was very funny).  His story reminded me of a bad experience I had in an Australian petting zoo where a kangaroo snatched a bag of kangaroo-food from me (this was when I was studying abroad in college)... haha.

Soon after that two other hostel-guests arrived (I will call them Jeff and Millie).  They were cousins from Belgium and were also godfather and goddaughter (Jeff was a good 10 years older than Millie and he had promised her that once she graduated from high school that he would take her to Japan since she had always wanted to go).  Jeff spoke very good English but Millie preferred to use French and also knew some Japanese from watching J-dramas (TV dramas from Japan).  We ended up hanging out with them several times since they were nice and easy-going people.

Mr. Yano welcomed the newcomers and proceeded to tell Millie and I that we were kawaii, the Japanese word for cute.  He said that his wife on the other hand was not kawaii, she was kowai (scary) and would often yell at him for staying out late drinking.  This story made us feel a bit bad since we were keeping him out late (and he was drinking a fair amount of sake and plum wine).  But after we had all eaten dinner at the izakaya he suggested that we go to a different bar down the street (maybe he was avoiding his wife?).  Along the way to the new bar Mr. Yano taught us a very amusing game that is played in the Osaka area.  Basically you pretend to have a katana (Japanese sword) and "slash" a random person (whom you don't know) in the street.  The "slashed" person then pretends to die.  The same game can be played with a fake gun (in which case you "shoot" a random person).  To demonstrate, Mr. Yano prompted my brother to "slash" a random woman sitting with two of her friends at an outdoor restaurant.  He did and the woman "died" while clutching her side.  Mr. Yano then had Mikey pull out a "gun" and "shoot" one of the woman's friends.  She did a very realistic jerk as the "bullet" hit her so she must play the game fairly often... haha.

After having more to drink at the other bar we were all feeling bad about keeping Mr. Yano out so late so we told him that we were going back to the hostel (Millie said that she wanted to go to bed while Jeff and Mikey decided to go to a different bar in that area instead).  Back at the hostel the receptionist was still there since she said she had to wait for some other new guests to arrive so that she could let them in the building.  We sat down and talked with her.  We told her that we had been out with Mr. Yano and she asked us if we had heard about his kowai wife.  When we said yes she told us that in reality Mr. Yano isn't even married, he just likes to tell that story!

There were hardly any places open in the area around the hostel (since it was a Wednesday night and we were some distance from Osaka Station).  So Jeff, Mikey, and I went into a random restaurant that claimed to have Belgium beer.  The owner of the place (who had been drinking at the bar section and seemed tipsy) came over to chat with us and ended up sitting with us for quite a while (I think she was interested in us since we were foreigners and she wanted to practice her English).  The more that she drank though, the less sense her English made and Mikey and Jeff kept looking at me to translate (even though she was still mostly speaking English - I guess I still understood her the best).  It was kind of awkward (and one of the waiters who seemed to have an interesting sense of humor kept laughing at our situation from across the room).  But the owner did give the guys some free drinks (and I got a gelato) so... all's well that ends well?  In the end Mikey and I stayed up later that I had intended so we slept in a bit the next morning.

Mikey said that he still wanted to go to an aquarium (since we hadn't ended up going to the one in Himeji).  So around noon we grabbed some bento (packed lunches) from the nearby supermarket and took the subway to the Osaka aquarium.  And now for a picture-tour.

Approaching the Osaka Aquarium.

Penguins!  I love penguins.

The aquarium had a nice setup where you were able to see each large tank at multiple levels.

There were several large rays.

These small fish look like a swirling cloud.

A rather ugly fish.

Cute clown fish!

Tiny string-like fish(?)

Dolphins!

More swirling fish.

In other news, I may have seen a monkey crossing the road on my way to school on Wednesday... is that even possible? 

More soon (hopefully).

The Culture Festival 2012 and Halloween

So, due to a special request from my blog's "most loyal reader" (aka my brother) I'm taking a break from my continuing saga to talk about this year's culture festival at Hashi Middle School.  As you may recall from my post last year, the bunkasai (culture festival) is an annual event at every middle school in Japan.  They are all a little bit different but most involve decorating the school with various art and school projects, the students singing numerous songs (usually each grade and each class sings a song), performances by the school band, and often include class skits.  My school also has a talent show and gender-swap competition at the end of the day.  The whole culture festival ran from 9 AM to 5 PM on Sunday (the kids and other teachers went to school on Saturday the 27th as well to set up and practice everything but they also got Monday and Tuesday off from school to make up for it).

This year I tried to help out more before the festival (mostly just with the posters that the students were making that explained some of the special events that have taken place this school-year so far).  I also asked the students about their class performances beforehand (though some were unable to explain their skits very well...).  Thus I found out that one first-year class was doing Snow White (with six dwarfs instead of seven), class 2-2 was doing The Emperor's New Clothes, class 2-1 was doing Momotarou, and one of the third-year classes was doing an original story called Moshi-Dora.  During the festival itself I discovered that the other first-year class was doing Alice in Wonderland while the other third year class was doing a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood.

I also wanted to do something during the festival itself (like participate in a skit or sing a song).  Last year all the full-time teachers sang a song together so I was hoping to participate in that as well this year.  Unfortunately when I asked the teachers they said they weren't doing a song (I think they had been told that the festival had to end by 5 PM this year).  But since the festival was right before Halloween I figured that I could at least wear my Halloween costume, Link from the Legend of Zelda video game series (the Ocarina of Time version, in case any geeks were wondering).  I told Risa-sensei about my costume and she said that wearing it during the festival would be fine. 

On the day of the festival I brought my costume along to change into later (I figured I could wear it during the afternoon segment).  When I arrived Risa-sensei said that she had decided to dress up as well (as an old man since she had the wig for it) and said that we could both be in the gender-swap competition that way.  I'll admit I was surprised that I would be going on stage (and would apparently be interviewed in Japanese) with only a few hours to prepare...  Risa-sensei thought it would be funny if I did all the talking between the two of us (as we were going to be interviewed at the same time).  So we came up with four questions and answers (and I memorized the answers in Japanese which wasn't too bad except that I had to memorize the word jitakukeibiin which means "I guard my home" as Risa-sensei's answer to the question "What is your job?" - which basically is a long-winded way of saying "I'm unemployed."

But before that we were able to watch the class performances which were each about five minutes long; here are some brief descriptions/reviews of the skits:

1-1:  Alice in Wonderland - Well, I think that their skit was based on Alice in Wonderland anyway since it seemed from their props like the five main characters were very small in size.  The kids weren't using microphones though so it was almost impossible to hear them.  Some of the other students were dressed as bugs and one of the teachers made a guest appearance as an angel. 

1-2:  Snow White - A surprisingly good performance given that this class has some troublemakers in it (Prince Charming was actually one of the troublemakers so that in itself was funny).  At the end Snow White apparently transformed into a man (the homeroom teacher) when she was kissed by the prince and the spell was broken.

2-1:  Momotarou - (a Japanese myth where a boy born from a giant peach grows up to save his village from a horde of ogres with the help of his friends the dog, monkey, and pheasant).  They missed some of their cues and had some issues with the visuals so it wasn't as good as their practice I saw last Friday.

2-2:  The Emperor's New Clothes - (apparently just called "The Naked Emperor" in Japanese) was pretty good but they played too much music.  I was wondering what they would do when the emperor put on his "new clothes" but they just had the student wear shorts and the same cape he had been wearing in an earlier scene, which worked well.

3-1:  Their rendition of Little Red Riding Hood was hilarious.  Instead of having one they had three Red Riding Hood Sisters (who were the tallest boys in the class from the basketball team).  They went to give their grandmother a gift but were confronted by four wolves and much sword and fist-fighting ensued.

3-2:  Moshi-Dora - Moshi means "if" and Dora can be an abbreviation of dorama, the Japanese word for "drama" but in this case Dora stood for "Doraemon," a cat-shaped robot from the future who is a famous Japanese comic book and anime character.  The plot of the story was "What if our teacher were Doraemon?"  At the end, their homeroom teacher came out in a full Doraemon outfit!

After the skits I got on my costume and participated in the Mister-Misses contest with Risa-sensei (we were the only girls participating).  The kids thought that our costumes were good (I was pleased when I heard some of the boys correctly identify me as Link) and I managed to not mangle my lines too badly so all-in-all it was a success!  The rest of the festival passed in a blur and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that it was 5 o'clock.

On Tuesday I dressed up once again for the kids at Hayai Elementary (since it was the day before Halloween).  At the beginning of the day there was an assembly and I entered the room from the back after I got my costume on (I had attached the ears with the help of spirit gum before I left for school).  During the assembly a couple of the 5th grade girls noticed my costume and kept turning around to stare at me.  The excited look on their faces was priceless!  Then at the end of the assembly the vice-principal told the students to turn around since I had dressed up for them.  A lot of the students were enthusiastic about the costume (though many asked if I was Peter Pan... does he even have pointed ears(?) or Legolas from the Lord of the Rings).  The vice-principal also pulled out a camera and took a picture with all the students (there are only about 60 at Hayai Emelentary) and the teachers (including me).

During class with the fifth graders one of the girls who is a big Legend of Zelda fan got the others to call me "Link-sensei" - which was awesome.  After the lesson the same girl came up to admire my costume close-up; she said that it was very accurate (which pleased me) and pointed out some of the details to one of her friends, "See, this part of the triforce represents courage, this one is power, and this one is wisdom." - she's a smart kid.

During lunch I ate with the third graders and I noticed some of them giving me weird looks from across the classroom.  I told them to ask me questions if they wanted so one girl asked me if my ears were real.  I almost said 'yes' before remembering that I had on the fake ones so I told them that they were rubber...  The kids must have thought that I'd always had pointed ears but they hadn't noticed before... haha.  I should have told them that everyone in the US has pointed ears.  I think some of the confusion was due to the fact that I had arranged my bangs to be covering the seams of the ears so they were fairly well-disguised.  One boy asked me how the ears stayed on and I told him it was with a special glue (I let some of the students tug on them to show that they were on securely).  All-in-all, another fun day.

In other news I saw a spectacular double-rainbow on Wednesday but I didn't grab my camera in time to capture it.  Actually, the weather has been kind of crazy the last couple of days with torrential rainstorms giving way to bright sunlight and even a big thunderstorm last night.  There don't seem to be many thunderstorms in my area of Japan compared to the number I would experience in Massachusetts (especially in the summer) maybe that's why it was humid all summer long, there were no storms to break the humidity.  I'm sure that the weather here can't compare to cyclone Sandy in the US though.

Anyway, have a good weekend!