turning point

some time shortly after my healthy and surprisingly delicious school lunch tomorrow-- it ought to fall right in the midst of daily cleaning time, so it'll have to wait until the balcony is swept clean of giant moths again-- i'll be logging onto the staff room's ancient laptop to slowly have the identity of our next President revealed to my eager eyes. apparently there's a good chance that textbooks a few years down the line might read "and on November 4th, 2008, the U.S. elected its first African-American President". in all sincerity, may the best man for the job win. (cough) since it's clearly Obama.

three day weekend

only one word has the elegant simplicity necessary to fully capture the unique experience of practicing basic karate exercises that briefly and spontaneously evolve into funky soulful dances alone in your apartment blasting stevie wonder's "superstition" at 1pm on a sunday afternoon: Awesome.

Spot the Gaijin

random thoughts from the back porch

it occurred to me that these posts are technically coming from sixteen hours in the future, PST. the previous post appears to have been made on an unsuspecting seattleites' calm and cool thursday evening, when it was in fact written under the balmy high-noon sun of a kumamoto friday. so unless you're living closer to greenwich (and recieve South Korea's ever-retreating window into the past) this blog extends to you an opportunity to peer into a technological wormhole corkscrewing its way through the earth's curvature straight at the friday sun, whilst the thursday moon reflects its radiant light outside your window. beautiful, in a way?

it's thoughts like these, which after writing down, make me realize i probably have too much time for thinking these days.

O saka it to me

I make no apologies for the title. I do, however, apologize for the length of this entry. Put please try and power through, there are one or two good parts hidden in this sordid tale that are like M&Ms in a bag of trail mix.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote, and life has been real busy- but a better way to put it would probably be 'rich with experiences'. Tonight, for example: after spending an extra hour after work to help the kids practice for the district-wide Junior High English speech contest next Tuesday ('important musical instrument' must be one of the most difficult possible phrases to pronounce correctly with an American accent), I got home and whipped up some gyoza and cold somen noodles for dinner with Spooky, followed by a Chili Peppers/Ratatat jam session. Then we met up with some other ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) who stopped on their way through town at the Italian-style 'Tao' cafe across the street. One delicious chocolate float later, we swung by a ramen truck that had pulled up outside in the parking lot and got some hearty bowls of steaming noodles with seasoned pork and vegetables. For those of you who've done some time in Walla Walla, these Ramen trucks are the Japanese equivalent of the taco trucks, except that they play catchy little melodies when they drive up and are open until 1am most weeknights.

Crossing highway three via the pedestrian bridge that practically leads to my doorstep, we stopped at the top to look out over the urban jungle of Ueki for a spell, and discussed the important intellectual issues of the day such as the feasibility of leaping down onto a truck as it sped under if we were being chased by malevolent A.I.-gone-awry machines from the robotics factory down the road. Alex has to have a detailed Halloween poster prepared for a class presentation tomorrow so we spent the last hour coloring and writing basic explanations for ‘haunted houses‘ and why ‘trick-or-treat‘-ing was amazing as a kid (cultural education is fun!), and now we're listening to Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley on my laptop as Spooky works out the progression on his guitar. This is what life here in Japan is like between stuff like Radiohead concerts in Osaka and country music festivals at Mt. Aso, and well, things could be worse.

What was it like seeing a concert in Osaka? Quite a trip, actually. It all began... terribly. The secretary from work who had generously offered to help us buy the tickets ended up ordering the dates and destinations in reverse. When Alex, Holly and I showed up at 7pm to catch the overnight bus from Kumamoto to Osaka on Wednesday night, it slowly became apparent that the shuttle we stood by was full, and we instead held reservations for a different bus currently leaving a city hundreds of miles away and bound straight toward us. Well, shit. Several challenging cell phone calls in Japanese, 40 minutes and 30,000 yen in cancellation fees later we were on a different, fancier night bus up to Osaka, mostly thanks to some swift action on Holly‘s part. Of course, things could only get better from there, and get better they did.

The next morning at 7am we pulled into Japan's second largest city and unofficial gourmet food capital (and the purported birthplace of Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), found a Subway for a fresh and filling tuna sandwich, then found the subway for a quick and simple ride to our hotel. Being an international city, Osaka has much more English scattered about than I’m used to down south, making navigation not only possible but fairly straightforward. I should also mention that fast food across the board (including McDonalds and KFC- both very popular here) is much, much better in Japan, and the staff that run these little bites of U.S. culture have all the efficiency and courtesy their American counterparts lack. Even when I stumble into my friendly neighborhood McDonalds at 2am requesting a freshly made cinnamon melt, teriyaki McBurger and hot melon pie, the ladies working there still seem surprisingly genki (full of energy) and almost happy to see me. Or at least amused, which seems to be my general affect on people these days.

Anyway, next we went to Osaka's giant Ferris wheel for a scenic ride and then on to the aquarium , which was lovely. Though our visit coincided with the most massive elementary field trip God or more likely Satan ever conceived of, and we were forced to essentially ride on a shrieking river of adorable yellow-hat-wearing kids as their curious little minds pulled them from exhibit to exhibit, each new animal eliciting screams of delight that I sometimes worried would shatter the glass protecting us from the sea-dwelling predators waiting on the other side. Always waiting. To your left you can see a majestic whale shark lurking near the bottom, as promised. Then it was time for a nap at the hotel, and up again in time for Radiohead, which looked something like this:













A beautiful experience. Here is the set list for any Radiohead fans out there:

Reckoner
Optimistic
There There
15 Step
All I Need
You and Whose Army
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The Gloaming
Videotape
Morning Bell
Faust Arp
No Surprises
Jigsaw Falling into Place
Idioteque
The National Anthem
Nude
Bodysnatchers

Encore 1

Airbag
Knives Out
Just
Where I End and You Begin
Planet Telex

Encore 2

Fog
Karma Police
Everything in its Right Place

The next day we explored the renowned side streets of Osaka and some enormous outdoor fish markets , along with sampling the local specialties- takoyaki (fried octopus dumplings) and okonomiyaki (sort of a seafood and flour pancake, and one of the better things I've ever had despite how that sounds). We ended Friday night in style at Osaka’s most notorious dance club- Club Pure, which we ran across accidentally at the end of a long, meandering search. The deal was all you can drink (nomihodai) for as long as you can stay (read: stand up). There were live DJs, at least three separate VIP lounges, and cozy little caves a small group could escape to when we needed a brief respite from the Pure techno/hip-hop powered adrenaline pounding through the club and our very VEINS. The music fueled a furious frenzy of physically incongruous dance styles, brought from all over the world and dropped hard on the main floor. The result was a dynamic chaos of movement that was pretty damn fun, all of it made even better by a more than decent line-up of unlimited cocktails coupled with frequent high-fives from a tall, jovial Hawaiian guy I befriended somewhere around drink three.

The night ended around 4:30am with a quick fill-up at a 24-hour ramen shop around the corner, then back to the hotel on a swift ship to sleepland as nearly-muted anime played on the TV.

An hour or so later the sun rose, and seven hours later our stalwart trio rallied and set out again into the great unknown. I distinctly remember sleepily pushing myself off my little quilt bed on the floor, walking out onto the compact smoking deck to gaze down at hundreds and hundreds of Japanese people going about their daily routine, and thinking how strange it was that this is the country I live in now. I pay utility bills covered with indecipherable kanji and wake up every morning on a futon laid over tatami mats. Except for that morning, where I woke up and felt thousands of miles from home. Love that feeling.

Emerging from this pleasant bit of introspection I rejoined Holly and Alex and we hit the streets again, soon finding a genuine Mexican restaurant in a nearby building that resembled a 30-story inverted hour glass. The scooped-from-avacados-before-our-eyes guacamole dip, fresh from the oven corn chips and '1800' tequila margaritas deserve mentioning, since my second favorite type of cuisine (Japanese food recently moved to the top) is pretty sparse here. Full and happy, we caught the subway down to Osaka castle to tour the tower and grounds, donning some ferocious Samurai gear at the top as the next logical step in our efforts to amuse the people who’s undivided attention we inevitably have anyway.

The final stop before our return bus trip was Spa World, a conglomeration of differently themed baths and water slides sprawling over three major stories of a large building. The “Asian” floor and the “European” floor are on a monthly rotation between the sexes (I got to explore everything from statue-studded Roman baths to a forested Norwegian hot spring and log sauna area), while the top floor is a family-oriented affair open to both genders with water slides crisscrossing overhead and a warm outdoor river running between large, moon-lit and mood-lit hot tubs. I could be way off, but I think introducing onsens like this to the U.S. could be a profitable venture. And they'd just be nice to have around.

Forced by circumstances beyond my control to leave this dreamlike world of spas, we boarded the bus and headed back home to Ueki, this time so relaxed and exhausted that I was able to pass out for the better part of the eleven-hour trip. So ended my journey to Osaka, land of commerce, gourmet food, and fantasy brought to life. I know I'll be back to explore the Asian-themed onsen world one of these days, but in the meantime there is a lot of Japan left to discover. Thanks for powering through, and please drop me a line at anderskg@gmail.com if we haven't talked in a while. Not every detail of these experiences makes it on this blog :)

Here's the complete line-up of pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/anderskg/Osaka
http://picasaweb.google.com/anderskg/HollysOsakaPics#

The Red Ribbon

At the end of my 'Day in the Sei' post, I mentioned a dramatic guilt-inducing short story about the devastating effects of the atom bomb in World War II. I think it's time to post that story.

Program 4, p. 34-36 of the Sunshine English Course level 3 (standard English-teaching textbook for Japanese public schools, 8th grade). Reading practice:

When I first met Rumi, she was sitting alone on the seashore. She was looking toward the sea. She was a cute little girl. Her mother and father went to Hiroshima on August 5. It was just before the last war ended. Before they left the island, they said that they would only stay overnight. One day passed. Another day passed, and still another day passed. But her parents did not come back.

Rumi's uncle took her to Hiroshima to look for her parents. They walked around the burned-out city for four days, but they could not find her parents. After they returned to the island, Rumi went to the seashore every day. She waited there alone for her parents. I felt sad whenever I saw her. Rumi had a pretty yellow ribbon in her hair. She loved it. It was made by her mother.

One day, I found that her hair was falling out. I said to her; "I'll make a red ribbon for you when your hair gets better." She smiled, and then turned toward the sea again to look for a ship. She said, "Mom and Dad said they would only stay overnight."A few days later, I saw Rumi on the seashore. She had a hat on. She said, "My uncle gave me this hat. My hair is sick." I did not know what to say.

A couple of days later, I found Rumi in her uncle's arms on the seashore. When I saw her face, I was very surprised. I hurried back home and made a red ribbon for her. Then I brought it to her. She slowly opened her eyes, and gave me a smile. Her teeth were red with blood." Thank ... you," she said weakly, and closed her eyes again. Tears ran down my face. Two days later, she died in her uncle's arms on the seashore.

After the first time I read this aloud for a class, each student chose a page to practice and one by one came into a separate room to read them to me, as I graded their pronunciation from C- to A+. Something about it seemed odd. I have since read this chilling tale to so many classes that I can almost recite it from memory.

This same book has a heartwarming and much more uplifting story published toward the end, called "The Mountain that Loved a Bird". Incidentally, it was written by my grandma, Alice Mclerran, so I was pretty surprised to find it in my English course textbook. Some small world.

welcome to the jugyo, we got fun n' games

Here are some pictures of my daring exploits in the classroom. The original copies were good old fashioned film prints, and currently lacking access to better technology, I took pictures with my cellphone and sent 'em to my email. My laptop broke shortly after I got here (corrupted hard drive after 2 weeks of use- be wary of refurbished Dells) so I'm limited to using the internet during breaks in the workday at school.

These pictures are from Ueki-kita, one of my three junior high schools, which I reach either by bus or by picturesque thirty-minute bike ride. What you see is a pretty standard classroom set-up with rows of attentive Japanese students, and what you don't see is the kids out cold sleeping on their desk, punching each other repeatedly in the head, and yelling out English swear words at random. If I can get them to recall conversational words as readily and pronounce them as loudly and accurately, I will have done my job here.

In reality behavior like this is usually the exception, but pre-teens and angst go together like a dirty apartment and cockroaches, apparently no matter where you live. When I get the chance I'm going to collect their hilarious pencil boxes and post a picture of them on here. Almost all have some random 'Engrish' phrase on the top, and those that aren't marijuana-themed (realistically about 1/3 of the boys' parents have bought them these... one of my favorites reads "Smoke dope and addicts- is bud rearry for me?") usually have something to do with peace, love, music, or candy.












Most of my time is spent reading words, phrases and stories aloud, but I am slowly gaining some flexibility as I get to know the language and fellow English teachers better. Recent developments have included a class sing along to Under the Bridge (by the Red Hot Chili Peppers), and working out basic words playing Hangman. One of my students also lent me the piano sheet music for the rousing main theme from Pirates of the Caribbean, which I hope to work into a lesson somehow. Right now I'm thinking a pirate-themed dance off during a school assembly around Halloween.

In other news, I just returned from an adventure-filled trip to Osaka last weekend to see Radiohead, and have a few yarns to spin and pictures to share from that trip when I get the chance to upload them. Until then, here are some teasers from my three-day trip to the gourmet food capital of Japan: samurai gear photo shoot in four-hundred-ten year-old castle; multiple-story indoor/outdoor onsen waterpark complex; twenty-four hour all you can drink hip-hop dance club; eleven-hour hungover bus ride; majestic whale sharks.

my apartment; a visual tour

a day in the sei

so imagine this- in the deep american south, on a steep dirt road winding its lonely way through the forest toward wide expanses of rice fields below, an elderly female farmer comes across a fallen poplar tree hopelessly blocking the progress of her chevy pick-up.

suddenly an enormous giant of a japanese man skids his bike to a halt behind her, leaps off and wordlessly runs to the fallen tree, and begins to struggle mightily with the large shaft slanting diagonally across the road. apparently discerning the physical impossibility of this (its trunk is still securely attached at the base), the giant then attempts to scramble up the muddy imbankment bordering the left side of the road clad only in flip flops, and appears to violently twist his ankle as he falls heavily back down. the farmer utters her first words- "Stop! It's too dangerous!" but the giant either hasn't heard her or is too absorbed in his simple but urgent task to heed her cautionary pleas.

after a brief inspection of the slope he takes a dashing start, leaps up to grab the protruding trunk and frantically hoists himself over the edge, scrabbling clumsily over the top and sending dirt flying behind him. regaining his footing and replacing a flung flip flop, he strides to the base of the mighty poplar, braces his knees over it, and begins to pull. at first nothing happens. then, to both of their surprise, the trunk slowly lifts out of the ground with a deep tearing sound until it is miraculously free.

grinning broadly with this unexpected success, the giant then clambers back down to the road, and together he and the lady maneuver the defeated tree into the woods, safely clearing the forest path once more. the farmer bows courteously to the giant and softly says "Thank You", and he responds with a smile and a cheery grunt that falls somewhere between "No!" and "House!". climbing back in her pick-up, the old farmer proceeds to the base of the wooded slope, across the rice fields, and up the opposite side of the valley toward her home and family to relate the strange and somewhat unsettling incident.

her family is worried they haven't seen the last of this giant, for there are rumors circulating the small village that a similar-sounding giant was recently seen buying a six pack of beer, a miniature folding stool and some goldfish food the day before, while several parents have reprimanded their children for creating exaggerated stories about a strange grotesquely-bearded man who shows up to their school seemingly at random every other week or so to teach them how to order coffee or a coke in Japanese, or reads them dramatic guilt-inducing short stories about the devastating effects of the atom bomb in World War II, or just sits silently and awkwardly with them as they eat lunch. now if you switch japan and japanese with american and english, chevy pick up with miniature white k-truck, and poplar with hollow bamboo tree you have a pretty good idea of what happened in Ueki last thursday afternoon.

nani ga ichiban suki desu ka?

in no particular order, here are some of my favorite things about Japan:

1. onsens. these are giant, traditional japanese baths, which honestly look like the picture at the right (pulled from the web). every onsen has two separate sections for men and women, and you wear about as much as you would for a bath at home. which is why i haven't been able to take a picture of one yet. you pay between 300 and 800 yen ($3 to $8) to get in, and there is usually an indoor facility with rows of washing stations and complimentary soaps and shampoos, along with several pools of varying temperatures. you then leave through a doorway and enter the outdoor area, which is surrounded on all sides by lush foliage, carved out of natural (looking) rock, and has at least one pleasantly gurgling waterfall and one shrine-like wooden-roofed pool for escaping from the rain. the water is not chlorinated or excessively salty, and is quite hot in the largest pools. in the winter i'll be able to watch snowflakes drift down onto the water's surface and turn into little puffs of steam while i stay comfortably submerged in one of the baths, but during these hot humid summer months i've fallen in love with the small pools of cold water. uniquely refreshing and invigorating. each onsen also has a steam room, usually with a funky tv inside. my little town of Ueki has two beautiful onsens within a ten-minute drive, and the nearby town of Yamaga has a great one that's open all night. a bowl of hot japanese ramen (which bears little resemblance to the ten cent Maruchan packets in the US) from a road-side stand followed by an hour long soak in one of these at two in the morning made for a great end to a friday night a few weeks ago. it was in such an onsen, while having the tension gently drawn from my body by the small pool of cold water hewn into living rock, watching the setting sunlight glow through the trees surrounding me as a warm breeze stirred the many-colored leaves, that i truly started to love japan.
2. efficiency. japan has grown to be the second largest economy in the world despite considerable limitations in natural resources and relatively tiny land-mass through endless ingenuity and the efficient use of space and resources. there are simply too many people sharing too little space for things to work differently, and so efficiency is deeply ingrained in the culture itself. while other, better examples abound, one of my favorites in daily life is the typical japanese toilet. almost every toilet i've seen in a japanese home or apartment has the addition of a little sink on top. as with american toilets, after every flush the toilet bowl is filled with clean water, which is first stored in a tank behind the toilet. the tank itself is filled with fresh water directly from the pipes. the difference with japanese toilets is that after flushing, the fresh water runs through a small faucet atop the tank which you can wash your hands in, before it drains directly into the tank, to be sent to the bowl after the next flush. very economical. fancier toilets with bidets and seat warmers exist elsewhere, but i appreciate the little toilet sink in my humble apartment. on a related note, my bare-bones japanese cell phone comes with a 2 mega-pixel camera, full internet browsing, an IR port for sending/receiving contact information when held close to the IR port of another cell phone (extremely convenient and vaguely sexual in practice), a full japanese-english dictionary with the capability to read (with the camera) and translate kanji, hiragana and katakana into english, and a micro-SD card slot which can be used to load mp3s onto the phone and listen via headphone adapter. I can also watch any broadcast TV station in decent resolution on the thing, which is about half an inch thick. japan does exist about 16 hours in the future, after all.
   
3. generosity. the average japanese person is surprisingly kind and generous. if you ever need directions the person you ask will inevitably lead you right to your destination (even if it's fifteen minutes away), and they are happy to help you before you can even ask for it. i went out to a local bar on my first friday in Ueki, and after a few minutes the bartender called up his english-speaking friend to come and help translate. not only was i able to learn about and drink the best types of japanese beer, wine, and alcohol, but this was how i first met "Spooky"-san, my first japanese friend. he chose the nickname for his band name- he plays a mean guitar. during our first meeting i mentioned i needed some things for my apartment, and he immediately offered to take me shopping the next day to find them. he has since lent me his acoustic guitar and helped me find a good piano-keyboard at a second hand shop, enabling us to have some righteous jam sessions. this kind of generosity engenders reciprocity, and i've found myself making efforts in return that would have been rather rare during my 'former' life. i can only hope it rubs off on me and sticks, because it's certainly a good way to do things.
4. nature. Kyushuu is beautiful. there are bamboo-forested hills surrounding ueki, and large expanses of wooded mountains to the east in the Aso region and to the south where another JET and i have hiked in Kosa. the sunset is from this last sunday evening, seen over the fields which run behind my apartment. the picture with the bike was taken with my cell phone, of the same nearby rice field. a scenic bike trail running from Kumamoto to the south and Yamaga to the north passes within five minutes of my apartment. the bridge shown here led to a large grassy valley where the Volcano Aso music festival was held. I went with Spooky, Alex (my friend and fellow Ueki JET, between me and Spooky in the picture below) and Holly, another friend and JET who lives in Kumamoto city. Which brings me to:
5. music. Japan has many shared musical tastes with America, along with several new and well-received additions. i can sing along to pink floyd and the red hot chili peppers when i go to a bar, then get exposed to some popular japanese music. i won't be listening to much J-pop, but i'm starting to get into the dance/trance/electronica that's getting big among the twenty-somethings around here. the Volcano Aso festival featured an all-night line up of talented DJs, one of whom incorporated video game noises from the original Nintendo NES system in brilliant fashion (Chris Lukes, if you're reading this and interested, i'll try to send you some samples). at Volcano Aso we pitched our tents and drifted around the valley, dancing to music, hanging out with Spooky's friends, and catching a two hour nap during one of the more relaxing sets. i think this dance floor sign just about sums up the experience. on october 2nd Alex, Holly and i will take an overnight bus to Osaka to see Radiohead in concert, which may include a tangential trip over to Kyoto. next month the slopes of Aso will host another music festival- Country Gold, led by Kumamoto's world famous country band leader "Good Time Charlie", which i'll need to attend. in the meantime, the owners of the local Ueki bar are all musicians, and i'm hoping to bring my keyboard over and add it to the existing line-up of drums, guitars, bass, and turntables they have set up. along with occasional piano sessions in the junior high music rooms, i can already tell playing and listening to music will be a big part of my experience here, for which i'm very grateful.
   

ohayo gozaimasu

good morning. it's 10:11 on monday, september 22 in ueki, japan. first off, let me apologize for the lack of capitilization or proper punctuation throughout this; these things become slightly more difficult on a japanese computer.

now, i am sitting in the teacher's staff room at a junior high school where i teach english, using a laptop designated specifically for my use (an "FMV" model which appears to be from the late nineties, and is set in english by default, making it invaluable). two hours ago i left my modest apartment in the middle of suburban ueki on the ten-minute bike ride it takes to get here, then taught my first class of the day. these usually consist of me slowly weaving through the network of students desks as the teacher speaks, occasionally correcting grammar and spelling in the students notebooks, and periodically being asked to read sentences and passages from the english textbook with my golden american voice. i say golden because my ability to read aloud in my native tongue is the primary skill that qualifies me for this wonderful job- an assistant language teacher (ALT) through the japanese government-run JET program.

i'd like to keep these entries relatively short and readable, so i'll wrap this first one up with a quick story about this last weekend. i caught a silky smooth train ride up to fukuoka (the largest city on my southern island of kyushuu) along with a group of other JETs in the area, and went out to dinner and a dance club. a very capable DJ coupled with an epic breakdance-off helped the club stay entertaining until about 4 in the morning, after which 8 of us JETs attempted to share a room in a japanese "love hotel". love hotels are special private hotels intended for couples, but their focus on privacy is rumored to make it easy to move a large group of people in to a single room to crash for a night. unfortunately we chose the higher end of the spectrum in terms of both luxury and security, and the extra 6 of us were kicked out on to the cold, cold street. in reality it was quite warm and pleasant- which is why after searching in vain for another option, we settled down in a nearby public park like any friendly hobo. this was my first time sleeping outdoors in a city park, and i remember waking up slowly and peacefully, with the warm september sun on my face and the sound of children's playful laughter surrounding me. literally- there were children surrounding me since i had fallen asleep on a platform by the top of a slide.

after everyone dusted themselves off we made our way to costco, where i bought an annual membership and massive containers of a few essentials- barbecue sauce, beef jerky, nutella, and sharp cheddar cheese among them. beautiful.

soon i'll start uploading pictures to this blog to add some visual aids to these stories. in the meantime, i am having the time of my life here and will try to keep this updated in order to explain why. if you know me well enough to read this far, then i am missing you and would like to hear from you. anderskg@gmail.com is what i use these days, so please throw me a transpacific line.

ja mata,
ken