Big Blog of New Beginnings

Well, I'm officially settled in into Midorigaoka-cho Nishi cho-me 12-22, a small (big for Japan) 3 bedroom house with, luckily, an AC unit. It is between 30C and 40C here most of the summer, with about an 85% humidity or something that feels like it. At night, it is still over 30C, generally, due to the humidity. It rains some, but that only serves to make it more humid, not colder. So, for those of you who are familiar with wet-saunas, I'm living in one. It isn't as bad as I thought it might be, but mostly, that is because I was expecting the very worst. Unfortunately, the temp and humidity, like a sauna, bring the body into a lulled state, where it doesn't want to move. Ever.

Luckily there is a cure! It's that I'm in JAPAN! I may have never walked as far as I did yesterday, and I walked many kilometers again today, it seems. Why? The name of the mountain that I am near, "Midorigaoka" (that means green hill). When you think of a forest, what comes to mind? Sure, there is some green. SOME green. Here, the hill is all green. Layers and layers of greenery. Trees growing through other trees, giant fern-like trees poking through lush bushes, and tons and tons of leaf. None of it seems to be dead either. All the plants are almost entirely green, from trunk to leaf! You can't really distinguish one plant from another by car hardly. I truly did not know the meaning of "Impassible woods" until I saw this. The place is gorgeous. My initial reaction when seeing this by car was: "Uh, oh. I wonder what all my allergies will do around this stuff everywhere." Surprisingly, the answer is "nothing." None of it has effected me. In fact, the sparse trees and grass of Harrington, WA, out in the desert, have many times the effect of the typical 10x plantlife that is almost everywhere that hasn't been turned residential.

The houses are no less pretty. Most have some variations on a classical Japanese roof, and many have interesting brick or plaster formations. Most people have gardens or thick, well developed and trimmed hedges and gardens. I would guess that 1000's of hours or more are spent gardening and trimming by the 10,000 residents in my neighborhood. One person has a house-sized garden, and he is out there all the time. The growth is such as to provide a very private feeling. There is less transparent glass than translucent, to add to this effect. (Shops, however, look about like ours. Commerce is definitely the same model as we have with few differences.) Almost every house is unique, and it IS mostly houses here. There are fewer apartments here than in almost ANY town this size in the entire US! There goes that stereotype about Japanese living in so many apartments and condos! Still, due to land cost and availability, they have made some interesting changes to make things more viable. For instance, if you are wealthy enough to have a yard (about the size of a parking spot in the US, generally) You probably put a balcony over it, so as not to waste housing space. Always a balcony: they don't do struted 2nd floors. However, most houses seem to have a second floor (no basements). Driveways are interesting too. Lets do a little imagery. No, don't close your eyes, it makes reading very difficult. Okay, so picture a driveway. What does it look like? Is it wider than it is long, or longer than it is wide? About how wide is it? Is there anything over it? What's at the end? Here, it is wider than it is long, 9/10 of the time. In fact, most are meant to be basically a sideways parking spot, sticking off of the road, with a little metal and glass cover of pretty colours for shelter. They are squarish, however, so good parking is a plus. One "driveway" I saw was about 7 square feet, in the shape of a triangle on the inside of a curve on a steep slope. Bad place to park? Probably. But having a spot is kinda prestigious. Maybe not so much for that one though. Some people just park on the road, but that is definitely not as prestigious. If you own a nice car, you definitely don't park it right on the road very often, you park it in a driveway. Some people have actual garages. By "actual" I mean bricks in a square shape, with only about 3 feet of coverage for shelter for the back of the vehicle. I saw a Mini today: It was one of the widest cars on the road! I've seen one that was definitely wider: An explorer. Which is huge by their standards. It even looked gigantic to ME sitting next to all the 5' wide cars, driven, of course, by a ditzy looking young girl who could not have afforded that herself. C'est la vie. The same things no matter how far away you go, I guess. Cars are taller than they are wide much of the time here. Squarish, so as to fill parking spots, and to fill the roads. The roads?

The roads are lineless except for major through-ways, and many of them are the same. They have diamond marks on the ground (not diamond "lanes," since there is no lane) That are systematically painted, painted well so they can't be missed, repainted so they never fade the slightest, and then are systematically ignored by pedestrian and driver alike. Whatever they are supposed to do, I have not yet seen it. If it includes using their blinkers, I have seen it, but not until people are already part-way into the next lane, most of the time, if at all. Kind of like Idaho. But with pride in efficiency. And recycling. And people that all walk or bike to anything that isn't a mile away. Even the elderly. In Idaho they get a motorized scooter for shopping IN the store. Here, they walk. And strangely, it works. People go get drunk or go to those suspicious looking places with the small strobe lights out front on foot, go home inebriated on foot. Which is good, because if they were driving one the streets (which are for drivers, bikes, and pedestrians universally in most places) that would be very, very bad. But no one seems to. Those diamond things that seem to be so blatantly ingnored, may be on the right on one block, the left on the next, and the right after that. The blocks themselves are small. A given block might be as wide as the main street of Harrington, or perhaps a little wider. Some are very long, especially those that curve. One block I spotted had perhaps 4 breaks over a kilometer. There were almost as many bakeries as there were intersecting roads on the outer side.

The bakeries? I walk into one, ask the confused-looking woman behind the counter in the native tongue of Nihongoland what her #1 item is and what her favourite is, and the woman points to what looked like a simple bismark with no frosting (she's confused because I'm a caucasian, and she's probably never once had one in her shop). A boring looking donut with slightly flakey crust..."Nani?" (what?) I ask, not knowing what was so special about it. It sounded like she just said it was full of curry. Curry? In cold looking donut? Not an especially moist looking donut? What the heck. I try it. And, in the typical Japanese way, they had stolen somebody's ideas, well, 2 ideas, a dry donut (European), and lukewarm curry (Indian), and put them together. And there was much rejoicing. Wait, "much rejoicing?" As I leave the shop and walk along the street shoving the dry cold curry donut into my mouth, I can't seem to stop chomping away no matter how bad it looks to my eyes or to my brain. It's marvelous. Why is this so good? How can this be? Maybe its not. Was I not supposed to drink the water? Probably. The next thing I know, I am back in the bakery, with a different confused-looking girl behind the desk. When I request one of thing I had just eaten, she stood still. Finally, after having repeated myself and gestured a bunch, the old woman who sold me the first one and her accomplice come around the corner, and start laughing. The young woman behind the counter can now move, but doesn't know what to do. The woman who served me the first gets the donut and puts it into a bad without a word from me. She goes straight for my curry-confection and picks it up and rings me up. No one says anything, besides counting out the change as they get me my second donut-thingy of the night, which of course disappears even quicker.

I had already mentioned the similarity of road behaviour to Idaho, but the resemblance actually doesn't stop there, especially with Couer d'Alene. The population of the greater Miki area is about the same as the greater CdA area. It is a primarily conservative people, with a small college of a couple thousand or so that are generally, as most colleges students are in these small towns, more liberal in nature than the base population. There are also the newer conservative folk in the area. Its a great place to retire for the wear-boned and aged. So many from the cities to the south move in and to a large degree control a bit more of where the money goes and what happens when it is done. Sound like Californians? Probably feels like it to the natives too. Also like Idaho...

Dogs. Lots of dogs. Most people seem to have a dog, if not 2. No backyards? They walk along the streets and small parks and the owners clean up the poo after them. One dogs' howling while tied up so his master can go in a store earns him a treat which to me shows that the dog knows he gets treats when he whines on a walk. Well, the master got him to shut up...but the problem is is that he has a dog that obviously knows he gets food to shut up for a minute or two. Not so different. The dogs, as can be expected, are smaller since they don't have free-run of a big area. I've seen hundreds being walked in 2 days, but the biggest was the wining platinum blonde lab that got the treats to be quiet. Almost no one has the little yippy-brainless dogs. Except my next-door neighbor, of course. Did I mention houses have little soundproofing in much of Japan? Well, the owners don't seem to realize that if they never let it out of the tiny cell they have it in in their big-enough backyard that it will whine to be let out since it can hardly stand. Apparently somebody bought a kid a dog, regretted it, and doesn't know what to do except to plead to get out. The dog is probably getting punished by being made to stay in its cell, ironically, because it makes nois so often IN the cell. But what can you do.

I met my overlord teachers today. I was expecting Gerald to look and act older, and for Mr. Aliponga to be some stiff old guy. Gerald is a smart-aleck who doesn't sit, he lounges; Mr. Aliponga is my advisor, and has the same "I'm-a-pain-in-the-rear-but-you're-going-to-like-me-because-I-mean-well" behaviour that characterizes many educated Philipinos that I've met. And the sad thing is, no matter how much of a pain they act like: You're going to like them. And I do. Johnathan is great. They told me something interesting today. Paraphrased: "Most of the teachers are going on vacation from next week until the 3rd week of September. Except for you. You'll do some odds and ends and teach for 2 days." So...I'm on vacation starting this Sunday. For about a month, mostly. So if anyone cares to visit, my plane was only 1/3 full, if that, and prices have dropped greatly on weekends from what it sounds like. Remember the heat though. Don't bring coats. Waste of room. Air Canada is a good airline, they'll treat you well, and they get here faster that any airline I've heard of. I get to meet my roommate...next week. So I'll let you all know as soon as I can if I can have company with his permission, haha. My computer is fully operational, if you haven't guessed it, so if any of you want to email me, chat online, or anything else, go right ahead. I can't get a phone until I get my "Gaigin Card" Which is basically like a formal "ghetto card" for many odd priviledges like banks and phones. No lie. Pretty weird. So I'll be trying not to have my gaigin card pulled here, and you take it easy there. You may also find this blog at myspace.com.

Take care,

~A~