Heat Seaking Kitties, Bonburi, Taikyoken Mini-Masters, Flying Mutant Ants, or Roomates Really Do Exist?

"I don't think anything too exciting is going to happen today," or so I had thought this morning. HA! Yeah, I was wrong on that one. We set the plans into motion for the role-plays that will be the centerpiece of tomorrow's performances to mark the end of Summer Camp here in Midorigaoka ("green hill," which is, humorously enough localed next to Aoyama, meaning "blue mountain," both of which sound very beautiful when spoken yet are among the simplest of names you'd find anywhere on the planet away from Trees, a town in the deep south, USA.) One role-play that I was supervising today was especially funny. They were doing a play from the book Aladdin. They needed a ring to give Aladdin for the skit, but they couldn't locate one to use as a prop. I told the guy in the group to take off his watch, which he gave to Aladdin (played by a very tiny-handed junior-higher) and Aladdin put this "ring" which could fit without opening up onto her upper arm, probably, was just funny enough to make the skit a comedy by itself. They threw in some lugging motions on the person who was carrying the ring, and that made it all the better! The results will come in tomorrow, and hopefully they perform it well on stage. Stage-coaching, one of my many jobs here apparently, is pretty fun when you have no budget. Like HS but without the drama of fellow actors being as personal when someone stinks or screws up.

I also got to do a PR lesson on our open-campus-time. Gerald headed it, and was hilarious, maniacal really, but did a good job connecting with the many students there and making the University look pretty fun. Which it is. Apparently one of the attractions, as I recently found out, is that our boys Baseball team is very cute. Gerald apparently knew a student that told him this, not all that long ago, and that she had come to this school with the full intent of sleeping with every single one of them! Apparently she managed to "bat a-thousand!" So all I know about our popular boy's baseball team right now is that they are loud at the lunch table, they are our main sport by popular approval, and that the team members are cute and man-slutty. Gerald always has the most interesting information.


Then I went to go home, knowing that their might be some kind of a festival tonight from Maybelle, who I knew from the tourist trip, and who had presented on a Phillipino game involving a can and slipper-throwing (it is not something I would like to try to explain in a small number of words. It was clear that it had one of the COLLEGE students at the camp totally stumped after explanations in 2 languages by about 3 people in clear wording). So I head towards where the festival was supposed to be. I am immediately intercepted by the new woman in my life, Odd-Eye, as I've come to think of her, who had somehow managed to track me down and decide it was time for some cuddling. So I obliged, having a bit of time on my hands before the Bonburi (I think that is about how it would be spelled). I probably petted her and managed to take pictures over about 20 minutes! She was not ready to give up either, not even with putting up with the camera that she was *slightly* more tolerant of this time. I figured out I had to put something like a petting hand or my face directly behind it to make her move towards it. So I took about 5 decent pictures of her. She's not a very healthy cat, I'm not sure what she eats, but she is collared, a bit poorly-cleaned (or she rolls in the dirt alot) and kinda ratty for a cat all-in-all. But come on! A cat that finds you on the street to cuddle you on your way home?? How cool is that! And she's c~u~d~d~l~y! So yep, sorry Brandy, but you've got to share a little bit more of the spotlight again! Finally, when it becomes clear she isn't letting me go away and stop petting her, I try and lead her stumbling along a pet along a low wall (seen left) as she enjoys the pet, while I turn to quickly head the other way. I checked to make sure she wasn't following me, and I never saw her again tonight after that, so she probably just got a little confused and stayed, not knowing where I went (I hope, this time anyways, she IS someone else's cat!)



I get to the Bonbori (dance festival, basically) to see that there are giant concentric and overlapping rough-circles of people dancing around a big Taiko drum playing to the beat of a poor speaker-system with traditional music running. There are around 2000 people in the space the size of about 2 Harrington blocks. Most are not dancing. There are also carnival games "BINGO" (the quotes are because it is more like a lottery where the first person to bring up a single number called out wins the prize, with descending prizes, the best one being a huge beetle (don't ask me, I have no idea what is so great about owning a beetle, no matter how large.)) There are other carnival events as well: simple games with cheap wood and plastic implements used for so many years, just like Fall Fest in Harrington, really. Except these ones are immensely popular. Fireworks begin...and go for a while! I got a few good pictures, the best of which is below. Remember now, I have a free, outdated, cheap by perhaps the cheapest phone-maker in Japan...and of course that means my resolution at night is probably better than most of the best in America. So lucky me. Unlucky is that I can't take the phone with me when it expires. There is some law about it I don't understand yet. Just the same, The dancing begins as the fireworks end! Everyone is dancing in step, perhaps hundreds, and Maybelle, in a kimono from her friend Yumi, and Yumi herself head out to join them, (Maybelle being Phillippina doesn't really know what she is doing, but she is a good sport about it.) I am left with her friend, a perhaps 40 year old teacher of English at a local community center, who is giving me all kinds of wonderful advice about things in the city and the local area. Then she informed me that the walk to the south that I went on for stargazing a few nights back was further than I thought: I was on the edge of Kobe! Maps.google.com might be able to give you an idea about the distance that that is. I think my fast-walk is faster than I thought. Kyoko is her name. She has excellent English skills, and has been a big assistance to Maybelle. She's very helpful about almost any thing that I might need here. Then I am approached by a man and his wife, and their very little one, asking if I am American, where I am from, etc. At first, I was worried at a very cultural event like this one that I might be insulting by being out of place or something, but it wasn't the case here. They were literally just curious about me. They mostly spoke clear Japanese that I could understand but not answer well, but he of course was not expecting much Japanese out of me anyways, so Kyoko translated to some degree, and, his wife even did some translating.

Then Maybelle came and managed to convince me to join the giant circle-dance. How? I have no idea. But Phillipinos are very convincing folk from what I have seen. The next thing I know I am doing this mass-correography, and thinking about how this move here is like Cross-hands, and this move here is representative of nourishment and simultaneously of a punching sequence, and how this move over here is like that of a late 1970's African-American jazz singer's dance. One old woman, about 4'3" came up to me after one of the dances, smiled at me, said some very glad-sounding blessing-like words, and then bowed ever-so-slightly and walked off as soon as I uttered to most polite and thankful thing I could think to say, especially since I was quite thankful! We did a total of 3 dances together, the 3 of us, Yumi, Maybelle and myself, and of course Yumi and at least a few dozen others I would guess got me on tape doing this dance in near-synchronization with the people I was using as cues: Those with precise wrist and foot placement. Like with sword fighters the best practicioners can be picked out by their foot-placement and wrist-position. The dance is symbolic on a number of levels that I am missing still, I think, but it is definitely representative of the flow of life in Japan. The cooperation, the moving to the music, the crowded yet generally happy, busy life, and the communal representation of flow and of sticking together with your immediate group that overlaps with so many others directly or indirectly. "The dance" could be thought of as living in Japan. If one person was to stop, it could be awful, since the dance is an almost constant movement forward with some side and backwards steps. Twice I almost stepped on a little kid that was a bit out-of-step! The parents do not seem to want to prevent children from participating in this cultural event, and I imagine that other than danger of someone being out-of time (even if it might be only to one's own danger) must be worth the risk. Japan is almost more Western than it is Eastern, in not all but many ways. These events, for some, especially the profoundly elderly, seem to be very important. Most that can walk even hunched, dance at some point, and sadly some of the best dancers (through experience and dedication) are over 70, despite lack of limberness.

When I returned from the dancing, I was again met by the couple that were so interested in me before. I compared notes on some of the martial and dance aspects of these dance styles with others, and as I often do, made hand motions to express some of them. The man of the inquiring couple was instantly asking questions to Kyoko-sensei. "Whoops" I thought. Now he's going to go through every Japanese martial art or other custom I might go though. Luckily, I think Kyoko saw this coming, and mentioned that I studied Taikyoken (T'ai Chi Ch'uan, which she knew because I had asked her as a local resource earlier if there were classes around the area, to which she replied that there was one female of many years practice at her own community center but not likely any others) and the initial reaction of the guy was, which I understood but hardly believed my ears: (translated) "Oh, Taikyoken? Yeah, our local master of it is here dancing; would her want to meet her?" Kyoko went to translate the sentence, but I cut her off waving my hand, stunned slightly, knowing it was a bit rude, telling her I understood but wasn't sure if I believed my ears. He took Kyoko and I over to meet the Sifu, who turned about to be a roughly 65 lb. 3'2" very elderly woman, frail looking, yet with a perfect back.

At this point I knew she was dangerous. Most really frail old folk that have been doing this forever are better martial artists than anyone young could hope to be, especially in Taikyoken. She is not only ancient, but carries herself with tremendous confidence. She informed me that classes are Wednesday afternoons, in a very old dialect from who-knows-where/when. Kyoko had to translate almost every word, with a tiny bit of difficulty. I tried to be as respectful as possible, but I still worried I would find some way to accidentally insult such a person, funny, considering I'm nearly twice her height: But that's twice as far for my head to fall when I am knocked down too.

At this juncture, she says that she wishes to move on in one way or another, and leaves us to attend to Maybelle, who has suddenly returned with Yumi and is batting at her kimono somewhat violently. Turns out she got a bug in there that stung/bit her at least 5 times. They fight with it, and the bug seems to be gone. But Maybelle is in pain, from her top-left-side rib under her armpit to her spine. It's a stinging pain. My companions can't likely strip her right then and there, so we are force to walk to a friends house, 4 blocks from my place, surprisingly. The woman there is a gracious host, and gets us ice cream after she manages to get Maybelle fixed up with the help of Kyoko and Yumi, followed by a little tray of wonderful, pretzel-like confections that are more like flaky, bakery-goodness. She talks with me to some length, interested about where I come from, what I am doing in the area, etc. After a while, she begins talking more with Kyoko, her obvious friend for some time, and our connection to the woman, and I hear a familiar-sounding word. "Katoriku" Catholic. But she sounds sad. I wasn't sure what to think. I asked Kyoko, who'd been successful for translating before "what about Catholics?" as innocently as I could, hoping it isn't something that I would have any reason to get defensive over, and to my surprise, it was the woman's husband. He died a few years back. Here this grandmother is taking care of her own mother, single, probably not a big wage-earner, and she has us in to help an almost-complete stranger to fix her up and treat her stinging bites, and treats us to a full dessert! I didn't have to put any effort into the little bit of tears that came, and I thanked her once again for her hospitality. She ushered us out shortly thereafter, and the prognosis, by the way, of Maybelle's stings: "A new, flying breed of ant that stings at people exists in Japan now." Japanese people have been growing with them, so they are not effected expect perhaps for a split second. Maybelle, however, was a very foreign body to these things, and when it got caught in her kimono, it panicked about as much as she did, except her swatting at it in her clothes only got her extra stings. We don't know that that was it for sure, but bees were not around where we were, and no other flying insect besides a mosquito in the area could create an itching sensation: and even those don't make you sting painfully.

I go home, once again expecting no oddities. Did I leave that light on? No. The roommate has returned! He's about 5'11," tall, sports-playing Korean guy. Seems pretty nice, has better English than Ms. Kawada told me. Oh, and my broken washing machine was replaced with a brand new one, free-of charge while I was gone at work! Oh, and my roommate's favorite hobby? RPG's on Playstation 2. And he has Final Fantasy XII which he told me I could play any time, even when he is gone! And now it is tremendously late and I am exhausted. Shawaa O abiru shimasu.

~A~

Somehow having something more to post about!

First, an announcement. The address at the bottom of my first blog WAS correctly translated, so it is valid. However, there is an adjustment to be made, which I did on the post itself. (The difference, specifically, is moving "Miki, Hyogo" from right before "JAPAN" to "Hyogo, Miki" right before everything else. Apparently this makes more sense to many, although both are recognizable formats, the updated one is preferred.


This first image is that of my room (broken airconditioner included!) You can see the steel shutters behind the windows. Although it is night, you wouldn't really know either way when these things are shut. These protect the glass from exploding all over the place in storms or Ichiro impersonations gone wrong. The room is not tall, the table is very short. I'm sitting at it right now typing. Sitting on the floor. It is less than knee-high by a long shot. I've only hit my head once on the doorway so far. That's another thing: almost all interior rooms in most homes are elevated from the rest, or separated by a doorway with a solid frame all the way around. So stepping between rooms is necessary. No dragging your feet: you'll trip. Some of the classrooms at the school are actually 1/2 meter above the hallway, so you are quite high-up when you are in class. It can be an unnatural feeling.


Speaking of unnatural things, the last thing I thought I would see many oddities in when I came here was eyes! One of my fellow teachers (australian) has eyes that are not amber, but instead a much more ORANGE colour than you could attribute to Amber. Her father's (also a teacher there) has plain brown eyes, so I don't think it is from him. The "odd-eye cat" below, not that you can tell all that well, was shot in full daylight. I am calling it an odd-eye not because it has different colours of eyes, but because one seems to be permanently dialated. It ran out into the street to cuddle me on sight. I guess she knew I was a cat person? In full dailight, the eye was immediately obvious. She knew what a phone or a camera was though, because if I brought it anywhere near her face she would turn away. I had to sneak it in front of her face at a weird angle, flat against the cement, upside-down while petting her after about 20 tries doing other things. Two little girls saw me petting it, and like all cute-as a button girls that can probably get away with anything, but don't look like they'd try, wanted to join in on the cuddling the kitty. They were fascinated by my English talking-to-cat sounds. They'd likely never seen more than 10 non-Japanese people in their 8 years of combined life. So, I let them take over and took one picture of them and the cat. Of course, like all little girls that seem so cute, like my own sister was, they are really troublemakers when they think no one in charge is looking. They went for the cat's feet, going for some tickling of the toe-hairs. After I said "Bye bye" (I heard them say it to their friend down the street, so I knew they'd understand), they thought mayble playtime was over, and the cat seemed slightly content about not having to twitch much more. They proceded by following me and trying to be quiet, failing, of course, in giggling fits whenever I'd turn around and see them. They weren't very good at hiding of course, but they knew that and still thought it was fun to follow me. I was a little worried they'd follow me and get lost, but they abruptly turned off into their own houses across the street from eachother after a couple hundred kilometers.


I went to go see the sales (grocery stores make different sales on everything every day, encouraging you to shop every day, which you do. Great marketing, much better from what I can see than the US). And got a very nice Lemony drink by a company called "Kirin." They seem to be the dominant drink company of taste-choice for most of the area. Most other drinks that are of the same kind are not sold at the same stores even. Most people probably would not buy them next to a Kirin. Unlike Coke or Pepsi or Starbucks, or any American beverage company, they do not divide the company into groups for different things. Kirin makes coffee drinks, sweet drinks, healthy drinks, traditional drinks, soft drinks...anything they make is "Kirin." Funny enough, I have not seen one Pepsi or Coke of any kind since I've been here, besides one flavor of Fanta that, of course, doesn't have an equivalent by Kirin or any other company. However, Combini (Conveni(ence stores)) carry one small bottled water drink. The one with the red stripe along the blue, Cascade somethingorother. Otherwise most of the stuff here is made here. I was surprised by this, especially since it is a small, crowed island with little land. Almost everything eaten here is MADE here. Ingredients must be from many places, but food is assembled here for people here.

I beat the Badminton Goddess!
At work (before all that) had to take some of the students and set up badminton courts, so that they could have a n0n-English activity that would hopefully wipe them out a bit so they'll get some sleep for tomorrow's class. The young woman in charge was Yui, another person who was a helper for our Summer Camp. She is about my height, maybe taller, and has long arms. She's fairly lean muscle, and stronger than she looks. She helped roll out the poles for the nets, handling each one about as easy as I could. Then I found out why she was in charge: She's the local Badminton (badomiton) Goddess. She basically told me "I'm good at Badomiton." She is not one to brag, even for the Japanese, and most Olympic medalist in this sport from Japan would never, ever say something like: "I'm excellent at Badomiton." She was, of course, like almost all Japanese people would, underestimating herself hugely. She's incredible. Eventually I ended up in a game against her, in teams. She almost never had to move her feet. We were starting to fall a little behind, and then I remembered my where my true sporting abilities lie: Unpredictablity, confusion, lack of proper form, and unusual slap-stick humor. These started to go into every swing. I would look as if I was comitting to one shot, making it SEEM as if I was rigid and dedicated to a shot, then switch it to a very different shot. I'd look hard when I was going to hit soft, and I would make it look like I hadn't seen or wasn't going to be able to get to the birdie until I knew it was the last second, and then I'd move in and bat it with a quick motion at full extension. I did baseball, samurai, golf, mario, behind the back, serving while walking away, and everything I could think of. I even did a Dragon Form T'ai Chi Ch'uan reverse-held blade move mixed with some other forms I know for a while which looked so terribly ineffective and off guard that they never knew I going for the birdie, especially since I wasn't looking at it, I was using a broad T'ai Chi Ch'uan vision to see where it was without looking at it. I was using less energy because I was using a combination of relaxation techniques that were appearing tense or dedicated to hard movement, but were in fact not dedicated to anything in particular. This put the opponents on their toes constantly when reacting to my movement. Eventually, Yui gave up and sat down exhausted, a few points behind. It was then that I realized that I had went from being not-good at badmiton as I was 8 years ago when I had likely last played it, to being actually GOOD. Of course, 3/4 of my victories were because of the element of surprise, and I wouldn't say I was great by any means. I think Yui's nerves were just plain fried from reading and constantly reacting to my false signals, and kinda I felt bad for being so spontaneous to some degree, but I had also had her laughing to where she couldn't effectively play anymore on at least 5 occasions, (about a 1/3 of the amount of the rest of her team members that were cycling in and out). She and everyone else were part of a strickly adhered-to form-focused badmiton physical education style that was their greatest weakness. I hardly ever held the racket like it was "supposed to be" and I never moved the way they were taught, swung like they were taught, or anything else. If there was anything that I KNEW to be the most effective single way to do something at any one point, I avoided it like the plague. I picked anywhere between 10th best and things that may not have been attempted for any reason nor have almost any effectiveness. Yet they are unexpected, so they suddenly become VERY effective as long as it gets over the net. Yui's reflexes are like lightning, so I had to make sure that she had no idea where it was going or even that it was going to be hit until it would be too late for her to cross the court, or until I made her think that I was going for the opposite corner that I was. I ended up making 2 others sit out from general exhaustion of lungs from laughter and the heat I was trying my best to ignore. It was quite possibly the most successful sporting competition that I have ever participated in considering the odds. Especially since I was a primary source of bizarre entertainment for those who were watching our game from the sidelines (everyone not playing or taking a break seemed to be watching our game versus any of the other 5 games).

This morning was also a humourous experience! I was walking along where I saw my first gaigin (foreigner) yesterday, and I saw her again. I had to wait at the long light anyways, and so, before it turned, I turned to her and said, "Don't see many gaigin around here, do ya?" She jumped, severely, panting from the shock. She shook her head out and, still gasping, said, "no, no you don't! You're right, I didn't expect you! We both were walking in the same direction for a few blocks, and it turns out she's been here a little over a year, and is an Alabaman ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). She was surprised to learn that I was a visiting teacher in training, probably for the same reason everyone does: I don't seem very serious and I look far too young. Just the same, when I had to go North and she Southwest at an intersection, she gave me her email and basically said that she and a few rouge gaigin get together where they are an assortment of minorities rather than individual minorities and chat in English. It sounds pretty good. When I'm helping out with the summer stuff and there isn't *quite* as much to do, I will probably go see once what it is like. I'm sure I'll meet all kinds of interesting people there from abroad.

~A~

Phone/email

Hello everyone,

This post has 2 purposes:
1. New contact information in the form of phone/email.
2. Observations on reactions from Japanese in my attempts at Japanese language "Nihongo" (Nihon=Japan, go=language)

1. The number here in Japan is 080-5342-4979 or, if you don't like the way it looks, 0(805)342-4979 if that helps somewhat in remembering. Unfortunately, even with what I think of as an expensive phoneplan is one of their cheapest, so, unfortunately...I only have 62 minutes per month. International is 99 Yen per minute as well as taking those minutes. So, calling you all will not be a good option. Emailing me at that number, however, will work just fine for getting a hold of me much faster. Just remember: I am at work from about 8:30am until 6:20pm daily, so I might not respond right away. that means, for you in the Pacific, Mountain and Central timezones, that I work from somewhere between 10:30pm-8:20am Central time zone, and 12:30 pm-10:20 am Pacific time zone. So any calls during those hours will likely be met with delay. I will be obtaining, through one strategy or another, many pictures and sending them via email or blog to many or all of you depending on nature and convenience.

2. I have asked (In Japanese) many people for varification on my many guesses for directions in my dozens of miles of foot travel since I have arrived. It has been met with surprise, shock, crankiness, joy, amusement, and a host of other reactions, many of them emotionally charged. Today, I saw my first caucasian female since arriving, so, as you can imagine, Everyone I talk to outside of work is Japanese, full-blooded, and have not likely left the continent or even Japan in most cases. So I am a real rarity, so when I am spotted, and especially when I talk to people, I get about as strong as a reaction as one might get from, say, seeing some Gangsta rolling into Harrington blasting rap and bouncing down the road, looking for some honies, asking for directions. I am, to some degree, representative of a threat of westernization that has been slowly consuming their culture. It brings many good things, but, it also makes them realize how much they are losing their own culture, and how much closer they are to being like a country ruled by people like Bush. So not so good, generally. Today, I asked for directions in stuttering yet grammatical Japanese to a man that was hauling cut weeds out of his small patch of yard. He eagerly replied with a wide smile and excited arm gestures how to get to the Midorigaoka train station. He smiled at me and waved as I hurried off. It was a bit of a shock to me myself. He was thrilled to see me speak Japanese, however poorly it might have been. Earlier when I was getting directions to the same place from about 2 km away, it was a different reaction. The man I talked to didn't look all that happy that I was there in his neighborhood when I asked him how to get to the station. Still, he did not hesitate to give me clear, accurate directions to the station using what English he knew. I think that perhaps, like many people that I speak Japanese to, he was using it as an opportunity to practice speaking English, but he was not happy to see my foreign face in his neck of the woods. I didn't think about that possibility until it happened for some reason. It never directly crossed my mind that a person would be happy to talk to me but not to see me!

One last unfortunately long blurb.
I had a humorous experience with French, Fulansugo, if you will. I have seen two businesses with French signs, one was "Le Crabe' " and the other was "Ne c'est pas" Le Crabe' was obviously a bakery of some kind. I still have no idea what in the world "Ne c'est pas" (meaning "isn't") is, or rather isn't. What they do, I can't tell from the outside, and they seem to be a private business of some kind, so I don't want to go strolling in. With Le Crabe' however, I did go in to see what they had. I asked the woman at the counter, "Parlez vous Francais?" she replied with a tilted head. I asked her supervisor who appeared to be the owner or head cook or manager (and hopefully would speak French) the same thing. They both looked at eachother and then and me and said "Sorry" nearly simultaneously. Note that that was English. I'm not even sure if they knew what French sounds like. Oh well. That happens here. If you don't surf, as is the case with one of my students that defends that she DOES NOT like surfing, you may still wear a shirt that says "surfing goddess" because that sounds cool, even if you don't actually like surfing. The same goes for anyone else. They will wear what looks cool regardless of what they do. So, we might call the majority of youngsters in Japan "posers" if we didn't realize that there is no pose that they are modeling any behaviour off of others along with the clothes. It is just a duplication method. Clothes and behaviour are two very different subjects in most cases, unless you are talking about formality, in which case it is by this vague sense of "level" compared to your superiors and inferiors, not what style as much.

"Rainy Season"

I was told that it was rainy season a few days ago. Since there were no rain clouds since I had gotten here hardly, and only a little rain in Kobe, I didn't think much of it.

I had a new dish today: Meat and Potatoes. Except the meat is in the potatoes...in little fried things. So meat and potatoes fast food! I went outside to eat it since I heard a few droplets of rain hitting the ground, and a tiny rumble of thunder off in the distance. I at it all in about 2 minutes. By the time I was done, I was soaked to the bone, and thunder deafened the sound of cars everywhere. The rain had picked up exponentially. I walked up the street to a bookstore, and they were closing all the safety door. Now I figured out why all my windows have steel shutters on the outside of them.

Because they need to.

I start to wander home from there, my shoes, socks, hair, dryfit shirt (ironic, i was fully saturated like everything else on my person). The rain starts to get in my eyes in a way that I can't blink out, and my glasses are covered. The rain gutters along the edge of the streets shuttle water at about 4 times my fast-walk speed, maybe more. By the time I get to the end of the first block, the gutters go from being 1/10 full to OVERFLOWING. I still can't really see. I make a turn, and another, through an intersection, crowned, that I have to slosh through water, despite the elevation compared to the surrounding area. I walk for a while, make another turh, and it is then that I realize that I am actually not on the right street, nor one I have been on before. Blind. Wet does not describe the rest accurately. Rain pelts everything continuously. I finally go through a spiral of roads until I get to the connection to my place. I go in hang up or lay out everything...and the sound of rain stops entirely. Now the sky is blue for the first time I've seen, only 15 minutes later.

All in all, I give Japan's drainage system a B+ Adam only gets a B- because he couldn't see better than enough to stay out of trouble.

At least it is not hot for a moment! I can't say much for that foundation being laid for a new house down the road: much of it washed away in the time is takes to eat a quick meal!

School Tour

I thought I wouldn't have much to say after yesterday's huge post. But there is more! I went on a huge tour, all day long today. I went to Kobe Steel's giant factory for steel making. It is huge. For Japan, it is enormous. I saw a block of steel the size of a car get pummeled into a 100m sheet. I saw more ore than I would ever care to again. And I saw that SOMEHOW they pulled of thousands of tons of steel made in a day with almost no smell, no visible pollution, and with lush trees between the forklift big enough to car a semi in its jaws and the wire plant. So that was awestriking. This was the legendary "Japanese steel" that I've heard people complaining about breaking American-made steel tools over. I don't know if you could find enough Americans that would get along well enough to cooperate in such a large-scale operation to perfection.

Then we went to Himeji Castle. It is the 7-floor giant in Japan, near Kobe. The thing has a 1000m wall around it with small doors for arrows. The walls are basically unclimbable, and tall. The place is not only beautiful, but also a workout. Maybe 1000 steps to see everything in the place! It was widely fought over, and, dispite US bombing raids in WWII (some probably aimed at the castle) almost everything around it was destroyed...except the castle. (Of course!) It's gorgeous, trust me. Lots of good exhibits inside too, it's half-way a museum. We ate at a nice traditional Japanese restaurant, and that was great except the knee pain (you kneel generally during the meal).

Then we went across Kobeyashi Bridge (longest suspension bridge in the WORLD, all white, big enough for a jumbo jet to fly under comfortably, or a huge cruise ship) 300m tall supports (300 ABOVE the road, let alone the water, I don't know how far that is) And you can see it from space in the day if you know where to look and you aren't too far from Earth. For a reasonable view, use maps.google.com, zoom out, double click on Japan, type "Kobe" and look just the coast to the southwest of where it takes you. It is so tall that the satelite images don't line up the top properly because of a slight difference in angle where the smaller bits of the map meet. 4 kilometers! Then we went to a hot spring where (luckily) I didn't have to go in after the baking and boiling all day. It would have been nice in winter, maybe, but not then. So I hung out with two other foreigners, Maybelle (a philipino girl) Tiang (a vietnamese girl who I will be tutoring in English) both of whom are fellow students at KUIS (or as I am seeing it now occasionally: "KUINS" (spoken: Queens). Maybelle is Catholic and basically a native English speaker, so she probably has more in common with me than anyone other than Gerald Williams, my boss. Tiang (spoken: "Chang") Is a frail-looking, brownish-red eyed quiet girl who is a natural at Japanese but feels insecure about her English. She is very empathetic and it seems most people around her empathize with her very easily and automatically. Me included. Yes, Her eyes are redish. Actually red in the sunlight. Very odd. She doesn't look demonic or anything though, probably because she's about the size of Nicole minus any muscle and with a very slight bone structre. Despite everyone doing stuff for her she is definitely not manipulative and will generally never ask for help with anything even if she needs it. Later Maybelle and I had to help her find her apartment since she couldn't find it! She would have wandered in the dark for quite some time before she found it too, probably. So some interesting characters on this trip! Another character that I will be working with is Kawamura-sensei, a teacher at KUINS who has been to most of the world's countries, many of them over a dozen times, almost all by airplane. He's very intelligent, a great speaker, and apparently not afraid to change in front of students, dispite being 66 years old. He's charismatic enough to make up for the fact that he got most of the way undressed 4 times over the course of the trip that everyone still likes him. The man knows his limits, that is for sure! There were fireworks on display tonight, but we got home too late. Oh well. I think some of the girls wanted to drag me off to see fireworks since they couldn't find any other guys and that would have been awkward for everyone. I've seen fireworks before anyways. Saturday there will be another display, apparently. I guess you don't need to celebrate a holiday ON the holiday. Makes sense. We do it with birthdays in the US sometimes.

I think I got indigestion from that little bit of sushi though. Or maybe the french fries that were the first bad food I've had since I've gotten here!

My new address, apparently, is: Adam Frank, Hyogo, Miki, Midorigaoka-cho Nishi 2 Cho-me 12-22, JAPAN. It's more...official now.

~A~

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~