…we wonder if the foreigners could say a few words.

1. Huh?

2. So I was at the 62nd Anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima for most of today, starting with the Memorial Ceremony this morning. We walked about all day, and we wanted to go and hear the survivors speak about their experiences, with the promise of English TranslationTM. So we went to the place that we thought was it, and we found the promised English TranslatorTM, and after a bunch of people gave their short speeches, it seemed like we were in the wrong place. Then, the bombshell:

“…we wonder if the foreigners could say a few words.”

3. Again, huh?

4. It turned out that we were in fact at a meeting of a Japanese Anti-Nuclear group’s public meeting to ratify a draft “Statement of Action”, and the previous speeches were of members who were talking about why they joined the movement. After a bit of buck-passing, I decided to grab the microphone, being no stranger to impromptu speeches (I prefer to go impromptu where possible; guess I am more than a bit lazy after all), and said a few words.

5. So I guess that’s how I accidentally spoke at a Japanese Political Rally. Not something you do everyday.

June

1. Summer, in all it’s humid glory, is here. It’s actually not quite as hot as I remembered it last year, but it’s plenty hot enough for everyone. Though I do really love summer, the humidity makes it feel like a sauna but I prefer it to the dry furnace heat of the Australian summer — and I’m less likely to get sunburnt just sticking my head out the window. The Ozone Layer is really great like that.

2. (It’s so humid that at night, it fogs. At 24 Celcius.)

3. Summer never travels alone, so trailing its tshirt-tails are the festivals and festivities that happen around summer. Beginning of this month was Tokasan, which celebrates the coming of summer, where everyone dresses up in their best Yukatas and enjoy the street stalls and street food and street drinking. And dancing, as my friend Dan found, who looked his, err, best, in his man-Yukata dancing with the old ladies. He lives in a country town after all.

4. The beginning of the month also saw the leaving of two close work mates, and the arrival of a new one. It’s always sad to see people go, and it can be difficult to deal with friendships as a transient experience. But thanks to the magic of Facebook and email, they’re never that far away. Later this month my best friend here will leave for home, and tears may well be shed. *sob*

5. But it wasn’t all bad news. Fireworks are legal here, and people here love nothing more than to go down to the river and run around with sparklers and shoot off some explosives. So last weekend we did as the locals did, and went to the park to play with explosives. While drinking a lot. And I mean a lot. We also climbed trees, and you can see the photos here.

The Merry Month of May

1. ‘Tis be a merry month, for today is my birthday! Happy birthday to me! Yesterday a big group of us celebrated with a big big picnic by the river in the Peace Park, enjoying the spring sunshine and the river views and the many many cans of beer we all consumed. Strangely, I have almost no photos of the occasion, as neither photos nor words could describe just how much fun I had.

2. Last weekend was the Golden Week holidays, and a friend and I went up to Tokyo for a few days during the holidays. I took a lot of photos for that, and I’m sorting them out now. We also started a series of photos featuring my friend, Derek, who has an almost abnormal fondness for jumping in photos. Check it out here.

3. I also got myself a new mobile — a Nokia N73. It’s essentially an upgrade of my old phone here, the aging Nokia 6680. It’s a good phone, but damn the N73 is awesome! Even with Softbank’s (and other Japanese carriers) insistence on locking their phones down stupid levels (my phone doesn’t support playing mp3 files, can’t install many programs available on the internet even when it works with regular the N73) and removing functionality (my phone ships with Adobe Reader and Lifeblog, neither of which is on my phone), it still does so much — I use it like an iPod Shuffle, got about 1 Gig’s worth of music on it, as well watching movies and tv shows (converted to the same format as for the iPod) and for showing my photos. The screen is brilliant, the web browser is super sweet, and the camera does an ok job of taking pics. The camera, though, is really, really slow, even compared to the cheapest point-n-shoot digital. Even so, it’s a great phone.

4. New phone and holiday aside, I’ve also reined in the spending, and have started saving in earnest. My travel plans are changing by the day, which makes it difficult to know how much I need to save — so I’m just going to save as much as possible and see where we go from there.

5. That’s that for now, I’m going back to playing with all my presents!

ohanami

hanami_20070409_39.jpg

1. One of the most beautiful times of year in Japan are the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which signals the beginning of spring. Cherry blossom viewing parties, or “ohanami”, are held all across the country, and it’s basically a picnic underneath the cherry blossom trees where you hang out with co-workers and friends and family and get utterly sloshed. It’s brilliant!

2. Check out some of my other shots in my portfolio here.

March

1. It’s March 26th, one day away from the one year anniversary of my arrival in Japan. I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last couple of weeks, thinking about all the things I’ve had to learn and adapt to. And all the things that I do now that I never thought I could do as well. I never thought I would like teaching, but I’m enjoying teaching immensely. I never thought I was any good with languages (well, I’m not, but that’s through lack of study rather than lack of talent), but I have picked up a bit of Japanese, and I’ve been remembering a lot of Cantonese as well. And who would’ve thought I’d even like the kids classes? I imagine a few of my friends have just fallen off their seats. Yep, I do fine with kids these days — a few even like me.

2. (One 3 year old likes me so much that her mum once asked me if I was her dad. Her mum! Mothers should not make those kinds of jokes. It’s just not cricket.)

3. (And speaking of cricket, we’ve been playing a few games of corridor cricket, one of the benefits of working with a Brit. If anyone wants to send me an inflatable cricket set, I’ll love you forever…)

4. Some things won’t change though; I completely forgot to renew my work visa, so I will have to do that today. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, if not for the fact that my visa runs out tomorrow.

5. I’ve been playing a lot of guitar right now, building my chops and my ears by listening and working out different songs. I haven’t enjoyed playing so much for ages now, and I’m looking for people to play with — I’ve already met a bunch of guitarists, bass players, trumpeters, saxophonists and harmonica players, which makes for one hell of a mix. And I’ll be adding guitar teaching to my rotisserie of talents, I’ll start teaching a class next week. Maybe I can turn that into another source of income… extra beer money!

6. Not much more to report for now. I’ve put up more photos on my portfolio site, look for the highlighted entries. I’m planning on spending my Golden Week holidays on a road/train trip to Tokyo with a friend — using the cheapest possible modes of transport and accomodation there and back. I’ll be writing about that, so stay tuned. The first of my Indonesia stories are ready, so I’ll be posting it as soon as I choose the accompanying photos. That rounds out this month, (I can sum up my entire month in less than 500 words. I lead an exciting life) more later.

February

1. I once mentioned that the reason we drink ourselves to oblivion every weekend is because we don’t know what else to do — not being able to read Japanese makes it very difficult to browse the entertainment guides. But, I’m happy to say, we’ve started branching out, and the weekend is no longer solely devoted to breaking one’s liver (though, we still do that quite often).

2. Last week, my friend Dan and I wandered down to the river by the peace park and sat under the bridge and rocked out some blues — me on guitar and he on the harmonica. It was too damn cold to play for long outside, and we were quickly upstaged by a bunch of uber-cool Japanese lads cranking out Sting and other tunes. I can’t wait until spring comes, there’ll be tons of kids down by the river cranking out tunes. Sundays will be totally awesome.

3. Afterwards I went bowling. Yep, Ten Pin Bowling. It’s pretty popular here, and you can drink while you play! Drunk bowling is great, if somewhat embarrassing. You can count the drinks you’ve had by the number of gutter balls per game. You should try it some time.

4. What else was there? Ahh, yes, Valentines Day. Valentines runs a little different here than back home. Here, girls buy guys chocolate, and guys reciprocate by buying girls candy and cookies and stuff on March 14th, which is White Day. And it’s not solely people you really like, it’s co-workers and friends as well, so it’s kind of a nice day for everyone, rather than a miserable day for single people. I got 8 boxes of chocolates, so I got some White Day shopping to do (as well as some serious exercise to burn off the choco-fat).

5. That’s about it for February, which marks my 11th month in Japan. I’ve received my new contract, which I will sign tomorrow, and I have my papers together to renew my work visa here. So I’ll be here for another year at the very least, though I don’t see myself coming home permanently for some time yet. Sorry Mum.

January

1. Someone once told me what happens at the beginning of the year is a precursor to how it will end. Good January? Great December. Bad January? Uh-oh December. If that be the case, December ‘07 is going to suck.

2. Well, that’s not totally fair. By and large January wasn’t so bad, if you discount losing my wallet (which had all my cards and 26,000 yen in it), getting my bike towed away by the cops, having to work on Australia Day (knowing full well all my friends back home were getting drunk) and coming down with a nasty fever laden flu (I’m currently suffering from said flu). And the various bouts of intestinal troubles, probably a left over from Indonesia. But, discount those and I had a pretty good January, filled with fun and frivolity. Really.

(more…)

Back from Holiday

1. It’s tough to be back in chilly chilly Japan, after a two week jaunt through the tropics… *brrrr*, it be cold.

2. The trip back was long, and mostly pretty boring. Airports have ceased to be anything more than a place to go to hand over your life for safe keeping with a bunch of people you’ve never met, and never likely will meet. Maybe my next holiday will be cars, trains and boats only — not that it’s necessarily safer, but at least there would be something to see when you look out.

3. I’m now busy doing all those things I should’ve done before I left, but forgot, and to sort through the luggage and photos and all the post trip stuff. Interesting material to come!

Remembering one’s name, and future calamities

1. The strangest thing happened to me last week — I inexplicably remembered how to write my Chinese name. Out of the blue, all 50 something strokes of it came back to me. I can’t remember the last time I managed to write my full name in Chinese, must’ve been years. Now I’m practising like crazy, determined not to let it get away from me again.

2. I also have a secondary motivation to relearn my native language — I have recently met a very impressive Japanese woman who is not only bilingual, but she has a smattering of Cantonese as well. By comparison I would say I can speak a “sprinkling” of Cantonese. I just can’t stand people who are good with languages; especially when they are also fun to hang around with. *sigh*

3. The weather has really started to turn cold now, regularly dropping to low single digits at night. It has been raining a bit lately, and with the wind it’s getting very miserable out. I’ve had plenty of Brits and Canadians make fun of my inability to deal with cold weather (The bastards, I never made fun of them when it was hot…), but even they now concede that it is cold. I’ve had conflicting reports of how much snow to expect during January and February, but that doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that it snows at all. I’m kinda excited about living in a city that snows — since it’s been about 15 years since I’d seen snow — but even the thought wears off after a few minutes. Coming back from Indonesia into a white Hiroshima is going to be hell.

4. Speaking of which, I have finally paid for and received my tickets — rock! I’m am looking forward to this trip, dicing with death and all that. Really, it’s not that crazy to go climbing erupting volcanoes and all that, right? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

5. Uh-oh. Jinxed myself good now.

Working at Starbucks

1. At some stage in the past I’ve probably mentioned that Starbucks is probably the best of the cafe chains around here. (Seriously, few Japanese really understand what decent coffee is. This is, after all, a country that sells canned coffee.) I have since found another couple of cafes that serve better coffee, but at 500 and 600 yen a pop ($5.50 - $6.60 or so) they’re not exactly cheap. Not that Starbucks is terribly cheap either, but it is cheaper, and usually bigger. Quantity counts 15 minutes before a kid’s class.

2. One thing that I have come to appreciate about Starbucks is the fact that for the price of one measly coffee I can sit there for hours and hours at a time. Why would I do that, you ask? What difference is that to sitting at McDonalds for hours at a time? Well, it’s quieter than “Makudonarudo” for starters , and it’s a nicer place to work than my classroom.

3. For all their faults, it has to be said that they do try to create a nice ambiance in their cafes. It’s… homey, for want of a better term. My classroom has no windows, aircon, or soundproofing. It has nasty fluorescent lights and a tiny table that I bang my knees against every work day. The combination of searing overhead lighting and cramped, noisy surrounds almost guarantees that I am too distracted to think straight.

4. On the other hand my local Starbucks, has nice halogen lighting rather than fluorescent, has air conditioning, and the comforting quiet chatter of people talking in a language I barely understand. Which I block out with my iPod. An out of the way table by the corner and I’m away, focused, and producing good work. It is so pleasant working in that environment that I actually enjoy working that overtime, because I know that I’m getting stuff done. Finishing stuff is nice. It feels good.

5. Which is kinda sad. What sort of life do I live where the act of finishing a task provides more enjoyment than not working at all?