Alive. I am.

I haven't had a reason, or much of a reason to why I stopped writing these past couple months.  Among the contributing factors is a brain on tape delay, and more importantly, the noticeable degradation of my only working language, which I believe is suffering from pretty serious abuse.

When you teach English to English speaking students, you have the luxury of being verbose.  If they don't know the meaning of verbose, they can hit a dictionary.  I like being verbose, I like writing and talking in a flowery round about way.  I enjoy the way English works, how I can say the same thing twenty ways and probably still have options.  When you teach English as a second language, that option isn't there.  It is simple or nothing.  So my English isn't being used poorly, but rather simply, and in a world where your only working language isn't being properly bolstered and massaged, you tend to fall into some bad habits.

I'm in this weird catch-22 where the only place I can properly use the language at the level I wish is on this blog, and sadly never have the necessary motivation, inspiration or desire to write one.  My proficiency has been unexpectedly stunted.  Not irreversibly, but I have found that I need to try a lot harder.  Maybe I will just read more, and try to absorb better habits that way.

So, some updates:

Pat and Jenn's challenge:

Get a photo of you at a bar watching an nhl playoff game.

Here is a dated photo of the Kings playing the Coyotes in the Stanley Cup Finals.  This game was old even when it was being played.  I bet the Kings win the cup.

Rachel's challenge:

Swim in the pacific. 
     
I've swam in the Pacific before, but never on this side.  This was Utsumi beach, and it's about an hour from where I live by train.










Other updates:

I went to Iga Ueno, in Mie prefecture and learned that the Japanese Ninja of old had many ways to predict rain.  I reckon it rained a lot. 

I also went to Ise, which is also in Mie prefecture.  It is home to Ise shrine, the largest of all Shinto shrines in Japan.  Ise shrine is large, beautiful and very peaceful.  The trees I saw there were the largest I've seen in Japan.  It consists of an inner and outer shrine, this is a photo of the inner.

 

While in Mie, I also went to the coast and saw Meoto Iwa, the married rocks of Japan.  These rocks celebrate the union of marriage (between a man and woman specifically, I'm told), and apparently the rope weighs over a tonne and is changed many times every year.

                  

I also went to Nagoya city zoo.  I saw this bear, and I love him.  He's a Yezo bear, and they are found far to the north in Hokkaido.  Yezo is an old name for Hokkaido.  Also known as the black grizzly.

I got a love letter from a five year old.

My student Chika tried to spell donut:

I saw this monstrosity.

And, I learned to never quit.

Things are fine.  

Coming up is my summer vacation.  Starting on the 6th of August, and going for two weeks, I will not be required to put on nice pants, or a collared shirt and go to work.  For two weeks, I have absolute freedom of movement and thought.

My official plan as of right now is to disappear, and see where I end up.  This might mean a hiatus from the internet, aside from access on my phone for navigation.  That is a loose plan, and we'll see how that pans out.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Nagoya is absurdly hot and humid, and apparently runs a close second to the south island paradise of Okinawa in terms of top temperatures.  I reckon anywhere will be cooler.

Sorry for the delay.

Much love,

Sean 

Dragons!

I had an outing.   I feel like every year I go to at least one baseball game; some random Blue Jays game against some team on some random Saturday, where we show up at the gates and get cheap tickets for cheap seats - enjoying the game with a beer in the nose bleeds.  Well for reasons easy to divine, my ability to see the Jays play this year has been some what limited.  However, baseball wasn't out of the question, and on Sunday I met up with some other ECC instructors, and we paid our way into the rather spacious Nagoya dome.

The game was a good one, and the hometown Chunichi Dragons aren't a team to disappoint.  As the 2011 champions of their division, the local baseballers are one of the best teams in Japan, and from what I hear, always put on a good show at home.

They were playing another team from their division in the Lions, and spotted them a two run lead in the fourth that seemed insurmountable for the majority of the game.  Yet, in the bottom of the seventh, the Dragons finally found home plate and exited the inning with the deficit cut in half.

The Lions put up a tough front again in the eighth, and almost managed to shut the Dragons down with runners in scoring position.  Then, on an error for the third out, the shortstop overthrew first and the Chunichi found home plate for the second time!  The flood gates opened and the home team scored another four runs on four batters.

A quick top of the ninth and the game was over, Dragons six, Lions two!  It was a pretty amazing game, and the fans were maybe the best part.  There was so much energy and excitement during the comeback that it was palpable in the air, a raw enthusiasm carried by song and chant that I don't think is possible in the vacuous emptiness of Rogers stadium.

Here are some videos:

Here are the cheerleaders and silly mascots doing some dancing before the game:

 

 Here is the last out at the bottom of the seventh inning, the Dragons are up to bat. What they are chanting is the batter's name:

 


 Here is the kind of crazy things they play on the screen. The screen wasn't very well utilized, but when they played the pump up videos it was intense. The Dragon's mascots are two Dragons, pink and blue, and a Koala named Doala:


 


As a bonus, here are some pictures of my Monday/ Tuesday classroom:

And here is the board after one of my classes with older students. Team 'The Seans?' narrowly pulled off a victory over 'Team English' during a marathon battle of janken snake:

Let's Do A Letter

Dear Child,

I know you were farting in my class for the whole hour, but there were eight of you, and so I couldn't put a name to the smell.  Seriously, you smell really bad, I'm not sure what you ate.

Please refrain from crop dusting my classroom in the future.

Sincerely,

Sean-sensai

Things That Make Me Feel Awesome #2

That brief second, the fleeting instant in time, where I see comprehension come to a student's eyes.  After that the class is all smiles and fun.  

Vending Machine Roulette: Match

Vending machines in Japan are unique from the rest of the world.  Not only are they everywhere, and I mean absolutely everywhere, they're ubiquity is only outstripped by their availability of selection.  I would be willing to wager that there are at least eight different companies with vending machines set up around Japan, and in every vending machine there is no less than ten different drinks.

If you can't find something you enjoy, then have some water.

With this in mind, I'd like to introduce a new feature to this blog of mine!  Everyone put your hands together for Vending Machine Roulette!  Please come with me on a journey for the ages, as I venture out on a magnificent quest to buy, try and review every single beverage available for purchase from Japanese vending machines.




Today's drink is something called Match.  Aside from sporting a fancy yellow colour, and taking up residence in a tiny little machine next to an off white liquid called 'Pro-Sweat', which may or may not be real sweat, bottles of Match come with a fun little pump up message:  Let's Vitamin!  Yes!  Let us Vitamin!

In the area of taste, it is on the borderline of too sweat and addicting.  Its flavour is that of liquified candy. If you took all the rockets you received as kid while trick or treating, probably not an inconsiderable amount, and blended them with syrup into a yellowy broth, you would create something with a taste very similar to match.

I've only found two vending machines holding the stuff, and they were located on a shady train platform and a dark alley, respectively.

Let us vitamin!


Ciao,

Sean

Challenge Completed: Italia Mura!

"Visit the Italia Mura and explain to me why its called "italia"...is it italian themed...its near the port so is it safe to consider it the "jersey shore" of Nagoya?"

I chose this challenge as my first one because I thought it would be a fairly easy task in which to get my feet wet.  As with any time that I set out to be an intrepid adventurer, I decided to start my trek to the Italia Mura with a little bit of research.  I was interested mostly in where I could find the place, but also was curious as to whether it was a shopping center, or a market or perhaps something else entirely.

With these questions in mind I swiftly opened my browser to google, and  hastily typed 'nagoya itali-' before the autofill function relieved me of the need to say anything further.  A click later and I was on a Wikipedia page, having to come to terms with some rather harsh news.  It read:

"Italia Mura (イタリア村) was a mall located near the port of Nagoya, Japan. Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals and the San Marco Square along with its cafés and orchestra."


The first thing you notice is the use of the word was.  Italia Mura was a mall.  Next you notice the word were.  Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals.  The article summarized with this:

"On May 7, 2008, Italian Mura was closed due to financial difficulties, as the management claimed."   

I was no longer dealing with the concept of a bustling, fast paced Italian market.  What I had signed on to explore was instead, an extinct Italian homage, four years to the wind.  With this new found knowledge I decided to break my challenge into the important questions.

• Does it even exist, and if so, in what capacity?
• Why is it called 'Italia', is it Italian themed? 
• Is it the Jersey Shore of Nagoya?

Does it even exist?

With this question first and foremost, I set out this morning by bicycle, and managed to get to the port within a reasonable amount of time.  I would have been quicker, but I had to make a necessary detour to one of the many Mr.Donuts found in Japan.  I used my rest stop as an opportunity to feed my coffee addiction and do some people watching.  

Nagoya Port is really nice, and especially so today because the weather was exceptional.  The Aquarium sat stalwartly to the far right of the large paved shorefront, and to its open doors streamed countless children.  However, this time around I wasn't interested in that inverted Ocean, and instead turned my bike to the left side of the large jetty, where there were very few people to be found.  

Nagoya Port is actually quite incredible and diverse.  Besides the aquarium, there is a maritime museum, a docked Arctic exploration vessel and a park, which is beautifully maintained.  The park was what lay between me and my destination and on this particular Friday, contained exactly two people:  a man on a bike, presumably without a home, who had a penchant for collecting cans, and another man, who was very far from home, and looked an awful lot like me.

     

   

After a brisk ride, and a brief stop on a bench to snap a couple photos and enjoy the salt air of the Ocean, I managed to get to the other side of the park, and found myself face to face with a rarely bland facade of what turned out to be the Italia Mura.  I was rather fond of the palm trees that were planted in rows, and they made me feel like I was back in San Diego again.

My next question was whether or not it was abandoned.  The parking lot outside the building seemed rather empty, save for a few cars, and it certainly didn't have the bustling feel of a place in use.  However, it was by no means in great disrepair, as it looked like the vegetation had been regularly groomed, and the main building kept pristine.  So it still existed, but in what capacity?  I'm not sure I ever found this out.  The main area of the Italia Mura had about five people in it, and they all had the air of maintenance me, carrying tools and ladders.  When I tried to park my bike close to the center, the man with the ladder actually said to me quite loudly 'Not!"

As for why it is called Italia Mura, and whether or not it is the Jersey shore of Nagoya, to those questions I can provide more definitive answers.  As for it being the Jersey Shore, that is a solid and definitive no.  This place had about as many Italians as it did French people, and about five times the number of Japanese to Canadians at that.  

As to why it's named Italia Mura, I guess it translates to something along the lines of 'The walls of Italy" and as said earlier in this post, the mall is supposed to be recreation of some of Italy's finer sights.    However, because of the whole abandoned feel of the place, and the absence of any people, the whole Italia Mura embodied this feeling of post-war 1940's sadness.  Besides a small field close to the area where some retired locals laughed and played weird golf, the whole Mura took on an atmosphere of forgotten tragedy and abandonment.  

So ends my adventure to the Italia Mura, and with it I call this challenge a success.  I do really wonder what will become of this place, as it has this latent beauty that sits untapped next to one of the nicest areas of Nagoya.  The port is a beautifully designed area of the city, and this part of its history and development is wasted and forgotten.  I take heart in the presence of the maintenance people, and hope they are working towards something great.

Thanks for reading, and as a bonus I will give an extra picture of a restaurant I saw while biking home from the coast.    

Much love,

Sean

I Deserve This

When did it become unacceptable to brag about things?  I'm trying to remember the age when making an exposé of your life's few victories became tactless and shallow.

I'm as bad about it as the next, I admit it, and often shut down socially in the face of someone else's boasting.  I call them a braggart, and revel in their bad taste. Yet it seems that people are systematically shamed by society to be almost embarrassed of their accomplishments when it comes to receiving the praise of people outside their family.  To accept recognition with anything less than meekness, makes you self absorbed and overconfident.

I'm may only be saying this because I'm in Japan, where the standard comment from most parents is that their kids are 'not smart' regardless of the kid's actual mental acuity, but I won't pin it on Japan alone.

What I'm really trying to say is, I wonder what it's like to receive an award and say "I deserve this".  I don't think I've ever done it.

Japanese Train Conductors Have Really Nice Pocket Watches

Sometimes I wonder if operating a train feels like living a life of destiny and fate.

The track to your final destination stretches out in front of you eternally.  Often you make brief stops at somewhere interesting, and can look around, but soon find yourself moving off to somewhere else. Ultimately your every action is predictable and determined to the second by the soft clicks of that reliable pocket watch kept safely in your coat pocket.

It comforts me to think that the tracks have switches.

Sean

Things That Make Me Feel Awesome #1

When you're walking with headphones on, and that song you love kicks in with its steady beat, bum tik bum tik,  and you just strut like you own the sidewalk.

This effect is greatly heightened when you are wearing a collared shirt with the top button liberated.  Loose your tie like it's casual Friday and turn on the swagger.

I know you know it.

I'm a Cof-fiend and Why I Must Work For NHL.com

Hey! Monday post, yeah!  I'm one for one.

I've done almost absolutely nothing for the last nine days.  This is the direct result of having a lot of time, little money and no work.  Golden week just happened, and I didn't go anywhere.  I was in Nagoya.

As a result, I decided to utilize my time between sleeping and drinking to get some things that I needed.  In order of acquisition, I got a new desk, some new sunglasses, and a coffee maker.  In order of importance, I got a coffee maker and who cares what else.

I've been experimenting with my new device, and have since learned how to make a sludgy concoction as dark as the night.  I call it my home brew, and it won't  put hair on your chest, but instead sizzle it off in a dramatic display of weird science.  In a way I am a little sad that I can drink coffee at home now, as I hadn't realized what a big part of my day going to the coffee shop had become.  It was a great place to creepily people watch from behind my book.

So with all my free time at home now, I have returned my attention to the business of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  My mourning period for the beleaguered underdogs of Ottawa has passed, and I have regrouped my wits to reassert my zealous fandom towards Washington and their struggle to defeat the very team that killed my precious Sens.

I'm not sure when it happened, but the NHL's website has officially been promoted to the status of 'out of hand'.  I've been frequenting that website for the past four years, and the steps towards ridiculousness must have been so gradual that no one could have noticed until it was too late.  And in that moment of realization, of true and utter hopelessness, I realized my true calling.  As if from trumpets on high, I knew that it is inevitable: I  must become a writer for NHL.com.

I'm talking about the puns of course.  Every single NHL article written now hides behind a title laced with bad taste.  They all follow a very simple formula too: name, hyphen and word fragment.  For example, my blogs can only be deemed Sean-sational!  Get the picture?

Now you see why I must work for them.  I've been doing bad puns since I could talk.  In university, my roommate and I sat in our kitchen and riddled off bad fish puns for a half hour on a snowy evening.  It was a halib-good time, even though I got the feeling he was pickerel-ing on me.  I even slipped one in the title

So that's it, I'm immediately going to focus all future efforts towards becoming a template writer for NHL.com.  From what I've seen, you don't even need to be good, or know stats, or have any idea who players are.  It also helps to talk about the mid-second period in the first paragraph, then transition into the late game to finally conclude with a recount of goal that had no bearing on anything during the mid-first.  Unless the title writing position is its own gig, then I'll just do that and have a coffee.

I decided to try my hand at a title pun for a front page tab.  Just imagine it is Christmas or something.  I'll also add in some annotations.

Also thanks to those that read my last post, and send me some good ideas on what to do.  You can view those challenges by click on the tab to the right of the screen.  If you have yet to give me any good ideas, then do so now.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
        

Let's Have Some Fun

This isn't working like I had wanted it to.  I wanted to post a lot, and I didn't want it to be simple, mindless recounts of events, though I probably haven't even done enough of that.  Let's change things up a little bit.  On this, my 50th post, I will make a decree for change!

Let's make post size smaller, but periodicity much more frequent.  Let's have more input from the people reading this, tell me what you would like me to do - send me on a task to get a certain photo, visit a certain place or meet with certain people.  I am inviting any and all suggestions, serious or otherwise.  Make a request.

Either post a comment or send me an email to my full name @gmail.com.  I will create a page of challenges, and then I will go about trying to make them happen.  Give me a little bit of purpose in my free time.  I feel like I have a lot of the latter, and too little of the former.

On my part, I'm going to try and post something every day, or as close to that as I possibly can.  Probably not full posts, although from time to time those will still occur.  Sometimes it will be really simple thoughts or maybe pieces of fiction and often just ideas.  I would like to expand the utility of my writing, and in that way perhaps make it something I can use with more versatility in the future.  Help me out and feed my addiction.  Ridiculous requests are ok, IF the goal is attainable without me breaking any major laws, or find me in a situation in which I morally will be unable to recover for many years.  No murder or prostitutes.    

Starting this Monday, the 7th of May, I will start posting frequently.  Please help me out.

Recap:

1. Give me ideas, requests and challenges for things to do.

2. I will use my blog more frequently, and if there is a single dedicated reader out there (Hello Mom and Dad!), you will find yourself with a content overload!

Peace in the East,

Much Love,

Sean



Examples:

Dear Sean, Whom I adore,  I think you should ________________.

- go here

- do this

- learn this

- meet someone like

- etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

Shift.

I'm lying in my bed.  It is a rainy, spring night, fourteen stories above a highway of tracks.  Trains rumble by subtly.  The noise is soothing and rhythmic.  It is expected, and in that way comforting.  When a distractive noise becomes a constant, its absence is the bother.  The air is sweet and cool, with a hint of fragrance.  It smells like warm things to come, an Ocean not far, and that crisp odour of a rain not long past.  Wind blows through the partly opened window, the cross breeze created by the slightly ajar balcony door.  It is late, too late to hear the goings on of anyone's daily life.  Yet in that void creeps the night noises of a city in slumber.  The lone car drives quickly down an empty street, accelerating loudly.  A drunken couple talks nonsense, stumbling home to their empty, waiting beds.  And amidst it all, the ever constant, a train rumbles by softly.

Shift.

I am sitting in front of a large glass tank.  Inside the transparent walls, exists an artificial world made of real creatures.  They swim by methodically.  They swim by rhythmically.  They swim by with out a glance, or a thought, or a care.  A turtle makes a wide circle, it's path the span of the tank, not a inch of circumference wasted.  The fish are more erratic.  They swim faster, they change direction more often, they are less and less consistent in a way proportionate to their size.  The smallest abandoned the notion of a circle outright, and swarm in tight lines.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  A shark swims in a disjointed way.  Diagonally, slightly up with a list to the left.  The little fish don't like this.  Back and forth.  I picture the tank from above.  I am looking down on a city, everyone with a path.  Who makes the wide arcs of a turtle?  Which of you is the back and forth of the tiny frightened fish?   Who will claim the title of the listing shark?  They're not that much different then people.  Then I walk away, and realize that at least I can walk away.

Shift.

I am in a dimly lit bar, surrounded by smokey vapours and that comforting smell of old bottles.  My company is little, but diverse.  An androgynous, mouth breather straddles the bar cautiously.  Next to her sits a sack of a women idly pulling on a lit cigarette.  They are both playing audience to a thin, reedy, caricature of a bartender, who gives me the last dregs of the Kirin at a hit to his wallet.  The bar is small, and in that way lovely.  There are no surprises behind corners, and no corners to be surprised around.  It is a tiny bar on its surface, and deeper than most in other ways.  I sit in a thick leather chair and open my book.  I drink slowly.  I am the absence of urgency.  The bartender looks at me reluctantly, imploringly; an alien reading a book is bad for the night life.

Shift

I am in a train car, enveloped in the noise of a language unintelligible, or maybe misunderstood.  A man sleeps by my right shoulder restlessly.  I am poked and prodded by the jerking fits of an active napper.  Smoke and perfume is in the air, cigarettes and the mask of something sweeter; fake and manufactured.  It half works and creates something less than the sum of its parts, not as intoxicating to me as either scent alone.  I suck on an empty beer can and its empty insides gurgle sullenly.  The drink isn't a crutch or a release, but a luxury allowed in a country not my own.  I lose myself in the noise again.  I recognize the tones of normal conversation: anger, joy and urgency among them, yet the sounds hold no weight.  I touch lightly upon moments of understanding.  I catch words and phrases like I'm eavesdropping through a thin wall; the sound is muffled.  It slips away swiftly, my comprehension, and I am alone again in a sea of people.  Alone in the least lonely way possible.

Shift, I am in a classroom, I am in a busy train station, I am in a coffee shop draining the last of my drink.  Bottoms up.  The scenery flickers, and I am the static visitor to this world's many vistas.  The extreme constant.  The world is my moving picture show, and it comes to me.

I hope you liked that.  I kept everyone waiting long enough that I figured I should write something beyond the standard 'been here, seen that' regurgitation.  Good things come to those that wait.  In answer to your questions, yes these are all real scenarios that I have experienced in the past few weeks, and I just took the liberty of adding a little dash of artistic license.  I'm not even sure how you sit at a bar cautiously, but my word that lady was doing it.

I went to the aquarium last Friday, and it was an aquarium.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I don't think I've ever been to a real one before.  I really do like zoos and things of the like, but the general impression I got from Nagoya Aquarium was 'sad'.  I spent a lot of time sitting creepily in the back of dark rooms watching things swim in circles.  Sometimes I enjoy going places with others, but something about my rainy Friday solo trip to the aquarium was positively haunting.  I can be alone.

The bar is a tiny thing just minutes from my house.  It boasts a dense, smokey, atmosphere, and sports a crowd of people that often come off manic or manic depressive.  They never pursue conversation with me, and there are rarely more than two patrons at a time.  I like this.  It is obscurely located down a side street, and I find the little nook absolutely charming.  Quaintness, but not in a lame way.

Train rides are exactly as I described them, I just don't always have a beer.  The first paragraph is every night from my room since I started leaving my window open, give or take the rain.  I could always hear the trains, but they were a rattling, distant thunder before, instead of the distinct rolling melody I hear now.  I have also gained those other nuances of the night - the traffic, the inebriated, and I desperately wish for crickets.

I'm in the full swing of teaching time now.  There are children.  They hug me, and bother me and make me smile.  I like some of them more than most, and I like all of them more than I honestly expected.  They're children, and I can't get mad at them for being so.  I get more annoyed at adults who pay for conversation classes and then don't speak.

I am content.  I am busy, but I am not wishing to be elsewhere.  I'm not rushed to live my life.  Sometimes the easiest way to adapt to a new situation is to be completely absolute of self.  Then after a little ado, the situation finds itself forced to bend around you.  Knowing who you are in every possibility is the ultimate flexibility.

However, being who you are in every possibility is the ultimate challenge.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
      

I'm Big in Small Circles

So here's a funny piece of news: I've inadvertently achieved internet fame!  As part of the gap schedule set up that the company is rolling over the next couple weeks, I'm on the school tour as an All-Star substitute.  The awesome school director of today's location, Joy, kindly asked me for my photograph, and who am I to say no?  I had no idea that I was going to hit front page on the Konomiya website though!

http://www.ecc.jp/school/chubu_area/konomiya/konomiya.php

I think that qualifies as a successful day on the job.  The funniest part is that I am fairly confident that this school is not on my schedule for the school year starting in April, and I just sincerely hope students don't check the website and come out specifically for that handsome guy in the top row, second from the left.  I'm such a heartbreaker.

Thanks for reading,

Much love,

Sean

Who Will It Be?

I recently came into the possession of my holiday schedule for the school year (April 2012 - March 2013), and although I haven't a clue which if any of you are planning on visiting me, my availability is as follows:

April 29th - May 6th, 2012      (Sun - Sun, 7 days)

July 16th, 2012      (Mon)

Aug 5th - 19th, 2012       (Sun - Sun, 14 days)

Sep 17th, 22nd, 2012       (Mon, Sat)

Oct 8th, 2012        (Mon)

Nov 3rd, 23rd, 2012      (Sat, Fri)

Dec 23rd - Jan 5th, 2013     (Sun - Sun, 14 days)

Feb 11th, 2013     (Mon)

March 20th, 2013      (Wed)

As well as my days off being Friday and Sunday, I also have an additional 5 flex vacation days that can be used throughout the year.  Provided you give me enough notice, I will be able to slot those into my schedule or fit them onto the end of larger vacation periods to accommodate any visits.

I do hope to see at least a couple of your smiling faces in the year to come!

Sean   

I'll Take The Shinkansen

In order to properly appreciate this post, it is my recommendation that you press play on the video below before continuing on.  This is merely a suggestion for your enjoyment though, viewer discretion is advised!



So if you had not guessed by now, I bought a bike.  However, instead of jumping the ledges on route twelve on my way to catch sweet Pokemon and earn gym badges, the only thing I've caught is a cold and I get to hop curbs in a jostling fashion.  The new bike is a stunner, and fits the mould for what I would call the stereotypical Japan-bike.  Wheel covers and a basket.  I was told last night that the youth slang for these majestical steeds is a Japanese word meaning 'mother carrier', and there is no real guess work that needs to go into figuring out why the kid's call it that.  Don't I look like a tough guy.

Knowing a while back that I had intentions for purchasing a bicycle, I had made a inquiry with my friend Emily as to whether or not she'd be up to the task of naming it.  As she had just come off a multi-month, Australian bike tour with some friends last year, I figured she was intimate enough with the biped-als (a joke) to be the authority on names, and a couple weeks later I presented her with this picture:

And this description:

"Ummm, the pedal strokes are firm, and with purpose. It rides steady, and the springs in the seat allow for a very soft and relaxing sit. The basket and bell accent it perfectly and both brakes work splendidly, but the left one has a plaintive squeak! It's an older girl, but it carries itself with an air of dignity and poise that shouldn't be overlooked."

Keeping in mind that I had only rode this bike a whole eight minutes home from the shop before taking this picture, writing that paragraph and then asking for a name, I feel like I outdid myself to build this thing a personality from half truths and copious amounts of crap.

Thus the Shinkansen came to be.  She actually did well, considering that naming other people's inanimate objects can be a rather obscene task.  The name is a joke and a compliment wrapped in an enigma, that is again folded into a paradox.  As far as mother carriers go, it is a nice silver colour and I guess 'sleek' enough.  Calling it the bullet train gives it something to aspire to.  Yet in no way is it fast, despite possessing a whopping five gears.  Its real allure comes in the possibilities for mockery, the times when I can leave the apartment and say "I'm off to the store, I'm taking the Shinkansen!"

You can turn the music off now too, if you were crazy enough to keep it on this long.  It is really a ten hour loops of the bicycle song from Pokemon, and it's only relevance to the story is that I was humming it on my way home from the store and that Pokemon are awesome.

The shop where I bought the Shinkansen was this little hole in the wall of a place that I found a few weeks ago while making one of my night walks around Nagoya.  The store immediately caught my eye  because it was the first place to sell used bikes, and it was run by this friendly looking Japanese couple, the husband always eyeing me warily when I happened to browse his selection on any given day.

When I finally stopped to make my purchase, he was out front of the store making repairs to a rather dilapidated looking thing.  Again he kind of looked at me sideways, and provided me the courtesy of grunting.  I started inspected his wares, and his eyes followed me as I poked and prodded the inventory.      I was disappointed that the green one that I had been eyeing for a week or so had been purchased, but I'm absolutely positive that it must have been picked out by some child who was saving their money for months to buy that very bike, and that now they're off in some sunlit, grassy field, frolicking hand in handle.  When I finally had made my consolation selection, the real fun began.

All bikes of my Shinkansen's variety come with built in bike locks on the back tire.  They all have a special key that only fits that lock, and that key MUST be in place for the bike to move.  When the lock is not secured, the key can not be removed from the mechanism.  This means that theft on bikes is pretty low in Japan, and the whole system works quite well.

  
Unfortunately for this cute, shop owning couple, they had made one ghastly oversight.  For whatever reason, they had been possessed with the notion of placing all the keys for all their bikes into one jar.  I'm not sure if they just didn't expect anyone to buy them (which seems like a fairly poor business model), or it had been something done in haste, but it led to a rather funny montage of the older man parading keys to the bike in order to free it from the confines of the iron manicle.  A modern day tale of Cinderella and the matching slipper.

While this was happening, I was facing a struggle of my own.  His lovely wife possessed about as much English as me Japanese, and was trying to kindly request of me my address for something I can only assume was a police registry.  This is all fine and good, except that my address is about three lines long and goes a little like something-chu, something-shi, something-ku, etc, etc and I for the life of me have been unable to commit it to memory, let alone try to pronunce it without being laughed at.

With all praise going to the iphone, I was finally able to find my address in some remote corner of Facebook where I had messaged it to my sister.  Seemingly simultaneously the correct key was found, and the bike freed from its chains, and I proceeded on my mary way.  I finally used it again today to get groceries and succeed in hitting a traffic cone, but fortunately didn't break my eggs when I bailed.  Thankfully, a nice woman did come quickly to the aid of the fallen pylon, and no cones were seriously injured.    

In none-bike related news, I signed my contract, and am now a full fledged instructor!  Nice work me!  Due to the proximity of my arrival to the end of the Japanese school year, my week and a half of contract leading up to the end of term has me rocking the role of a sub shifter, and for the past three days and the next week I will be visting a variety of different ECC schools in Nagoya and getting a taste of the many faces of the company.

I managed to get a little bit of experience out of the past couple days, and even got my hands dirty in a few free time lessons, and I think I may have even managed to teach something.  I also learned that I hate the meitetsu train line, as its sign boards at Nagoya station are a blanket of Kanji.  I can't blame the Japanese for using their language, but I am allowed to be rueful and petulant.

Yesterday I was most graciously invited to the end of the year party of one of the schools that I will be working at come April.  It was also a goodbye/welcome party to a couple staff members, and the event was carried out in the form of a Japanese drinking party.  So with the keg tapped and the food served, I was offered a glimpse into the cool world of Japanese social customs.  I also simultaneously got to realize how little I really do know about the people here, and how bad my pronunciation is for the few words I know.  I have a long way to go.

The night was good though, and as the party was made of students and staff alike, there was much chance to talk and learn about where I should go, what I should see and the likes and dislikes of the wonderful people that live here.  I couldn't maintain my normal position as wallflower, but I guess I really wasn't too bothered.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean


P.S.  I think my bike could still maybe use a first name, *__________* the Shinkansen.  What do you think is a suitable title for this noble steed?  Let me know in the comments!




  

It's a Post!

As I come to the end of one of the busier weeks in my life, I finally find myself with enough time to sit down and write.  With tomorrow being my last day of training, and today my only day off after six consecutive days of kids teaching demos, my time over the past week has been filled with prep work and actual work.  I always have good intentions of writing more, but it is interesting to note that you can move to the other side of the world only to find out you're the same person everywhere.

Training was split into two parts, good choice and KEW, with good choice being the adult teaching methods portion and KEW standing for Kid's English World.  Good choice was a rather laid back experience, and involved lots of time spent sitting at a table and reading from a manual.  In stark contrast, KEW training has been a high power, non-stop, energy draining thrill ride.  Starting on the second day, I've done demos after demos of different levels and ages, until you're singing the songs and chanting the vocabulary in your sleep.  I've learned that smiling is important and that it is frickin' hard to sing and dance at the same time for a half hour.  Yet, as exhausting as it is to live through, I can already see the value from the training starting to show.

All of the initial stress of having to be loud and smiley infront of other people, singing songs acapella and playing games with adults pretending to be children was pretty quick to evaporate after my second or third showing.   The doubt I had in my abilities to think on my feet during a lesson is also starting to fade, as I've learned that any game that makes the learning fun is effective, and anything that involves throwing a ball into a basket from across the room is an instant success, even among pretend children.  The manuals for the lessons do a great job of telling you what needs to be included, and for the sake of the condensed thirty minute demos, as often as not it is harder to not go over time than anything.

In my free time, instead of writing, I've been taking to the streets through either elaborate, meandering walks or brisk, directionless runs.  If you look at my last post, there is a picture there of the hotel that shoots up from the top of the Nagoya train station.  Along with three other buildings next to it, that block happens to be the tallest section of buildings around for many kilometers.  Fortuitously, this provides me with somewhat of a built in compass.  With a beacon in the sky, that can be seen from a fair distance, I am able to set off in any way and always circle back to the center of my new world with ease.

My ability to navigate has also been further improved by my recent acquisition of an iphone, my first ever smart phone.  I realize I'm a little late to the party, but I've just never had a necessity for them over the past few years.  Yet, as it turns out they are basically the cheapest available phone in Japan, with an Android alternative running you about an extra 2,000 yen a month, and a simple flip phone parallel in price.  I've already used it to chat up girls at a bar and find my way back home today after I wandered outside the range of my landmark based navigation system.  I guess it is paying for itself.

Walking is swell and all, but I think with my first pay cheque, the purchase of a shiny new (or used) bicycle will be in order.  Every morning when I wake up and the sky is clear, I can see mountains in the distance.  I'm also acutely aware that there is an ocean a mere 5 kilometers from the floor I am currently lying on.  Although I think the sea is easily within my capabilities, the mountain quest would be a pretty lofty adventure without a wheeled steed.

The bicycles of choice here may not be what you think.  If all the rage for bikes in North America is trail riders and sleek road racers, then Japan's mainstream double rimmed weapon of choice is something more reminiscent to what you might have seen in the 1950's.  You're picturing the curvy, swooping, old fashioned bikes and you're absolutely one hundred percent spot on.  Except they all have baskets, every single one.  I'm not sure why this has become the trend for the Nagoya bike scene, but I find them all rather charming.  I've been scoping out places that sell bikes, and there is a shop a couple blocks off that  has a lonely looking green bike that gives off that abandoned vibe.  It's also cheap and has a sweet basket, and I'm freaking tired of walking with my groceries.

Last Sunday was 3/11, and the one year anniversary of the Tsunami and Fukushima meltdown.  I had to go to Sakae that day to get my phone, so I guess I wasn't very surprised to seem people marching along the streets in what I thought was a memorial ceremony.  However, I was quite shocked to instead see many of them holding anti-nuclear signs, and to learn that the whole thing was just as much in protest as remembrance.  From what I've heard, the wound is still fresh, and it is hard to find a single person in Japan who doesn't know someone effected by the tragedy.

Look at the bikes in this video... I was not kidding.

Other than everything else I just told you, there is little to report.  Two more demos tomorrow and then a day off before signing a contract Wednesday.  I walked briefly by Nagoya castle today and snapped a quick photo, but I plan on going back Tuesday and visiting it proper.  We also recently got a rice cooker and I am the master of chop sticks!

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
              

The Japanese Live Here

The last time I spoke with my family, my Dad asked me a very simple question:  What is the most striking difference between Japan and home?  Now it might have been the residual jet lag, or the fact that I was trying to absorb and process every cultural difference all at once, but the long and short of it is that I came up blank.

It feels like it should be an easy question.  Japan finds itself on the forefront of new technology and design; it has a long and rich cultural background that weaves itself into every facet of its society; and exhibits a social group dynamic that is quite different than that of North America.  With all this is mind, it may sound weird when I say that the answer is none of these; instead it is the most simple and common sense thing that I find the most striking difference from Canada.  Japan is home to the Japanese.

Take a walk through the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto on a weekend and tell me what makes someone a Canadian.  What one thing, what one common physical trait makes someone easily identifiable as a Canadian citizen?  Canada has such a rich blend of ethnicity, that to try and pick a background or an identity to bind us as a Nation is virtually impossible.  There is a pride in our country, a mutual satisfaction in calling it our home, but where we come from and why we live the lives we do could not be more diverse.

I don't want this to sound like I'm surprised to find Japanese people in Japan.  I'm not an idiot, and I knew what to expect.  I am aware that Japan has had a history of being exclusionary and pesky to foreigners, just ask amnesty international.  Yet think of how much I stand out here, and then drop a Japanese man in Union Station and ask yourself who turns their head.

I hope I don't give off the impression of complaining, as I simply meant this more as an observation than anything else.  If Canada is a mosaic of all sorts of cultural threads, then Japan is a tapestry of a much more singular origin.  Yet as I have spent increasing amounts of time observing and watching people, I have come to realize that to be Japanese is to be apart of a look just as diverse as any other people on the planet.  From diversity they achieve unity.  I love it.

I've really enjoyed my time here so far, and am starting to feel comfortable with my more immediate surroundings.  Moving around the world is, I assume, never easy, and I don't believe it is weird for me to miss my family, friends and fuzzy dogs considerably.  Yet, in the grand scheme of things, my transition to Japan probably could not have gone any smoother.  Within the past couple days I have started to return to my apartment with a feeling of home, and that comforts me.

Day three of training starts tomorrow, and just as the first two days tended to be more administrative in nature, the following days should be more hands on and demonstrative.  Everyone I have met from the company has proven to be rather upbeat and positive in the way they go about their job, and more importantly in the way they talk about ECC as an employer.

Wish me luck in the days ahead,

Love you family!    

Thanks for reading,

Sean
 

An Icy World of Perpetual Sunlight

If you leave Toronto at noon on a Wednesday and head west towards Japan, a funny thing happens.  For the next thirteen hours of your life, the sun will never set.  This of course causes all sorts of problems for the airlines, as they are then faced with tough logistical problems such as how to justify trying to serve you an egg dish they call breakfast when you're an hour from Tokyo and it's two in the afternoon.  The passengers will never stand for the nomenclature!  The longest day of my life, quite literally.

An interesting fact about flying from Canada to Japan is that the world is not flat.  You big shots like to sit in your wing backed, padded chairs and look at your maps, taking your kids fingers and slowly tracing straight lines across Oceans from continent to continent, labouriously plotting your misguided routes of transit.  In reality, the fastest route between Canada and Japan is apparently over Alaska, across the bearing strait and concluding with a swing down the eastern arm of Siberia and a brief jaunt over the Sea of Okhotsk.  The icy world of perpetual sunlight.

The flight itself was uneventful to the fullest.  I continued my streak of having a window seat located exactly by the wing, and shared my little three seat nook with a youngish looking Japanese woman and an older gentleman who I assume was Canadian.  The woman beside me had two different states of existence: eating and sleeping.  She never missed a meal, and always hailed the drink cart as it passed.  Yet as soon as the tray went up, her sleep mask came down and she'd be out in minutes.  In the whole thirteen hour flight, she never stirred once from her seat.  I thus deemed her Iron bladder.

 I realize that it is my fault that I opted for the beer and the tea from the drink cart in consecutive passes, but I had to assume she'd get up at least once.  Fortunately for me, the old man was super fidgety, and had about a twenty minute window for sitting before he had to pace the the aisle, and I managed to not so nimbly jump her seat a couple times.

Despite the plane being about twenty minutes late to Narita, my transfer couldn't have gone better.  Since the airports are so far outside the city centers for most of the big Japanse cities, I was unfortunately not able to get a good look at Tokyo while we were landing.  This wasn't helped by the fact that there was a dense layer of cloud close to the ground.  However, as we were circling the runway I did manage to catch a glimpse of a certain famous mountain sticking out from the clouds.  So beautiful.

Transit from the arrival gate was hastened by the moving sidewalks affectionately called Travelators.  You must NOT play on them, warned signs.  Immigration came next, and after a brief moment of the official staring at my passport photo and laughing, I had picked up my bags and was through the domestic gate on a bus to my connection.  As we got off the bus, the two stewardesses who were standing infront of the plane gave a bow and enthusiastically welcomed everyone aboard.  As we took off from Narita, the baggage handlers energetically waved at our plane from the runway.

After landing in Nagoya, I slowly found my way to the attached train station, and using my printed out instructions, meticulously went through the process of buying a train ticket from the automated machine.  English in Japan is for the most part pretty common.  They have managed to find this balance between the two languages that allows for fairly easy navigation by anyone with an understanding of at least one of them.  If you do get confused, there are often people nearby that will be will  attempt to send you in the right direction.

The trains are always running and always on time.  I may not have a large sample size, but from my limited experience, when a platform displays an arrival time, that train is there without question.  There are two big train companies in Japan: the meitetsu, which is the government run train system, and the JR lines, which is a private company.  These companies have tracks that run independently from each other, and you can only get to certain parts of the city, certain ways, via certain lines.




Nagoya Station, which is a not too shabby 10 minute walk from my house, is a connection station for most of the different lines for both companies, and as a result tends to be busy.




The building is massive, with dozens of different tunnels leading to the different subway lines that run in every direction like spiderwebs from the station.  Sitting on top of the station is a looming hotel that jets out into the sky in the form of two large towers.  Most importantly, Nagoya Station is a stop for the Shinkansen, or bullet trains, that can take you swiftly throughout the country.

I'm still relatively green on the train lines here, but in my first two days I have ridden a total of five different lines between the two companies, left my umbrella in one of them and mistakenly underpaid for a ticket; embarrassingly getting stopped by the automatic gates as I tried to exit the station.  Good will be the day when I get a grasp on all the lines.

Nagoya is a beautiful city.  Due to its history as a major manufacturing center for Japan, it suffered heavily from bombing in the second World War, and as a result close to a quarter of the city was destroyed back in the forties.  This destruction provided the Japanese with the opportunity to rebuild in a new way, and I will be the first to say that they have done a great job.

The wide streets and copious green space give a sense of openness to Nagoya.  There is this really sharp mix of new and old Japan that comes together and provides a very unique effect.  Skyscrapers and apartment buildings form perimeters around the city blocks that are filled with narrow streets and small traditional Japanese dwellings.  Fountains and statues are common around parks and in plazas, and due to the amazing coverage of the train systems and the raised highways, there is very little traffic congestion in my area.

The place that I am living at is a complex called Freebell apartments, a fourteen story apartment complex that overlooks the train tracks leading to Nagoya station.  The skyline is rather striking. and the sounds of the trains can be heard regularly all day long.

I find the sound relaxing; muted and rhythmic.  The second floor offices have an extensive English library and there is also a fitness room available for all tenants.  Things are good on the top floor.  There is a bit of a learning curve with this all in one washer/dryer though.

I have had some time to explore on foot in the past couple days, and can proudly report that I did manage to get lost at least once.  Most recently I found myself trapped in a department store that was ten floors of sheer madness.  Unlike the western floor plans of separate stores on the same floor, Japanese shopping centers employ an open concept that is just sheer madness.  Sensory overload.  I wandered about this giant building for what must have been an hour, going up and down escalators, and even getting trapped briefly in a gaming arcade.  I did however managed to scope out the prices for bicycles, and spot a robot vacuum desperately trying to break free of its tiny prison.

Today's major accomplishment was taking the subway to Sakae to find the 100 yen shop, and buy cooking utensils so that we could stop eating dirty convenience store sandwiches.  My roommate Gary and I were pretty successful in finding the store eventually, and we managed to navigate our way around the madness and buy some cookware before giving up on the confusion in an attempt to find food.  Today's minor accomplishment was ordering a coffee at Starbucks through a series of hand gestures and pointing!

In our travels we happened upon a vehicle safety festival hosted by Toyota, complete with a full brass band, pom pom dancers, and a device called the seatbelt convincer!  It crashed you into a wall at five clicks!  The funny thing is that the children seemed to love it.  Other highlights were the exclusively Pokemon store and a weird track observatory called the Aqua Spaceship.

I am extremely happy to report that the first few days have been going quite well, and the only thing that really needs to come along now is my sleep schedule.  I will call the move a success when I stop waking up at 4 am.  I have yet to experience any of the anxiety that I had in the first few weeks of Africa, and it is such a relief as I can honestly say that I really had no idea what to expect upon coming here.

Thanks for reading!

Lots of Love,

Sean

 

       

I Hope We Can Still Be Friends

There is no such thing as a clean break.  As soon as emotion and feeling come into play, there is absolutely no way to try to separate yourself cleanly - like velcro, with thousands of tiny hooks that stick in you where it hurts.  They tear and they rip as you pull them out, the split never as clean as you had wished.  Break ups are hard.

That said, I am not breaking up with you.  However, I will be going away for awhile.  This is hard for me.  I don't always show a lot of outward emotion, and that is probably the number one reason this blog is good for me, but I have gotten through the panic and excitement of the last couple weeks by trying not to think about the preparation as anything more than something to do.  Mindless tasks rarely elicit my panic response.

So I will make a request.  Let us, readers, not break up.  Let's keep in touch and be close.  I want to hear from you, I want comments, questions and ideas for things that I should try.  I will try and do things that will be interesting beyond me prattling on about how I feel.  I'll go for walks and take a camera.  I'll do challenges and I will take requests for topics.  There will be the standard updates, the routine pouring of my soul, but I encourage you to help me through this big transition in my life.  You guys lose me, but I lose everyone.

Commenting is easy; at the bottom of every blog there is an option to post a remark.  You don't need to sign in and can easily post as anonymous - but I hope everyone will leave their name after their message.  You can also reach me through email and let me know how you're doing.  I will take requests for postcards, but state up front that I'm not always great at staying on top of that kind of thing, and your date of receiving will be between now and next April (2013).  My email address is easy to find, and if you don't know it ask any of my close family or friends and I'm sure they'll send it on.

Everyone has been very supportive of me through this big period of transition, and I'd like to acknowledge how truly lucky I am to have such wonderful friends and family.  Mom and Dad, thank you for being willing to support me both emotionally and financially every step of they way, I could not have done this without your shoulders to lean on.  Jess and Kase, you are amazing and I expect to see you soon (bring Gryphon and Finny).  To all who came out for my goodbye party last Wednesday, I thank you, but am not sure all those shots count as friendship the day after.

If you have a google account feel free to subscribe via the little bar to the right of your screen.  Thank you everyone, I hope that through the coming year I give you something worth reading!

Lots of Love,

Sean