Also, a temple
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
So much has happened since we last spoke.
I went to a mixer in Shibuya on a Saturday night. I met a whole bunch of people and had some great food.
Afterwards, I went to Yokohama and spent the night at a friend’s apartment. The next day I went to another all-you-can-eat restaurant. This one had more than just dessert, so I ate a-plenty.
After lunch we walked around Yokohama and saw a fire juggler!
Here are some random other pics from Yokohama:
I got a bug in my eye as I watched the third year middle school students graduate.
It was a nice ceremony and I am going to miss them all very much. :(
Mikey had his birthday party at a future space prison medical facility themed restaurant.
I was able to find a copy of "Willy Wonka and the Chocoalte Factory" (1971) which has Japanese subtitles.
I planned on showing the second year middle schoolers some clips from my favorite film but,
We had an earthquake.
On March 11th, there was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan at 2:47p.m.
It was in the teacher's room, at my desk when it started. Earthquakes are quite commonplace in Japan, so usually they just get ridden out, lasting only a few seconds, and people don't pay them much mind.
I began and I looked toward the nearest teacher to gauge his reaction.
"Oh, jishin da." (Oh, it's an earthquake.)
a few seconds later and it hasn't stopped, nay it has gotten stronger.
"Oh!" "Jishin da!"
"Oh!" "OH!"
I looked at some of the other teachers now, to gauge their reactions. I saw one get under a table and that was my cue. I got under a sturdy table in the kitchen area and just about pooped my pants. The teacher's room is on the second floor of a three story building. I began to think about my own death. If the building gave way, the second floor would collapse onto the first with the third falling onto everything.
The cupboard opened and the plates and cups poured out, breaking on the floor. The refrigerator opened and the milk spilled. The coffee machine hopped off the counter and crashed to the ground. All around me things were falling as the floor seemed to undulate. This was a scary ride and I wanted off.
When the shaking subsided I crawled out from under the desk and made my way down stairs and outside. One third of the children weren't at school because they had graduated a few days prior. The remaining students were, for some reason, split in to two groups: those who were already outside, cowering in the dirt field designated as the earthquake evacuation area and those who were still inside their classrooms, waving to me as I walked to the field. This struck me as odd.
When I got to the field many kids were crying, some were in shock, but mostly they were sitting in their rows being well behaved, considering the events which just transpired.
Shortly after the rest of the students joined us on the field there was a rather large aftershock. This created more fear in the already scared student population.
More aftershocks followed quickly but with less severity. All in all we had over 200 aftershocks in the next two days, with over 700 happening in the two weeks since.
There is a medical condition which exists called "earthquake vertigo". This is the feeling of being in an earthquake while one is not occurring. I have this now. I believe it will go away eventually, but it is a pain in the butt to constantly feel like the earth is rocking and swaying and not being able to tell if it actually is or if it's all in my head (inner ear, to be specific).
The ALTs in my area banded together and we all stayed at my apartment for the next few weeks. We would watch TV all day to try and figure out what was going on in our world. The tsunami, the power plant, the aftershocks, the search and rescue; we struggled at first but we soon learned a whole new set of kanji solely relating to disasters.
One of the guys didn't have power at his apartment so he stayed with me. One of the girls didn't have water at her apartment so she came over and showered. The two guys who lived closest to me brought over some chairs and other goods so we could all have things to keep us occupied during the day. We created some strong bonds through this tragedy and we had a lot of fun otherwise.
One day, we went to a park nearby to play and have a picnic. We wanted to enjoy the outdoors since we had been cooped up for the past few days and might have to be inside for a while longer, if the power plant got worse.
The world media did a fantastic job of creating fear in the hearts of our loved ones overseas. The situation was dire for sure in the areas closest to the ocean near the epicenter and eventually the power plant, but the rest of Japan was essentially fine. This earthquake was big, bigger than the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, but Japan is built for earthquakes. Tokyo city proper suffered almost no damage to the buildings. Osaka, in the south, barely felt anything; yet the media made it seem as though the whole country was teetering on the edge of a chasm, poised to fall into the sea and be swallowed up.
I had been opposed to Twitter. I didn't see the value in reading about the pointless mind dumps celebrities were sharing with the world. I certainly didn't add to the world's cultural demise with my own meaningless spoutings whenever I fancied a little ego-masturbation. Can I really convey a nugget of wisdom in 140 characters that the world will be better off after having read it? I may be slightly narcissistic (who doesn't have a little bit in them?), but I'm certain my musings are of no consequence to anyone but me.
Having said that, I did get a Twitter account shortly after the earthquake in order to follow the news more closely. BBC World and Timeout Tokyo were my main sources of news, until about a week ago. BBC World stopped covering the earthquake in Japan and began focusing on Libya, rugby, and other world events. I began to follow a reporter for Voice Of America, who is based in Seoul, South Korea. He has a very even handed approach to providing the facts and keeping us all informed. He updates almost around the clock.
As things started to settle down in this country, the rest of the world was still on edge over the radiation leakage at the plant. I decided to travel to Osaka to ease the tensions and fears back home.
It was a lovely 3 hour train Shinkansen ride and I stayed at an unbearably cheap hostel for four days. This place was $15 a night, so you definitely got what you paid for. The room was shared which was to be expected, but the bathroom was atrocious! The toilet was a squatter but it had a plastic seat set on top of it to make it a western style. The seat wasn't secured so it had a tendency to move a little. Since the toilet room was designed with the squatter in mind, the new seat was facing the opposite way from which the room was. This means you would sit down and you had about 5 inches between you and the wall you were now facing. This is too close. There was never any toilet paper. The toilets in Japan have a faucet which runs while you flush. It fills the tank with water for the next flush. This faucet is usually used to wash one's hands after using the loo. Yes, there is never any soap. Yes, there are also no towels. The faucet on this toilet was non-functioning, having been bypassed for some reason. The tank still filled but you couldn't wash your hands.
"No problem, I'll just use the sink in the foyer" thinks I.
Negative, ghostwriter. This sink doesn't emit water when it's single faucet handle is properly maneuvered. This is a good thing, strangely enough, since the basin isn't connected to any piping down below. You can see the floor if you look down into the sink. All of this is probably due to the fact that the sink is quite literally falling off the wall.
I had to lean into the shower every time I wanted to wash my hands. Please keep in mind, there was still no soap or towels. In Japan, there aren't usually towels at the restrooms in public, and there is only slightly a good chance of having a soap dispenser. Most everyone has a little hand towel they bring with them and they use that. Soap? I don't know why they don't have soap.
The guy I shared my room with liked to keep the climate in the room comparable to that of the deepest, darkest jungle in Africa. This made sense, since he was from Romania. He had a lower bunk while I had the upper bunk, right by the heater. The windows were always closed and the heater ran 24/7. Mostly this didn't bother me, since I was hardly in my room.
Yes, I spent every night in Osaka out in gay bars all night long. The friends I met up with are gay and they found these great bars to hang out in. We stayed out from 8pm til 7am the next morning every night. It was a blast! I met up with a friend of one of my friends from the San Francisco band Music For Animals. This girl had studied in SF and now lives back in Osaka. She had a lot of fun hanging out with us, I suppose, because she was keen to join us every night. Bars, karaoke, and a visit to the sentou kept me occupied and kept my mind at ease about the northern part of the nation and the disaster which was still being dealt with. It also helped my mother sleep a little better (definitely better than I was sleeping!).
I returned from Osaka and began to help my friends move away. All my friends had acquired jobs in different cities so they all needed to move before the start of the new school year.
Before we all split up, we went out to dinner and dancing!
I then had a week of training in Tokyo with my new company. I changed companies in order to stay teaching at the same schools I had been. This new company is really nice: they paid for my transportation to and from the training and they put me up in a hotel near the training site for the week. This was awesome! I had so much fun learning more about teaching and also meeting many new friends. We went out to eat every night and we found some cool bars to hang out in. We had a couple low key room parties as well, forming some bonds and havin' fun!
On the Saturday after training, Yuki and I went to Odaiba to visit the Takoyaki museum!
Here are some random pictures:
It seems this blog has run out of media space. I am unable to upload any more pictures unless I buy more storage space. I am looking in to other options.
Please standby.
 |
| Beard Papa's! |
Afterwards, I went to Yokohama and spent the night at a friend’s apartment. The next day I went to another all-you-can-eat restaurant. This one had more than just dessert, so I ate a-plenty.
 |
| Shu mai and gyoza dipped in chocolate. The gyoza was meh, but the shu mai is gooooood! |
After lunch we walked around Yokohama and saw a fire juggler!
Here are some random other pics from Yokohama:
 |
| I always thought Mommy's helper was a bottle of gin... Turns out, it's a robot seat. |
 |
| Hula hooping that-a-way |
I got a bug in my eye as I watched the third year middle school students graduate.
 |
| The school seal |
It was a nice ceremony and I am going to miss them all very much. :(
Mikey had his birthday party at a future space prison medical facility themed restaurant.
 |
| Russian Roulette. Two of these are full of wasabi. |
I was able to find a copy of "Willy Wonka and the Chocoalte Factory" (1971) which has Japanese subtitles.
I planned on showing the second year middle schoolers some clips from my favorite film but,
We had an earthquake.
On March 11th, there was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan at 2:47p.m.
It was in the teacher's room, at my desk when it started. Earthquakes are quite commonplace in Japan, so usually they just get ridden out, lasting only a few seconds, and people don't pay them much mind.
I began and I looked toward the nearest teacher to gauge his reaction.
"Oh, jishin da." (Oh, it's an earthquake.)
a few seconds later and it hasn't stopped, nay it has gotten stronger.
"Oh!" "Jishin da!"
"Oh!" "OH!"
I looked at some of the other teachers now, to gauge their reactions. I saw one get under a table and that was my cue. I got under a sturdy table in the kitchen area and just about pooped my pants. The teacher's room is on the second floor of a three story building. I began to think about my own death. If the building gave way, the second floor would collapse onto the first with the third falling onto everything.
The cupboard opened and the plates and cups poured out, breaking on the floor. The refrigerator opened and the milk spilled. The coffee machine hopped off the counter and crashed to the ground. All around me things were falling as the floor seemed to undulate. This was a scary ride and I wanted off.
When the shaking subsided I crawled out from under the desk and made my way down stairs and outside. One third of the children weren't at school because they had graduated a few days prior. The remaining students were, for some reason, split in to two groups: those who were already outside, cowering in the dirt field designated as the earthquake evacuation area and those who were still inside their classrooms, waving to me as I walked to the field. This struck me as odd.
When I got to the field many kids were crying, some were in shock, but mostly they were sitting in their rows being well behaved, considering the events which just transpired.
Shortly after the rest of the students joined us on the field there was a rather large aftershock. This created more fear in the already scared student population.
More aftershocks followed quickly but with less severity. All in all we had over 200 aftershocks in the next two days, with over 700 happening in the two weeks since.
There is a medical condition which exists called "earthquake vertigo". This is the feeling of being in an earthquake while one is not occurring. I have this now. I believe it will go away eventually, but it is a pain in the butt to constantly feel like the earth is rocking and swaying and not being able to tell if it actually is or if it's all in my head (inner ear, to be specific).
The ALTs in my area banded together and we all stayed at my apartment for the next few weeks. We would watch TV all day to try and figure out what was going on in our world. The tsunami, the power plant, the aftershocks, the search and rescue; we struggled at first but we soon learned a whole new set of kanji solely relating to disasters.
One of the guys didn't have power at his apartment so he stayed with me. One of the girls didn't have water at her apartment so she came over and showered. The two guys who lived closest to me brought over some chairs and other goods so we could all have things to keep us occupied during the day. We created some strong bonds through this tragedy and we had a lot of fun otherwise.
 |
| Colonel Sanders-san gives us a report on the damage. |
 |
| Steven getting tea-bagged |
One day, we went to a park nearby to play and have a picnic. We wanted to enjoy the outdoors since we had been cooped up for the past few days and might have to be inside for a while longer, if the power plant got worse.
The world media did a fantastic job of creating fear in the hearts of our loved ones overseas. The situation was dire for sure in the areas closest to the ocean near the epicenter and eventually the power plant, but the rest of Japan was essentially fine. This earthquake was big, bigger than the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, but Japan is built for earthquakes. Tokyo city proper suffered almost no damage to the buildings. Osaka, in the south, barely felt anything; yet the media made it seem as though the whole country was teetering on the edge of a chasm, poised to fall into the sea and be swallowed up.
I had been opposed to Twitter. I didn't see the value in reading about the pointless mind dumps celebrities were sharing with the world. I certainly didn't add to the world's cultural demise with my own meaningless spoutings whenever I fancied a little ego-masturbation. Can I really convey a nugget of wisdom in 140 characters that the world will be better off after having read it? I may be slightly narcissistic (who doesn't have a little bit in them?), but I'm certain my musings are of no consequence to anyone but me.
Having said that, I did get a Twitter account shortly after the earthquake in order to follow the news more closely. BBC World and Timeout Tokyo were my main sources of news, until about a week ago. BBC World stopped covering the earthquake in Japan and began focusing on Libya, rugby, and other world events. I began to follow a reporter for Voice Of America, who is based in Seoul, South Korea. He has a very even handed approach to providing the facts and keeping us all informed. He updates almost around the clock.
As things started to settle down in this country, the rest of the world was still on edge over the radiation leakage at the plant. I decided to travel to Osaka to ease the tensions and fears back home.
It was a lovely 3 hour train Shinkansen ride and I stayed at an unbearably cheap hostel for four days. This place was $15 a night, so you definitely got what you paid for. The room was shared which was to be expected, but the bathroom was atrocious! The toilet was a squatter but it had a plastic seat set on top of it to make it a western style. The seat wasn't secured so it had a tendency to move a little. Since the toilet room was designed with the squatter in mind, the new seat was facing the opposite way from which the room was. This means you would sit down and you had about 5 inches between you and the wall you were now facing. This is too close. There was never any toilet paper. The toilets in Japan have a faucet which runs while you flush. It fills the tank with water for the next flush. This faucet is usually used to wash one's hands after using the loo. Yes, there is never any soap. Yes, there are also no towels. The faucet on this toilet was non-functioning, having been bypassed for some reason. The tank still filled but you couldn't wash your hands.
"No problem, I'll just use the sink in the foyer" thinks I.
Negative, ghostwriter. This sink doesn't emit water when it's single faucet handle is properly maneuvered. This is a good thing, strangely enough, since the basin isn't connected to any piping down below. You can see the floor if you look down into the sink. All of this is probably due to the fact that the sink is quite literally falling off the wall.
I had to lean into the shower every time I wanted to wash my hands. Please keep in mind, there was still no soap or towels. In Japan, there aren't usually towels at the restrooms in public, and there is only slightly a good chance of having a soap dispenser. Most everyone has a little hand towel they bring with them and they use that. Soap? I don't know why they don't have soap.
The guy I shared my room with liked to keep the climate in the room comparable to that of the deepest, darkest jungle in Africa. This made sense, since he was from Romania. He had a lower bunk while I had the upper bunk, right by the heater. The windows were always closed and the heater ran 24/7. Mostly this didn't bother me, since I was hardly in my room.
Yes, I spent every night in Osaka out in gay bars all night long. The friends I met up with are gay and they found these great bars to hang out in. We stayed out from 8pm til 7am the next morning every night. It was a blast! I met up with a friend of one of my friends from the San Francisco band Music For Animals. This girl had studied in SF and now lives back in Osaka. She had a lot of fun hanging out with us, I suppose, because she was keen to join us every night. Bars, karaoke, and a visit to the sentou kept me occupied and kept my mind at ease about the northern part of the nation and the disaster which was still being dealt with. It also helped my mother sleep a little better (definitely better than I was sleeping!).
 |
| Chihiro and some guy with fantastic norks! |
 |
| Chihiro gave me cakes! |
 |
| Tomato |
 |
| Green tea |
 |
| Mint |
I returned from Osaka and began to help my friends move away. All my friends had acquired jobs in different cities so they all needed to move before the start of the new school year.
Before we all split up, we went out to dinner and dancing!
 |
| Shibuya sans most lights |
 |
| Coconut juice |
I then had a week of training in Tokyo with my new company. I changed companies in order to stay teaching at the same schools I had been. This new company is really nice: they paid for my transportation to and from the training and they put me up in a hotel near the training site for the week. This was awesome! I had so much fun learning more about teaching and also meeting many new friends. We went out to eat every night and we found some cool bars to hang out in. We had a couple low key room parties as well, forming some bonds and havin' fun!
 |
| My new pillows! Only $10 each! |
 |
| Tokyo dome! |
 |
| Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima style |
Here are some random pictures:
 |
| Everybody on their phones |
 |
| Accidentally ate my naan into the shape of India |
 |
| Crab girl got her hands back! |
 |
| Party supplies: check! |
 |
| "We're number 2!" |
 |
| Can't imagine this tastes good |
 |
| All the members of the fam |
 |
| The flowers were for Anthony |
 |
| The earthquake shook the mud from walls |
 |
| Fried Flowers |
 |
| Thought it was a restaurant. It's a hair place. |
 |
| New bed! |
 |
| Lismo! |
It seems this blog has run out of media space. I am unable to upload any more pictures unless I buy more storage space. I am looking in to other options.
Please standby.
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