Saturday, January 31, 2009

The land of coffee slurpers & phlegm hackers

Sometimes things just seem really backwards here...

Unacceptable and Impolite:
- blowing your nose in public
- walking and eating and/or drinking
- the noise made when your pee hits the water in the toilet... you should either use the button that creates the noise of a toilet flushing to cover up the noise... or just keep flushing the toilet until you are finished peeing.

Acceptable and Normal:
- sniffling profusely because it is rude to blow your nose
- slurping ... this includes noodles, coffee, and tea
- clearing phlegm from your throat by hacking loogies in public... this includes the sink in the staff room.



I don't think I'll EVER get used to the coffee slurping and the hacking up phlegm... so annoying and so gross. It just so happens that 4 days out of the week I sit directly next to coffee slurpers and 1 day out of the week I sit dangerously close to the sink in the staff room.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Snow!

It snowed here this weekend!





Friday night was a lot of fun. A few of us went to a Korean BBQ place for dinner in Onoda (the next town over). After that we went to Karaoke in Ube. Saturday I went to Sunpark Mall in Onoda with Meng and Patricia. We had dinner at the awesome okonomiyaki restaurant there.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Scratch that...

Forget CNN... I found a site:

http://www.webtvhub.com/watch-obama-inauguration-acceptance-speech/

Not cool.

I'm trying to watch the inauguration online... and I can't.

CNN.com Live is blocked in Japan - along with every other live feed.

WHY?

Not cool.

It's Official

Walking with my supervisor on the way to the 1st class of the day this morning:

supervisor: so have you decided if you're re-contracting yet?
me: yes, I've decided.
supervisor: ... so are you...
me: ... ... no ... ...

Signed the paper this morning. My contract ends July 27th... and then I'm not sure what I'll do after that... but I've got 6 months to figure it out.


Part of me feels kind of stupid (especially in times where the economy sucks) for giving up a guaranteed job that:

A. pays well- and it's completely, 100% tax free
B. has excellent benefits- basically 100% insurance coverage (only in Japan) plus a pension plan... and I'll get my pension when I'm done working in Japan
C. allows me plenty of vacation time to travel- 15 days plus holidays... and there are many holidays.

plus other benefits not listed above.


I don't have too much to complain about here:
My city is alright - not much to do here, though... and not many people my age.

I don't want to be a teacher. Yes, I wanted to come here and teach English for the experience... and overall I have enjoyed that experience - and everything else that comes along with living in a foreign country. I wanted to live in Japan for at least a year and that's what I'll have done by the end of my contract.


I like it here for the most part... but I don't see myself happy if I stay here for a second year... so I'm not going to. I'd like to start working towards a career and like I said above... teaching is not what I have in mind. Simple as that.

I'm excited for the next 6 months... and I'm excited to see what comes after that!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Life goes on... back in Japan.

Well, I've been back in Japan for about 2 weeks now. Going back to work and having nothing to do wasn't very fun, but once classes started things started getting back to normal.

This past Tuesday it snowed - hard. A small layer actually stuck to the ground, but by evening it was gone. When I saw that it was snowing, I decided I didn't really want to ride my bike to work - so I walked to the train station in order to catch a bus to my base school. I've never taken a bus before... but my supervisor told me there was a bus that ran from Ube station to the bottom of the hill to the school - he just didn't know what time. Alright, so I made my way to the station and got there around 7:40am (plenty of time). A bus pulled up around 7:45am and I asked the driver if this was the bus that went to the school. He just looked at me, smirked, and informed me that there was no bus that goes there. Awesome. So I just walked to work that day... it took about 35 minutes.

Wednesday night I decided to make spaghetti for dinner. Never try to cook spaghetti on a gas stove in a pot that is too small. Just don't even try it. Why? Because. Half of the pasta is in the water and the other half is sticking out... and while you wait for the pasta in the water to soften, the water will boil over, causing the flames of the gas stove to get really big... and then catch fire to the dry pasta that is not yet in the water. Yeah...

Thursday, I taught my last class to some of the 3rd year students at the technical school because they're graduating at the end of February and I won't have another class with them between now and then. I'd actually ran into one of the students on my way home from the commercial school on Wednesday. I have to go under the train station through this creepy, dirty tunnel and he was smoking with some guys on the steps to this tunnel. At first he was surprised to see me, and a little nervous because he was smoking, ha... but then he realized that there wasn't much I could do about him smoking, so we just chatted for a few minutes. He informed me that his last class with me was the next day because he was graduating. He didn't seem too excited to be graduating. From talking with him, I got that he was just going to start working some technical job in Ube... I don't really blame him for seeming bummed about graduating from high school. But it was a nice conversation.

Didn't do much this past weekend. Hung out with some friends Saturday night and watched a terrible movie called "Le Divorce"... don't watch it, it sucks. Today I went shopping in Kokura with Meng. I bought 2 scarves for pretty cheap and some ear muffs - all for my upcoming trip in February to a snow festival in Hokkaido.


Last weekend was a 3-day weekend because Monday was a national holiday for Coming of Age Day. I went to Osaka by way of a 9 hour overnight bus with Meng and we stayed in a capsule hotel. It was interesting. Basically, there are all these "capsules" - which are stacked on top of each other... and that's your "room." There's a tv and radio in every one! You have to go down the hall for the bathroom and showers. The showers are the typical Japanese public bathing type of thing.
We got to Osaka early Saturday morning, dropped our stuff off at the capsule hotel, then made our way to Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture. I'd been to Kobe before... back in 2003 when I stayed in Osaka for the summer. All I did then was go on a boat ride with my host parents... and it was basically a boat ride to nowhere. We decided to go on a boat ride in Kobe on Saturday... and it was seriously the same thing!... a boat ride to nowhere! After that we went to China Town in Kobe for awhile. We couldn't find it and this really nice man helped us. This man is the only reason I didn't completely hate Japanese people after that weekend because the rest of the weekend we seemed to encounter some pretty rude Japanese people... it was weird. For example, the waiter at a restaurant who refused to acknowledge that I was there and would only look at Meng, the Asian, ... even though she doesn't know Japanese... and I had to tell her the words to say or else the man would not have brought us water or taken our order. Why? Because western-looking people cannot and never will be able to speak any Japanese and no Japanese person will ever be able to understand any words that come out of their mouths even if it is perfectly fine Japanese. Just various encounters like that one. But anyway, China Town was cool. There were a lot of interesting things there - like bottles of alcohol with dead lizards in them! What is that?!?!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Sunday we checked out of our capsule hotel and made our way to Nara. I had been to Nara before as well... back in 2003. I remembered there were a lot of deer everywhere and a really BIG Buddha. This time around we saw a lot of deer and the really BIG Buddha. Nara is nice. The deer are REALLY aggressive though and they are everywhere. I thought it would be fun to buy some of the deer food and feed the deer... bad idea. Literally the INSTANT money was exchanged for deer food, I had at least 5 giant deer surrounding me, head butting me, and chewing on my coat. I had intended to buy the food to feed to the cute baby deer... but that did not happen. At one point I was running away from a mob of deer throwing the food in every direction trying to get them to leave me alone. It was a rather traumatic experience. If you go to Nara, you should try feeding the deer simply for the experience : ) I would've been really pissed if they ripped my coat from chewing on it... but they didn't... just ended up with a lot of deer slober on it.

After we made it past the deer, we finally made it to Todaiji Temple. This is a picture of Daibutsuden at Todai-ji Temple. It's the largest wooden building in the world and is a listed UNESCO world heritage site. This is where the GIANT Buddha sits with his GIANT friends. I tried to get people in the picture in order to show just how big this Buddha is...



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Home for the Holidays : )

I decided to go back to America over Christmas and New Year's. It was a really nice time and I'm glad I went. It was great to see my family, a few friends, and eat American food!

Some pictures from Christmas:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

It was a pretty long journey: I left my apartment Sunday afternoon (December 21) and took the local train to Fukuoka where I stayed the night in a hostel. The train stopped for some reason for about 40 minutes on the way there which turned the 2.5 hour long ride into over 3 hours. Monday morning I caught a plane from Fukuoka to Kansai International Airport. After that was the long 12 hour flight from Kansai International to Detroit. Let's just say there were a lot of babies on that flight, the plane was crappy and we didn't have our own screens, and I had a middle seat in the middle row. Upon arriving in Detroit Monday afternoon, we were informed that the temperature outside was 1 degree F (or -17C)! I've never traveled anywhere by plane over Christmas holidays, so this was my first time experiencing the "holiday rush" at the airport... and it didn't let me down. Immigration took forever, customs took forever - people were everywhere. Let me just say, too, that people are not very pleasant to be around after they've been on an airplane for 12+ hours. Just saying.

My 1pm flight from Detroit to Chicago was delayed about 5 hours. Yes, 5 hours. I think we sat on the ground - in the plane - longer than we were actually in the air. At one point we had to de-board the plane because there was some "security breach" (as they called it). Apparently nobody had checked the plane after maintenance... or something like that.

Since my flight was delayed 5 hours, I didn't make it into Chicago until after 6pm. I was supposed to catch a bus from Union Station at 6pm. Didn't happen. Luckily my friend Andrew had planned to pick me up from O'hare and drive me to Union Station - so he knew what was going on and offered to let me stay the night at his parent's house. So I stayed the night and spent my first night back in America watching the Bear's game with Andrew and his parents. It was actually pretty nice. I'm just glad I didn't have to spend the night in the airport.

My mom was nice and bought me a plane ticket that left first thing Tuesday morning from O'Hare to Indianapolis. That was the best choice ever because later that day there was a HUGE snow storm in Chicago that delayed HUNDREDS of flights and people were stranded at Union Station for 11 hours because no trains would run.

So I made it to Indianapolis Tuesday morning, finally.

All I have to say is that I'm never flying Northwest Airlines ever again.

Even though it took forever to get home - like I said to begin with - I'm still really glad I went. I'm missing out on my little sister's high school graduation in May and a family reunion in July... so I think being home for Christmas helps make up for some of the family things I'm missing out on in the coming year.


The journey back to Japan wasn't nearly as bad. My mom and my little sister drove me to Chicago and we had a little Chicago vacation the weekend before I had to come back. It was nice, but COLD!



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

My flight left early Monday morning (January 5th) and no flights were delayed (thank God). I flew from Chicago to Detroit, Detroit to Kansai International, and Kansai International to Fukuoka. The flight from Detroit to Kansai was way over booked and they offered me a FIRST CLASS seat if I'd take a flight that went from Detroit to Nagoya and then Nagoya to Fukuoka instead of the one I had... and I was all excited to take it... until I found out that it didn't arrive in Fukuoka until 50 minutes after my original flight. What's the problem with that? Well, with the time that my original flight got in, I was BARLEY making the last train back to Yamaguchi... and I would definetly not make it back in time if I got in 50 minutes later. So I opted out of a sweet first class seat from America to Japan in order to not get stuck in Fukuoka... because although the flight would've been 100 times better than my economy seat could ever be... it totally would've sucked to get stuck in Fukuoka for the night... and I had to be back to work the next day. But anyway. At least I got an aisle seat this time instead of the middle of the middle row.

So yeah, what I meant to say with this post is that it was good to be back in America and see my family and friends over the holidays.