Sukii-wa suki desu ka?

That means "Do you like skiing?" for those of you who don't happen to speak Japanese. Of course, I fall into that category as well, but for a few brief shining moments this weekend, I had many others fooled into believing I didn't.

It goes like this. A co-worker of mine, a young and very cool science teacher named Mishina-sensei, invited me to come on his annual ski trip. He said I could invite my girlfriend, so I did. She in turn invited reinforcements in the form of 2 of her friends. So bottom line, this poor guy got stuck with not 1 but 4 goofy foreigners on his nice little ski trip.

The ladies came out Friday night and I took them to Gandhis, which, as far as I can tell, is still the greatest Indian restaurant in the world, including those in India. Yes, they may be from Nepal, but true talents know no borders.

I cleaned up my flop-pad, because it's not every day a guy gets three reasonably attractive ladies staying at his place. It took me a few hours, but I finally got the place to a state where I wasn't embarassed to have a fellow human being inside it with me. The girls actually thought it was quite homey, which is in marked contrast to my brother's appraisal, which was something along the lines of "This place is depressing" and "I can see my breath when I sleep...that's not normal."

At the crack of 4, we awoke to the soothing sounds of cell phone alarms and got ourselves together just in time to be 5 minutes late to the 4:30 am departure time. Luckily, Mishina lives right below me so we didn't have far to go. Being Japanese people, they were completely ready to go and waiting only on us. "Uh, yeah, ohayo gozaimasu ("good morning"), sorry, sorry, ohayo gozaimasu...OK, Let's Go!"

We piled into Mishina's car and headed to the expressway, which is a bargain at only about $20 an hour. The ladies promptly fell asleep and I stoically remained awake to inspire Mishina to do the same. He was driving, so I felt this was not purely altruistic of me.

We chit-chatted for a while, and eventually he started quizzing me on my Japanese. He is my absolute favorite person to speak Japanese with, because his English is absolutely amazing, so he can explain things to me as he's talking. I always feel right at ease. With some other people, it's far more difficult, and those awkward pauses are AWKWARD pauses. But, no matter.

Our destination was Shiga-kogen in the famed Nagano prefecture. This resort is the biggest ski resort in Japan, and also the site of many of the 1998 Winter Olympic ski events. It was breathtaking in scope. After stopping for brekkie at about 6:30, we pulled into the resort at about 8:30. It was cold and snowy.

I look distinctly Nordic here.

Our hotel was pretty funny, because it was built right on top of volcanic hot springs, so it kind of smelled like someone had cracked open about 30,000 eggs in the lobby and every single room and just never cleaned them up. It took a bit of getting used to. The advantage of this nasty eggey smell was that it was only a short walk downstairs to a nice hot bath.


Hong's and my room. A view over the slopes:

The ladies were mostly trying snowboarding, which they had little to zero experience at, so Mishina pointed them to the bunniest of bunny slopes, and we men were off to the good stuff. With us was Taga-san, the extraordinarily nice man who works in the front office of our school. He is personally important to me as the man who loaned me his bicycle for 3 months when I first came to Japan, and didn't complain when I accidentally left it out in the rain about 10 times. He speaks slightly more English than I do Japanese, and he thought it was about the funniest thing he'd ever heard everytime I put more than 3 words together in a sentence, so we had a grand time communicating in our respective languages. Each wanting to learn the other's language, most of what he said was in English and most of what I said was in Japanese. It would have confused the hell out of anyone if they were paying attention. I'd be like, "Migi-gawa? (Turn Right) and he'd say "Yes, Right." It was great.

Taga and Mishina were both extremely talented skiiers, especially Mishina. I started the day off a bit rusty, but this was my fifth time skiing this season, and so my skills have improved a bit. The guys thought I was very impressive for just going down most runs straight instead of turning. I tried to explain that turning is very hard to me and I prefer to go straight and just ride out the bumps. They thought it was crazy. I taught them how to say "Big Balls" and so everytime we saw a slalom skiier flying down the mountain, Mishina would point and say "He has big balls." By the end of the day, I was feeling up to speed and pretty big balls myself and even trying out some moguls, which I could almost sort of halfway do. I had about one run where I felt like I'd gone down in a straight line. The other ones were crooked or full of crashes.

I think the best part was the camaraderie. We had a great time skiing and riding the lifts and talking. At first, I was a bit nervous to talk, but after a while I got more comfortable talking and saying stupid stuff in Japanese, so it got easier and easier as the day went on. Before this weekend, I was so nervous about communicating in another language. The whole weekend turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

After the day's skiing, we had a super-fancy high cuisine Japanese meal at the hotel. I enjoyed it for the most part, but of course there were a few items I definitely wished were not there. The four of us were at a table with 2 very nice and very quiet teachers from my school, so it made for polite but very restrained conversation. Darn it, though, everyone did valiently at trying to communicate. The one lady would try so hard to think of the English words she would get furrows in her brow. The pain of trying to be right.

After the fancy dinner, we men retired to our room to Drink, with a capital D. Mishina's father owns a liquor store, so he had brought a really good bottle of sake. We were sitting around drinking and watching the world championship of ski jumping. It was a little sedate. The two teachers joined us, and then the 3 Kuraaaazy ones came in, full of genki (energetic) energy. Hong loves card games with a strange intensity, and so resolved to teach the group how to play a card game. I personally love card games, but I'm far too lazy and simple-minded to actually learn any of them, so my contribution was sitting there sipping my beer and demanding that the girls speak more slowly.

While they were ironing out the rules of the games amongst themselves, they were naturally speaking quite fast. Our Japanese hosts couldn't follow whatsoever. I would look over at their horrified faces every few moments and say, "I can't understand either" in sympathy. To be honest, I was a little embarassed of the girls' energetic juggernaut into the social gathering, because it interrupted the rather quietish evening that had been going on prior to that point. But I think that they had a good spirit and that my colleagues enjoyed it in a bemused way. It was definitely something to talk about later, and 2 of them valiently dared to try playing cards with Hong and her friends, though they got the rules explained to them at slightly less than light speed. I was impressed with their will to participate.

After a comfy night's sleep, we skied another half-day, this one absolutely perfect. Perfect powder from the previous day, plus clear perfect blue skies. You couldn't ask for a better day of skiing. We headed home in the afternoon, satisfied.

Highlights from Tokyo

Hong and I had an exceptionally good time touring Tokyo this weekend with our friend Kay as well as our friend from UCLA, Reina, who is in Japan for a month touring. We stayed in the ritzy Roppongi district for free, courtesy of Kay's sister's boyfriend. We had, I think, my best time in Japan yet. I know that's saying a lot, considering the almost ludicrous good fortune I have to be able to do the things I do so often. But, somehow this weekend just came together like few others have, and I'm gonna put it down in my personal memory book as one of the best ever. Here are a selection of some of my best photos from the weekend.

I was big pimpin' as never before. It's good to be the king. The ratio: 2 Asian girls to 1 white dude (me), and this is BEFORE Reina came on board, bringing the total to 3-to-1. The Japanese people were scandalized.

My trusty companion, as always.

Our good friend, Miss Reina. She was in fact born in Japan, but you could have fooled me. I would have guessed Mars.


This is part of the Imperial Palace. Apparently, at one point in the '80s, this piece of real estate was rumoured to be worth more than California. That's a little hard to believe, but it's a hell of a nice bridge.



A goose:



He came up to us expecting food. Unfortunately, we had nothing for the poor guy. But how beautiful he was!



In the Imperial Palace East Garden, there were a few cherry blossom trees that were blooming. It's been an unseasonably warm winter, so a few trees have bloomed. It's unheard of in early February!



The model, posing with the sakura blossoms. Wonderful.



In another month or two, Japan will be covered with these beauties. I cannot wait.



It's hard not to be giddy around cherry blossoms.
























On our way to the Meiji shrine, we ran into this massive parade of shrine-carriers. We had completely forgotten that today was Japan's National Foundation Day. We got swept along with the crowd into the shrine and down the dusty path. It was wonderful, utter mayhem.



Some experimentation with light and color:



I think this actually gives a good impression of what it was like there:



A team effort.



One of the ringleaders of the shrines. These guys are important for morale and discipline. Those things are really heavy.



The shrines making their way to the main shrine at Meiji. What a sight.



The lion's head crosses the gate into the main sanctuary.



This was scary and fasctinating. I forget his name, but apparently he wards off evil spirits. He staggered around in a menacing way and generally looked pretty scary, but people still wanted to have their picture taken with him.



This man seemed to be his attendant, because he followed him around everywhere he went. What a face.



A beleagured shrine carrier continues to lift his heavy load.



A taiko drum group performed. They sounded so awesome and looked so cool, I want to join one now. This lady in particular had stunning poise and looked so joyful and skilled while she was playing. I was pretty captivated.




































































These ones are a little strange. Harajuku is famous for attracting off-beat types on the weekend who sit or strut around in "Cosu-Play" ("Costume Play"). Who knows why, but it's a great if strange show. These girls were doing all sorts of sultry and provocative poses, to the delight and discomfort of the crowd.
























A little nasty.



Hong and Kay went up and posed with them! Although their poses weren't quite as...provocative.



At night, we went up to the free observation tower at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. This is Shinjuku from the air. A beacon of light in a sea of darkness.



On the bus ride home, something unexpected happened. After the rest stop, I looked out the bus window and saw what looked like a big mountain. I hadn't seen any other mountains around, so I was confused. I couldn't even see the top. Then, it hit me. This is Mount Fuji! We were right next to it and I hadn't noticed. I can't tell you how surprised and excited I was. To see pictures of this my whole life and then to finally see it with my own eyes was quite an experience, even out of a bus window. It really is as dramatic as the pictures make it seem, and it absolutely dominates the landscape. What an incredible sight. I mean look at that conical shape. That is a really huge volcano right there. Incredible! This right here was my first view ever.



What seemed like at least an hour later, we came around the other side of it. This time it was even clearer.
























What a sight. I snapped this while the bus drove along the coast road. I don't think I'll get over this. It's just such an impressive sight.



This is but a smattering of the good fun we had this weekend. We took so many photos I wouldn't even know where to begin, so I'll just keep those memories to myself. But, I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the incredible things I saw, and I hope if you ever get the chance, you can see them too!

Jay

The Shopping Song from Hell

Test

This week I am doing a lesson about Shopping. Hey, it's "Conversational" English; I'm trying to make it useful. I thought that my lessons lately were starting to get a little dry, so I wanted to flash them up with some audiovisual flair. Enter the Internet. Somehow, through the awesome power that is YouTube, I bumbled across this quote/un-quote "Japanese Reggae" song about a very ugly but very blinged-out girl barging into a high school math class to teach them how to shop.

I played it for the kids today as a lesson warm-up, and, to my great surprise, they didn't know what the hell to make of it. I figured since it was in Japanese and at a high school and it was SHOPPING, they would be all over it, but I think bewilderment was the word today. I don't think they were looking for the same campy value that I saw in it. I think they watched it and wondered 1) Why the song sucks so badly and is so terribly annoying and 2) Why is this bonehead hijacking 2 minutes of our day to make us listen to it.

Oh well. I know at least some of the livelier kids got it. Gosh knows it made my day better, and in the end, that's all that really matters.

My Sexy Ride

It just occured to me that I have never posted a picture of my sweet ride, a '97 Mitsubishi Mirage. It's just like the Lancer, only significantly slower. The best part is that this baby only cost me $300 bucks. How, I don't know. I'm just gonna chock it up to tremendous good fortune and leave it at that. It has been my faithful companion for about 4,000 kilometers now, and you cannot deny its sexy appeal. I only wish I could take it home with me for its 32 miles to the gallon and dead sexy looks. All bow to the sexiness of the Mirage.

Foggy Time

Don't these remind you of those cool atmospheric Chinese landscape paintings? These are the houses outside my window on the foggiest morning I've yet seen here. I was pretty mesmerized by this.

Welcome to Class

Well, folks, I have been working my blonde behind off for the last couple weeks. You can officially strike those blog entries about "boredom" right off the record. You see, the Japanese school year ends in March, and begins in April, so we are in the home stretch here. As a result, I have been told to devise a way to distribute grades to these poor students in my classes. My solution was to give an interview test. More on that later.

Anyway, I've been working on planning and explaining and scheduling this test, and my days have been surprisingly full lately...of work. I've been staying till 5 and 6 regularly, which for an ALT like me is about the equivalent of midnight. It's been rough, but satisfying.

Luckily, today I had no classes and was free to chill out a bit and quietly prepare for next week's interview tests. I usually eat lunch by myself, but I was beginning to get a bit depressed by hanging out in the teachers' room too much. They are so serious-looking, it just gets to me after a while. I was due for a lunch with the kiddies.

So, I headed up to the 2E (2nd-year students, E class - the English track) class and opened the door carrying my lunch for the day, some yakisoba and pork from the local Suuupaaaa Maaakat. As always, all the kids dropped everything, stared at me, and uttered various versions of the words "Wow" and "Huh?". I think they were a bit surprised to have the foreigner English teacher dude in their classroom at lunch time.

No matter, though. It was great. I ate lunch, discussed some hard-hitting subjects like what they ate for lunch that day, and then, right as their next class was about to start, they begged me to stay. Seeing as how I had 0 classes for the rest of the day, I acquiesed. Luckily, the next class was my favorite: Ancient Chinese Classics.

The teacher of this particular class was the closest thing to a Cowboy the school had yet produced. He always walks around with excitingly unkept hair, a dirty smile on his face, and a style of walking that I can only describe as suggestive. He just looks like a bad-ass through and through. He was quite amused by my apparent desire to bore myself to tears for an hour straight, but he politely showed me which page we would be translating and gave me a copy so I could follow along. Seeing as how the Japanese kids could barely understand the stuff, I was understandably lost. So, I just amused myself for the hour by trying to pick out which Chinese characters I could recognize at all. Out of perhaps 90 on most pages, I knew about 10. Basic stuff like "Water" or "Tree" or "North" or "Delicate snow blossoms floating on an icy tarn." Stuff like that. That's not too bad, considering most of those characters I learned from osmosis and not from actual studying.

Eventually, the teacher asked me if I knew the word "Tao." I said I did, and then he asked how I knew it. I proceeded to explain that I knew it from "The Tao of Pooh." Needless to say, he wasn't impressed. I tried to defend myself by saying that I had never read it, but to no avail. I can just hear it now: "Those Americans study Chinese philosophy through Winnie the Pooh. What ignorant bastards!"

After that class, I somehow got roped into staying for "Writing" class. This one was taught by an actual English teacher whom I know, so she was a little surprised to find me in her class. I tried to pay attention while she dissected sentences like "You are the last person I expected to meet here" and "Every time my sister goes out, she buys something," but I was pretty well bored by this point. Every time she called on me to corroborate some grammatical point, I was taken by surprised and invariably offered the solution to a question three points back. It was magical.

After that, school was over, and I felt like I had really lived like a student for a few hours. I was almost keeling over from tiredness! Next time I see one of those poor guys sleeping in my class, I'll just let him sleep! Oh, to be a student...

Teachers and Posers

Last week, we had our second official Midterm Conference in Gifu City. This one differed from the previous one in one crucial aspect. Instead of being populated excluvisely with over-paid, under-worked, and under-dressed JET Program participants, it also included actual, legitimate Japanese Teachers of English, or JTE's, as they're affectionately known. Judging from my previous experience with the first conference, I had full confidence in this one sucking majorly, but to my utter amazement and sheer joy, it was rather pleasant. The inclusion of real Japanese teachers into the mix, our colleagues, gave the conference an air of politeness and gravitas that the previous one was....lacking. Let's just put it this way: I was 15 minutes late to the first one, and 30 minutes early to the second. Pretty much all you need to know.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the day, and definitely the most potentially nerve-wracking, was the part where they split us up into combined groups of foreign English teachers and Japanese English teachers and had us "discuss" our differences and opinions. Seeing as how most JETs view the Japanese system of English teaching as sheer madness, and most JTEs think ALTs squeeze in their English classes between their group orgies and their drunken parties, I thought this would be a 100% disaster. It was surprisingly polite and, dare I say, productive. There were some legitimate opinions exchanged, politely, and I thought there was a pretty good dialogue considering the rifts in culture and the awkwardness of being put in a circle and told to "discuss." "Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island; discuss." I, of course, added nothing, but sat and listened in bemusement until our 45 minutes mercifully ended. I would like to think that I neither improved nor made worse the outcome. Not bad, eh?

The best part of the trip was hanging out with my boss, whom I pretty much think is the greatest guy ever. Sure he forgets to tell me important stuff, and makes jokes about me in Japanese while I'm standing right there, but I got a kick out of seeing him see me interact with all my nutball foreign English teacher friends. It's like he realized I'm not actually as demure and polite as I pretend to be at school. Hope he doesn't tell the others!

Overall, conference = success. My gosh I've become a dork. I'm writing blog entries about CONFERENCES. Jeez...

Snowfall in Nakatsugawa town

This last week, right before Russell left, we had quite a snowfall in Nakatsugawa. Unfortunately, we missed the actual falling of snow, but the stuff was everywhere when we got back! I'm not used to having to pry my car doors open in the morning. It kinda sucks, I'm not gonna lie.

But the snow was still quite beautiful. It's kind of exciting to have snow right outside the windows and around the car. It adds an element of inclement to the environment that I'm not used to. Snow is certainly a lot nicer to look at than to walk around in with running shoes and to scrape off your car. Luckily, I have upgraded to an actual ice scraper (direct from Wisconsin, no less!) from my airline frequent flier card, which I had put to some use before.

When I sit here huddled up in my apartment with my little kerosene heater for warmth, I can't believe there's big hulking pieces of snow outside my window. It freaks me out! I can't believe that if I don't fill that thing up with kerosene and light it on fire, then I will freeze. What a feeling. I miss central heating.

When I arrived at school, there was a flurry of happy activity as teachers and students swept snow and played around in the new fall. It was a nice sight to see. Here is the fountain at the high school. The kids were making snowballs and trying to ricochet them off the frozen top of the fountain. Damn good idea, actually!






Luckily, it hasn't snowed again since then, so now there are just lonely-looking piles of snow sitting around looking forlorn. It has been nice and sunny, just the way I like it. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm gonna enjoy it while it does.

For those freezing their arses off in California, I symphathize. It's almost colder there than here at the moment, come to think of it. Be strong.

Journey Photos

Hello, dear readers! I spent this weekend doing very little at all, and after all that traveling, man it was good. I hope everyone else is similarly relaxed. Too dang cold outside to do much else. About my only achievement of the weekend, besides getting a cheap haircut, was tagging and uploading photos from Russell's and my recent trip around Japan. They are now posted at my Webshots page for your express enjoyment. The link is to the right, and the album title is Boyz in da Hood. I hope you enjoy the shots, but if they suck, do not hesitate to send hate mail.

Jayman

Strangers in a Strange Land, Part 1

This is Himeji Castle, the finest in Japan, and most noteworthy (to me) as the place where James Bondo-san landed in a goofy helicopter while filming "You Only Die Twice" or something or other in the '60s.

Well, Rusty's time in Japan has nearly drawn to a close, and after a marathon 3-day travel fest encompassing 4 cities, 4 bullet train rides, and thousands of years of history, we have spent all of Monday in a 10x10 foot area in Hong's apartment doing approximately nothing. The major accomplishment of the day was eating breakfast, which was American style. Mission accomplished.

Well, it's been a wild and crazy adventure here with my brother in Japan. I have to admit, the Boy did admirably, not complaining too much and generally eating things that were put in front of him. I made a small mistake on the last day by booking a $43 guided bus tour of some of Japan's oldest and most prestigious temples. Let's just say he might have preferred to spend the money on apple pies from McDonalds. 43 of them, to be exact.

Last week, we went up to Hakuba, high in the Japan Alps, and took in a truly fine day of skiing. We were booked for 2 nights in a very ragtag backpacker hostel, but after our day of skiing, we just hightailed it out of there to save a bit of money and avoid talking to any more backpackers from England. It was a wise choice.

Hakuba was truly beautiful, and truly freezing, and everything was covered in snow. In comparison, Nakatsugawa seemed almost balmy. We spent 2 days in my town, doing little and attempting to save money. I will post some photos from Rusty's day at my high school later.

Last Friday, we awoke very early in the morning (4:15 am), so Rusty could enroll in his classes at SDSU. Unfortunately, the California budget crisis seems to have hit too close to home or something: the computers got too overloaded and he wasn't able to enroll. We grabbed 2 more hours of crappy sleep then took off for the train station for our high-speed Bullet Train ride to Himeji, to see Himeji castle (the best in Japan, allegedly).

The train was fast and luxurious, and we lucked out and got a flawless English tour of the castle from a local volunteer. She only does 1 tour per week, and we were it. Kinda lazy, if you ask me. I have been to other Japanese castles before, and they were generally pretty crappy, boring reconstructions, but this one was original, beautiful, and fascinating. The 2 hours I had budgeted for it was hardly sufficient, and our poor guide wasted not a minute getting us to see the highlights. I felt bad for her, running quickly to escort these silly foreigners around the castle in 1 hour. I'm sure she thought we were sort of irreverant dumbasses, but she had a great smile and hid it well if she did!

After Himeji Castle, we hopped back on the Bullet Train for our 1-hour trip to Hiroshima. We were really starting to like riding this thing. It was so great, you just find your car, sit down and relax in the spacious awesomeness while Japan flies by your window at a million miles an hour. It sure beats the oh-so-slow local economy trains I always travel by and Rusty hates. I won't be able to justify this extravagance again for a while: my ticket from Gifu to Hiroshima was well above $100. It hurt to pay that much, let me tell you.

In Hiroshima, we went to see the bombing-related sites, which were quite sobering. In spite of the tragedy that this town has suffered, though, I think it is one of my favorite in Japan. It seems determined to be a great place. The streets have a lot of liveliness and the restaurants all look clean and polished and brand-new. The Boy and I had a good night on the town, first eating some crappy curry, and then Rusty found a weird little path lit by a few lanterns and thought it looked cool. It turned out to be a way-swanky restaurant, and so we sat down and I ordered the boy some Japanese sake. He thought it tasted remarkably like the swill they purchase at the frat for their "sake nights." Oh well, I tried.

The next day, we caught the early Bullet Train to Kyoto. We were off to see some of the great sites of ancient Japan. More on that later, as the Adventure continues.