A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I’m reading a book right now called Norwegian Wood. It’s a book written by a Japanese author named Haruki Murakami. A Japanese teacher at my school recommended it to me. I’m really enjoying it so far. It takes place during the 60’s in Tokyo and Kyoto, and involves a Holden Caulfield-type character and his relationship with his dead friend’s girlfriend.

One of the characters in the book mentions that her mother was originally from Fukushima. Normally, my eyes would have skimmed past this word, “Fukushima,” quite quickly. It would have registered as a place in Japan, maybe in the North, maybe to the South; it could have been big, or small, but mostly, it would have only been a place that I knew was quite removed from the story and quite anecdotal. I probably would have forgotten later on that this place was even mentioned.

Having lived in Fukushima for four months now, this word is not just a word anymore. It is a place with many people that I know; it is also a place where I ride my bike to school, where I’ve memorized bus and train schedules, where I walk into the supermarket to buy tofu for breakfast, where I put my garbage out, where I brush my teeth, where I keep my underwear. It is where, every once in a while, I’ll stop at in the middle of a bridge, or beside a river, or by a window, and say, “this is where I live.”

Seeing this word on a page from this book, for me, it builds a part of the story – both inside the covers and outside of them.

I used a well-known cliché as the title for this post. I also included a photo of the word “Fukushima,” as it appears in the novel. I like the idea of blurring the boundaries between text and image. Despite being a photo of a word, does it still carry within it a thousand others? For me, there are probably more; this photo brings more to my mind right now than any other photo that I’ve taken in Fukushima.

Iwaki Halloween

Here are some photos from our Halloween party a few weeks ago. A lot of them are shot with a similar style to the Shine River Rave. I tried to make them as chaotic as possible. I think some turned out alright.

On the Inside Looking In

I spent most of yesterday and today at a teaching conference in Fukushima City. There was definitely a different vibe to this event when compared to the last orientation conference we had in the first half of August. I think what set this observation off for me was a new ALT who had just arrived from Boston one month ago.

Most of us are all fairly settled into our new lives, nothing really freaking us out. If anything, we needed a break from work and a chance to be around other foreigners (yeah, i'm a foreigner -- i am part of a very small fraction of the population of Japan). People's hair is getting longer, and we seem to be wearing more clothes because of the weather. Where everyone would select the "Japanese" menu options in August, more and more people seem to be taking the "Western" style meals. We take less pictures, and we've formed cliques based on our different regions. We're not just wide-eyed tourists anymore; we've got lots to share, brag, and complain about. We're all still excited, but also just a bit jaded in our love for Japan. It's easy to tell who's been here even longer than us because these people don't even bother to wear suits anymore.

Contrast this with our new ALT: he's all smiles and looking to make friends with anybody. Everything is new and awesome for him. He wants nothing but to share and to be shared upon. As another ALT mentioned, "he's got Tokyo orientation written all over him." There's nothing bad about this, but he's still got that glow. In a sense, he's a celebrity among us. He's new and ready to be taken care of. We've all gone through almost 4 months of JET -- many more have had several years. We know how challenging it can be to leave one's home (in my case, for the first time) and we know how important we are to each other to make this our new home for the time being.

As for people taking care of us, I feel a bit sorry for all of the Japanese English Teachers who decided to attend this very ALT-centered event. Not only did it seem, at times, like it was a place for us to vent frustrations about our work as ALTs (which often had a lot to do with our relations with teachers), but the presentations were exclusively in English and usually spoken quite fast. The presenters even directed their points to “us” and “we” in ways that were clearly intended to refer exclusively to ALTs. I found it ironic that we all sat on our side of the auditorium and complained about being misunderstood and ignored while our JLTs sat on the other side politely trying to keep up with the dialogues happening in the room.

It’s been very busy at my school over the last few weeks and it’s been difficult to get much face-time with the teachers that I work closely with. The teacher who escorted me to the conference, said that he’s been getting only about 4 or 5 hours sleep each night. When I apologetically told him that I had signed up to go out with several ALTs for the evening, he said that was fine because he was looking forward to getting good nights sleep in the hotel. He also drove for about an hour into Iwaki to pick me up at 7am, so that we could drive two hours to the conference in Fukushima – and he bought me a coffee at a rest stop. I have to admit that I’ve felt a bit neglected in the past couple of weeks, but this is more due to the nature of our business. But really, I don’t need to be babysat – I probably wouldn’t like it if I was. I’m glad I was able to spend this time with my JTE because it reminded me to appreciate the extent to which these people have taken care of us.

Here’s to taking care of each other.

Coveted Barbeque Sauce

The other day, my friend mentioned that of all the foods he missed the most, he really missed being able to eat a good sandwich. I told him that I used to eat a lot of sandwiches back home, but oddly enough, I didn’t really miss them. The next day, I really wanted a sandwich.

Sandwiches are available here in Japan, but usually only in convenience stores. I haven’t tried one yet, and I don’t really plan on it.

I mentioned that I used to eat a lot of sandwiches. I wouldn’t say that I was a sandwich expert, but I’ve always been pretty good at putting stuff between two pieces of bread. This is not as easy as it sounds. I’ve learned over the years that there is a certain skill to piecing everything together, folding, cutting, and of course balancing ingredients. Anyone who knows me well, has probably been able to smell peanut butter and jam on my breath at some point. I’ve actually been eating a lot of peanut butter and jam sandwiches here in Japan (you just can’t beat them as a mid-morning snack), but I really miss a proper sandwich with a little meat and vegetables.

Two days ago I decided that I was going to make chicken sandwiches with barbecue sauce. Condiments are a bit lacking here in Japan. Things like mustard, relish, and barbecue sauce are a bit difficult to come by. I managed to find everything except for barbeque sauce. I looked in a couple of places, and I began to think that maybe it wasn’t a good sandwich that I missed, but some tasty barbeque sauce.

Alas, when life gives you lemons… I decided to make barbeque sauce. With a quick search on google, a found several recipes for barbeque sauces. I learned about different bases, flavours, and uses for barbeque sauce.

My sauce was a ketchup base (I used ketchup instead of tomato sauce because it lasts longer in the fridge). I was missing a lot of the typical ingredients used – Worchester sauce, olive oil, white vinegar, but I did have Japanese counterparts: soy sauce, Japanese cooking oil, and rice wine vinegar. I also added a dash of whiskey and some lemon – to tie everything together.

The sandwiches and the barbeque sauce – maybe because of the barbeque sauce turned out great. With a bit of mayonnaise, vegetables, and toasted bread, I don’t know if I’ve eaten anything that tasted so much like home.

A few people are coming over for dinner and a movie tonight – among them the friend that misses sandwiches. I thought I’d give my sandwiches a second go to see what he thinks of them. I also made some fish soup – something I haven’t done since my old restaurant days.

***


I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but people started arriving, so I didn’t have time. The sandwiches were a big hit with everybody and the soup was good too – although there were a ton of fish scales that required a bit of careful eating.

Movies we watched: Big Trouble in Little China and Little Miss Sunshine. Both were amazing; both I’ve seen before; and both I will see again sometime.

The photo is one more from my day at setogaro.

What to do with myself

Work has been ridiculously slow over the last couple of weeks due to illness and exams. Because of the H1N1 virus, any classroom that has 10% of its students away due to illness, is to be closed. Each class has 40 students in it, so if 5 students are away, the class is shut down and a team of teachers arrive with masks and bottles of antiseptic to sterilize the room (actually, I don’t know if this last part is always the case, but I know that it definitely happened at least once).

Now, each grade level has 8 classrooms and occupies one floor of the school. If any one grade has 2 classrooms closed, the entire grade is suspended. If 2 of the 3 grades in the school are closed, the entire school will close. In such a case, teachers (and ALTs) are still required to come to work.

For the first half of last week, my first year students were all sent home because a couple of classrooms had been suspended. There were a couple of days where the second grade had one classroom closed and another two classes with 4 students away in each; we were one student away from closing the entire school. But the first years got better, returned to class, and it wasn’t until the next day that they closed the second year classrooms. I think they will be back at school tomorrow.

I should really get some photos of the masks that many people in Japan where – and that many are required to where. Since people have been wearing them ever since I arrived in the country, I can’t imagine what Japan would be like without them. I wonder if there are many people wearing these masks at home?

Anyway, my first year students have been writing exams all week, and I’m at a different school tomorrow, so I won’t be giving any classes until Friday. I wish that I could say that I’ve been learning lots of Japanese in the meantime, but my studying has been a bit slow-going over the last week – possibly due to too much kerosene in the air.

I thought that I would put up a few more photos from our adventure into Setogaro on the weekend.

Setogaro

A friend took me out to a place called Setogaro on Sunday. The place is two train stops away and seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere – yet it’s still part of Iwaki. The park there would take several hours to walk through, so we only ventured in about a half hour; that’s approximately the distance we traveled in camera time – we were actually in the park for almost three hours.

Anyway, the place is beautiful. We had two days of rain, so the water was clear and the waterfalls were in good form. The autumn leaves made for some great nature shots. I took a ton of photos of running water, but my two favorites are of these two small streams trickling into the main river. I’m thinking of going back next weekend as well if I’m not too busy.

The Hunter

The nights have been a bit chilly lately, but the skies have been very clear. On my way home from a buddy’s place, The stars were brighter than I’ve seen them for a while. Despite it being late, I had to try to get a few images. I’ve never taken photos of stars before – I always thought that it would be very difficult. I’ve read a bit about astrological photography; aside from the expensive glass, the pros use cameras with built-in cooling systems to minimize any heat vibrations. They also mount their cameras to tripods specially aligned to the earth’s axis and that have mechanisms that can be automated to compensate for the Earth’s rotation by minutely turning the camera. These photographers can expose for whole nebulas and star clusters that are barely visible to the human eye.

With my camera setup, I’ll settle for this exposure of Orion. It’s a 10 second exposure at 4.5 aperture and 800 ISO. Already there is some motion blur in the image, but the overall shape is there and even the colours of the stars are visible.

Aside from the iconic belt that is made up of three stars, the constellation features Betelgeuse, which is a red giant and said to be the 12th brightest star in the sky and is located at Orion’s right shoulder (it’s the reddish star in the centre near the top of the image). It is reaching the end of its life and when it explodes, it will be visible even during the daytime.

Rigel is another prominent star in the constellation and forms the left foot of Orion (it’s near the centre at the bottom of the image). Rigel is the 6th brightest star in the sky.

Even though Orion is probably the most iconic of constellations in the sky, I can’t say that it’s my favorite. Yet, seeing it in the sky here in Japan is comforting. For me, Orion reminds me of coming home from band practice on Monday or Thursday nights with my dad and my brother. I’d either be carrying my saxophone or my trombone, after stepping out of the van and walking up the front steps to the house. Maybe it was while I was walking up the steps that I’d look up and see the Big Dipper and realize that the stars were out, or maybe it was while we were standing at the top of the stairs waiting for my dad to unlock the front door that I would turn around and see Orion standing to the south overtop of the house across the street. Whatever the reason, the image even smells like autumn band practices.

It's all fun and games until this places goes nuclear...

This is a photo that I took inside of a nuclear power plant training facility, which is located on the same grounds as an actual nuclear power plant. I went for a bus tour with the International Association, an organization that puts together various events geared towards internationalization. The tour involved a one-hour bus-ride north of Iwaki, where several nuclear power plants that power much of the country are located. The tour itself was very brief. We got to drive around some of the grounds, which are apparently about the size of Tokyo Disneyland. We didn’t actually get to go into one of the buildings housing nuclear reactors, but we were allowed into the training facility, which is designed as a replica of the real thing. We also got to go into a tourist centre that had information on the nuclear facility.

Afterwards, we went for a massive barbeque where the group of about 100 of us gathered at a summer-camp getaway under a giant roof, split up into teams of 7, and grilled various meats, seafoods, vegetables, and noodles.

The day was a bit rough because I had to get up at about 7 in the morning after playing Monopoly until 3 in the morning the night before. “Guess what I found in my apartment the other day,” someone said. We were all pretty excited about the game at first. I even learned that the boards are different in Australia; they don’t have Boardwalk and Park Place – they have other names that sound very unnatural for a game that I’ve played for about as long as I’ve been alive. In the end, nobody really won and we called it a night. I’m still a bit bitter that I didn’t win. I only had Mediterranean and Baltic Avenue, but I also managed to negotiate infinite immunity on every player’s properties. There was no way that I could lose. Yet, I paid hard the next day.

The woman in the photo is Ella. She is a Filipino woman who married a Japanese man and has been living in Japan for the last 5 years. The boy that she is chasing is her son, who I think is 3 years old. There is some concern about his speech development. He has been to a doctor because he has not shown much language development. He may be just a late bloomer, but within the next few months or so, we’ll have a better idea if some special treatment or care is necessary. One reason his language may not be developing very well is that three languages are spoken in the house: Japanese, English, and Tagalog. I can’t remember the context for speaking English – Ella speaks very good English, but her husband speaks mainly Japanese, and when Ella speaks to her friends or family, it’s always in Tagalog.

From the time that I spent with these two on the tour, it was my impression that the kid could be a handful. Most of the conversation I had with Ella was shared with the duty of making sure the boy didn’t throw himself down a flight of stairs, where, in between attempts, he could cry and scream – this was despite my various attempts to make monkey faces and googly eyes with my Gaijin face, which usually goes over well with the younger crowds – heck, who doesn’t like monkey faces and googley eyes?

Cold

It got very cold in Iwaki a few days ago – colder than I thought it would get, or at least quicker than I expected. This cold is not something that I am used to. I can’t tell if it’s because I wasn’t prepared for it, or if it is because this cold is a different one than what I’m used to. I can’t see my breath, and there is very little wind – the sun is even still out much of the time. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the proper clothes. Somehow, the cold goes deep and from the advice of someone who’s been through it all, I prepared to never be fully warm again for the coming months.
Part of the reason that I am so cold can be attributed to the Japanese attentiveness to heating – or lack thereof. Few apartments/buildings have central heating. Instead, they rely on individual heating units. In my apartment, there are three forms of heat. One is an electric base heater that plugs into the wall. It was 3 settings: top element, bottom element, and both elements. It doesn’t have a fan, so the heat has no way of circulating and it is my understanding that electric heat is expensive to run. I use it in the morning or at night when I want to add a quick burst of heat to a particular area that I know I will be for a while.
I also have an air-conditioning unit, which conditions the air to be warm as well as cold. This unit has various temperature control settings and also features a fan that distributes the air in the room. It also has a timer – although I haven’t figured it out how to use it yet. Unfortunately, this unit is also located near the ceiling of my apartment and the heat doesn’t always reach the floor. I often find myself feeling cold sitting on the couch only to stand up into the warm half of the room. It is also electric and can be costly if used too much.
Finally, I have a kerosene heater. This, by far, seems to be the most effective and cost effective means for heating my apartment. Unfortunately, after firing it up for a few minutes last night, I learned that the fumes it emits are not pleasant. I am not sure if this is something that merely needs getting used to. Many people in Japan use kerosene heating and after reading a few websites, it seems to be safe as long as the window is open a small amount. It is recommended that the unit not be left on unattended – i.e. when sleeping. There was only one teacher who I talked to today who said that she wouldn’t use kerosene because the fumes gave her a headache; but she said that she often forgot, or neglected to open a window.
At school, I also have an air conditioning/heating unit in my office, but will not be activated until December 1st. Apparently, this is the day when it officially gets cold every year. When the teacher who I share the office with stepped into the room and saw me huddled at my desk with three shirts, two jackets, a scarf, hood on, and some fabric I found in the Halloween decorations box draped over my legs, he suggested that this room, because it does not receive any direct sunlight, and is only ever occupied by one-two people, is probably the coldest room in the building.
It is supposed to warm up a bit in the next few days, but still, I was lucky enough to have a teacher take me to the furniture store tonight. Because I still only had a summer futon and blanket, I slept with a wool sweater on – as well as a small blanket and a tablecloth over me last night. Tonight, I look forward to stacking a second, proper winter futon on top of my old one, and sleeping under a second comforter. I also have slippers awaiting me in the morning, which I will try, but cannot guarantee that they will be placed in the proper, side-by-side, toes and heels together fashion that seems the custom in this country.

On another side-note, last week, a student who frequents my office quite a bit asked me if I would show him how to play chess. In return, he would show me how to play the Japanese version, shogi. We met today after school and he arrived with his chessboard that he got sometime in his early childhood. I began by asking him if he knew how to set the board up and how each piece could move. He said he did and so we began playing. Within four moves, it was apparent to me that I was going to lose this game. I’m not sure what he originally meant when he said, “teach him how to play,” but he gave me a bit to think about for our next game on Friday.