Baseball

Today was a holiday, so I had the day off. Many students and teachers from my school went to go watch our baseball team play near my apartment, so me and a couple other ALTs went to go watch as well. The weather was nice to start out with, then it started to rain, but then it stopped again. Overall it was a good day, but Iwaki ended up losing in the last few innings. Here's some photos of my first baseball game in Japan.

Rainy Day Enkai

 I just got home from a teacher party tonight. It's also been raining quite a bit for the last couple of days. Here are some photos of us leaving the hotel where the party was at.

Food for thought

I just finished some Japanese curry over rice for lunch today. The curry was leftover from a batch I made for some people that came over to watch a movie – although we didn’t end up getting to the movie. I made a basic vegetable curry with potato, carrot, onion, and green beans, and then people brought their own main ingredients to go with the curry. For myself, I had a piece of tonkatsu (to make it katsu-kare), but other people brought other food such as chicken, croquets, and squid to go with their meals. I also made a salad using all of the leafy greens that I had acquired throughout the week: green leaf lettuce, cabbage, and a bitter leaf that is often used in hot pot dishes. I had lots of salad left over from the night, as well as some un-cooked squid, so I cut and cleaned the squid, fried it up, and had squid salad with sesame dressing! Fantastic!

For breakfast lately, I’ve been eating toast with peanut butter, strawberry jam, and mashed up banana over top. Usually I used to slice the banana, but I started mashing it into a banana paste after an Australian friend treated me to his mashed up variety – I haven’t sliced a banana since. For someone like myself with a high metabolism that needs to be fed often and doesn’t have a lot of disposable income – or time for that matter, peanut butter and jam has always been a staple of my diet. I find it very strange when people get excited about me eating peanut butter and jam – apparently nobody really eats it, but really enjoys it when they do. I brought peanut butter and jam sandwiches to a potluck dinner around Christmas and everybody loved them (as I knew they would). When I tell Japanese people that I eat bread with peanut butter and jam, they find this very strange. They believe the combination to be “way too sweet.” Maybe I’ll have to teach them the phrase: “goes together like peanut butter and jam.”

Some other foods that I’ve cooked recently have been: sushi rolls, chicken salad, chicken sandwiches, Gyudon (beef over rice), nabe, fish filets, and I’ve also been trying my hand at Indian curry.

I was originally going to try to include a blurb about how the molecules that make up the cells of our bodies are replaced over a certain amount of time and that certain parts of our bodies replenish faster than others. The entire human body itself is said to replace itself somewhere around the 7-10 year area – mostly on account of our dense bone cells that take longer to replace. Other softer tissues like eyeballs and skin cells replenish themselves much faster. I was going to then measure the amount of time I’ve been in Japan (268 days) and make estimates on what parts of my body have become entirely Japanese. For example, if the cornea replaces itself in 24 hours, the skin every 14 days, blood cells every 90 days, and soft tissue every 6 months, then each of these parts of my body would – in the sense that I’ve been eating the same food that Japanese people eat since I’ve been here in Japan, essentially be Japanese. When I return to Canada, certain parts of my dense body structure, such as my bones, would also then retain some of this Japanese-ness within them for an additional 7-10 years.

Anyway, after searching the Internet for a while, I could not find any definite answers to what the actual regeneration periods are for different parts of the body. There is actually a lot of contention over whether this theory of molecule replacement for the entire body actually takes place. Many scientists believe that certain parts of the body, such as brain cells, don’t in fact replenish themselves at all.

It’s also worth mentioning that Japan only produces 40% of the food that they consume – the rest is imported. You can see a video on this on another blog: Strange Japan.

Some of you may think it odd that a few days ago, I mentioned that I started work at a new agriculture school last week that focused on growing produce, flowers, and raising animals, but only showed a few photos of cherry blossoms from the school grounds – and hence, neglected any visual data pertaining to the odd looking barnyard animals available to me. I didn’t have a chance to go to the farmlands, which are apparently a bit farther away from the school grounds, but the cows and chickens were indeed raised right next to the school building, and I did get a chance to look at them with my camera. There were also at one time, pigs that were raised at the school, but now the pig building (stables?) are only used for storage – I’m not sure why.

Backlit Blossoms

Here's another photo of cherry blossoms. It's been rainy and windy for a couple days, so i don't think the blossoms will be around for much longer.

Hanami and the Misadventures Thereafter

Hanami is an event that signifies the beginning of many things here in Japan – for me, they became the beginning of my misadventures of the week (last week).

The cherry blossoms are still in full bloom in many places in Iwaki, but most of the cherry blossom celebrations happened the weekend before last. These celebrations are called “hanami,” where basically, people go to sit beneath the cherry blossoms with food and drink and enjoy the beauty of the flowers.

I went to one of these celebrations, which was organized by the international association at city hall – basically, some people at city hall suggested that we all go to a park together. It was a bit more complicated than this however, as the park apparently gets quite busy, so some of us arrived early, about 10am to reserve a spot with tarps and blankets. The place where we met was more extravagant than I expected: the park was actually somewhat of an amusement park with old derelict rides and food vendors and was decorated with sponsored lanterns. When we arrived, there were already several Japanese people drunk with their families; one guy who seemed particularly inebriated was dressed up in a Draemon costume complete with face paint – although the paint was starting to run and held a “why so serious?” likelihood to the Joker.

The day itself was actually quite fun. Cherry blossoms are very symbolic of the new year’s beginnings. The cherry blossoms usually mark the beginning of new jobs, the new school year, and outdoor social events begin once again after the anti-social coldness of winter. It was good to see many people who I haven’t seen for quite a while. After an afternoon and evening of Japanese snacks and Ozeki One Cup, before I knew it, it was almost midnight. People were still in the park at this time and there were a few lights that gave illumination to the blossoms.

Many people from our group had already left for an evening of karaoke, but me and a friend decided instead on a hot bowl of ramen before heading home. We had parked our bikes on either side of the park, so we agreed to meet each other at the Nissan dealership on the road nearby. We met as promised, although, I had misplaced my bike key at some point in the day and was without wheels.

At this point, you may be wondering how many embarrassing stories I can possibly post on this blog, but yes, this is another one of ‘those’ posts.

I was feeling a bit bummed about the situation, so Don, being the kind person he is, agrees to go back to the park to help me look for the key. We have friends that live close by, so we stopped in and borrowed a lantern to help us look. The light wasn’t good though, and we looked without any success. I even jumped over the fence to examine the train tracks beneath the sky-pedalling ride that we went on earlier, but still, no dice.

Our friends, the lantern owners, had gone to a bar that was on our way home, so we stopped in to return their light before walking to a ramen shop downtown. The shop is one of my favourites because they let you squeeze fresh garlic into your bowl with the garlic presses handy at each seat. I usually go for about 3 or 4 cloves before popping a whole one into my mouth for fun. I won’t be kissing anybody for another few months, so I enjoy myself while I can.

After ramen I walked home without my bike.

The next day I searched multiple times through all of my clothes and phoned people asking them if they found my key in any of the tarps/blankets we sat on the night before, but still no key. I phoned my supervisor in the hopes that the school might have a spare key – or that they may have some other solution to my problem; I couldn’t have been the only irresponsible ALT that this has ever happened to.

I forgot to mention that the night before, I ended up walking my bike to a Mini-Stop convenience store, where I had hoped in a last ditch effort, that my key had fallen out of my pocket while reaching for my wallet to pay for my Ozeki One-cups. They didn’t know where my key was either, so I ended up leaving my bike there. My supervisor suggested that I check with the Mini-Mart people this next morning to make sure it was okay to leave the bike there for a day or two while we figured out what to do with it. I had already decided to walk back to the park to look for the key in daylight and the Mini Stop was close by.

At this point, I should also clarify that nobody in Japan locks their bikes “to” anything. Instead, most bikes just come with a collar attached to the back of the bike, where, when locked, immobilizes the rear wheel. Hence, by walking the bike on its front tire, I was able to get it to the Mini Stop.

After checking with the clerks at the store, they assured me that they did not find my key and that it was okay to leave my bike there, I walked back up to the park to look one more time. It was noon, but people were already set up on their tarps with food and drink. I bothered a few people with my bad Japanese, who were in the area we occupied last night, but with no success. Some other friends were having their hanami event later that day, so I hung around and took photos before meeting them for more hanami.

The next day I was at one of my visit schools, which is about a 40-minute bike-ride from my apartment -- and there are no buses. It’s also about a $20 cab ride each way. I managed to borrow a bike from another friend for what turned out to be a very wet ride. It poured rain all morning and the zipper on my bag opened while I was riding, so I spent the day wearing wet jogging pants; I also didn’t bring a change of socks.

During my day at work, in a moment of sulkiness within my damp clothes, a teacher phoned me for directions to where I had left my bike. He said that he wanted to drive the school’s truck to retrieve it and bring it back to my base school. Once at the school, he would try to “break” the lock. Now, I grew up with a mechanical engineer for a father, so when this teacher used the words “break the lock,” I cringed slightly. I would prefer the words “cut the lock” or “dismantle the lock”; as it is, I can only picture my teacher with a screwdriver and a hammer – or maybe some kind of heavy rock, pummelling my bike until it is able to move once again. I try to persuade him to let the school’s handyman to take a look at it, but also try to brush his choice of words off as a possible vocabulary misnomer.

The following day I was back at my base school, which I often walk to as a change of pace, where my teacher told me that he could not get the lock off and that maybe I should talk to one of the school’s maintenance staff, but it is also the first week of lessons for me and I end up too busy to do anything for the next couple of days.

It ends up being Thursday when I go to another visit school, but this one by bus. I ended up very lucky this day for a couple of reasons. The first was that as I walked out the door of my apartment in the morning, I realized that I may have spent all of the cash in my wallet to buy groceries the night before and that I would have to run back inside to grab some change. The other fortunate moment was when I decided to check my wallet, there was in fact a gaping cavity where all of my funds had been depleted, but, because there were no extraneous amounts of cash to obstruct my view, I was able to catch a glimpse within the bottom crease of my wallet, where I found a glint from the toothy smile of my prodigal bicycle key returned to me.

Super Sushi

Why is it that I do the things that I do? Maybe I’m starting to go a little crazy here living on my own…

Tonight was sushi night, so I spent most of the evening making sushi rice and putting together nori maki rolls. A couple teachers I was talking to today said that they had never eaten California rolls before, so I thought that I would make some tonight and bring some for them tomorrow.

I’ve made sushi a few times since I’ve been in Japan, but I always make the same thing: California rolls and usually a salmon roll to go with it. These are easy rolls that I know how to make and I know that they taste good. Tonight however, I didn’t feel like the usual sushi fare, so I made a point of exploring new sushi flavours. Actually, I told myself that I was going to make strangest sushi that I could come up with. Janice and I once attended a sushi making class where the instructor encouraged us to make up our own sushi concoctions. He even showed us some of the weird stuff he makes, which were far from the typical “Japanese” style flavouring; many of them were just weird. I like a good challenge, so with this in mind I got to rolling the stuff I bought from the store – as well as stuff I already had around my apartment. Since Janice is not around, I am free to explore all of my palatial desires without any concern for others.

After reading this post, many people will probably want to ask me whether any of them were any good. All I can say is that it was a lot of fun and that I’m exhausted. Coming up with all of these rolls requires a lot of planning, prepping, and tasting – by the time I actually got around to sitting down for dinner, I was stuffed from tasting all of my concoctions.

Here are some of the rolls that I came up with:


Garlic Sardine:

I bought what seemed to be marinated sardines of some sort, which I made rolls out of, but I also tried rolling them with garlic and negi.

Konbu and white onion:

I also bought some konbu – which is kind of a soy-sauce marinated seaweed; I rolled this with cucumber and white onion. (sorry, no photo).

Kimchi Peanut Butter:

This was probably the weirdest one of them all. I rolled kimchi with peanut butter and cucumber for crunch.

Sour Crab with a kick:

This was probably my favourite of the night. I rolled crab with cucumber, lemon rind, and added chili flakes inside and on top as a garnish.

Stinky Crab:

I don’t think I even tried this one – it’s in the fridge for breakfast tomorrow. I rolled crab with kimchi and garlic.

New school

I had my first day at Banno High School today. It's an agricultural school that grows its own produce, flowers, and even raises cows and chickens. The cherry blossoms are still in bloom -- in fact, full bloom at the school. It is no coincidence that the cherry blossoms bloom during the first week of school; they are symbolic of new beginnings. Here are a few photos of the school grounds.

That time...

Well, it’s that time of the month again – the time where I write about how busy I’ve been, trying to finish the work for this month’s Japanese test as part of my correspondence course. Don sent me an email the other day asking how book #5 was going and I replied that I’ve made a lot of friends in the process of its competion. What this means is that I don’t seem to have much of a knack for acquiring new languages and therefore must enlist the aid of the various Japanese people around me. The photo included in this entry is of my 9-year-old friend helping me with my homework on the way to see the plum blossoms in Mito last month. I feel that I have learned a lot of Japanese since I arrived in Japan – more than I would have thought that I could ever learn, but language is a very complex entity and although my vocabulary is expanding, its scope is small, and nuances lacking thereof.

The course itself is quite good. It is comprised of 6 books – each containing 20 lessons and one monthly test that must be mailed in before the due date. Each lesson provides new vocabulary, grammar points, example dialogue recorded onto CDs, and several exercises. Overall, there is a lot of material covered and even the Japanese people I show seem impressed with its content (although most Japanese people are impressed with any level of Japanese spoken by a foreigner). My only criticism of the course is that the Beginner series that I am working with is written all in Romaji. I feel that I am lacking a significant amount of practice reading Hiragana and Katakana that could be had in completing this course.

Anyway, I managed to finish the book on time and I mailed my test off yesterday on-time with only one more book to go.

On another note, classes are just starting for this school year, which is a very odd phenomenon for me this time of year. Usually classes very busy at this time before winding down in a couple of months. Instead, everything has that clean-slate feeling of new beginnings. We have new students, new teachers, and I even have a new school that I’ll be starting at on Monday. All of the new first year students have new school supplies and walk around proudly in their new uniforms; it won’t be long before they’re forgetting to do up buttons or deciding not to wear socks. What’s affecting me most lately though is that all of my first year students from last year are now in second year, which means I don’t get to work with them anymore – yet they look so grown up since I first met them and are all of a sudden very eager to talk to me every chance they get. I get the sense that this is just a prelude to me leaving in a few months.

My new first years are great though – and seem very willing to learn and speak English with me.

So far, all of my lessons have been about introducing myself to the students. The teachers that I’m working with this year have provided me with some somewhat prescribed topics that they want me to share with the class. Typically, I tell them who I am, where I’m from, and then share my favourite hobbies, sports, foods, etc. When it came to sharing my favourite movie, I thought it impractical to throw a list of films at them that they had probably never heard of. My solution was that I would say that “The Dark Knight” is my favourite film. I figured that this would be a movie that most kids in Japan would have seen (I know that many high school students in North America definitely have) and it was also a film that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, although most students know who Batman is, very few of them knew of this movie. As they all stared at me wide-eyed and writing notes – even the teacher said that he would make a point of watching it, images of bank-robbers being shot up, hospitals being blown up, faces being horribly disfigured, and pencils being lodged into eye-sockets, suddenly came to mind and I began to wonder if I made a mistake. At this point I can only pray that Japanese youth are just as desensitized to violence.

I should also mention that I discovered a couple of students today who were big fans of Sum 41 and Slipknot, but had never heard of Metallica. I made sure to rectify this by having them take appropriate notes and assigning the proper Youtube studies for this weekend.

DMZ

“Is it okay to take pictures?” I ask as I raise my camera and look to the building across from us. The officer is wearing an American military uniform with the name “Pounds” stitched into his breast.

“Take as many photos as you like, sir, but seriously, do not make any gestures towards them in any way.”

During our second day in Korea, Don and I took a tour to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from North Korea. Although there has been no open conflict since the armistace established at the end of the Korean War, the countries are technically still at war with each other. As recent as 1984, there have been skirmishes between soldiers from either sides resulting in several deaths, and as recent as 1990, there have been discovered tunnels being bored from the Northern border into the South towards Seoul. There was also the infamous axe murders before this where South Korean soldiers were killed over the pruning of a tree. A quick look at the Wikipedia page also lists several incidents of gunfire between the two countries as recently as 2006.

Of more recent note, a South Korean naval patrol ship sunk off of the coast of the Korean Peninsula where only 58 of the 104 sailors survived. South Korea has not ruled out the possibility of North Korean sabotage in the incident. To link any potential escalation of animosity between the two countries however, one of the German members of our tour mentioned to me that earlier in the week, the New York Times published an article containing a North Korean statement that made reference to this tour that we were participating in. I looked up the article, which reads as follows:

In a statement reported by news agencies, the North demanded an end to the tours in the so-called demilitarized zone, calling them part of a pattern of “psychological warfare” and warning of “unpredictable incidents including the loss of human lives in this area for which the U.S. side will be wholly to blame.” (New York Times: March 28, 2010)

I’m sure anyone reading this can imagine the sense of alarm we felt when at one point on the tour, we heard gunshots in the distance from two different directions. These were not however, explained, or even acknowledged by any of our guides. For the most part, the American military personnel escorting us were fairly calm and personable. The Rupublic of Korea (R.O.K.), or South Korean soldiers however were a bit more intense. They all stand at guard in Tai Kwan Do stances in order to “look intimidating to the enemy,” as our escort explained. Many of them also partially conceal themselves behind buildings “in case they are fired upon.” They were also the ones who made a fuss when Don and I lagged behind the tour to take photos of ourselves in a mirror within the Freedom Building. The only time we got the sense that something was wrong was when, at one of the viewpoints, we were asked to get back on the bus because there seemed to be an abnormally large collection of North Korean soldiers collecting at a post overlooking our position.
We only saw one North Korean face to face during the tour – which is probably one more than many see in a visit to Korea. He stood about 100m away on the North Korean side of Panmunjeom, or Joint Security Area (JSA) where the two countries hold their occasional meetings. At this site, there are blue buildings that sit directly on the border; when we were shown the inside of the building, we were able to walk to the side which lies on North Korean soil. It is this area where Koreans from both sides are stationed to keep an eye on each other. It is said that here is where South Korean soldiers are “in front of them all.”

This was also the part where we were told not to gesture at the North Koreans in any way.
At this point in the tour, I looked at our tour guide, who was the only South Korean civilian in our group; her face was white and her movements hesitant. She’s been doing tours to the DMZ for 6 years now, but this is only the third time in which she has brought a tour to Panmunjeom. I asked if she was okay and she said that she was “very nervous.” When I asked her if I should also be nervous, with a quick nod of her head, she said “yes.”

Although the relations between the two countries remain tense, there are many absurdities that were made very apparent to us during the tour. For one, just behind the South Korean border, there stands a building called the “Freedom Building,” which was built where any North Koreans defecting to the South, could reunite safely with family and friends. To this day, because no North Koreans are allowed to cross the border, this building has yet to be used for this purpose. It is also worth noting that when the building was first built, the height of the building intimidated the North and caused them to build an addition onto their opposing structure. Now, when any buildings are built in the JSA, they are made sure to not be taller than this building for fear of retaliation.

There is also a train station that has been built just south of the DMZ on a railway where trains once moved freely within a unified country. The station was built in anticipation of a time when Koreans would once again be able to travel between the two regions. It is a fully functional station that is fully lit with trains down at the platform and has personnel selling train fares; even the seats in the waiting area are showing signs of wear from the many visitors passing through. However, not a single train has ever left the platform bearing any passengers.

The Demilitarized Zone is also a place for very large flags. In a village on the south side, a very large South Korean flag was donated and erected. Almost immediately, the North Koreans raised their own flag, upon the largest flagpole in the world – standing 160m. The flag also weighs 270 kg. It apparently takes 50 men to raise and lower the flag, which they do regularly because if the flag becomes too wet, it will tear under its own weight. The flag itself resides within one of North Korea’s Propaganda Villages. These are villages constructed by North Korea to give the illusion of prosperity in the North and to provide a place for South Koreans to defect to. Until a few years ago, they would broadcast propaganda messages to the South telling them to join the North. It is apparently obvious that nobody lives in these villages because nobody is ever seen – aside from the team that raises and lowers the flag, and because there is no glass in the windows of the buildings; the claimed reasoning is that outfitting them with glass would prove too costly.

Also, just outside of the DMZ on the south side of the border, there is a sort of rest stop for all of the tours. It was where we stopped for lunch and where we regrouped for the second part of the tour down the North Korean incursion tunnels. At this stop is also an old locomotive riddled with bullet holes from the war; several armoured vehicles on display; and the Freedom Bridge where prisoners of war were allowed to return to their countries after the Korean War. This was also the place where we were able to hear gunfire from the north. What is absurd is that this spot is turning into somewhat of an amusement area – complete with theme park. There is also an amphitheatre set up, which is beside a small park decorated with hundreds of small plastic windmills. The theme park is apparently for the tours full of school children to play in while they wait for their buses to take them back home.

There are many aspects of this place that seemed quite amusing to us during the tour, but I think we all found it a bit difficult to laugh out loud.

If I learned anything from our stay in Korea, it’s that the country and its people are very proud of their history and their culture. Ever since people have populated the Korean peninsula, others have been trying to take it away from them, whether it’s been the Chinese, the Mongolians, or the Japanese (and maybe even the Russians?). There is something to be said for a group of people that have managed to stave off such powerful imperial forces. In order to explain to us how Koreans see themselves, our guide told us that in Korea they have two different sauces that they use for their cooking: one is a dark liquid that is very rich and pleasant; the other is red and contains a very strong spice. She told us that these two condiments are what best describe Korean people; ordinarily Koreans are very friendly and loving – like the rich dark sauce, but when they are threatened, they become very passionately angry – which is embodied within the red. Woe to those who anger such peoples. The real shame is that after many centuries of retaining their own culture and heritage, it is only within the last 60 years or so that the country has become divided and alienated against each other. It is not possible to enter North Korea from any country other than China. Now families speak nothing of contempt for their distant relatives to the north. They speak their own brand of propaganda, mockingly condemning the lifestyles of the North; they laud their poverty, poor health, lack of freedoms, and profound unhappiness. They refer to them as brainwashed, and that the North sees the South as “monsters.” A generation has passed since the separation and our guide lamented the fact that she had a grandmother who suffers in the north – someone whom she’s never met. Hopefully, another generation won’t be allowed to pass by under these terms, where they will only grow closer to losing all recollection of one another.


***Also worth mentioning: within the last photo of the bridge, there is a small white mass behind the limbs of a tree – this is an unexplained dead dog on the North Korean side of the bridge.***