Warm Fluids

On my desk at work, there were these green forms sitting in a brown envelope for the last few weeks. They were papers that were required for the medical examination that takes place for all teachers and students in Japan’s education system. The students had their checkups earlier in the year and just last week the teachers had theirs done.

The forms on my desk were all in Japanese of course, so I couldn’t understand anything except for where to write my name and birth date. There was also a woman in a long white coat, one of the school nurses, who kept coming to my office for updates on how I should go about my examination: where and when to go, which forms to take, and such. The bulk of the examination took place last Friday, and today, I went to a clinic to have my chest x-rayed.

For the check up, I went with another English teacher to a room where stations were set up each portion of the exam. The first thing we did was to each hand over a small plastic vial filled, to the appropriate line, with our urine. We were supposed to take these vials home to get a sample of our first pee of the day, but I didn’t know this, so mine was quite fresh and still warm. I had also taken a multi-vitamin in the morning, so mine was the most neon-yellow of all the vials placed in the plastic tray.

Next, we handed in our forms from the brown envelope to make sure we filled them out correctly. I can’t read Japanese and hadn’t filled any of it our, so the teacher helped me through each form. I diligently answered questions about my allergies and medical history; I told them that I am not a smoker and that I consume about 3-5 servings of alcohol per week.

After the completion of the form, we had our height and weight measured. Everything is metric of course, so my numbers were 182cm and 80.9 kg. I can now respond to my students’ questions in numbers they actually understand. The person who took the measurements, marked these numbers down on my form, handed them back to me, and I was off to the next table where I had my vision checked. To check my vision, I looked into a small device and reported the position of a certain circle with a hole in it over a series of trials. It was either facing ‘ue,’ ‘shita,’ ‘hidari,’ or ‘migi’ (up, down, left, or right). As the examiner, this time a woman, marked my results, which she told me in English were “perfect” (with my glasses on), my good eyes managed to spy 3 glass vials that had been slipped into my brown envelope. I turned to the teacher beside me and asked, “are they going to take my #$%@ing blood?” He told me that they were and when I looked across the room, sure enough, two stations over, there was another teacher with a needle sticking out of his arm – at which point, more profanity ensued.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with having my blood taken – although I do generally avoid it whenever I can, but isn’t this a procedure that I would normally have to agree to in advance? Maybe I overreacted a bit – and maybe I could have been a bit more proactive in establishing for myself just what this medical examination entailed, but to me, it seems common courtesy to inform someone in advance when they are going to be punctured by a sharp object.

In all fairness, after having my blood pressure checked, the man who took my blood was very quick and I hardly felt anything. Nonetheless, the teachers behind me enjoyed laughing at me when I turned my head so as not to see the stabbing-through of my arm.

The test finished with a hearing exam and then I went for an x-ray of my chest today. I’m not sure when I’ll get my results, but I’m pretty sure that this is something that I’ll have to ask about.

For today’s photo, I was preparing to do a portrait workshop with the students of the photo club on Wednesday. I thought that I would take the opportunity to photograph my kitchen knives. My apartment came mostly fully-loaded with everything except knives and futons. I bought these shortly after I arrived and they’ve been excellent to me.

***On another note, my pen ran out of ink today and my pencil ran out of lead, so when I wrote most of this post at work today, I used mostly borrowed ink.***

Neighbours

I live in a quiet neighbourhood within a fairly quiet city. There is a part of the downtown area that stays busy late into the night, but for the most part, when I walk down the streets of Iwaki after 8 or 9 o’clock, there are very few people on the road. Even Friday and Saturday nights are quiet.
My apartment is generally very quiet as well. Some of my neighbours in the building across from me moved out recently. There used to be a young couple with a small boy living there, but now there’s just a clothing rack full of dresses and a small stereo component lying on the floor. They were the few people that I would see come and go during the day, although I was never outside at the same time as them, so I never got the chance to say hello. Now, I rarely see any of my neighbours. The parking lot only ever has about 7-8 cars in it and whenever one of my teacher’s drops me off, he always asks me, “why are there never any cars in this parking lot?” One of these days I’ll have an answer for him.

I live in a corner apartment, so I only have one neighbouring unit, which I know people live in because every weekday I can hear someone coming home and punching in their door-code just before eleven o’clock. They also play a lot of video games, which I know because their living room is on the other side of my bedroom wall and I can hear them playing whenever they’re home. There’s also someone who lives below me who I saw shortly after I first arrived in Japan. He was parking his bike beside where I usually park mine – under the stairs, when I rode up behind him and said “konichiwa.” After glancing at me, he quickly jumped around the corner and went into his apartment.

I sometimes see people coming or going in their car when I’m also coming or going, but I rarely see anybody face-to-face to say ‘hi.’

The other day it rained all day only to let up in the evening when I went to grab some groceries for the next day. Walking through the streets at night is usually quite nice because it’s so quiet – kind of like when it first snows and everybody stays indoors. On the way back I noticed that the lights from all of the buildings and streetlights were reflecting off of the pavement very nicely and I could see white clouds hanging low in the sky; I had a feeling it would be a good night to take some photos. I spent about an hour walking up and down the streets of my neighbourhood and got a few good shots. There was still a light drizzle, which got on my lens, but the light reflecting off of these spots I don’t think was a total loss. A clean lens might have been ideal, but the raindrops added a bit of a cool effect.

***As usual, please click on each photo to see it in a larger/better format!***

Fish

We went for sushi today at a sushi bar in some town up the coast today. It’s a bit of a shame that I don’t have more disposable income because I think I spend too much time trying to figure out how to get my favourite foods for prices that don’t do these foods justice. At home in Vancouver, I would always frequent the typical “All-You-Can-Eat” sushi restaurants that can be found all over the city – and which are usually run by either Chinese or Korean restaurant owners. In Japan, typically, I get my sushi from the kaiten-shushi restaurants where the food comes around on conveyor belts. Alternatively, I’ll wait until after 7pm when all of the prices for the ready-made food in the super market are marked down. All of these places at home and here in Japan are good in the sense that I really like sushi, but to sit down in front of a sushi chef while he prepares a meal of fresh fish is an experience unto itself.

I spent several years working in a restaurant back home – a fish and chips restaurant actually, so I’ve had experience working around fish all day. I know how precious a good knife and a clean cutting board can be. I wonder if these sushi chefs ever cut themselves at work. The chef at this place I think said that he had been living and working in the same place for over 40 years (this number sounds a bit crazy to me, so I want to think that I’ve got the number wrong, but at the same time, I remember the number being quite crazy, so I’ll leave it as is). I used to cut fish for hours some days, and I got pretty good at it; I never fully cut myself, but sometimes, when I got pressed for time and the knife was moving quickly in my fingers, a slight graze of the blade would leave the smallest cuts on the end of my fingertips. I wouldn’t notice until after when I was washing my hands. I also wonder if his hands smell like fish all day even when he’s not making sushi. I remember coming home from work and my hands would smell for hours after. There were many days when I would finish work, exhausted, dehydrated and malnourished, with cuts on my hands – usually with a few fryer burns, and my hands smelling like fish, but there was also a sense of satisfaction that I had put together good meals that many people really enjoyed.

Being a chef is such a wonderful profession and I have a lot of respect for them. I think all restaurants should have open kitchens so that we can fully appreciate the work that goes on in them. I like the idea of seeing food in front of me being turned into a meal. It’s work, and it’s art, and it’s all a little bit magical; sometimes all the ingredients may come together in the right form, but still, something could be missing. I’m reminded of a memorable phrase from True Blood, where the chef mentions something along the lines of, “you can taste it when someone puts love into their food.” Cooking requires a certain presence of mind that keeps one in tune with the food that’s coming together. There’s been many times when I go through the motions of cooking without really paying attention, and it won’t turn out the way I want – and I won’t know what went wrong. I hate this. But I think that if you really care about the food that you’re making, and really make an effort to care about the people that you’re making it for, it makes all the difference in the world. This isn’t something that’s easy to do when working at a restaurant for several hours in a day, but again, I think it is very noticeable when it’s there.
My Japanese is still terrible, so I couldn’t understand much of what our sushi chef had to say, but he seemed to enjoy talking to our more Japanese-savvy party-member, and he seemed to enjoy cooking for us as well. I think this post is a testament to this.

Down by the river

Here's a few photos I took down by the river a couple of months ago and have neglected to put up for some time now. Things are looking a lot greener now.

There are many great things along the river. Baba's is along the river. The bakery is just before the river. Many friends live along this river. Sometimes i ride along the river to get sushi or tonkotsu ramen. It's also where i like to run when i feel like running.

What goes up... well let's leave it up there for a while.

We’ve been doing a lot more writing in my classes this school year than we did previously. This means that I have a lot more marking to do between classes, but it also means that I get to read about my students more thoroughly.

We had students write about their future dreams this week in class. This entailed that I read paragraph after paragraph about students wanting to either be a teacher in the future because they liked a particular subject and enjoyed working with children, or they wanted to be a pharmacist because they wanted to help sick people; I estimate about 60% of assignments were completed as such. There was a fair bulk that also aspired to be doctors and lawyers (not such a big stretch considering the academic focus of this school), and the rare gems who wanted to be concert piano players and cartoonists. There was also a student who wanted someday to be a pilot, which I thought was cool.

I think that my favourite of the lot however, was this one:


I want to be a magician or a juggler. Because I like to surprise people. When I told my friends, they said “if you become a magician, you won’t get enough income.” It is not a well-paying job. But I would still like to be a magician.


I have to make efforts to realize my dreams. For example, the No. 1 juggling club is in the University of Tokyo and the No. 2 is in Kyoto University. It is too difficult for me to enter these schools. But, I’ll never give up! I will realize my dreams!


Thank you for listening.


There are a few things that I like about this piece of writing – my favourite being the acknowledgement of the adversity he faces and the persistence in spite of this. Not only do his friends not support his dreams, but also the future prospects of the career itself don’t appear to be very self-sustaining. Even the pursuit of the dream itself appears to be unrealistic in his eyes as the academic requirements to enter Tokyo or Kyoto University, which will allow him to truly excel in his chosen profession and to study with the best of juggling talents, seems beyond his means (last year, only one student from Iwaki High School was able to enter each of these universities respectively).

There is also the irony, which I can’t help but mention, in attending such a rigorous school as Iwaki High School in pursuit of a dream to study juggling, of all subjects, at Japan’s top academic universities (where most students go to pursue successful and highly distinguished careers in areas such as medicine).

I’ve been doing some reading on autonomous learning practices lately and I’m also very appreciative of the fact that he’s taken charge of his learning. He knows the prospects; he has a clear picture of where he needs to go and what he needs to accomplish this; and I saw him the other day from a second-floor window, practicing his juggling in an empty classroom after school – a further demonstration of his persistence in achieving his dream (as a once juggling hack-enthusiast myself, I can also say that he was pretty damn good).

Anyway, I probably won’t be around long enough in Japan to see him realize his dreams, but the inspiration is nonetheless comforting.

Thanks for listening.

Words of Advice

We did an exercise in class a couple of weeks ago where students shared their words of wisdom. First the students would share a story that held a lot of meaning for them and then, in the form of advice for the rest of us, they would tell us what they learned from this experience. Here is my favorite story from the bunch:


My grandfather had a cute bird. I liked the bird very much. One day the bird disapeared. I asked my grandfather "where is the bird?" My grandfather said, "it is on the table." I was sad when I saw the bird. Because it was cooked!! I ate the bird and I said "thanks you." The bird was very delicious.


--We are given life by animals.

On another note...

On another note, I've been following another blog -- one that probably not enough people are reading, about an English teacher's experience in the heart of Bangkok, where probably not enough people understand the conflict and bloodshed that is happening right now.


Please check it out and give her your support: http://princessinaka.blogspot.com/