Typhoon

Since 11 a.m. it's been raining, raining, raining. Wind and rain pelting our flimsy apartment walls and windows. I don't find it scary at all, but it is rather fascinating to be on the edges of a typhoon. They told me today that it's supposed to be here in Chiba sometime tomorrow, which I guess means this is just the outer part of it now. I sure hope it means that they don't run the trains tomorrow. Then we get a three day weekend!

Engakuji - Kita Kamakura

A carving on a door to one of the buildings at Engakuji, and some yummy iced green tea.

Jizo Statues at Hasedera

Rather than continue this long dry spell of no posts, no news, and no pictures, I figured I could at least pop off a picture.

These are Jizo statues. Jizo are bodhisattva who are considered to be guardians of unborn, aborted, and miscarried children, and also they generally protect and are merciful to those in need. All around they're a good deity for most general purposes and are among the most widely visible icons in Japan.

It is common for people to put a red bib on the statues, or to dress them somehow (usually the color is red) when they mean to thank the deity for services rendered, or to mourn someone's loss and pray for their guidance through to the next life.

These ones here have been given baby clothes and toys, most likely for a child who died young or was aborted.

Asakusa

Melissa and Laurie in front of the famous (and huge) lantern at the entrance to Asakusa Shrine.

A Bug's Life

We met this big little guy on our way home today.

We took our time getting out of the apartment this morning, and made it to Onjuku by this afternoon. At about five or six o'clock, we were waiting at the station for our train home. Sitting on a bench, reading, Laurie and I were surprised to find this beetle bumming around. And bumming he was. You'd call it moping except he didn't seem depressed. At first I was afraid he'd scare Laurie, since the first I saw him, he was maybe three feet from her feet. But she wasn't scared. Then we took some film and pictures of him as he went on his merry way, antennae wiggling, towards the far end of the platform by the smoking section (I didn't see him light up, though).

It was either that or more pictures of Onjuku, in which case I may as well rename the blog. We've been there six or seven times, now. More than almost any other destination. But that's not a complaint! This time we got me a bright pink inner tube and I went out to catch some waves with the surfers!

Idioms

Today being the first day that's muggy enough to turn on the fan, we've been having quite the conversation here in the English department while enjoying the breeze. Amongst several interesting tidbits I'll share just a few that I wrote down (the rest simply got lost in my terrible memory, but anyway, here goes):

The Japanese have a nifty expression when speaking self-deprecatingly about their garden:



うちの庭は、猫の額ほどのひろさです。
Uchi no niwa wa, neko no hitai hodo no hirosa desu.
"My garden is as small as a cat's forehead."

Another interesting expression is used when Japanese wish to comment unfavorably on the small quantity or size of something. For example,


私の給料は、雀の涙です。
Watashi no kyuuryou wa, suzume no namida desu.
"My paycheck is as small as a sparrow's tears."

Lastly, though this one isn't an idiom like the two above, it's still relevant because I wouldn't have heard it were it not so hot out today.



暑いな畜生!!!
Atsuina chikushou!!!
"this weather's for the beasts!" Or possibly, "Damn, it's beastly hot out!"

I'm told not to use this last one in formal, polite, or any but the most casual of situations.

Perquisites

I just wanted to brag a little.



I came home for lunch and managed to get a photo of it before I ate it all. Salmon fried with pineapples and onions, a bowl of rice, and miso soup with a cup of houjicha tea...(only the main dish and the tea cup are in the photo, but you get the idea).

Indeed.

This is one of the best parts of this job. I live five minutes' walk from school and get a forty-five minute lunch break everyday. And on days when Laurie's not working, she makes things like this for me. All the time!

Onjuku Redux

This weekend I decided to keep the backpack on my lap.

So we made it to Onjuku Beach with all our stuff.

The weather was wonderful. The sun felt all the more warmer and closer because it was hiding right behind a waxy layer of clouds. Every once in a while it would peak out along with a hint of blue sky, but mostly it was a delightfully overcast day, the perfect atmosphere for being at the beach.

Friday night at eleven I'd started reading a novel, Eragon. (Laurie caught me around five in the morning sitting at the kitchen table with a headlamp--still reading.) So naturally, yesterday, I had two items on my agenda: finishing the book and having a nap!

I finished the last couple hundred pages as soon as we found a spot to lay down.

Then we played in the water for a while.
Next time I'll wear swimming trunks when we go to the beach.
(wet underwear makes for a sore train ride home...)

There were lots of surfers out, too. It looks really fun. If only surfboards weren't a thousand dollars...

Lastly, I had a nice lazy nap. Long enough for a weird uneven tan-burn to mar my otherwise lovely skin.

Onjuku

A lazy hour or so ride to Onjuku. The kind of train ride where, when you get off the train, you stretch, yawn, and look about with glazed eyes before plodding off to leave the station. The kind of train ride where, if you put your backpack full of the day's supplies (things like, say, "lunch" "swimming clothes" "beach towels") up on the train's overhead carrier, you forget about it when you get off the train.

Yup.

It was just that kind of train ride.

Star Wars III 1/2: Sith Vacation

Today the 1A students continued their journey to computer mastery.

We have been working on a tutorial where they learn how to find images on the internet, copy them and import them to Photoshop, and then manipulate them. Today we succeeded in finishing the tutorial with modest success. Overall, I am pleased with their performance. The force is strong with this bunch.

The finished result looked something like this:



They seemed to get a kick out of it. Of course, the hardest part was getting them used to the basics. From there they had few problems. Clearly, when students are interested in the subject matter, they can overcome almost any language barrier.

A Red Herring and Then...

Found this today at the Devil's Dictionary. For some reason I thought it was funny. It reminded me of a very productive hour I spent in philosophy class once. Something about Hegel, I think.

That, and I was just reading peoples' online opinions about the latest news from Apple (they are switching to Intel chips). Of course that was a rabbit trail which led to another set of opinions about the slow death DRM (Digital Rights Management) is causing the Fair Use / Creative Commons community.

But that has relatively little (if anything) to do with life here at Toke.

* * *

Today's classes were Monday's classes. That's because yesterday (Monday) we didn't have class.

Why not?

Well, because we had Tuesday's classes on Saturday.

Yup. On Saturday we had 4th, 5th, and 6th periods from Tuesday's classes during the same time that we normally have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd periods during the weekdays.

We had class on Saturday so that parents could come and see what they are like (it had something to do with the PTA I think). As Murphy's Law would have it, I had nothing to do from noon until 4 except be at work (the weather was lovely), and nobody came to observe the classes I was in!

もったいない. [That's Japanese for "such a waste"]

But I had a really great time with the students. For whatever reason it didn't seem to register with them that they were in school on a weekend. (All I can say to that is, when I was in school, weekends were sacrosanct. You couldn't get me to take classes on a weekend. That was a special kind of punishment.) So it was actually really productive. We did a warmup game and some brainstorming, and their enthusiasm seemed to really spark their interest in the lesson at hand. It was just the thing to raise my spirits, too. I actually didn't mind going into work after that. And sitting around all afternoon wasn't too bad, either, since there's always more lessons to plan and papers to shuffle.

June So Soon

Today is June 1st.

The past two days were rainy, cloudy, and cool. This morning, of a sudden, decided to change that into clear and mildly hot. By afternoon, Japan was back to its characteristic humidity. It's the kind of persistent humidity that never fails to bring to mind how a frog must feel. Not quite sticky, not quite slimy. Not completely uncomfortable, but certainly not comfortable. This kind of weather is the kind where, unless you're going to get sweaty via workout or hard labour, there is no perfect set of clothes to wear, because no matter what you choose, it won't feel right after twenty minutes anyway.

But lest that sound like a complaint, it's only going to get hotter. And stickier. And more humid.

Really though, it's not so bad. Myself, I've resolved to get used to it and I figure if I exercise enough then when I go shower it'll feel like I'm drying off, and when I dry off I'll feel like there's a cool breeze blowing.

* * *

This morning I began familiarizing the first year students with a vocabulary exercise. Basically, students stand in a group and pass a ball around. The person with the ball must choose an adjective and pass it to someone else, who in turn must say the opposite adjective (hot / cold, pretty / ugly, etc.). It seemed to go over well.

Also, Harada 先生 was kind enough to scrounge up an extra internet cable, so now Louise and I don't have to share. Immediately upon receiving it I ran a software update and I feel much better. Now if only I had wireless...

The photo library is presently undergoing reorganization, so I won't be adding any pictures for a little while. In seven months we've taken over five gigabytes of photos, and it's recently become a necessity to plan out a storage-retrieval scheme. I can only imagine what other people go through. I know a guy who takes three or four times as many photos and keeps up a website to boot.

昭和の森 から/ From Showa-no-Mori

この写真は、昭和の森からです。平成十七五月二十一日。

This picture was taken from the lookout in Showa-no-Mori, 05/21/05. It's actually a panorama made from 3 or 4 pictures I took and then merged in Photoshop™. If you click on it you'll be taken to a page that offers a more full-sized view.

I'm not certain, but I think the lookout at Showa-no-Mori might be the highest point in Chiba Prefecture. As a whole, Chiba is a flat penninsula. There's a series or range of hills south of here, though, that might be higher. At any rate, we are approximately halfway between Tokyo Bay and the Pacific Ocean here, and about a 20 minute walk from our apartment is all it takes to see such a nice view. That is, when the air is clear enough. Most days we can't see that far. I'll have to check, but I think that the lookout is twelve miles from the beach, as the crow flies.

One weekend we decided to see if we could walk to the ocean. It took about three and a half hours at a mild pace. That was back in January.

The beach that's just barely not visible in the photo is a famous one known as Kujukuri Beach. "Kujukuri" means "99 li", and "li" is an old Chinese measurement. So Kujukuri is like saying "Ninety-nine Miles" but with a slightly literary flair. Anyway, I hear tell it's the longest beach on mainland Honshu or the longest one with nice sand or whatever. I wouldn't know. I haven't gone there yet, I don't think. The one we ended up walking to this past winter was south of that. ...Or maybe that was Kujukuri, but we were on the southern stretch of it.

In the middle of the picture you can see rice paddies that are filled with water. Just a few weeks ago the rice was barely poking through the surface, but now it's a few inches above the water level. Also worthy of note are the two twin buildings in the center-left of the picture. These are apartment buildings, and aren't anything special in-and-of-themselves, except that that's where the next town over from us is. It's called Oami. From where I took the photo to Oami's train station (which is near those two apartment buildings) is about forty-five minutes to an hour on foot. We often make the trip because right below the lookout is a park adjacent to Showa-no-Mori called Konakaike Park (小中池公園) which has a most enjoyable slide I like to ride on. The slide is as long and twisty as a waterslide, but it's not just polished metal--it's got roller thingies on it like on an assembly line. Kids bring a piece of scrap cardboard to sit on and have a great time. I usually don't have any cardboard, so my pants get a bit dirty, but it's loads of fun to go down. Also at Konakaike is a pond (you can see a section of the dam and a small slice of the pond in the photo, right above and to the right of the trees on the bottom) where we go to visit the koi. Koi are carp, but that's a bit misleading, because they are really the most colorful fish you could hope to see in freshwater. So I like the word koi better than carp. "Giant Goldfish" also has a nice ring to it. As a matter of fact, I've got a picture of them:




They love crumbs. It's very entertaining to throw them bits of food and watch them jostle around and play bumper-fish with each other.

Where is "Toke"?

土気 / Toke [pronunciation = "t" + "okay" ] is part of the Midori Ward of Chiba City, which is the capital city of Chiba Prefecture, Japan. And actually, I live in Toke's neighboring municipality, Asumigaoka [pronounced "a soo me gah oh ka"], but I'm 30 seconds' walk from Toke. As far as I have been able to find out, Toke is the older of the two, and Asumigaoka started as something of an extension. But now they are two different municipalities. I live in one and work in the other. Not to worry, though: my commute is merely just a five minutes' walk.

So to add to the confusion in detail, let it be known that I will use Toke and Asumigaoka in my posts, but for the most part you may think of them interchangeably, unless you really are a stickler for geography (I know I am), in which case you'll just have to wait until I find a good map and figure out a way to post it.

For now, though, some URL's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiba%2C_Japan
http://www.city.chiba.jp/english/data/index.html



This map shows ticket prices from Toke Station.

Children's Day: Koi Nobori

On Children's Day, there are many of these giant goldfish wind socks everywhere. This string was hung across the lake at Konakaike Park



子どもの日は、たくさんおおき鯉のぼりがあります。このは、小中池公園からとりました。

While in Chiba City

We went to Chiba City today to do some shopping and to hang out somewhere other than Toke. Had a lovely sandwich and coffee from Dotours. Also, we ran into a life sized teddy bear. I think he was advertising a new pachinko parlour that has just opened.

Illuminating

The clip begins with a yaki imo salesman loading more wood in his stove and hoping to lure some business. We next proceed to cross the street to Chiba Chuo Park (Chuo means "middle" or "downtown" by the way) where all the trees have been decorated with Xmas lights. The Japanese call it "Illumination", which somehow sounds more pure and Christmassy than I'd have expected.

Illuminating

The clip begins with a yaki imo salesman loading more wood in his stove and hoping to lure some business. We next proceed to cross the street to Chiba Chuo Park (Chuo means "middle" or "downtown" by the way) where all the trees have been decorated with Xmas lights. The Japanese call it "Illumination", which somehow sounds more pure and Christmassy than I'd have expected.


Watch the Video

Click to view