A Pre-Holiday Update

Day pass into weeks, weeks into months, and now we find ourselves in the closing stage of the reign of the Heisei emperor.  If you didn’t know, the emperor of Japan is retiring at the end of the fiscal/school year, so the traditional Japanese calendar will start from year zero next April.  Who knew the emperor was allowed to retire? 

So I have largely been neglecting my blog as my life has settled into a routine that feels very little like the adventure of my first year or two here.  Work has settled down and classes are finally as easy as they were by the end of my first stint in Japan.  My kids know me, and the fear of being hit with ever-present balloon seems to deter most bad behavior.  My large apartment is nice, although these days few of my friends come to visit.  I started running again almost daily in October, because I signed up for a relay race in February.  I’ll be doing it right here in Ogaki with some old buddies that I used to run with years ago.  My time is widely expected to blow.  Oh well, my teammates mostly have full time jobs and kids.  I learn a tiny bit more Japanese every day, although I don’t really use much at work.  I passed the top level of the Japanese language proficiency test back in July (I got the result in September).  I now feel fully qualified to read a newspaper article and answer a multiple choice question about it with 70 percent accuracy.  I’ve done a number of things that I’ve blogged about in the past, but don’t really feel like re-reporting.  I went to the Ogaki festival in October and caught flying rice balls.  I went to thanksgiving at a coworker’s house and cooked mac and cheese this time, which outperformed last year’s crappy potatoes.  We had a Halloween party for the kids and I crossed dressed again, this time as a witch.  Our Christmas party is coming up next week, and I’m going to be sort of an anti-Santa; I basically plan on walking around with a big sack of crappy presents like newspaper and old socks.  Should be a good time.  I’ve been on a couple mediocre tinder dates, which wound up feeling more like language exchanges than dates (that is to say work, where I get to speak Japanese!)  I’ve done some bike rides and hikes as well, but at this point it just feels like normal exercise rather than exploration…

If this blog seems like a bit of a downer, don’t get the wrong idea.  I’m enjoying myself more than last year or even the first half of this year.  I just haven’t done much that I feel like bragging about on the internet.

Looking forward I’m coming home as usual for Christmas.  For the second year in a row I got super cheap tickets, this time $740 for the 12/24 to New Years.  Speaking of cheap tickets I also snagged a $250 ticket to Vietnam for our January break.  I’m going for 4 days to Hanoi with the same two friends that went to Malaysia in September.  I’m pretty stoked for that because it seemed like they weren’t going to have enough money to make it happen for a while.  Plus who knows when the next time I’ll be able to travel Asia with two 25 year old women again??

Well, we are nearing the end of 2018, so have a merry Christmas, jolly Chanukah, festive Kwanza or whimsical pagan solstice celebration.  Let’s start 2019 on the attack!

Malaysia!

Wow, since my last blog post I flew home for 10 days, came back, taught for two weeks, flew to Malaysia for four days, and came home barely missing a record setting typhoon.  Minnesota was great as always, although I somehow managed to book my return flight for the wrong day and missed a day and a half of work.  I got some really dirty looks and a deeper understanding of the meaning of “nonrefundable ticket” (turns out you can’t even change the little bastards).  So then I worked 10 out of 11 days and got up at the ass crack of dawn to fly to Kuala Lumpur on day 12. 

My friends Emily and Sam found $300 tickets and an air B&B on the 22^nd floor of a high-rise for like $40 a night.  Our place had a pool and restaurant on the 37^th floor roof top.  The place had four towers and so many people we had to wait 5 minutes for the elevator to come.  We had a studio with a mattress on the floor for me and a semi-broken AC unit.  It worked out though.

I was a bit nervous going with friends that I hadn’t traveled with before, but we got along well and didn’t have any emergencies except when a monkey stole a bag of souvenirs from us.  We did a bunch of touristy stuff like going to temples, mosques and shrines and going to the top of an 88 story tower.  We did a food tour one night with a random local guy we found on the internet.  He fed us Chinese street food and we got caught in the middle of a huge Chinese ghost festival parade.  (I didn’t know before going that the gates to the spirit world were open in early September).  Other highlights included feeding parrots an aviary and visiting an enormous cave guarded by a 100 foot golden statue of a Hindu war god. 

Overall the city was super huge and built up but it was easy to get around with uber and nearly every one spoke English.   The people are super diverse and there are very active Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist communities.  The city was also super developed and we didn’t have any problems with scammers, feral dogs or human refuse being thrown out of 2^nd story windows.

Now I’ve been back taking it easy and gearing up for another work week.  We have a meeting tomorrow before work for the full staff 200+ Shimon staff, then on Wednesday I teach at my new branch for the first time.  I’ll be in touch.  Tootles.

Gunpowder and Ass Sweat

Ah, my half-packed duffel is sitting on the kitchen floor, my laundry is drying on my dining room chairs and in the distance I can see the lights of the bullet train flickering between tall buildings.  I must have made it to summer break.  It wasn’t easy this time thanks to a record setting heat wave that has seen temps pushing 100 almost every day for three straight weeks.  This week I had two extra summer lessons, which meant showing up to work at 9am with sweat dripping off my ass.  We decided it would a good idea to have a summer cram session theme this year, so the kids just sat at their desks studying vocab for 3 hours.  All I had to do was test them when they were ready, which was easy, except when I had to fail an 8 year old three times because she couldn’t remember the phrase “you’re right”.  Irony.

Yesterday I got back from English Daze, our annual teacher-student camping trip.  We went to a sprawling nature center an hour away with 40 youngsters for an overnight.  The first day it was literally 101 degrees and the students did an orienteering activity where they walked around with maps for three hours.  I just sat in a little hut in the woods and waited for the kids to find me.  I had the furthest station and nearly died before any of the kids reached me.  Somehow they all seemed to be fine in the heat.  The second day I was supposed to take my kids to a petting zoo, but it rained so I played alcohol-free beer pong and had a paper tower building contest.  This year was a little better than last year, since a few of my kids actually came but still sucked due to getting up at 6am two days in a row.  Well that one’s in the books.

Before that?  I went to the beach on lake Biwa with a couple friends two weeks ago.  It’s kind of shallow and full of jet skis, but it hit the spot on a 95 degree day.  You can also see my study abroad school from the beach.  After dark we walked around Hikone while I reminisced and my two friends caught Pokémon. 

Last week was there was big fireworks festival in Gifu city.  I went with one American and one Japanese coworker and we spent over an hour wandering through crowds trying to get to our other two friends.  Fireworks are a huge deal here, probably because you can’t buy any of the good ones legally.  The two newspapers in Gifu each sponsor one event, and always try to outdo each other on the first two weeks of August.  I hadn’t been since 2009, so it was nice to go home smelling like gun powder and fried meat again.  We never found our friends though…

Well, that’s about all that pops into mind for my summer.  I’ve been out and about more than last year which is nice (although mostly after sunset, like a heat vampire).  I’ll be attempting to return home tomorrow, although a typhoon is currently heading for Tokyo which may delay me.  Hopefully I can fill you in on my life in person soon, and also hear about any scintillating adventure you have been on!  Until then!

Fun in the (dangerously hot) sun.

Summer is upon us!  Last week we had 72 hours of straight rain but it finally gave way to blinding sunlight and 99 degree heat.  July and August are indoor season in Japan, but I got in couple of good outdoor days in June at least.  I hiked up to Gifu castle which was pretty cool, but we got to the top of the mountain just minutes after the squirrel petting zoo closed.  Shoot.  The employees started chasing the squirrels around with nets just after it closed, so they must herd them inside or something.  Squirrels are actually pretty rare in Japan, so it’s fun to watch Japanese people freak out when one darts towards them.  Also my old friend and colleague Izumi came for a visit (just a month after I met her in Hawaii) and we met up with our old running crew.  We did the 10km route we used to do every Monday night, and we got to see cormorant fishing at the river.  Ukai, as they call it in Japanese, involves letting a cormorant catch a fish out of the river, but with a metal collar one it’s neck, so it can’t swallow the fish.  Then the fish is squeezed out of the bird’s throat and presumably eaten by a human.  It’s a strange custom, but it’s a very popular tourist attraction around here.  People line the river banks at sunset to watch.  Afterword we went out for beers, and I vetoed the fish restaurant. 

Two weeks ago I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which was as hard as I had imagined.  It’s possible that I passed, but I felt like I was answering with about 70 percent confidence on most of the questions.  Not great considering it was a multiple choice exam.  I find out the result in September.  Pass or fail I have a disappointingly long way to go before I’m fluent.

Last week we had a banquet to celebrate the arrival of our newest teacher and the start of another school year (never mind that it started in April).  We rented a private room in an Italian restaurant and had an amazing five+ course meal, including sushi, pizza and snails.  As always there was unlimited alcohol of every sort.  After about an hour of drinking, or new teacher Sam put her parents on video chat from Texas.  Our boss drunkenly remarked to them “I am not stable but the company is stable”. 

So looking forward, tomorrow is my birthday!  And looking backward, we actually had the party last night.  All six of my local coworkers and one Japanese friend came to my new apartment.  My coworker Emily baked cookies and my friend Mai gave me a slightly ridiculous sun hat (see pictures).  Now I have to wear it whenever I see her because she has a matching one.  I bought a Chromecast recently, so I can play any video on internet on my TV.  We spent the night watching SNL videos and complaining about the weather.  I was pretty happy just to be able to enough space to have friends over though.  Well I should get back to cleaning up my place and mentally preparing myself to be 33 years old.  Stay cool friends.

New Apartment!

Greetings from the east friends!  I see I have not posted since Golden Week, so get you all up to speed let me start by confirming that I was indeed nearly volcanoed a month ago.  My trip to the big island was wonderful, and I got to see the lava coming out of the volcano the day before the eruption caused the closure of the viewing area!  Overall we stayed one step ahead of the volcano the whole 6 days and didn’t experience so much as a travel delay!

Back in Japan things are normal.  I work more hours this year, including a grueling 11am-10pm Friday, but classes are much more stable.  At the Friday meeting each week I get to hear the other teachers complain about the branches they took over from me, but other than that I have nothing to do with any of my students or coworkers from last year.  Oh well, moving on…

Last weekend I moved into a new apartment!  I had been contemplating it for months and finally pulled the trigger.  I moved just across the street and have the same land lord, but my new place is probably three times the size.  I have a nice big living room to have friends over, a veranda and two Japanese style Tatami rooms that I plan on never using or cleaning.  Let me know if any of you need a place to crash in Ogaki!  I’m also on the 5^th floor so I get a constant cross breeze.  I had my AC cranked up in my old place, but now don’t need it at all!  My rent is about $100 more a month, and I have to buy furniture still, so no loans for any of you this summer!

Besides that weekends have been a bit more fun and social lately.  I went to a strange rock concert in a one room venue in Nagoya.  After we paid and went through the door, we almost went into the wrong show because there two simultaneous concerts in adjacent rooms.  My coworker helped an American band fly in to perform, so I am one of maybe 50 people who have seen the Balinda Butchers live in Japan.

What else?  I found a free one room art gallery inside of a bank near my house.  I ate Hawaiian food for the first time after coming back from Hawaii (the restaurant Gravy Sauce is 20 minutes from my house).  I also spent a Sunday serving ice cream to kids at our annual ice cream party.  This year my students were actually invited which made it more tolerable.  Sadly no one brought red bean paste as a topping this year. 

I also signed up to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on July 1^st.  I’m taking the top level this year so if I pass, I can actually say I speak Japanese.  Woo!  I’ve studied a ton over the last few years, but it always seems like there are a million things I’m still missing.  Oh well, wish me luck!

And hey don’t let me forget, I’m coming home over summer break.  I’ll be in MN from August 9^th to the 20^th.  See you then!

Okay that should do it from my end.  I am off to search for a sofa at the recycling shop.  Keep it real!

Snoring, Leotards and Huge Apartments.

As quickly as a flash of lightning, I finished my spring break, roared through my first three weeks of classes and am somehow on vacation again.  It takes time to adjust to having nine weeks of vacation a year I guess.

So anyhoozle, the last half of my spring break was pretty pleasant.  I did an overnight trip to Takayama, a city in the far north of Gifu.  It is renowned for its mountain scenery, it’s preserved historic district and its ratio of 18 foreign tourists per local resident.  There were literally more foreigners per square meter than Tokyo or Kyoto.  It was quite a shock as I was expecting an isolated town in the heart of the mountains.  I stayed in an interesting hostel that provided me with a screened off sleeping room.  So it was totally private except I could hear everything happening in the other 19 sleeping pods.  One guy was snoring so badly I thought aliens might be sucking his brain out.  Hostels are hit and miss.

After coming back I started teaching with all-new students and coworkers.  Classes are much smaller, I have lots of materials, and I see the same students every week, so this is promising to be a much better year.  I get to work one day a week in Nagoya, the big city 45 minutes away.  Unfortunately it looks like our branch there is going to close this fall, due to lack of students.  My boss told me (no joke) that he is transferring me to work in a gymnastics center on Wednesdays.  Details TBD but hopefully I get to wear a leotard to work.

Outside of work, it seems like we have a pretty good group of Americans this year.  Last week we had our annual tradition of watching wrestle mania together.  It’s has become something I can only enjoy under very specific circumstances, specifically with fried chicken, beer and a very nice couch.  We’ve also been watching movies and hanging out in the apartments which has reignited my desire to get a less crappy room.  The land lady showed me an apartment next door that has four rooms and is on the fifth floor.  I can get it for only $100 more per month, but I’m not sure what I would do with basically two empty bedrooms.  We’ll see.

Starting today, I’m on vacation again!  Woo, Golden Week!  On Monday I’m flying to the big island of Hawaii to spend 5 nights with my parents.  They are desperate to get away from the Minnesota weather, although I don’t think Hawaii will actually be that different from Japan.  It’s been 60’s and 70’s here for what seems like forever.  Summer is sure to be upon me soon though.  Tomorrow I am going to pack up and then go on a date with a non-English speaking dentist.  Wish me luck!

Okay thanks for tuning in again guys and gals.  See you next time!

Spring Break!

Welcome back folks!  The school year is over and I am on an extra long two week spring break!  Somehow I survived the final weeks of a dismal school year, and I am now looking forward to starting fresh next Monday.  My last week passed with little fanfare, and I can’t say I’m sad to leaving any of the branches I taught at this year.  It didn’t seem like many of the other teachers even knew I was leaving.  Had I stayed, the majority of my students would have changed anyhow.

So after my classes wrapped up I had a week to shadow teachers and train for my new classes.  Next year I will be back in Hellos, which is where I originally taught from 2009-2011.  I have met most of my students, and there doesn’t seem to be any major problem in any class.  I am especially excited to teach high school students that actually speak in conversational sentences.  The only class I am worried about is a preschool class I’ll be taking over with one 3 year old girl who I’m pretty sure is 1 foot tall (I’ll measure her and get back to you.)

So the school year ended, we lost one American teacher and two new female teachers joined, one Japanese and one from Texas.  I got a chance to meet them both this week and both seem fun and uninhibited.  I feel astonished that new teachers are now almost 10 years younger than me!

So I’m on spring break, yay!  This weekend I went on a three day trip around the Kii peninsula.  It’s the largest peninsula in Japan and located directly south of me.  It’s almost all mountains, forests and little fishing villages that dot the rugged coastline.  There is a train line that runs along the coast around the whole peninsula, and I spent two days riding slow local trains from town to town.  It’s fun to see what life looks like when you’re 5+ hours away from the nearest big city!  People are friendlier in rural areas, although to my disappointment there were many other foreign tourists, so I didn’t get to be the first ever American in any town I went to. 

So I basically spent two days hiking around, riding very slow old trains and taking pictures of cherry blossoms which are in full bloom at the moment.  It’s been a very warm spring, with temps in the 70’s for the last week, so the blossoms are about a week early this year.  It’s wonderful now, but I am dreading summer.

I crashed in a cheap hotel the first night, but couldn’t find a place the second night.  I intended to stay in Wakayama, a large city 90 minutes south of Osaka, but I couldn’t find a single room.  On my way in to Osaka, my phone died, which left my roaming the city at 12am.  Finally I found a 27 story hotel with one non-smoking room left for $150.  Oofda.  But better than sitting in the station until the 5am train!  The hotel in Osaka doubled the cost of my entire trip!

Anyhow, I’m back home now in Ogaki.  Today I helped train the new American teacher.  Because she didn’t get her visa in time, she is doing all her training over break and will not even get a chance to observe a class before she starts.  Yikes!  Then I’ll five more days of vacation until I start 100% new classes.  (Yikes again).  Stay tuned and wish me luck!

Tokyo Report and Looking Forward

Oh hi!  Looks like you’ve stopped by for this month’s installment of The Michael in Japan Show!

I guess I should start with Tokyo!  We arrived at 5:30 am, well before sunrise and went to Tsukigi fish market.  I had been there before, but I must have been either half asleep or still drunk from partying all night, as I didn’t remember how huge and utterly fishy it was.  There are literally thousands of people running, yelling, arguing and frantically trying to buy the best of whatever had just been unloaded from the boats.  The fishing industry in Japan is huge and hyper-competitive.  After our visit, I am content in returning to experiencing it through educational TV programs.  

After Tsukigi we did a couple of famous temples and then tried to go up Sky Tree, the tallest building in Japan, but it was so overcast that we were advised to return the next day.  Then we decided to have lunch at an owl café, only it wasn’t just owls there, and it wasn’t a café at all.  It turned out to be a weird sort of petting zoo with exotic pets that had been discarded by their owners.  And there was a vending machine and bench.  I don’t know why you would want to call your petting zoo a “café” as that would seem like a health department red flag, but that’s what showed up on google.  So after petting some owls, a monkey and a capybara, we drank our free vending machine coffee and went off to a Mexican restaurant for lunch (actually a first in Japan.)  That afternoon we explored a forest in the middle of Tokyo (Meiji shrine) as well as Shibuya, which has the famous world’s-busiest cross walk.  We crashed in a crappy hostel and went back to Sky Tree the next day.  (It’s worth the $20 to get to the top.  You can see every neighborhood of a city of 30 million).  After that I met an old friend for lunch, strolled around the imperial gardens, and took the bullet train home.  It was by far the most sightseeing I had ever packed into two days.  I'm still a little tired out from it...

So, since then (it’s been a month hasn’t it?) I’ve been mostly working and thinking about my next break in 2 weeks and my new work assignment.  Starting next school year (April) I am completely abandoning all of my branches and starting again, mostly working at two Hello’s schools a mile from my apartment.  It’s a much needed fresh start, as the experiment of renting me out to our parent company has pretty much failed miserably.  The trend of bad behavior and little support has continued, and at this point most of my students don’t want to be in class and most of my coworkers barely talk to me (they don’t really talk to each other much either).  It’s a night and day difference compared to my last time in Japan.  Hopefully my move back to Hello’s will set things straight.  This week is my last on my current schedule, then I train for a week, and take over new classes after the April vacation. 

What else?  I’ve been to a few movies lately- I enjoyed Beguiled and Black Panther (especially the first ever token white character!)   I also worked the last two Sundays, one training and the other teaching a free lesson for prospective students.  I taught four classes with 5 students and two of them singed up on the spot.  Not bad considering I didn’t even know where the books and flashcards were when I showed up! 

Other than that I don’t have much more to report.  I am happy that so many of you keep reading despite my relative lack of adventures/ run-ins with law enforcement.  Hopefully things start getting more interesting soon.  Happy spring interneters!!

Setsubun in Tokyo!

Good evening friends and frienemies, it’s time for another of my increasingly infrequent updates from Japan!  I enjoyed a lovely Christmas in frozen Minnesota shortly following my last post and have been back basically in Ogaki since then.  Winter has finally started in earnest and we have a few melting piles of snow around the parking lot.  The big news is that I’m in the middle of another one week break!  Why another break already you ask?  Well the Japanese teachers are doing parent teacher conferences, so we have no classes to teach, yay!  But actually all of branches I teach at finished their conferences long ago, so there is really no reason that I have off other than my loud and frequent complaining!  Now for the rest of the year my breaks are the same as the other Americans, which makes no sense from a class schedule perspective, but is a huge improvement over texting my boss every day of the break to ask if I have to work or not.  But enough about my corporate overlords, I’m on vacation!  Yesterday I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time with six other Americans.  It took five hours and I only got to kill one person (and steal a guy’s clothes).  I am not so sad now that my brothers excluded me from their games when I was six.  I also went on one long hike from the town of Motosu to Gifu.  I took a back road through a mountain valley and discovered the prefectural prison, complete with watch towers and barbed wire.  When things aren’t going my way I always imagine the many things I could be thrown into Japanese prison for, and then I feel more grateful for my life!

Later tonight two of my coworkers and I are taking a night bus to Tokyo!  It only cost $40 one way.  We are going to hang out there and do some sightseeing Friday and Saturday and then come back probably on the train Saturday night.  So far on the agenda are: the Tokyo Skytree, the Tsukigi Fish Market, and hopefully one of those weird animal cafes.  (At first there were only cat cafes, but now there are rumored to be owl and hedgehog cafes as well.  Have to try them all before the health department shuts them down!)  Saturday is also Setsubun, the festival where people throw beans to ward of demons, and eat long sushi rolls.  Hopefully we can sneak that into our program as well.

Other than that things have been pretty quiet here.  I’ve been running, lifting weights with the old people at the gym and still trying to read my mini novel in Japanese (I’m on page 170).  I bought some folding chairs so I could now theoretically fit 3 people in my apartment.  A Japanese friend drove me to the furniture store and also gave me chocolate eggs with star wars toys inside.  I thought she liked me, but it turns out I have to give all the toys back to her after I finish the chocolate.  Okay, keep in touch and stay tuned to see how if I get kidnapped by Yakuza in Tokyo!