Sakura

Well, I haven't been posting much in 2008. It's harder to come up with interesting things to write about now that the newness of living in Japan is thoroughly gone. Don't get me wrong, I still absolutely love it here. It's just that after more than one and a half years, things don't feel quite as strange and life has become a little more routine.

Last Saturday, I went to Himeji for a hanami party. Hanami 花見 means flower viewing. It's basically a picnic under the cherry blossoms with lots of sake. Himeji Castle is probably one of the most spectacular places in Kansai to enjoy sakura. I bought a tripod for the occasion, so I could take a picture of the yozakura (夜桜) or night time cherry blossoms.

It's 2008.

I survived my trip to Southeast Asia. I've got some pictures to show you.






I don't think I'll give you a play-by-play of the trip, since there is just too much to say. If you have questions, post them in the comments section and I'll happily reply. I will say that it was an absolutely amazing time. I want to go back. Especially to Vietnam, since we really only got to see Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Though Cambodia really was fantastic and I could certainly spend more time there. Some highlights from the trip: eating snake and drinking its blood for lunch on the first day, weaving through crazy Hanoi traffic and darting around the city on scooters, the temples of Siem Reap - especially Angkor Wat and Ta Prom, relaxing in hammocks by the lake at our guest house in Phnom Penh (cost: 5 USD/night for a double room), talking with kids on the beach in Sihanoukville, watching a kid swallow fire for our entertainment on the street in Saigon, and a million other things. Seriously, ask me questions.

It felt good to come back to Japan after the craziness of Southeast Asia. Of course Japan is crazy too, but it's a different crazy - more manageable. Returning to work after a long trip is always difficult. After a conference in Kobe and some added workload, I've finally readjusted and settled back into the routine.

Holiday in Cambodia (and Vietnam)

Greetings netizens! I'm on my way to spend the holidays in Vietnam and Cambodia. I'm taking 20 days! I'm really looking forward to it as Vietnam has been the top of my "must see" list since I arrived in Asia. I'm headed there with a friend from New Zealand and a friend from Nova Scotia who both live in my corner of Japan. We fly in to Hanoi and hang out there for a few days. Then we'll grab a plane to Phnom Penh and a bus to Siem Reap to spend Christmas at Angkor Wat. When we've had our fill of Khmer temples, the plan is to take a boat down the Mekong delta to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). We'll probably spend New Year's there and maybe head to some beaches on the east coast before flying out of Ho Chi Minh. Should be a great time. I'll be sure to fill you in when I return and hope to take lots of pictures with the fancy camera lens I bought as a Christmas present to myself.

In the meantime, I hope you all have wonderful holidays. I miss everyone in Canada, but I'm having fantastic fun times here in the Land of the Rising Sun. I'll leave you with some pictures of my Christmas parties in Japan. Chance and I had a party with our eikaiwa students. After telling them about Halloween and costume parties, they decided the Christmas party should be "cosplay". My favourite was Kiko. Believe it or not there's a girl hidden somewhere under that Santa hat and beard. We played Christmas bingo and a had a present wrap/unwrap relay. Good times. My friend also asked me to be Santa Claus for her kindergarten class' Christmas party. Aged 3-5, the kids were incredibly adorable and they even sang songs for me. It was a lot of fun, but I was really nervous. The costume they gave me wasn't the most convincing and I didn't want to be the one to shatter the kids fantasy of Christmas.

Bounenkai

This Friday is Yoka High School's bounenkai. Bounenkai is a party at the end of the year to celebrate all the hard work everyone has done. Last year, we went to a beautiful ryokan in Kinosaki. It was really fun. There was a huge meal, lots of drinking, karaoke, and conversation. I think it's a much better party than the "office Christmas party", common in Canada. Especially since you're totally encouraged to cut-loose and get drunk with your coworkers.

This year. We're heading to a town called Yumura for the bounenkai. The ryokan we're staying at is called Izutsuya. Judging from the website, it looks like a really sweet place. The pictures of the hot springs look phenomenal. I have really grown to love hot springs in Japan. You get over the whole "getting naked with strangers" thing pretty quickly and, when the cold of winter hits, there's nothing finer than a hot bath. Oh yeah, did I mention the Emperor has stayed at this particular ryokan? This party is gonna be off the chain.

Bye November!

November is over. It sort of flew by and once again, I've fallen behind in my blogging. It felt like a really busy month. I'll try to recap a little.

Izakaya Tanigaki
There's a great izakaya (J-pub) in Yoka. I'd been a couple of times with my eikaiwa students and when my parents and sister visited, we had dinner their with my kocho sensei (principal). Anyway, at the Halloween party, when most people had gone home at around 3:30am, the owners of the izakaya showed up after closing down their place for the night. I hadn't met them before, but they recognized me from my visits to their establishment. It turns out they're super cool. Shintaro and Yotaro are 30 year-old identical twins. I still have a lot of trouble telling them apart unless they're standing next to each other (Shintaro has longer sideburns). I chatted with them for a while and made plans to hang out again at their izakaya with Shintaro's wife, Mayo (also very cool). Since then, I've been making a weekly visit to Izakaya Tanigaki to eat, drink, and be merry. They even invited me to the 2 year anniversary of the izakaya, which was loads of fun.

Oya Culture Festival
Sometime this month, though the date escapes me, I went to the Culture Festival at Oya High School. I usually don't go to the school festivals at Oya since I'm only there once a week and the festivals always fall on days when I'm at Yoka. This time it was on a Saturday and I decided to give up some free time to support the students. A lot of the kids were excited to see me and I tried to check out all the stuff they set up. It was a fun time. The day ended with a rock concert by a band made up of the first year students. The were unpolished, to say the least, but it reminded me of my former life as a high school rock deity.




Ikuno BBQ
November also saw the 2nd Annual Tajima Autumn BBQ. Not really a big deal, but it was a nice afternoon. Many of the JETs in Tajima got together in the town of Ikuno to cook up some meat (and veggies, I guess).



Speech Contest
The prefectural high school English speech contest was held in my neck of the woods this year. I had one student from Yoka who made it past the regional competition to the prefectural stage. She did pretty well, but I think we could have definitely used some more practice sessions together. It probably wouldn't have made much difference though. Most of the other students had lived abroad for a time, so it's a little difficult to compete with their English abilities. Do I sound bitter?

Kinosaki Marine World
My friend Yuka works at Marine World in Kinosaki. She arranged for a big group of us to visit one day. It was a lot of fun and much more extensive than I imagined. There were lots of cool fish and sea mammals. My favorite was the fugu (blowfish) because they have ridiculously hillarious faces. I couldn't scare any of them into puffing up for me though and unfortunately I couldn't get any really good pictures through the thick aquarium glass. My pictures from the day largely consist of dolphins jumping out of the water, still pretty cool though.




JLPT
Yesterday I wrote the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I study a lot at the beginning of the month, which was great. My main reason for signing up to write the test was to motivate myself to study harder to improve my Japanese. I wrote the level 3 test which doesn't really count for anything. Level 2 is needed to secure employment at a Japanese company and Level 1 is required to enter a Japanese university. Unfortunately, work got really busy last week, preparing exams and such. That meant that I couldn't even crack a book for the week before the test. Needless to say, it could have gone better. I may have scraped by, but I'm not holding my breath. It doesn't help that the test is particularly nasty, jammed full of trick questions and the like. The listening section is especially silly, not so much testing your listening ability as your deductive powers. An example conversation might be something like:

A: I really like chocolate cake. I think I'll have a piece.
B: Chocolate cake?
A: No wait. I've changed my mind. I want cheesecake.
B: OK.
A: Oh, but if I eat cheesecake, I'll get too fat. Do you have fruitcake?
B: Of course!
A: I'll take a slice of fruitcake then.
B: Oh, I'm sorry. We don't actually sell fruitcake by the slice. Would you like to buy the whole cake?
A: No. In that case, I'll just go back to my second choice.

I'm not really exaggerating here. To top it off you only get to hear each dialog once. Aargh! I don't find out my results until February. But, like I said, I'm not expecting good news.

Halloween!

Halloween has come and gone. I bought pumpkins this year and carved them with students. It was great. Last year, my costume was Mr. Canoehead and I ended up spending a great deal of time explaining it to the non-Canadians. The Japanese, especially, had difficulty grasping the idea. This year, I went with a self-evident costume - the Killer Bee. OK. So maybe it was just a regular-ass bee, but it was a killer costume and I had a giant stinger. As usual, there was a big party in Yabu. It was great. Met some new people, didn't get puked on. Fun times. Here are some pictures...

Gojira! (Godzilla!)

I was driving past a gas station the other day and I noticed this. I had to turn around and get a picture. Ahhh, Japan.