Difficulties

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't posted lately. I just wanted to let you know that this may be my last post for a few days. I'm having some health troubles.

A couple of weeks ago, I started feeling a pain in my right side. It got to the point where it hurt to move around, so I went to a doctor last Friday. He spoke fairly good English, so no trouble there, but I think he jumped to a conclusion, as doctors around here are prone to do, from what I hear. After taking an ultrasound of my kidneys, which turned out fine, he poked and prodded at me and concluded that it was a greenstick fracture of my lowest right rib. He told me to come back in two weeks if it didn't feel better. However, it has since gotten distinctly worse, and today I missed a day of school (not an important day for me - the kids had exams, so I only had one class to teach, and that was the special education class) to go see the doctor again. He recommended that I go to the hospital and have a CT scan done. I hope it's nothing huge, but worst case, they could admit me to the hospital this afternoon and I could be kept for a few days, maybe even have surgery. I don't know, and frankly I'm pretty worried about it. It's gotten to the point where it hurts to walk, to breathe deep, to bend over, I'm having trouble sleeping, and it basically just stinks. Happily, though, a guy at the board of education is being really nice and taking me there and conversing with the doctors there in Japanese for me. It's not all bad. So, I'll keep you guys posted, but this is not generally good times over here. I hope you all are having a better time of it than I am. Take care of yourselves.

More about my teaching existence

Hey guys! It's great to hear from all of you. First, a response to the comments - Tornados28, I considered that for a while, but I'm going to have to say no right now. Being a teacher isn't something I'm really cut out for, this is just to have first-hand experience in a country I'm obsessed with, and let the sparkles wear down and find out more about the country for what it really is, not just what they board of tourism wants me to think it is. If I find after a period of time that I can really live here and feel comfortable here, then I'll talk about living here. Regardless, though, it won't be in teaching. I have to say, though, that I'd be surprised if I end up ever feeling truly comfortable around here - always feeling conspicuous tends to take its toll. Bob Dylan said it well when he said, "Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot." I'll leave it up to you to decide if I'm comparing myself to Jesus, or just Bob Dylan. Either way, do you think I'm getting too big for my britches?

Erin, yeah, go figure that they'd launch Atlantis, lift the ban on night launches, AND lift the ban on family tours all within three months of my leaving. That absolutely figures. That just means I'm going to have to come back to USA, is all. Hmm, turkey sushi... I'll have to give that a shot. I did, however, get my fill of Turkey and all the trimmings at the ALT Thanksgiving party in Maebashi. It was enourmous, about 55 people showed, and they had 8 turkeys that they imported from the US. I think my burps still smell like mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Some pics:


Some of the crowd


Some of the spread


Some of the rush for the desserts when they finally came

Sandy, it's AWESOME to hear from you. I will write you a private e-mail when I get a chance. ^_^

Sorry, the evening just got busy. I'll post more tomorrow. Sorry for the teaser title! :-(

Internet connection! I'm a real person again!

Hey guys! Guess what I got at my apartment, finally finally. That's right, internet. Check out all my packets. And bandwidth. Woo. So, computer, check. Monitor, check. Mouse and American keyboard (more important than you might think), check. Internet, check. Functioning camera, check. I'm in blogging bijness.

So. This is the first post in a little while, thanks for your patience with my lazyness. Last post, I promised some info on where I work and what I do, and I intend to deliver on that. First, however, I have some pics to post from a nifty little once-a-year event in Ashikaga, in the nearby Tochigi prefecture. It was the Coco farm and winery harvest festival, and it was a good old time.

I have the deepest respect for this little winery. To begin with, it's not just a winery, it's a home for people with mental disabilities. There is a large dormitory on site where the workers live, and they all work at planting, tending the crops and fields, and harvesting when the time rolls around. This is a great career for mentally handicapped people, they get to work someplace absolutely beautiful, producing something with real cultural significance that they can really be proud of. I may fake a mental disability just so I can live there (kidding. I know, tasteless, but I'm not always a tasteful person (^_-)) I believe it's government sponsored, most things for the public welfare tend to be, but this place produces some pretty high-quality wines and has its own non-insignificant income. I think the annual harvest festival is their biggest event, and all the residents and volunteers and workers on the farm without disabilities were decked out in festival attire. If you got a ticket, you got a bottle of wine and corkscrew, and there were all live bands playing classical and jazz music, and lots of food to partake of, and fine breads and cheeses, and a lot of people to just mingle with, and it was just generally great. The seating arrangements for the day were in what was their vineyard, prior to the harvest. It's on the side of a pretty darn steep hill. No kidding, really. It was physically a challenge to stay in one place while drinking your wine, and the danger of dropping your bottle down the hill was real. This conundrum was, of course, magnified by the fact that everyone was drinking at least a bottle of wine each. My actual souvenir wine glass was a casualty of this spatially disadvantaged situation. Still a wonderful time, though. Here's a link to their site so you can read up on it if you so desire, and also some eye candy.

http://www.cocowine.com/english/english.html

This is the crew from Shibukawa that went, minus Leah, who came a bit later. Left to right: Steven, me, Chau, Akira

Our grape friends, before and after the production process. A common comment was, "Hey, I have a picture of you on my underwear!"

(Again tasteless. For those of you reading this site who are unfamiliar with American personal garments, there is a brand called Fruit of the Loom, and every garment of that brand has a picture on the tag of various fruits. Wow, explaining that joke just wrecked the comedic timing.)

Some of the performers on the main stage, on the second floor deck of the winery. They were pretty high-quality, I have to say. These particular dancers were performing Irish dances, which was a surprise in itself. The fiddler in the middle (wearing the bobble cap) was darn good.

Some cool folks from Osaka we met and had lunch with.

Akira's pretty glass and ugly mug. Also an overview of the festivities, from the side of the hill

The hillside they forced us to perch on. Picturesque yet scary. Those lines criss-crossing the hill are steel wires that they hung the grapes from. They were right at head height, too. You had to watch out if you were tall, or you'd take your head off.

Leah, and looking up the hill as the carnival was winding down

Well, it's getting kind of late, and I've honestly had my share of difficulty adjusting my computer settings to optimize the efficiency of the blogging process. I'll make good on the promise to deliver some material on actual teaching at a later date. Hopefully soon, though, because I'm not limited to using the computer at school anymore! Woot again! Take care, everyone. Mata de.

Completion of Marathon Osaka trip, finally

Hey all! More updates from the land of the rising sun. I'd like to thank you guys that e-mailed me, it's great to hear from some familiar folks. Today, I'll be continuing, and hopefully completing my trip to Osaka with Chris, Austin, Jason, Ryan, and Akira. This has been a marathon entry, I still haven't even gotten to questions 5 and 6 from my original post. I'll have to post an update with some photos from the schools I work at when I get a chance. Also, hopefully I'll have internet at my apartment pretty soon - then, the blogging volume should rise sharply. Well, picking up where we left off.

The third morning in Osaka, we were of two distinct groups - the group of us that returned to the hotel at 12:30 the previous night, and the group that returned at about 3:00. There was a quantum leap of hurt between the two. I was with the group that returned earlier, we were in better shape, but the group that returned later didn't slow us up that day. Once again, impressive. I'm going to post another hangover photo, because I think they're funny. This is Ryan on the train. He actually wore his headband from the previous night, he said the pressure on his head helped his headache.

That day, the group decided to make a day trip to Kyoto to see as much as we could of Gion and the temples before they closed at 5:00. When we were on the train from Osaka to Kyoto, we ran into this cool couple from America who were on a long, extended honeymoon to Hawaii and Japan. The guy was a successful software and video game designer, so he had a decent amount of money to burn, so they were doing as much of the two places as possible in about a month and a half. It was cool talking to him, because it made me reminiscent of MY first time to Japan, and not knowing anything at all about anywhere. Now that a few things have left an impression on me, it's fun talking to newbies. The other guys in our group were able to help them out with a lot of info about how to survive around here for a few weeks, including a reminder that Yen is NOT, in fact, Monopoly money.

When we got into Kyoto, we did a quick walking tour of Gion, where I saw my first real, decked-out geisha. Apparently, some of them (most?) need attendants at all times while walking around the city when it's hot, just because their costume is so heavy and intricate that it's physically exhausting to walk around too much, and passing out is a real danger. We also met some girls dressed in basic Kimono, and we asked to get their pictures and they did the same of us. It was a happy coincidence that we were in front of a famous pagoda at the time, whose name I have since forgotten. You look it up, I'm feeling lazy.

We also hit Kiyomizudera temple, the temple of the famous flowing holy waters, which we did not partake of. The line to drink and wash your hands in the waters was about 45 minutes long, and the charge was about 8 dollars. I'm sure some of the comments we muttered under our breath made a dent in the holiness of the temple as a whole. We did, however, get some great photos with a lot of people who just walked up to us and asked for pictures. Apparently, our group really hit a nerve with the younger population.

We also tried to hit Kin'kaku-ji, the temple of the Golden Pavilion, but due to the confusing and intricate bus system around Kyoto, we got there at 5:05, and it had closed at 5:00. Unfortunate. That did, however, allow us more time to sleep back at the capsule hotel before going out to the Midnight Rave at Osaka castle that night. That was about the coolest party I have ever been to. The flyers were printed in English, and consequently there were a heck of a lot of foreigners there. Highlights of the party were: Doing the robot dance to a techno beat and chanting 'Domo arigato, mister roboto,' high-energy dancing with a girl from Ireland, chilling and smoking a tabacco hooka with a guy from france and a Japanese girl who had lived in Canada most of her life, beating tribal rhythms on some African drums while keeping time to ultra-modern techno music, and the people in our group monopolizing a radio antenna for most of the evening, dancing around it or just sitting on its stone base and taking in the Osaka skyline. Definitely an evening for the books. Chris has some good photos of the pole dancing and Osaka castle at night on his blog, the address for which I supplied in my last post. On his page, the entry is in his archives, under the heading "Best weekend since the dinosaurs."

After the party on our way back, we found this great playground with a slide that was about 100 feet long (that measurement is in feet, not meters - I'm still a rebel). Our entire group took turns sliding down it, and eventually made a 7-person train. I still can't get the rust stains out of those pants. Totally worth it, though. After mercilessly harassing a couple of really patient taxi drivers to find us Karaoke at 4:00 in the morning, we made our way back to the hotel and crashed.

That's pretty much the end of the weekend, finally. We had breakfast the next day, parted ways, and shinkansen'd our way back to Shibukawa utterly exhausted. Best weekend ever, though. I think we may have even out-performed those dinosaurs.

Well, that's about it, and it's getting late. Next time: Where I work and what I do.