Thoughts

Hello again everyone! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I was thinking about all you guys during Christmas, that was my first Christmas away from home, it really made me homesick. I miss you all! However, I've got some good friends here to be with, so it's not terrible by any means. ^_^
I had Christmas dinner with a friend and her family, and it was phenomenal. For the Japanese, Christmas eve is more important than Christmas day - I never had that explained to me so that I could really understand it, but all the big dinners happen on Christmas eve. On actual Christmas, the price of Christmas cakes and all drops sharply, because everyone's already eaten all the treats they want the night before. Slightly strange, but whatever. Here are some photos from the dinner party:

The general spread. Note the tree and flowers in the background - They gave me the flowers as a Christmas present, and they're almost as big as their tree. Ye gods. Anyway, the spread was great. Not what I was used to, but great. Roast chicken, Nabe (Japanese soup with a lot of stuff in it), french fries, and sushi. Hey, when in Rome.

The chicken - presentation is so important in Japan, they even made the chicken wear a bow. They even put lettuce, lemon, and strawberry borders around the platters of french fries. Yeesh.

The Christmas cake we ate. These things are maybe 6 inches in diameter, and they're pretty pricey (a decent one runs around 30 dollars), but they are made with the highest quality ingredients, and the strawberries on top alone probably cost 6 dollars. Strawberries are hard to produce this time of year, and the demand for perfect strawberries for Christmas cakes and whatnot drives the price way up. They made the setting look and taste great, though. The cake was delicious.

On actual Christmas day, I didn't really do much, it was kind of quiet. My folks had sent me a butt-kicking care package with some books, DVD's, newspaper clippings, and mixes for Jambalaya and Gumbo (a bit hard to come by in Japan), so I spent the day taking advantage of all of those. My folks and I tried to get a webcam system up and running, but it wasn't to be on that day - you know how those things are, when you're trying to install them. Well, imagine that, but with all the documentation in Japanese. I did eventually get it working, though - I'm on skype now with the webcam and everything - name is Jefferson Thomas Caffery - jeff.caffery@gmail.com. Video phones... The future is NOW, man!

Oh, by the way, one more MAD important thing that happened, a little before Christmas (although I kind of consider it a cosmic Christmas present, and among the best presents I've ever gotten, at that): I GOT A CAR!! um. For some reason, blogger is being uncooperative about uploading images right now, I'll try to post one a bit later. But anyway, having a car is KEY. I can now trek it to Maebashi and Takasaki pretty easily, and mount Haruna is within easy reach for camping in the Summertime, and you know, it makes grocery shopping and going to onsen and pretty much everything a whole heck of a lot easier. Good times, all in all. It's a Suzuki Alto, I'd never heard of the brand before (I've never heard of a LOT of the models of cars they have here in Japan), it's a small little K-car, but it does the job nicely. The steering wheel is on the right, which still kind of throws me.

I got a heck of a lot of vacation time over the holiday - something like 17 days. That's definitely one of the perks of being an ALT working for my company - we get the same holidays as the students. The rest of the teachers (the REAL teachers ^_^) don't get nearly as much vacation time. Being a teacher is a serious responsibility in Japan, and they are expected to come in a lot to prepare lesson plans for the next session, and grade exams from the last session, and plan and prepare and improve... but there's not a heck of a lot of that that I can do. Oh, darn.

Just something at random: over here, they have started selling a pita with three pieces of chicken and weird vegetables in it at McDonalds. They call it Pita Mac. PITA here standing for Pain In The Ass. This is a poorly-conceived creation, be glad it hasn't made it to the states, or if it has, avoid it. However, I can't complain about the fries, they are always, always perfect. Can't beat the customer service and attention to detail by the fast food guys around here. However, they can only work with what they're given, and you can't turn a Pita Mac into a silk purse.

Another post coming extremely soon. Like, in the next 2 hours.

Christmastime among the Japanese

Hey all! Once again, I realize it's been a while since I posted, but I'll skip the standard apology and go right into new stuff, because it's really interesting. Yesterday, we had a Christmas Enkai for all the Assistant Language Teachers in Gunma, and it was a blast!!

First, a little background on Christmas in Japan. This is definitely, noticeably, the Christmas season when you turn on the TV or are shopping in a commercial district, same as in America, but I guess the difference is, when you get into the residential areas, you can't really tell. The typical thing to do on Christmas if you're Japanese is to either stay at home with the family if you're married, or if you're young and single, it's a nice holiday to go out on a romantic date. If you're of the first persuasion, a really common thing is to get Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner, for reasons no one has been able to clearly explain to me. Perhaps that was the chain that first made a really big deal of decorating restraunts for Christmas in Japan. It's a bit of a mystery. It looks to me like the Mos Burger (a big gourmet burger chain) has been trying to get in on some of that action, but I don't know how much success they're getting from the "Merry X-Mos" ad campaign. Anyway. The holiday is kind of seen as a romantic holiday for young people in love. Another big difference is that very few businesses and almost no people put up christmas lights and all. From what I've come to understand, an actual Christmas tree is fairly common, but illuminations, as Christmas lights have come to be called here, are pretty rare. Maybe it's that the lights are more expensive, maybe it's because it's a very energy-conscious nation, but the streets are definitely dark (although, admittedly, this is Gunma we're talking about - maybe more towards Tokyo, more people decorate). However, the spirit is still there, I'm doing Christmas-oriented lessons at my elementary school, and the kids are digging it. It's funny - I sometimes see racks of Christmas cards set up in stores, but Christmas card giving is not so much a Japanese thing - New Year's cards are MUCH more in demand. The cards in the racks, therefore, are largely written in English - they're targeting the gaijin market! Very interesting. ^_^

A big thing to do when the Christmas/New Year's holiday comes near is to have an Enkai with your co-workers (or just general friends). An enkai is a dinner party at a Japanese-style restraunt or ryokan (Japanese-style hotel). Sometimes they are just for an evening, but often they are overnight. At these parties, people often let go of all the inhibitions they usually have around the office, and cut loose and eat all the fancy food they want, and drink all the alcohol they want, and the mood is definitely informal and the idea is to improve cameraderie (spelling?) in the workplace. It definitely works, too. The enkai restraunts and fancy ryokans do big business this time of year, and many people have a wonderful time at them. Including us!!

The enkai that I attended Friday evening and Saturday morning was for all the assistant language teachers in the Gunma prefecture. It was advertised for a long time on the Gunma Jet website - www.gunmajet.net - they will probably be posting some photos and whatnot there soon. About 40 ALTs from all over the region attended, some came from pretty far away. It was really convenient for me and the people living in Shibukawa, because the enkai was held at a ryokan by a lake really near Mount Haruna (name literally means "Name of Spring), which is the closest mountain to Shibukawa. It was held at the Yuusuge ryokan, which was a really goregeous place with a nice onsen (ON-sen, Japanese style indoor/outdoor bath and/or hot spring) on premesis, and it was right on the lake. However, to get there, you had to drive up these really narrow, twisting roads in the dark. Now, driving on these roads even in ideal conditions is no picnic - they're pretty narrow, pretty steep, and have a lot of hairpin turns and double-backs. However, in winter, it gets really foggy, and we had trouble seeing five feet in front of the car. Scary times. We were lucky it hadn't snowed yet. We all got there and back safely, though, so enough caution was taken.

Dinner began at 8:30, and we had dinner with karaoke and nomihodai (all you can drink) for two hours. It was definitely interesting times. Here's some photos:


The spread, before everyone got in

The first to sit down, that's Diana smiling at the camera

Each place setting was the same, and each one was superb.

The group at my table. For those of you unfamiliar with ryokan etiquette, each ryokan has its own unique style of Yukata (relaxing robe). One of the first things you do when you get to your room is change into your yukata, and you stay in that all evening. We didn't just all randomly decide to wear the same thing.

The group starts to spread out a little, and the drink starts to flow more freely. That's Jonas, me, and CJ from left to right. CJ is a total ham when it comes to karaoke. Fun times. We started with Christmas carols, moved on to 70's classics (Get Down Tonight, Jungle Boogie, etc.) and from there, whatever fun.

A general idea of the scope of the party

The karaoke becomes more animated. CJ and, um, I think that's Christine are early casualties.

We also had a secred santa gift exchange - these were some of the gifts.

After we finished dinner and karaoke, everyone went to the onsen and relaxed for a bit. The party lasted far into the night, but onsen tends to relax me to the point of sleepiness, and I was an early casualty. I only lasted until about 1:00.

This is the view of Lake Haruna, taken from the window of our room.


A little floating dock on the lake




Chau, Rebecca (?) and me

The outside of the onsen

Well, that was pretty much our time. It was an absolute blast.

I did find out one very interesting thing on my way up Mount Haruna, on the roads with all those narrow, steep twists and turns. I used to watch an anime series called Initial D, which is a series about illegal street racing in the mountains of remote Japan, very cool, very well done. Much drifting is done around steep mountain turns, very suspenseful. I found out that the series is based on THE TOWN I LIVE IN!! It's based in Gunma. The mountain that the main character races on all the time is called Akina (literally, "Name of Autumn"), which is a deliberate misnomer of Haruna. The town the characters live in is called "S-city," and it's pretty obviously Shibukawa. The opposing racing club is called the Akagi Red Suns, and Akagi is a mountain that's, like, right over there, I see it every day. The main character works his day job at an Eneos gas station, and there's an Eneos RIGHT BY MY HOUSE. It could be the one! There was even Initial D merchandise for sale in the ryokan we stayed at. I call that pretty darn funny. However, after driving on that road, I have a new respect for how INSANE street racing is. Apparently, there are still many kids who go up on that mountain to drift, but the local government installed speed bumps and speed strips as a preventative measure. Interesting stuff. Here's some links about Initial D, if you want to know more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_D

http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=60

By the way, I'll be posting more about where I work and what I do, but I can't really send photos, since the principals might have issues with photos of the kids being seen on the internet, where anyone can look. Therefore, if you want to see pics of the places I work and the kids and events therein, please post a comment to the blog or send an e-mail to jeff.caffery@gmail.com, and I will verify who you are and send out a mass e-mail to everyone with many pics. Hopefully this will work.

It was awesome to hear from you, Charles, Aunt Suzy, Trent. Have a happy holidays! Charles, you still need to send me your address so I can send you some CC Lemon. My back is feeling much better, for those of you who were worried. Thanks for your concern. I've largely fininshed my Christmas shopping, and I'm going to get a car next weekend (finally), so hopefully things will get easier pretty soon, i.e. I will have more time to blog. We can but hope.

Ja, later everyone!!

Resolution of cliffhanger

Hello again. So, to stop you worrying about yesterday, there was good news and bad news. The good news (REALLY good) is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan. The bad news is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan that would make my back hurt like hell, and they could therefore fix. So, apparently the doctor thinks its just muscle inflammation and that I need to go to an onsen (hot spring) to relax my muscles for a bit. Hey, I can handle that. Therefore, that will be top priority this weekend. Thanks for your concern, I'll stop whining about it now. ^_^

Maybe.

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.