Where the sun sets East

Farewell Japan

2006-09-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

the first pic I ever took in Japan, in my Tokyo hotel

And so this tale comes to an end, and what an end it has been. Indeed Tokyo is a world apart from the rest of Japan )and bloody expensive too). Here I got to eat all my favorite foods. I ended it last night with kaiten action and today with churrasco. I think now I am officially fatter than Ronaldo in his miserable world cup performance. But, let us revisit Japan, one last time.

Before writing this last post, I decided to reread my entire blog. It took me about a week, but I did it, and actually quite enjoyed it. It was nostalgic to be sure, but it helped me see how I have evolved in the past year, it was quite interesting to see how my entries sort of gradually morphed as my perceptions did. I want to go back and highlight some things about the blog and Japan.

First, about the nomihodais (all you can drink). I did not do any here in Tokyo, but more than abused of them in Hokkaido. It is a very Japanese thing, and I quite enjoyed them, but I think it is best if the nomihodai practice stay here in Japan. I do want to have a liver, and you know, vision. Anyway, I have often written about them or alluded to them in my blog, but I assure you, I have done more in Japan than simply drink, well kind of…

I said in an early post that the great part of my house was that I would be able to walk around naked doing katas and samurai grunts whenever I pleased. I did not always do this, most of the time it was in my underwear, because of that whole winter thing. But yeah, I am a pro at fighting myself with myself.

Another thing I noticed in my blog is the wealth of references I left. In the beginning, I did not even say they were refs? But then I started doing that hoping that people would comment more just to try and guess the ref. I can’t say it was a huge hit, but every now and then I got some feed back. To be honest most of the time I would either ref Seinfeld, Family guy, Simpsons and you know, biblical stuff. Kudos to Kaki, she was the person who replied to most ref requests. Honorable mentions go to Dom Rafa and Louis who would also regularly answer.

Actually, as far as comments go, when rereading the whole blog, I noticed that people would comment in spurts. Dom Rafa was actually among the first and last to comment, although he would go some weeks without commenting. Kaki and Steph were pretty solid, especially in the beginning. Ju and Mach were also regulars, but on a less frequent basis. Louis, Alex and Leo were sporadic, sometimes commenting 4-5 times in a row, then long spurts of no comment. Dave was a late comer, but then also left his mark. Then there were the sporadic one shots, even strangers who would comment. Finally, there was the spam. At one point it got pretty intense, but for the past 6 months there has been no spam, I guess blogspot is filtering better. The longest comment goes to Francis, who wrote a dissertation. The best comment? Hmm not sure I can tell, but I will give it to Kaki for her caption, it was pretty funny. Thiago was really solid in the beginning and probably had the funniest comments throughout.

I also noticed, at least for me, that the older posts were funnier and more interesting. As time went by I would be just posting pictures and commenting on them. I guess that is why there was more commenting in the beginning. One thing that has disappointed me is that we never broke the 10comments barrier. The most comments we got was 9, on 5 separate occasions. So, I guess this is last chance for you folk to break the 10 mark. Gambatte tabarnak!

Another thing I noticed was the gradual deterioration of the quality of my English. Wow, some of the mistakes I saw were criminal. I am even embarrassed to mention them. This is a downside to the JET experience, the overall loss of English, while ironically being English teachers.

I have mentioned early on how tough it was for me to remember Japanese names. That still holds true today. They are just not easy to remember, at least not for gaijin. I am ashamed to say that there are even some co-workers I could not remember their names. At the Embassy, it was a bit easier, but mostly because I actually had to talk to them and work with them, so after 1 week, I could remember their names, and by chance, the folks I worked with had easier names to remember.

So how was my Embassy experience? Pretty Great! I actually got to do some really interesting stuff. Met and drank with some Canadian sailors. Did some research on fuel cells, ubiquitous networks, Canadian railway R&D, and of course the gaming industry, which culminated in the Tokyo game show. How was the TGS? Awesome! I played PS3, Xbox360 and a bunch of stuff I never even heard of. I am still in awe at the production value of some of the booths, like Microsoft, Sony and other big players. From what I gathered, these companies were dishing out at least 2-3 million per day, for 3 days. Ours was pretty tame in comparison. Also worthy of note, were the booth bunnies. There must have been at least 1000 of them. These birds were hired (and pretty expensive from what I was told) to just stand there in skimpy outfits to say welcome to people. And it works; guys are taking pictures left and right. Some of the outfits were extreme, even by Brazilian standards, and that is saying a lot. I guess sex does indeed sell. But still, it is the video games that steal the show; some of the stuff I saw was beyond belief. I played this game that professional baseball players and formula 1 drivers play to improve reflexes, with 3D visuals and stuff. I took many pics, sadly, I can’t post them here yet because I have already packed my USB cables.

And now? Back to Montreal. I am very happy to be going back. I was asked where would be the first place I would go and what would the first thing I would eat. I am not sure yet, I guess I will mull over it on the plane. I am actually not really looking forward to the trip itself, it will be long and I have lots of heavy bags I do not wish to carry….. ahh, how lazy I have become since coming to Japan. Who am I kidding, I have always been lazy.

So what have I learned from this year? Difficult question to answer. I learned that it is indeed very difficult for very different cultures to adapt to each other. I now better understand why international cooperation simply has not brought the fruits it has promised. But there is hope. While it is not easy to cope, it is possible. I think there are many things both cultures can learn from each other. But there is no point in me telling you, because the other thing I learnt was that unless you experience something first hand, you can never truly appreciate it.
The one thing that to me is universal is sport (well, at least to males). I have lived in 3 countries, traveled to 3 continents, over 12 countries, and seriously, the only thing that is common to all is sport. Even art can’t compete with it. To me, it is the unifying human activity. All my closets friends in Japan have come through sport: Jin through basketball, Hane and Masaki through soccer, Honda through our kendo death matches, and my elementary students through kancho tournaments.

And my impressions of the JET program? Those have varied with time. At first I thought it was a great program, then I thought it was crap, then good again, then useless, and now, I think it is good, but not for English teaching. I have always held that the JET program is better for the JETs than it is for Japan. I still think that, at least on the short term. But on the long term, the JET program is great for Japan. The decision-makers were wise in their vision. Does JET help English teaching? Not really. However, JET will accomplish something in the very long run; it will help Japan bring in capable and competent workers into a desperately aging population. Many JETs choose to stay in Japan, even after they finish their contract. Moreover, with an increasing number of gaijin in Japan, it will help diversify and further internationalize Japan. Finally, the JETs that do go back are often good promoters for Japan. They encourage their friends and families to visit, and perhaps more. So in the whole, JET is good for Japan, but not for English teaching, although, with the continuing number of JETs who stay in Japan, it is likely that English teaching will improve in the years to come.

Well, I have written too much already. I will cherish Shinshinotsu, Tokyo and Japan for decades to come. But it has also made me realize how much I miss Montreal and that it is the only city I can ever really call home. I will miss Japan, I will miss the friends I have made here, but I will leave here a grown person, and I am happy for that. In the end, the one true constant is that alcohol IS the cause and solution to all our problems.

This is dan in japan signing off for the last time, from the land where the sun sets east….

You have reached the terminus.
sayonara

One week only

2006-09-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

this title alludes to two things; firstly, it refers to the amount of time we spent in Cairns in Australia, and it also refers to the amount of time remaining in Japan.

Cairns is a really cool place. The city itself, is quite small, and without much to do other than stores, travel/tour agencies, hotels, restaurants and bars. However, it is the center for tourits to visit the North East of Oz, where you are only a boat ride to the great barrier Reef. So obviously, our main activity there was scuba diving. We went to the reef on a boat that made both me and Juliana quite dizzy and out of it. But once there, it was all good. We started with some snorkleing then the main event. I went twice and Juliana only once. I bought an underwater camera, but it is not digital, so I can't post them here. But the best part, was that at the end of my second dive, I saw the most sought after fish there is, the fabled shark!! To be fair, it was not a huge great white shark, it must have been about 1.5m to 2m long. I only saw it for about 30 seconds as it swam away.

For the rest of our time, it was pretty chill. We rented a mini-car and drove to various beaches to relax and enojy the great sights.

On the Tokyo front, well, this is my final week. It will be my most busy week at the Embassy because next Fraiday will be the Tokyo Game Show, and we have much to prepare before that. It will be a great way to end my internship at the Embassy, with a video game trade show event. I am actually getting really psyched to go back home, and I think this intership was a great way to help the transition of Japan back to Canada. To other JETs out there, do look into it...;)

more pics:

Cairns

just outside Cairns

it is supposed to look like I am falling, for those wondering what the hell is going on here

Mossman Gorge, in Aborigines land, where many a people have died

Clifton Beach, where jelly fish reign, and can kill with one sting. To answer your question, yes, of course we swam.

the Mini

"little" friend we met. I called it Fred. It was neither very quiet nor very fast, making it real easy prey for those killer bunnies

This is at Cape Tribultion, where the Reef meets the rain forest, quite unique.

This is where LOST is filmed. At least in my dreams....

Juliana. What is important for you to know, is that it is her birthday. The ol' quarter century mark. It really saddens me not to be there today to celebrate this joyous occasion. To make up for it, I will be throwing her a surprise party. Um, Juliana, if you are reading this, please erase your short term memory.
So anyway, for the rest of you, free up your calenders for that secret date (wink wink) and rest you liver, it will need it...

Well kids, that was my Oz/NZ experience. Stay tuned for the grand finale...

Next stop: Japan, one last time...

Kiwi? I think so!

2006-09-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

So after Wanaka, we drove, and by we, I mean I, to Fox Glacier. It was like a small ski town. From there we went to Franz Ferdinand or was it Franz Joseph? anyway, for some reason the kiwis named one of their glaciers as a Habsburg Emperor (or heir depending which name it was). We drove further north via the West coast to reach Punakaiki, home of the world famous pancake rocks. On our last day, we circuled back south and ended whence we had begun, in the ChristChurch, where we spent our final night with Phil and Laura, and watched the last of the Twin Peaks first season.

How can I sum up New Zealand? I can't, so you have no choice but to go there yourself. Seriously, take a road trip on the South Island and your neck will hurt so much there is to see. Moreover, kiwis are, as expected, really nice folk (except for the ones who aren't, and the hobos). And if you ever run out of things to say to a kiwi, just ask them who they know who worked on LOR; no joke, EVERYBODY knows at least one person who worked on the movies. Also, if you want to get on their good side, just say you agree that Russel Crowe is kiwi and that Oz sucks at rugby. Just don't mention the war (ref? obscure).

In Tokyo, life continues busy as always. In 2 weeks here, I have already lived through 2 earthquakes and a quasi-typhoon. I was writing an email to my friend Leo when the biggest earthquake I have ever felt shook the city. Since I don't know many people in Tokyo, I have instead, begun my farewell of my favorite Japanese things: food. It seems I have been saying good-bye to Japan for a long time now. But this time, it is final. I have eaten my last sukiyaki, okonomiyaki as well as my last tempura (maybe). My last meal here will be of course, sushi.

Sur une autre note, je voudrais feliciter Ben et Caro, premier de mes amis proches, qui sont maintenant les fiers parents de Charles-Olivier. Je promets lui apprendre le Hold'em...

pics:

our nice little car...

WITH ONLY 4 GEARS!!!! I've never seen this before!

Near Fox glacier

At Franz something glacier

Mordor

I dunno

the West Coast

Represent!!

Pancake rocks

Punakaiki, at our hotel, there was an outside spa. We sat looking at the most star filled sky I have ever seen. Even the Milky way could be seen.

I believe this is an actual Kiwi, but Juliana is not sure. The kiwi is a flightless bird, so to test it, Juliana started running after it to see if it could fly away. The bird will be missed....
Oh by the way, the kiwi fruits in NZ are HUGE, They are as big as apples.

chess at the Christchurch

seriously, how come we don't have these kinds of sunsets in Montreal?

next stop: Canes, Carns, Kynes, how the hell do you pronounce Cairns anyway?!?!

New Zealand part 1

2006-09-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

We finally did it. We went to the land of Frodo. We spent one week in the NZ, in the South island only. We landed in Christchurch (yeah, I know) and were greeted by Phil and Laura, two of Juliana's friends, well sort of, actually they are friend's of an ex-teacher of the owner of a now dead cat who is also the roomate of one of Juliana's friend-in-law. Get it? got it, Good!! (ref?)
We stayed at their place two nights, did a 6hour trek in the area (gorgeous) then headed out on a 5 day road trip on a car, that, well, more on the car in the next post. In short, our short time in the ChristChurch was truely memorable.

Our first stop on our trip was a town called Wanaka, which was used in the filming of a small independant movie trilogy, you may of may not have heard of. From my inside sources, this site was used for such places as: the south of Rivendell (Rivendell had a South?!?!?!).

Anyway, on another note. Is anyone else not surprised that the croc hunter met his end at the tail of a stingray? I always knew he would be killed by an animal, seeing as he used to play with deadly snakes, crocs and such. I actually liked him, so I hope his spirit finds rest knowing that he died the way he lived.

On the Tokyo front, it has been another good week at the Embassy. They have given me bigger responsabilities and I know have quite a bit on my desk, probably more than I can do before my time is up. Today, I will be going to a Brazilian Churrascaria, a pretty good one too. I'm not sure I will make it out alive....

pic goodness:

The Misty Mountains, or as normal humans call them, the Southern Alps

Sumner, near the ChristChurch. Part or our 6 hour trek. We came accross many sheep. There are a LOT of sheep in NZ, it is even a little scary. They're everywhere Jerry, everywhere.

Laura and Phil. They were awesome. They greeted us really well. Laura cooked us a risotto al funghi worthy of Tuscany, and Phil got us hooked on Twin Peaks, we saw the whole first season, its really good. He also convinced Juliana to watch a 1950's movie about giant killer rabbits that terrorise a small US town. Okay, so he convinced me only. May this post be an hommage to them.

Rohan was not filmed far from this site

WTF!?!? this wasn't in the movie

these two pics are taken inside the "hotel" we stayed in Wanaka. Not a "budget" hotel, but it was great. 3 rooms, linving room with big screen TV, dinning room with a great view (see pic), 2 bathrooms with huge bathtub, fully equiped kitchen, and even free washing and drying machines.

Lake Wanaka, and token mountain

Next stop: part deux

Mountains, I want to see Mountains (ref?)

2006-09-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Blue Mountains. Okay, so they are not really blue, and they are not mountains. But the boys at marketing back in the 1700s didn't think the name Green Plateau would sell. So they said: what's cooler than a plateau? Mountains! and what do the Japanese call their green traffic lights? Blue! (no joke) Perfect now we are in business.
So we took an eco tour hike to this nice valley. We walked down the canyon (then up again), through a rain forest, then went to a plain where wild Kangaroos gather to eat. It was a nice walk, with great sights and our guide was a really cool guy. Like I said, one of the highlights of Sydney, even if I lied because they are not really in Sydney.

Yesterday, I realized just how provincial I have become. I found a small sushi shop near my apartment, about a 5 min walk. Now, back in Hokkaido, I would never spend more than around 25$ for sushi, and believe me when I tell you that I can eat lots of sushi. So I did not feel like taking my wallet to the place, so instead I took out 30$ and headed out. This is a shop where you order what you want and the chef prepares it right in front of you. These shops are more expensive than kaiten (convayer belt) so I knew I could not eat my usual quaota. Nevertheless, I would be in for a surprise....
I only eat 12 sushis, half of what I normally eat, and BUYA, the bill came to 50$!!!
GOD DAMN!!! I did not have the funds, so I told the lady that I "forgot" my wallet (so that she would not lose face) and would have to go back and get it. I left her my watch as collateral (it should be noted that my watch is worth less than the meal). So I ran there and back again, in rain, and paid my dues. The good news is that while running, I spotted another sushi place even closer to my apt. So next time, it will be a quicker jog.

now pics:

"blue" "mountains"

three sisters rocks

our guide and some......guy, who the hell is he anyway

best caption wins a prize

Next stop: Zealand....NEW Zealand....

Sydney and the Navy

2006-09-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

So after one week in Tokyo at the Embassy, there is much to tell. But before I write about my week here and drinking in a Navy Cruiser ship with ample weapons on board, first, let me tell you about the magical world of Oz, or Australia as the French call it.

Our first stop was of course Sydney. Honestly, hard to describe it. Hateful people, ugly buildings, and shitty food. I'm just kidding, they are not really considered people.
No seriously, Sydney is a fantastic city, and for the record, aussies are great folk. Only down side is that it is expensive. But the weather, even during their winter is better than our spring. Lots of restaurants, bars, cool places to visit, beautiful waterfront and even japanese stuff. We had the best Thai massaman curry ever, no joke, it was better than in Thailand.
We pretty much did the classics, stip clubs, synagogues and phone booths. In between, we also saw the opera house, other buildings that are not on post cards, and the Rocks and Darlington port. We also took a ferry to Manly beach. Yeah, I know great name huh. It gets better, the reason it is called Manly is because the English bloke that discovered it and met the aborigines was surprised to see that they were very "manly" in their behavior/looks. So...yeah, this guy was definately heterosexual.
But on to different things.

This week culminated in a drinkathon with some Canadian sailors. The HMCS Regina docked in Tokyo bay as part of a trade fair between Canadians and Japanese. The ship had come from a 3-week war game excersise in Hawaii with some 10 or so Pacific nations. Apparently they were not sunk one single time.
Anyway, I was on board to help the Embassy and Navy "facilitate" commercial relations in the field of "military technology" (I never thought I would be an arms dealer...)
Anyway, after the demonstrations were finished, there was a delicious lunch, then at night there was a reception on the ship. The food was fantastic: buffalo, saumon grilled lightly in maple syrup and the best damn chocolate cake I have ever had.
After the reception finished, some sailors were kind enough to give me a tour of the ship. The tour ended in one of the mess halls where booze just flowed like water. There was Hold'em poker, lots of sailor talk and, nah, that was pretty much it. Anyway, never thought I would drink in a Navy ship with a guy who has pulled a shot gun on what he considered a terrorist. Ahhh, those crazy guys....
On board was an exchange sailor from New Zealand. This guy got sloshed, at one point his "english" was absolutely unintelligeable. Great guy tough.

some pics just for fun:

opera house

some Aborigines playing the Digereedoo. Here it would seem that they are content with their current lifestyle, but we saw a real aborigine "reservation", and it is very poor. Their lot is not better that the native americans in Canada and is even comparable to favelas in Brazil. It is really sad to see.

ferry to Manly

Manly beach

near the Royal botanical gardens

Wallabies, which is Aussie for big rat, and a joey if you look careful

Looks spaced out? he is!! The Koala is perhaps the dumbest animal there is. Its brain is the size of a walnut. And it stinks, but its cute and soft and stuff.

This is a funny story. Juliana, convinced its okay to reach over the fence and grab a koala, grabs this guy in her arms before a zoo attendent ran to the koala's (or Ju's, those guys have really sharp nails) rescue. So if you are heading to Oz to pick up a koala, don't, its illegal by Aussie law.

What the HELL!?!?! how does anything sit like that!?!?! Itai! Itai!!!

Bondi beach

Top three moments of Sydney: Port Darlington, the Koala affair and the Blue Mountains

Next previous stop: the Blue Mountains

Tokyo, 4th time in...

2006-08-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

well kids, I am back in the land of Pikachu. I arrived yesterday, and today I started at the Embassy. Not a very eventful day, but I was given two interesting tasks, and from what I can tell, they are actually going to give me some interesting assignments. The big thing coming up is the Tokyo Game show, where video game companies all over the world will converge here for displays and such. My section of the Embassy will be assisting the Canadian companies coming in. Rumor has it, that they might get me a media card so I can go in and try out the new playstation 3, because as you are all aware, Canada's relations with Japan are extremely dependant on my liking of the PS3. I'll keep you posted.

I am staying in a nice little apartment. It is my brother's friend Jean-Olivier's place. It worked out perfect because during my month here, he will be spending a month in New York for training. I will take pics of the place and post them here.

I know, I know, you are all thinking: DAN, we don't care about or your life, we wants to see pictures of the Shire and Mordor and koalas, and kangaroos or koalas eating kangaroos, and Fabio. Well, not to worry, I will soon post up some nice pics. Just give me a few days to settle in (I am still living out of my suitcase). In the meantime, I have 4 weeks left in Japan, those of you in Montreal wanting me to bring you back something from here, just send me a comment or email; and don't ask for food....or Fabio.

Previous stop: Sydney

All is well

2006-08-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

G'day mates!

just a short post to say that all is well in the land down under. I have visited Sydney, New Zealand and today I am heading to Cairns to check out the great barrier reef. Anyway, no time really to relate all that has happened, but this is just a prelude to what will be a series of posts with great pics and some funny tales (hopefully).

I hope all is well with everyone!

Good bye Shinshinotsu

2006-07-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back (ref?). Sadly though, this will be the last time I will post from my (soon to to be ex-)home in Shinshinotsu. I has been a great home indeed. Tomorrow I part with Juliana to Tokyo. We will stay one week in Tokyo (along with a visit to Kyoto) before we embark on our 3 week trip to Australia/New Zealand. After that, I return to Japan for one month at the Canadian Embassy. But it will not be the same...ever.

I spent most of this week saying many good byes as well as packing and tieing up all loose ends. If you asked me 2 years ago if I would like to live a year in a small village in Japan, I would have laughed at your face; today, well, I laugh at mine.

The saddest part of leaving is knowing that I most likely will never again see any of the great people I have met here. This, of course, is not the first time I part from dear friends (or even family); but it never gets easier. I wish them all the best.

To close though, on my journey in Hokkaido, I would like to end on a happy note. I wish every person could go through a similar experience. It is really terrific. It has opened my eyes to a new world, to new ideas, new customs and new experiences. I have learned so much I could not even begin to describe it on this blog. And while it has not always been red roses, it has always been engaging.

Here is a month by month account of some highlights:

2005

August: arrival in Tokyo. Bright lights, big city. In sum, fascination! I fell in love with Japan in my first week.

September: work starts, making new friends, still feels surreal. Start playing for sport teams, all is well.

October: Honeymoon phase of culture shock starts to wear off, start seeing negative things of Japan. The colder weather also pisses me off! The Culture festival at school was awesome though.

November: My b-day lifts my spirits and keeps them high until x-mas. Snow starts. Work begins to become routine.

December: Anxious to go to Thailand to meet Juliana, can't really concentrate on anything else. Realize that x-mas songs piss me off even more in Japan. Santa should be shot dead.

January: Thailand trip was awesome. The return not so much. There is way too much snow, I shovel every day until late-February, no joke. My Japanese studies are at their peak.

February: Just like in Montreal, the worst month of the year, weather wise. Work is also getting tough because graduation is just around the corner, students are sick of being in school. I also go through some personal refelection.

March: End of school year celebrations brings tears and joy to many. It is also the Brazil Carnival, the best thing I accomplished in my whole stay here. It was a blend of Brazil, Japan and grassroots internationalization at its best.

April: Trip to Kansai with my brother and Stephanie. A very happy time except for the sad fact that Jin moved to Okinawa. New school year starts, very exciting.

May: Okinawa trip, pretty god damn great. The weather is also great back in Hokkaido. I take a new approach to my daily routine as I know my time left here is short. Bad side is that my Japanese study starts to suffer.

June: Lots and lots of festivals, parties and psychological preparation for the end. World Cup rocks (except for Fat Ronaldo and that fucking Roberto Carlos)

July: Juliana arrives, even more parites and festivals, school is great. Sadness and good-byes, but also joy and happiness in knowing that it was a memorable experience.

I don't know if I will be able to post in the next month since I will be travelling, but I promise to post about Australia and New Zealand when I return to Tokyo in September. I also promise to keep blogging in September to relate my last month in the East. I will also keep posting when I return to help cope with reverse culture shock and tell the tale of my new job search.

Until then, thanks for all the support. This blog has been a central part of my stay in Japan, and all the readers are an important part of that. For this, I think you all. I will send it off with another set of pictures. These are all finales to something meaningfull to me here in Shinshinotsu (listening to Good Riddence is recommended or Brothers in Arms). Cheers!

My last sushi experience in Hokkaido (best sushi of Japan BTW). The one on the first pic is whale. Not all that it is hyped up to be. The one on the second is my favortie, eel. Fucking delicious.

Last soccer

Last Basketball

My Good-bye party

Last Adult English conversation class

Last Matsuri (Japanese festival) with my closest (gaijin) friends

Juliana's own last experience in Hokkaido

Farewell celebration. People just came from all over town to wave me off as my supervisor drove me away.

one of my first pictures in Shinshinotsu.................

JHS trip, dinner and entertainment

2006-07-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been busy...
So last Wednesday was my last adult class, which ended with drinking at a bar. Then Thursday, as you know was my last school classes, followed by a soccer game and a farewell party with other JETs (ie more drinking). Friday was the farewell celebrations at both my schools and at night was a farewell party with the teamates of one of my soccer teams (ie, still more drinking, plus karaoke). Saturday morining at 9am (after drinking until late on Friday) we met with my JHS teachers for a 2 day road trip. The teachers pulled out the beers at 9;15am and started at it in the bus on our way to Furano to see flowers and such. I only drank after lunch as I stick to my PM mantra. Anyway, there was much eating involved, and you guessed it, it ended with more drinking again at karaoke.
Sunday, we continued our road trip to Asahikawa and visit a zoo, then a sake museum where you could try fee samples. Obviously we tried a few samples.
After the road trip, we were invited to one of the best meals I have ever eaten in Japan at my neiborgh's house. It was delicious (tempura of all kinds and sushi and other stuff I can't remember). I think I am now fatter than Ronaldo, if that is possible.

Anyway, yesterday, after 5 days straight of drinking we took the night off and went to a Japanese entertainment center. It is a huge building with many games, arcades, pool, bowling, karaoke, studios, archery, sports and what not.

Tonight is my final (well not quite) farewell party. This is the offical party organized by my town, so I suspect that I will need a liver transplant after tonight...

the elementary kids made a tunnel for me to walk through at my good-bye ceremony

speech at the JHS ceremony

yeah, some of the kids thought it fun to carry me and throw me up in the air...

good-bye dinner with my soccer mates

WTF?!?!?!

cherry picking during the JHS road trip

token lavendars

the sushis at this restaurant were huge. Seriously, they looked like onigiri (rice balls)

visit to a trick art museum....uhm.. yeah...."art"

some of more subtle ways to cheat at poker...

at the enkai

second party,

this is the sake museum, always good to have a dodgy bridge where people can drink free samples of sake....

dinner at my neiborgh's

oh yeah, in the mist of all these activities, we also did some kayaking

Ju found a new friend at the entertainment center

can you tell from my face that I hit the target?

I did not tame the bull, it was already tamed, I mearly shot it (ref?)

Last class...

2006-07-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

Today was my last class at the JHS. Last Friday was my last class at the Elementary school and yesterday was my last class with the adult conversation class. From now on begins a series of good-bye parties and trips. My liver may not make it....

It is a strange feeling to say good-bye to all these students. Some I am glad I will never see again, but some I will miss for a long time to come. For my last class, I had to give a speech on my impressions of Japan as well as a comparison with Canada. It was tough to do, but I sensed that many students were moved. I don't suspect they will remember it though after the summer vacation and once the new ALT comes in. But all the same, I wish them well.

As for me, well, I have some vacation time myself coming up and I am really looking forward to it. I can't wait to visit Australia and New Zealand.

Ce qu'ils ne rendent pas compte, c'est qu'en fait, je leur ai appris le Frengilsh...hahahaha, vive le Hokkaido libre!!!

I also took over math teaching duties.

...and then just like that....he disappeared (ref?)

you want a piece of me!?!?

the stock will rise HIGH!!! (ref?)

now, where am I going to go with this one? will it be a sexual inuendo caption; will I do a Street Fighter reference; or perhaps I will do a Matrix kung fu reference; maybe I will do a Ultraman reference; or maybe, just maybe, I will do a Hawaii dance number reference. No, any of these would be too easy. Let's stick with the classic "It was THIS big"

a student asked me what was the last movie I had seen. I answered x-man 3. No one knew what x-men where. So I said Wolverine. Again, no reaction. I figured they knew him, but not the name, the Japanese translation must be something like "Man who has claws". So I decided to draw him on the board. Now tell me that is not the best wolverine you have ever seen? Marvel should be begging me to draw for them...
oh, also the chicken was to answer another question. One student asked my why Zidane had head-butted the Italian. I did not know, so I told him that I figured God (or the CIA) transplanted the brain of a chicken into Zidane's head.

7th graders

8th graders

9th graders

Next stop: Teacher trip, and no, not mushrooms.

Mountains, I want to see mountains! (ref?)

2006-07-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

Hello again,

no I did not abandon this blog. It is really hot here now, which I plenty like, but it is hard in class, students just don't want to learn in this kind of heat, and I don't blame them. I too would rather be outside. But to be frank, this is the first week that I actually had to turn on my fan at home, which is to say that it has not been very hot this summer, at least not in Hokkaido. Let's hope this weather persists in my last two weeks here. Speaking of last weeks, they have been getting quite hectic. Started packing, saying goodbyes, writing speeches, leading the final offensive against the hobos...I tell you, changing continents is no small task.

But there is good news, in fact great news. To help me along the way in these last two weeks of Shinshinotsu it the beautifuol Juliana. She arrives Saturday night, although for her it will be Friday, and she left on Thursday........... of last week...well, not really, I am joking. It was not Thursday of last week, it was Wednesday.

Okay, so silly jokes aside, she will come and we will enjoy all we can enjoy of this Hokkaido summer, before heading to Honshu for a week in Tokyo (with pit stops in Kyoto and possiboly Osaka). Then, we will head to the forgotten continent. Really, I forgot its name, but its where them kangaroos live, I hear they are delicious, no seriously. We will spend 2 weeks in the land of Oz and also one week in the land of kiwis, or as it is now refered to: "Welcome to Middle-Kong, home of Heavenly creatures". It should be a blast.

After our trip, I return to Tokyo for my month at the Embassy. They have assigned me to the Trade commission. I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing there, but they sent me a letter saying that I definately will not be involved in any red clip shananigans. Besides, I already own a house. Well its not really a house, and I don't really "own" it, but dammit, a man can dream.

Alright, so the next post you read, will be written in the presence of the sweet Juliana and possibly Jesus; he is after all, the captain of the Northern hobo clan.

Next stop: Many good-byes

100!!!

2006-07-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

Centurion…

Today is a special day. It is special because it will be the World Cup final. But more importantly, it is special because it is the day I am posting for the 100th time on this blog. Yes, you have read correctly, so if you have been following Dan in Japan since its inception, then you have read 100 different posts. This blog has been around for about a year, which means that I have posted on average once every 3.65 days. I had originally intended to post about once a week, something I am currently doing, but as it turned out, updating this blog became something of a passion of mine. It served as a vehicle for me to maintain contact with friends and family. Quite frankly, without this blog, I think I might have had a very tough time here. It was very nice for me to write down some of the experiences I was living, and it was always great to read comments from you all. So to all that have commented, even but once, even if irrelevant, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I am going to take this opportunity to highlight some of the greatest moments here in Japan as well as in this blog.

So as you may know, I came to Japan to teach English as a JET. I was placed in Shinshinotsu Hokkaido, the most Northern Island in Japan. I teach elementary, junior high and an adult conversation class. All three have their pros and cons, but without a doubt, the elementary kids are the most fun to teach. During my stay here in Japan, I have met many interesting people. Here is a “short” list of some of these memorable people, both Japanese and gaijin:

-Kimberley, an American from Louisiana, the first other JET I befriended; we took the same plane up from Tokyo to Sapporo.
-Harada, my supervisor, and perhaps one of the greatest persons I have ever come across.
-Honda, holder of my Honda aka Little bandit, and winner of many a poker nights.
-Hane and Aya, my favorite Japanese couple. Thanks to Hane, I got to play soccer on a regular basis and get my right knee back into playing form.
-Max, my closest JET and a very good friend. He has often helped me with coping with culture shock and adapting to the Japanese way of life.
-Francis and Josh, two other Montreal JETs with whom I have shared some of the greatest laughs.
-Mieko, even though she is my student in the adult conversation class, more often than not, she has been a guide and a friend to me.
-Mika, another adult conversation class student who has often brought much life to class and has taught me a great deal on Japanese cuisine.
-Jin, my best friend here, although now he is living in Okinawa. Life in Shinshinotsu would not have been half as good if I had not met him

Now some useless stats just for the hell of it…
-While in Japan I have read over 17 books (that I can remember).
- I have seen over 25 movies (half of them legally). The best was the Straight Story and the worst was DaVinci Code
-I have eaten over 500 sushis.
-I have learnt and now forgotten over 133 kanji
-I have been to Thailand, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Okinawa all over Hokkaido and Mos Burger
-I have been kanchoed twice
-I have karaoked over 30 times
-I have only once gone into the wrong bathroom
-I have taken over 5000 pictures
-I have drunk more than, well, at this point let’s just be thankful my liver is still functioning.
-I have written 100 posts

What is my greatest moment in Japan? Tough one to answer, there are so many I can’t even remember them all. But I would have to say that one day that will forever be in my memory is actually quite easy. And this is not because I am a narcissistic whore, because I am, but I will never forget my birthday here. I think it was perhaps the moment in which I felt the most at home in Japan. It was a great party in which both my Japanese and gaijin friends came together and had a blast of a time. I also got some great gifts that I will cherish for a long time to come.
-greatest gift: DVD player
-worst gift: I still don’t know what it is or what it is for….

Best teaching moment? Another tough one, there are few outstanding ones, mostly because I am not a very good teacher. But I would say one of my favorite moments was directing a series of English skits for the Culture festival.

Worst teaching moment? Again, there’s not one moment which is easily singled out, but I suppose it was when I was coaching one of my students for an English competition and I was interrupted by another teacher who wanted the student for some other purpose and completely disregarded the fact that we were working on something. The student, as well as I, was really pissed.

Saddest moment? It has not yet come to pass, but I predict it will be at my farewell party. Leaving here will not be a joyous occasion, even if I am very happy to be going back home.

This brings me to another topic, one which is a happy one. I have been accepted to work for one month at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. It is a small contract, but it will be the cherry on top of this unforgettable year. As a result, I will be staying in Japan a little while longer and will only return to Montreal on September 26th. More on that as it develops.

I have not often talked about my impressions of Japanese culture on this here blog. The fact is that even after a year, it is hard to be a good judge. But I think I am finally entitled to elaborate a little more on Japan. I’ll use the hamburger technique in that I start with something good, then I say what needs improvement and I end with something good (ref?).

Japan is a very interesting place. To us Westerners, it is a very different and strange place. At first, it is easy to fall in love with it, and then it is also very easy to become disillusioned with it. I will try to be as objective as I can. Are Japanese xenophobic, close-minded, ethno-centric even outright racists? Yes, but no more than every other culture on the world. The only difference is that the Japanese are not as subtle as the West. But they are also not as violent. The Japanese love Japan, and are also very interested and curious about other cultures. They really are. However, they are weary of other cultures “invading” and “polluting” their own. But we can find this rhetoric everywhere even in Quebec. I also seem to remember some pretty violent clashes in Australia between Muslims and “whites” as well as burning cars in Paris, the jewel of Europe. Native Americans are still being persecuted in Guatamala, Peru, and many other Latin American countries; I won’t even mention North American because we have all but decimated them there. As for the Middle-East, well, I think this blog is too simple to tackle of the shit that is going on there based on cultural and religious rhetoric. So in short, when it comes to Japan’s treatment of gaijin, it is not perfect, but it is no worse than most places and perhaps best than most. In this, as a visible minority, I say Japan has done well to try and cope with gaijins, although it has room for improvement no doubt.

No, Japan’s chief problem, as far as I have observed, is with itself. Japan is slow to change, and that has been a thorn in its development, both economically and politically. Banking here is ridiculously outdated. The democratic process here is stuck in the 60s. Corruption here is not even corruption anymore because it has been institutionalized. While Japan is a very clean place, the amount of waste this country generates is tantamount to a crime. The youth’s “rebellion” here is comical at best and sad at worst. I find the education system to be too strict on some trivial things and too lenient on more fundamental ones (although this is a very cultural argument and is subject to debate).

But to come back to the good, Japan, like every place on earth has many great people. Ultimately, a nation is judged on its people more than anything. And to this, Japan, has passed the test. While Japan, taken as a whole society can seem to be very uniform, boring, predictable and bizarre, Japanese individuals are far from that. Each person I have met, even if they all seem to ask me if I know how to use chopsticks, has a unique personality, yet everyone also knows how to fit in perfectly in the “team” or community. I can’t say we are as proficient as that in the West. We are more concerned with asserting our individuality and pursuing our own goals and less concerned for the group. Japan on the other hand places more importance on the group, at the expense of the individual to be true. Both have their pros and cons. It is a question of upbringing.

So in conclusion, Japan is a fantastic place to visit, not because it is flawless, but because it is very complex, even contradictory, just like everywhere from Australia to Zimbabwe with the exception of Argentina (always one exception there is…).

Thus comes to pass my 100th post on a blog. I have enjoyed every moment I have posted here and even more the moments I have read your comments. So my homage today will be to every reader, regular or sporadic, known or unknown, who has taken the time to comment and say: “Dan, you are a fuck ball (ref?) and you suck more than anything that has ever sucked before (ref?)”

To end this way too long post, I want to highlight some of my favorite posts and pictures:

-in the Bible we must trust
-Homage to the boys in Japan
-Dialogue
-Kyoto, part deux
-Jin and the Yakuza
-Sad post
-Bridge over river Kwai
-Special day
-Hommage to the CORE
-funny tales in a strange land….
And last but not least…
-ah…those apples

And for something completely different, memorable photos…

Last JET meeting

2006-07-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the last JET meeting/party for me. To be honest, I did not stay for much of the party because I drove back home to watch the world cup games. Actually I did not watch them at home, but instead at another JET's house where many English were cheering on their team. I too was cheering for England because Canadian born, on Canada day noless, Owen Hargreaves had the match of his career. He was even elected man of the match by FIFA. But the mood turned to depression after Christian Ronaldo's PK. But secretly, I was happy Portugal made it through.
As for the other quarter final, well, fuck fat Ronaldo is what I have to say, and especially fuck Roberto Carlos. Zidane schooled Brazil.

Anyway, here are some nice pics:

Lake Toya

My bungalow, if you can tell

token sunset

token me

next stop: celebration

Lost post

2006-06-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

This is one of the few non-Japanese related posts that you may find here. I have dedicated much of my free time here to learn Japanese and Japanese related things. However, as my time draws nigh to an end, I find myself less motivated to study, and more inclined to "simple pleasures", which to put quite simply, means watching TV and movies. Also, since the World Cup has started, not only is my sleep schedule completely out of whack (games here are at midnight or 4am) but it also means that I have further strayed from the disciplined path of studying.

So recently, I have borrowed, quite legally I assure you, the first season of LOST, an American tv show. Now I am not usually that big on TV dramas, I much prefer comedies like the Simpsons, Seinfeld or Family Guy. But there are some dramas I really enjoy. Lost, I would say is my second favorite drama so far. It loses out only to the Sopranos, which is in a class of its own. My thrid choice would have to be 24.

Lost actually is somewhere in between Sopranos and 24. Sopranos concentrates on character development whereas 24 is plot driven. Sopranos strengh is the depth of the characters and dialogue and how we can relate or not to them. There are characters we simply love or love to hate. In 24, we don't care so much about the characters, except perhaps Bauer. What keeps us watching is the hook (imminent death to millions) and the cliffhangers at the end of each episode. But this is also 24 weakness, because once you've seen an episode, there is no reason to ever watch it again. In fact, rewatching an episode or season is quite boring. The same in not true for the Sopranos. I could rewatch an episode and still find it entertaining. Moreoever, Sopranos does not have the addictive hook that 24 has. I could watch en entire 24 season in a weekend, I can't for the Sopranos.

Now Lost takes the best of both worlds. Not only does it have a great hook and cliffhangers like 24, but it also takes the time to develop backstories of each character. Moreover, Lost has a big mystery and fantasy element that is absent in both 24 and Sopranos. Lost is also addictive like 24, but has the advantage of being interesting to rewatch because, like any other mystery, when you rewatch it you can see clues you did not the first time, and some even quite blatant.

But still, in the end, Sopranos is my favorite. How can you not love a show that has such classic lines as:
"you think the queen had her whacked?" -Sil referring to the death of Princess Diana.

"I have a problem with my uterus" -Adriana
"both of them?!" -Christopher's reply

In the words of Alanis Morisette, while in concert in Lima, Peru (probably drunk off her ass): "Let's go Brazil!!!" (this is not a joke)

Vive la St-Jean

2006-06-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

Ce n'est pas North Hatley, mais ce fut une St-Jean memorable. Un BBQ qui debuta a 4pm et qui fini a 2am avec des cris et des chants. Un mix de bouffe japonaise et non-japonaise, et un bon melange de japonais, gaijins jeunes et vieux. Il y a meme eu des "beer hunter" comme dans le bon vieux temps...

et la debauche commence

Next stop: JET party, one last time...

Vitoria do gordo

2006-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Brasil esta na segunda fase, e finalmente jogou como gostamos de ver, com estilo. O gordo jogou melhor, mas continuou achando que o lugar dele e na ponta do banco. Fico triste pelos Japas, mas time sem ataque nao vence jogos.
Vamos ver agora contra Gana.

a melhor foto da copa ate agora:

o Japao pode ter perdido o jogo, mas esse japa nao perdeu a esperanca....

Final Road Trip

2006-06-20T19:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, the faithful Hane and his wife Aya took me on a 3 day road trip accross Hokkaido. We went almost to the most eastern tip of the island. I can now boast that I have been to 3 of the 4 corners of Hokkaido, only the North escaping me. I guess it will be for another time. Anyway, it was a nice trip, I certainly had to use all of my limited Japanese abilities, so it was great practice. We also saw two great world cup games. The thrashing of serbia & montenegro (which funny enough is not even a country anymore) by Argentina and the Portugal vs. Iran game.
On the Saturday we stayed in a pretty lush hotel with a hot spring, lake, amazing food. It was very Japanese in style, which I fully appreciated (read, expensive).
Sadly, the climate was shit, it rained for the most part and was cloudy and cold. It put a bit of a damper on the whole trip.
We came back on Sunday to watch the Japan game, unfortunately, the Blue Samurai, as they are called here, were unimpressive. Brazil, on the other hand, lead by a very fat Ronaldo just got by the Aussies.

at a dinosaur museum, we got to do some work on fossils

who needs an umbrella when you can use fuki. These plants, when well prepared actually are quite tasty

token falls

a Hokkaido fox. These animals are really friendly, I guess because people always feed them. I also saw 2 deer, but was not quick enough to take a pic.

a little trip to hell, nah, just another volcano

Japanese style dinner, and this is not even the main course....

in a traditional yukata

at the Kushiro national park

the Pacific at its least glorious

Next stop: La Saint-Jean oestie!!!

Yosakoi and a defeat...

2006-06-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

Yosakoi is the name of an annual celebration here in Japan. Originally it started as a fisherman's celebration. There is a famous yosakoi song that fishermen sing as they bring in their catch. I guess through the centuries it grew and began to be another reason for communities to come together and celebrate. It has evolved into very intricate and elaborate dance choreographies and songs with people of all ages in colorful costumes. Recently, it has integrated many modern dances and music and has morphed into a sort of carnival with many teams of dancers competing in a parade, not unlike the carnival in Rio.
The yosakoi is perhaps one of the best exemples of mixing of old traditions with contemporay culture. I find the blend of modern music and dance with the traditional form to bit quite amazing. Although, to be fair, not all of Japan's attempts to mix old with new have been so succesful. Some Ikebana (traditional flower arrangement) has evolved and incorporated contemporary "designs" that leave much to be desired.

Here are some pics to give you an idea.

to be honest, I did not take these pictures, as I had forgot my camera, so I commandeered them from another JET

On Monday I went to see the Japan vs Australia game with many friends in a community center with a big screen, sadly Japan was defeated in a pretty poor display. On a happier note, Brazil beat Croatia, but to be fair, the game should have ended in a draw. Ronaldo was nowhere to be seen. For shame...

Another sports day

2006-06-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

So Sunday was my Junior high sports festival. It was a very cold day, cold even by May standards, let alone June ones. But there was no rain so all went well. I entered the 200m race, but did not win. I blame the fact that I had only had some 5 hours sleep on account of the World Cup game I watched with the English.
The festival was fun, but I thought it was pretty crappy that they only had 3 teams, and each team was basically one grade. So it was no surprise that the 9th graders destroyed the other two grades and that the 7th graders came in a distant last. I would have prefered to have seen mixed teams, it would have made it more competitive.

They also had a competition of a traditional ceremony type thing. The students stand in formation singing and doing katas. Then the girls also do a cheerleading dance. Actually the girls have to work twice as much as the boys because not only do they need to learn the song and katas of the boys part, they also have to create and rehearse a cheerleading act and design and make their own costumes. The boys just wear their uniforms. So kudos to the girls on this day.

On Saturday, I actually had a pretty good day, even if I had been bitter by the fact that rain cancelled the original day for the sports festival. However, it allowed me, along with my good friend Francis, to go to Sapporo and watch the Yosakoi, a carnival type event. It was really cool, but I will save it for my next post as to not overwhelm this one with pics.

Tonight is Japan's first game against Australia, should be a fun time, I will go watch it with some friends. I am looking forward to tomorrow's Brazil game, however, here it will play at 4am, no idea yet on how I am going to survive the next day...

Here are some pics to keep you entertained... (I also have more videos on google, will link them here soon)

opening ceremonies

the 100m

high jump

long jump

this was a fun event, it was a whacky relay race, so every leg had to race in a funny way

in this case, it was required to spin around the bat 5 times before sprinting

you can judge this one for yourself

jump rope comptetition

the 9th graders flag

ceremony

it is a sort of war cry dance, the students stand in a very stern manner, yell out things at the top of their lungs, and perform some katas. It is quite interesting. The girls then do some cheerleading...

...as can be seen here

the red team, who eventually won

Brazilians will understand why this is funny...

next stop: Yosakoi...

World Cup Fever...

2006-06-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

So last night was the opener of the 2006 World Cup, and what an event it was. Not even because of the game, but because of the people with whom I saw the game. A bunch of JETs got together at a guy's house to watch the opener. Most of them were English, so I was in for a hooligan of a night. It was hilarious. Many beers were consumed, and only one person (an American) passed out before the kick off.
Here are some of the most memorable quotes of the night:

-Oh my GOD, they are fucking cow bells! (an astute observation to one of the "dances" performed during the opening ceremonies)

-Look at those crazy Germans, with their German hair and faces, they are so strange and German (also said during the opening ceremonies)

-Ha! Take that you Germans, we beat you in World War II, and now you'll lose to a bunch of spanish speaking Gonzalez. (after Costa Rica tied at 1-1)

-Ah, there is nothing like the World Cup to bring out the racism out in everyone. (I won't even write why this was said)

-That wasn't even a tremendous shot. I have seen better shots not go in...(said, by and American, after Germany scored its last and most spectacular goal of the night)

-Of all the comments said during this game, and all the comments that will eventually be said during the rest of the World Cup, that was the most retarded one. What defines a great strike, is the fact that it goes in, not that it misses. (a reply to the previous statement)

-Ben, get out of your house! (also said after the statement about the goal)

Today was supposed to be my JHS sports festival but it got canceled on account of the rain. It will be postponed until tomorrow. Fucking rain!

Next Stop: more World Cup and the JHS sports festival, hopefully

Undokai...

2006-06-05T00:32:00.000-07:00

No, it is not a character from Lord of the Rings, it is the name of the sports festival here in Japan. Last Saturday was the Elementary school sports festival. It was really fun. The kids, especially the younger ones, were really cute. They played lots of fun games, and I was a starter for some of the races. It was cool to shoot the gun, but by the end, my ear was pretty sore from the blasts.
Anyway, I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, since that is what pictures are good for.
I have also filmed some great videos, which I uploaded to google video, just go to google video and do a search for Daniel Souhami or Japan school sports festival, there are 10 videos.

Opening ceremonies

Let's march

Warm up excercises to a very corny song, I suspect it is the same all over Japan. I filmed some of it, definately worth the watch

One of many races

2016 World Cup try outs

those years of duck hunt, the nintendo game, have payed off

when a teacher goes postal

my favorite event when I was a kid

Preparations for the dance

This was the best event of the day. The two teams had a number of "towers" that would fight each other. Each "tower" consists of 4 kids, 3 who form the base, and a fourth who sits on top. This is the captain of the white team. The objective is is try and remove the cap (or sash in the case of the captains' as we see here) off the opposing team's "tower". I suspect they played this game in the Edo period to really help build the samurai spirit. It looked really fun, even if it is sort of dangerous. Anyway, there is two competitions, the first is a battle royal with every tower in the battle (there is a great video of it). The second was a one vs one type competition. The captains of each team send out one tower to combat the opposing tower; as a tower loses it is eliminiated from the game, with the winning tower remaining to combat the next opponent. In the end all the towers were eliminated except the two captains. It was a battle to the death, and finaly red won.

The main event, the relay race

Da Vinci Code

2006-05-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I watched the DaVinci Code. Quite unimpressive is what I have to say. The book is a fun read, even if the plot is ludicrous and the end kind of sucks. Most of the time, books are better than the movie version; but that does not mean the movie has to be bad. Take Lord of the Rings for exemple, the book far outclasses the movie, but the movie is quite exceptional and deserved all the awards it got plus many it didn't.
But the Da Vinci Code movie, is so lame that it actually made me not like the book anymore. It's like Ron Howard went out of his way to accentuate all the shortfalls of the story and eliminate all the fun parts of the book. Plus what the hell was up with Tom Hanks' hair? Who the hell was this Jesus character and how come we never see him? Since when do all French people know not only how to speak fluently, but also how to write elaborate riddles in English? And why was there no nudity? I mean it is not like Amelie had anything else to do in the movie?

So save yourself the trouble and the money. The Church has gotten all ants at a picnic for no reason.

Next stop: Sprots festival...

In the Bible we must trust.....

2006-05-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

I can't take credit for what you are about to read, I commandeered it from Dancing Chaos blog. But it is funny as hell; in fact, if you like it, it probably means tha is where you are going....
Anyway, after Japan, I am going to to buy me an Ontarian, they must be hard working...

Why Can't I Own a Canadian?
October 2002

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. Recently, she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a east coast resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted fan,
Jim

Homage to the boys in Japan…

2006-05-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

It is time for another homage, and this time to some gaijin friends in Japan. These three gentlemen are my closest non-Japanese friends here in Japan. We have gone together on many benders and have enjoyed countless hours of Family Guy together. So here they are, in no particular order.

I am not even comment this one, it is too easy.

Francis “the daredevil” Langlois:
Francis is from Quebec and brings the franglais with him here in Japan. He is the most academic of us here (on his way to getting a PhD in history), but do not be fooled by his book smarts. When drunken, Francis is far from being a coherent or intelligible person. When on a bender, he has a penchant for attempting crazy dares that he imposes on himself, like rolling around on the street with oncoming traffic. It is a good thing that Japanese drivers are slow and considerate of pedestrians. In short, Francis brings a bit of humanity and compassion in this otherwise group of cynical cynics. He is also a huge Seinfeld fan and has similar tastes as me in terms of music, film and books (except that he has read 10 times more than I have; and by 10, I mean 73).

Teacher by day, cabaret singer by night, is there anything he CAN'T do?

"So are you sure this is what Derek wore at Mugato's show?" (ref?)

Charles Maxwell “Max” Weddington
Even tough his name is utterly unpronounceable for the Japanese, he can recite the entire periodic table backwards. Max, has been here the longest, and thus is the source of many Japanese tales and lore. Most impressive about Max is that in one year, he really learned tremendous Japanese. Max is from Oklahoma, and is the brightest American I have ever met. He has aided me often with my crap Japanese. Max is another avid Simpsons/Family Guy fan, as well as being an experienced gamer. Max’s dream is to one day be able to give instant orgasms to anybody anywhere. He further boasts that he can pass out in a tasteful manner….

Tarantino's un-unionized Mexican counterpart scouts locations for his upcoming picture: "Why won't you just let me die?"

After much practice, he was finally able to reach it.

Josh “badman” Goodman
Josh, another Montreal native, absolutely loves the joke of changing his name from Goodman to “Badman”. When someone makes the joke, it will often incapacitate Josh with laugher. Josh has the innate ability to mock anyone or anything, including children, especially the elderly, but especially children. Josh is also very proficient in Japanese, even if he contends that it makes no sense and will get him no closer to learning German. Josh is obsessed with time, and hopes one day to control it (although don’t expect him to do anything altruistic with such a power). Another connoisseur of comedy, Josh prefers to reference other people’s jokes than to come up with his own original material, not unlike this author.

"three words: Herpies!"

"It will grow back right?" (ref?)

world cup soccer

2006-05-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post.

Last week I played soccer on a field that was built for the 2002 World Cup. It was built for the Mexico team to train on. IT was fantastic. The grass was perfect, not one single bump, or patch of earth. IT was also a huge field, the biggest I have ever played on.

On another world cup note, I have prepared a World Cup pool that I am organizing here in Japan, but if people back home also want to participate, that should not be a problem. So let me know.

PS: I will be posting again later today or tomorrow

Pics and Question

2006-05-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

So as promised here are some pics of Okinawa as well as my road trip to the Toyako volcano, see previous post for more details.

Okinawan beach, as you can see it was a tad cloudy there.

the protective wall around the Shuri Castle in Naha, Okinawa. A beautiful castle, although it is a reconstruction, everything was bombed in the Second World War II (ref?)

just proof that I was there...

a traditional Okinawan play

Whoa...

Now for the volcano:

My frind Hane's guardian for road trips

Not actually the volcano, but a pretty sight nonetheless

Hane and Aya, my favorite Japanese couple, at the site of the volcano. Just behind them is the smoldering crater. The volcano last erupted in 2000, no fatalities, but it left a large chunk of the nearby city deserted.

exemple of the ruin it caused

pic from atop of the volcano

Now for my Question: do you bother seeing the pics I upload to Yahoo? or the videos I upload to google? I have a few more, but it is a bit of a bitch to upload, so unless people are seeing them, I will not bother. So, just throwing in out there. Let me know.

a post on comments

2006-05-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

I have decided to comment on the comments of last post since they are worthy of comment.

All Japanese people, as the gaijin here most likely already know, know what their blod type is. Moreover, they are always very surprised to learn that gaijin seldom know what theirs are. There is a very simple reason for this that I have been recently told. As it turns out, Japanese people who are in need of blood, must marshal their own donors. For exemple, if you need regular transfusions, you must try and get as many donors as possible. As a result, it is paramount that you know your own blood type. Now hospitals also have a stock of blood for emergencies. So I guess, people can give blood to a random clinic for storage. I am not sure how that part works.

As for Alex's comment. Bravo sir, you are a scholar and a gentleman. A triple win situation is a rare pearl indeed.

Congrats Louis on the reference. I hope the Show was awsome, I am jealous. It was a difficult one, and I suspected that only you or Jon would know it. However, I suspect that Jon does not read my blog, so it means that he hates children. Bam! right in the kisser!

Finally, getting a diploma in two weeks! how could this possibly go wrong!

I had a pretty awsome weekend. Went to Karaoke on Friday night with my buddies here; then on Saturday went to a musical, then played soccer, then met up with a score of other English teachers for a party. On Sunday, I went with my friend Hane and his wife Aya to visit an active volcano. It was very interesting, although the smell of hell was not beyond reproach.

Rant

2006-05-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess it was bound to happen. A week has passed since my last post, and nothing eventful or worthy of note has happened to be recorded on this here blog. I did play soccer for the first time outside since last October, and I did change my winter tires to summer ones, both signs of promising weather to come. But aside from that, I can't really say I have anything to report.

So instead, I have decided to rant about things I don't like, because God knows, humans were put on this earth to complain. Actually, its not so much a complaint as it is an observation. It upsets me that things that are supposedly good for you are not enjoyable, but then are. Let me explain myself. Take going to the gym for exemple. I prefer not to go to the gym and say, eat ice cream while playing video games than to go to the gym. But the irony is that, after I come home from the gym, I ALWAYS feel good, healthier and rejuvinated. However, after say eating ice cream, I feel tired, lazy, and lethargic. Now given that I know how I will feel after both activities, would it not be smart that my brain should tell me "dude, let's go to the gym, you will feel better after". But no, instead it says "dude, food man, food, need I say more".
My point is, that every time I go to the gym, even if it is not a good workout, I always come back feeling good. But still, I always have to fight myself to want to go.
The same applies to many things in life, like eating healthy, reading the book instead of watching the movie, giving blood, helping people, not stealing, caring for the elderly, waking up early, and those other things politicians claim they do. These are all things that we are generally loath to do, but once we do them, we feel great (execpt hoboes, who continue to wage the hobo war, and will stop at nothing until our way of life is utterly destroyed).

I tell you, I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God has a sick sense of humor, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing. (ref?)

Okinawa

2006-05-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

I am back from what will most likely be my last trip within Japan. And it was a good trip indeed. I went to Okinawa, Japan's Southern most prefecture. To be quite honest, Okinawa is nothing like the rest of Japan and could quite easily be mistaken for a whole different country. They have their own language (in addition to japanese), they look different, have different food and behave very differently. It was a most interesting experience. It was very hot and humid in Okinawa, but sadly it was also cloudy for the most part, with rain on two occasions and only one true sunny day.

The highlight is definately the scuba diving. I saw some beautiful corals and fish. It is really a great experience, I recommend it to all.
What is more, my guide on the scuba diving was an ex-marine, and he told me some interesting stories. He was stabbed during the Somalian massacre, perhaps some of you have seen the movie Black Hawk Down; anyway this guy was there. He used to be in Special Ops for Counter Terrorism, so I asked him a bunch of questions about the series 24, he laughed. It was quite interesting speaking to someone like him who has actually lived what I condem; obviously we sat in completely different political and social spectrums from each other, but I did not reveal my true mind to him as I wanted to learn as much as I could (also I cherish my life). It is actually quite strange, because he was a really nice and cool guy, and otherwise someone I would like to be friends with. But then when he tells you stories of how he learned how to kill people in 5 seconds or less with no weapons, its kind of scary. He also told me he was shot in Malaysia. I dared not ask him how many people he's killed. He left the military some 10 years ago, and after 9-11, some of his buddies asked him to come back with the follwing ENTHUSIASTIC argument: "dude, you have to come back; all that stuff we wanted to do but weren't allowed, well now we can do it!" You would expect something like that to be said by a young 18 year old soldier that knows nothing else; but in this guys case, all of his unit members are university graduates (he was a chemistry major, as he needed to know how to "blow shit up")

The low point of Okinawa is definately the excessive American military presence. Although I admit, when I saw some 6 jet fighters take off right in front of me, and hit supersonic speeds in less than 10 seconds it was pretty fucking cool.

Finally, a happy birthday and a huge thanks to Jin my host for my stay in Okinawa. He really came through for me, especially during my ATM crisis.

As for Hokkaido, most of the snow is melted (notice the most?). Actually today was a gorgeous day, I even did some garden work, and by garden work, I mean I removed all the dead twigs and stems from the once beautiful sun flowers that there lay. I also noticed that there one of those things that people use to water plants (i'll be damned if I used brain space to learn such vocabulary). It made me wonder if I need to water the soil for the new flowers to grow (there are already sprouts). If so, then these plants are in for a terrible surprise.

You see, I am a staunch environmentalist. I believe that human intervention on nature is cruel. If I need to help something grow, then to me it shouldn't be growing and that means that I am tampering with mother nature. Such violation is tantamount to something as evil as hunting duck for sport (of course, hunting duck for food is perfectaly acceptable; because if we don't eat duck, then who will? I mean ducks only have 2 natural predetors, and one of them is bigger ducks and the other of course being gorillas)

I will post pics at a later date because I am having trouble uploading them. To be frank I don't have many good pics anyway, so no big loss.

Seppuku

2006-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

So I promised a special post for the splendid gift I bought myself in Kyoto, and here it is, and alot more....
As you may have guessed, or not, or you simply don't care (but remember, if you don't care what is going on in my life, it means you hate orphans and all they stand for) I bought a katana, or as the French call it, le sword...

Yes, I am now armed with more than a simple bamboo weapon. I have not yet named it, but it does have a dragon engraved on it, so that might be a clue right there.

Anyway, it was quite the adventure going through the airport security with it, I can only imagine how it will be when I go back to Canada via New York (I would have it no other way; the only way to travel is through the city that will eventually have the Liberty needle on top of the Freedom Tower in the God Bless America park of Jesus Christ)

So today I gave my first test ever. Well, I have administered other tests, but today's was the first that I prepared in its entirety. It was a listening test with 4 parts, and it was quite tough. I catered my test to the elite of the class. But I was quite surprised with the results, most students did pretty well. It is the second big thing that I plan and execute from A to Z, the first being a treasure hunt for Easter. That was also a hit, and the students finished much quicker than I had anticipated (so for the time remaining, I just showed them the Tenecious D video of Tribute).
The next one, will be a series of "game shows" (Jeopardy, Price is right, family feud and wheel of fortune). I hope it goes well, I spent the whole week planning it and preparing it. I think I will even try to film it.

Anyway, about today's test, I decided to write a small story, read it, then have the kids answer questions on the tale. At first, I was going to use actual students names as characters; but I figured that would be too embarrasing to them, so instead I used their text book characters: Aki, Nick (the American), Kenta, Maria (a Brazilian) and Satoshi (who I made up). I created a more realistic situation, as opposed to the lame things that happen to them in the text book like: "Today Nick went to visit his grandmother". In short, I created, a story of love, cheating, deception, lies and jealousy. Let's just say that Aki knows a thing or two about a thing or two.....

Finaly, tomorrow I am heading to the sunny shores of Okinawa. I will spend a week with my friend Jin. I hope the weather is nice, because I will be taking my beach gear. Anyway, I will not post for the next week or so, but expect lots of pics and tales when I return to Hokkaido.

contemplating...

best caption for this pics wins the sword.

take that Pooh-san, never again will you take a bite out of piglet!

PS: BTW, the title of my post refers to the ceremonial suicide a samurai commits if he is dishonored or defeated in combat

Dialogue

2006-04-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

This is a little dialogue that I am comandeering from my friend Francis, who in turn comandeered it from another source (most of you will recognize it). So please enjoy:

"Last weekend, my friend Daniel Souhami visited me. We had a very good
discussion about a terrible experience I went through the week before. This
is a dramatic reconstitution of the discussion:

Dan: So, what happened with Mochizuki?

Me: Not even sure I should tell you.

- Come on...

- After dinner last week, she invited me to her appartment. It's a little
place with a little bathroom. So un-Japanese. It's like right there. It's
not even down a little hall or in an alcove, you understand...no buffer
zone. So we start to fool around, it is the first time, it's early in the
going, and then I begin to perceive this impending...intestinal requirment,
who's needs are going to surpass by great lengths anything in the sexual
relm...So I know I'm gonna have to stop, and as this is happening, I'm
thinking "even if I can somehowe manage to momentarily extricate myself from
the proceedings, and relieve that unstople force, I know that that bathroom
is not going to provide me the privacy I'm going to need..."

Dan: This can only happen to you.

- So, I finally stopped and said in a very approximative Japanese "Mochizuki,
I hope you won't take this the wrong way but I think it would be best if I
left."

Dan: You said this to her after....

- No, during.

Dan: Oh boy, wow. so?

- So I'm dressing and she's starring up at me struggling to compute this
unprecedented turn of events. I don't know what to say to reassure her and
first, I don't have the time to say it. The only excuse she might have
accepted is if I told her I am in reality Batman, that I'm very sorry I just
saw the Batsignal.

OK, Ok, this is not a real dialogue. I took it from Seinfeld and changed it
a bit. But is it not the best dialogue ever? Well, if you lived something
similar (happens to me all the time), wouldn't you say it like this? "

So that is Francis' constructive use of time. Anyone know which episode this scene is from? A little hint, it is the only episode that is done in real time.

Next stop: Okinawa

movie time

2006-04-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

I have decided to do a little change of pace and review the latest movies I have seen in the past 2 months. I have been pirating.. I mean legally borrowing the rights to watch movies off the internet. My list includes some recent movies as well as some older titles.

Recent pictures:

Narnia: mostly a kids movie, but I appreciated it, and it is the kind of movie I would have loved as a 12 year old. It was pretty true to the book and kept me entertained even if it was not as great as other movies of the same genre. I recommend it if you like fantasy, arn't too serious a person, like children (but not like Micheal Jackson likes children) and like the chronic what (cles) of Narnia (ref?).

Syriana: The movie George Clooney won his oscar for. I quite liked it. It is quite entertaining and certainly a good movie to spark some debate. But to be frank, I did not find that the movie was nearly as controversial as it claims to be. The only thing I criticize of this picture is its depiction of Muslims; I find it to be too one sided. Even though the crown prince is a progressist, the impression I got was that most muslims are in fact archaic in their views. The poor muslims that loose their jobs become terrorists, yet there are no muslim characters that renounce terrorism. But ultimatly, I think this movie is more interested in showing American corruption and bullying, and it succeeds quite well at that. I recommend it if you like politics, but otherwise, not really.

Lord of War: this was a great movie. Nicolas Cage delivers quite a good performance. It is a dark, cynical, black humor and a politically poignant movie. I recommend it. The end is quite amazing.

Older pictures:

I made a list of movies from the 90's that were overlooked by the box office but acclaimed by critics.

Miller's Crossing: A Coen brothers' classic if you ask me. Right up there with Fargo and the Big Lebowski. Fantastic dialogue and great acting by Gabriel Byrne and John Turturro. It is a gangster movie with dark humor.

The Straight Story: David Lynch's best movie in my opinion. Great cinematography and a tour de force performance by the lead actor, whose name I lamentably don't remember. It is anything from weird or complicated as most of Lynch's work, but undoubtably a beautiful movie, with great scene after scene. I dare anyone to watch this movie and not feel moved by it. A must see.

Zero Effect: a strange detective movie with Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller. Its okay, but seemed more like a TV show than a proper movie. If you are in to mysteries, this might suit you, but not really on my recommendation list.

Dead Again: another mystery movie, and certainly more interesting than the previous title. Kenneth Brannah delivers a very solid performance, as does Emma Thompson. The movie certainly offers many twists and turns but actually has a pretty predictable conclusion which makes sense, as opposed to other mysteries where they just invent some random reason to inculpate the otherwise most innocent person, so that they create a "twist". The final confrontation is a bit overdone, but almost in a comical way, so it gets away with it. Not a must see, but should please the average viewer.

Alright, that is it for now, I may do another series of reviews in a couple of months. I urge readers to post suggestions for me in their comments so that I can download, I mean rent, them. Thanks

Nara

2006-04-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

So our last stop, well, actually my last stop, as my brother and his girlfriend continued on to Tokyo, was the old capital of Nara. Nara was the first permanent Japanese capital before Kyoto in the 8th century. They decided to move it to Kyoto because the Buddhist clergy started to exerce too much influence over the Emperor.

We were fortunate in that Nara is where we got the best weather. It was a crisp blue sky with no wind and warmer tempertures. We pretty much did the classic in Nara, which is essentially a park with an old temple with a big Buddha and deer. Yes you read correctly, deer. They are considered a national treasure. You can buy these cookies and feed them. I got 2 deers to fight for one of my cookies (2 males). Then I tried it with 2 females, but they actually shared it!!! How dare they! Then I got 4 females to follow my, then I droped the cokkie in the middle to see if they could share that, but before any of them could make a move, a bigger male came, pushed them all away and ate the cookie himself.

On the Hokkaido front, nothing much to tell, it has been a slow week. I am actually really excited for next week to come, because it will be Golden week (perhaps the most popular holiday in Japan) and I will travel to a warmer distination. More on that as it develops.

here are the pics:

the park grounds, with the second tallest pagoda in Japan, losing out only to the one in Kyoto

pretty cool roof. I guess it is one demon eating another demon, or swallowing it. I guess it depends if you are one of those who sees the glass half full or one of those who actually finishes your drink!

Admit, this is the best picture you have ever seen in your life.

I take it back, THIS is the best picture you have ever seen. Come on, admit you laughed!

token sakura (cherry blossom)

token idiot

This gesture is actually supposed to emulate the Thai greeting. They make a lotus flower with their hands to express friendlyness, like us with the hand shaking, and Germans with face punching.

The big temple that houses the Big Buddha

the Buddha, his real name is Tom

token sunset

us at an extremely overpriced bar. The biggest ripoff of our trip.

this was above the sink of our hostel, which also sucked because there was a 10pm curfew!!! Anyway, since I don't believe in poisons, I need never wash my hands.

Kyoto, final days

2006-04-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

Our last days in Kyoto were more temples and some shopping. I bought a cool thing, which I will dedicate a specific post to very soon. Anyway, its late and I am feeling a bit lazy, so here are more pics until the next update,

The most famous temple in Kyoto, called, you guessed it, the Golden temple. Here is where Koizumi, Japan's prime Minister took Bush for a little visit.

at the Golden temple grounds

the "Silver tepmle" the secondest most famous temple and one of the oldest in Kyoto

cherry blossoms at night

next stop: Nara

Kyoto, part deux

2006-04-11T19:17:00.000-07:00

So our second day in Kyoto was more walking around and visiting more temples. The weather was again pretty nippy, but the sights were amazing. We had an amazing tempura dinner. At night there was more drinking topped with some famous karaoke. Here are the pics.

old school!

token garden

me and Josh doing to Pooh san, what Pooh san has done so many times to Christopher Robin

Maiko San in Gion, Kyoto

Essa eh pro viado do Marcos. Agora vc vai ter que subir denovo as escadas de joelho por causa do emprego em Ottawa

At a Shrine

another garden, perhaps the nicest we saw

token cherry blossom

token temple

tempura dinner

take a wild guess

On the Hokkaido front, this week is the beginning of the school year. So far, no many classes, but it has fallen upon me to prepare the English curriculum for the whole year. It is a daunting task, but a welcome challenge.

new set of munchkins

Next stop: Still more Kyoto

O-saka my ass!!

2006-04-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

So on to Osaka, as first stop in our week journey in Kansai. Osaka is Japan's second largest city and is popular for its food, lively atmosphere, and of course, home to most of the Yakuza. To be fair, we got pretty crappy weather in Osaka; it was cold and rainy. We visited the castle which is quite amazing, then we went to a famous street with many bars and restaurants and we ate typical Osakan food: Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki. The first is pretty much fried octopus balls and the second is a pancake made from noodles, eggs, whatever topping you chose, and BBQ sauce. It is quite simply amazing.

Following Osaka, we went to the old western capital of Kyoto. Again, the weather was colder than expected. As a result, the cherry blossoms were not in full bloom. But that did not deter our drinking ambitions. Our first day in Kyoto, we met up with two other friends and visited the Nijo castle, another gem of old Japan. Our supper was kaiten sushi (convayer belt sushi), I ate a record 15 plates of sushi (each plate has 2 pieces of sushi). I don't suspect I will ever match that, and to be fair, I am not sure I would ever want to either.

the first cherry blossom tree I saw of the trip

practicing my ninja stealth, can you guess where I am?

a pair of threes

part of the Kyoto castle, and people...

This week, on the Hokkaido front, I went twice to Sapporo Dome to watch two sporting events. On Wednesday last, my friend Hane took me to watch a soccer game. The Sapporo team, Consadole, won 3-0 with a goal by a Brazilian player. Yesterday, one of my adult English conversation class, Shinchan, took me to watch a baseball game. Our team lost, but it was an interesting experience. The Japanese sure do like their baseball.

Sapporo dome

Shinchan, also an electrician who once fixed my lights

Next stop: more Kyoto, but still no Bigfoot

Hokkaido blues... (ref?)

2006-04-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

it is a tough ref, I only expect one person to know it, let us test him or her then.

So last week was jam packed with funess, the only kind you can find in Japan. My brother, Mach and his better half (what the hell does that mean anyway!?!) Stephanie came to the cold and remote island of Hokkaido to pay me a little visit. The trip from the airport back to my place was an adventure itself, with stroms, neon, lost highways, and of course the abonimal Yeti. The next day we visited Sapporo Beer Garden (why else do people come to Sapporo?) followed by a great night in a bar and karaoke. It was a special night, because it was the welcoming party for my guests as well as a farewell party to my good friend Jin.

at the beer garden

this, believe it or not, is the ice cream menu....yeah, I know!

Jin and me at his party

people a plenty

On Sunday, we folloed up with some traditional cultural schedule, with a traditional song and dance show in my town, followed by the final of Sumo, and capped with a great night at my supervisor's house, where his wife showed us the basics of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

tea ceremony

Harada and his family

Monday we continued with more Japanese tradition. I took them to visit my schools, and the the faithful Honda (my friend, not my car, which is called Little Bandit) taught Mach and Steph the basics of calligraphy. The day was capped by another welcome party with delicious food, as always.

Honda supervising the penmanship

me gambatting

My English conversation class students

Welcome party with my co-workers

Tuesday, more Sapporo, and another cultural activity; my buddy Hane and his wife Aya taught my guests some origami, or so it would seem.

Next stop: Osaka or bust

Prelude II

2006-04-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay, but as you know, I was on vacation in the South with my brother and his girlfriend. I got back this week, but have been caught up in a bunch of welcoming ceremonies for the new school year. There were many speeches and much bowing invloved and I can't say that I understood all that was going on since my Japanese is still far from such a level of comprehension. Anyway, this post is simply a prelude to a series of posts that will be published in the next two weeks about my trip. I promise another array of pictures and some funny tales involving not only me, but also deer, brids, flowers, temples, hoboes, swords, fish (alive and dead) and those insufferable steam powered 19th century cyborgs.

next stop: snow in Hokkaido...

an adventure begins (or continues)

2006-03-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

So my bro and his girlfriend have arrived safe and sound in Hokkaido. It took us longer than planed to drive back to my place, I got a bit lost, but not my falt, everything was so dark, I could not see anything...
Tomorrow begins our hectic but fun schedule with Sapporo, then some country sight seeing, followed by a trip to Osaka, then Kyoto, and finally Nara. My bro will continue on to Tokyo, but I must return, you know, that whole work thing.

just because I am in a good mood here are more pics or carnival... (why not?)

next stop: the adventure ends

I hate you damn numbers!~!

2006-03-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

The one thing I really hate about the Japanese language is its counting system. Most might feel overwhelmed by the amount of kanji, but I love calligraphy and quite enjoy learning kanji, although I have been lazy lately. Japanese is a pretty logical language, for the most part; its grammar is pretty stright forward with very few irregularities and exceptions (only 2 irregular verbs, "to do" and "to come").

However, there is one thing about the language that makes no sense to me whatsoever, and the worst part, is that it should be, at least to my mind, the easiest thing to learn any language: numbers! There are at least 10 different ways to count in Japanese, and depending on what you are counting, you have to use a different system.

To give you an exemple, to count people, we say: 1-hitori, 2-futari 3-sannin
to count thin objects: 1-ichimai, 2-nimai, 3-sanmai...
to count long things: 1-ippon, 2-nihon, 3-sanhon..

as you can see they are not even consitent within one counter system. In sushi restaurants there are at least 3 ways that I can think of to count sushi plates. And often the cooks use different systemes, there is no standard. In fact, I have seen Japanese people argue over which counting system to use in a given situation.

Friday my brother and his girlfriend will arrive here. It should be good times. We will be going to Kyoto and Osaka. As a result, I most likely will not be posting here for the next 10 to 14 days; but when I return, you can expect a bombardment of new posts, so read on...

Jin and the Yakuza

2006-03-16T19:49:00.000-08:00

Jin, my best pupil and friend in Japan, is not in the Yakuza, as the title of my post may suggest.

But I did come face to face witha a Yakuza about a month ago. What the hell is a Yakuza anyway? fear not, I am here to tell you. The Yakuza are pretty much the equivalent of the mafia of the West. They pimp, extort, deal drugs, steal, and payoff politicians. In short, they are Japan's organized crime syndicate. There are many Yakuza gangs, and they are often rivals for territory and control of the rackets, whatever that means.

The Yakuza differ somewhat from their western counterparts in that they abide by a strict code of conduct, somewhat reminescent of the ways of a samurai. In a way, they are the last of what is left from the old traditions. They are extremely nationalistic, hate foreigners and are proud of it. If you have ever seen Kill Bill, they are the ones with swords...

Yakuza in Japan are not secrative about their allegience. They wear pins indicating their gang membership. It also serves as a way to avoid innocent killings among civilians. In addition, the Yakuza also have elaborate tatoos to indicate their rank and status within their clan.

One month ago, me and 2 other Montreal Jets, Francis and Josh, were at an onsen (hot spring) and saw a man with elaborate tatoos on his arms and chest. Francis, who is a historian and and has studied the Yakuza, knew that he was one. It was surprising to see a Yakuza in a onsen, they are usually forbidden to go in because of their tatoos. This guy must have been friends with the locals.

As soon as he saw us, he challenged us to a death match. Since I am obviously alive writing this here post, it is safe to say that we won the battle, even though he had a sword.

And now back to Jin. It is with great happyness and sorrow that I am announcing that he has been accepted to study English in a University in Okinawa. He worked hard to get in and deserves it very much. But I do not hide that I am also sad because I will lose my best friend in Japan soon (he leaves at the end of the month). Okinawa is the southern most island in Japan, as opposed to Hokkaido, which is the most northern. So as you have guessed, he is going a good distance away. I will however, try and visit him, if time and money permit. So best of luck to you Jin, and enjoy the fine weather down south.

That is all

Graduation time

2006-03-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

So Monday was the graduation ceremony of my 9th graders. They are now going to go to high school. Here in Japan, the school year is from April to March.
The teachers are especially tired (not me, but then again, I am a special case, and hardly considered a teacher in the same respect as the others), because they have spent the last month organizing the ceremony, making sure the students are prepared for the High school entry exam and doing all the administrative work needed for the start of the next school year in 3 weeks. Here in Japan, teachers double as educators and secretaries and administrators. Me of course, I read, study Japanese, or hang out with the kids and school them in a little thing I like to call full contact golf (note: golf balls are entirely optional for this version of the game).

Anyway, it was a very nice celebration. The school was nicely decorated and the students performed some chorus songs. Needless to say there were more than a few tears by parents, students, and to my surprise all teachers. During the goodbye song sung by the graduating students, a couple of them really broke down; it was very intense. I don’t remember being so emotional at my graduation, and I KNOW the teachers were not either. Or maybe it is because I don’t know what salty liquid discharges are (ref?)

But seriously, it was a very touching event, and I actually am very sad that I will not get to see the current 8th graders graduate next year, because I have bonded with them even more than with the 9th graders.

After the ceremony, there was a party with the PTA and then a second and third parties as is custom in Japan. Much food was eaten, and way too much alcohol was drunk, especially in the presence of my student’s parents. But what the hell, they are no longer my students…..

the stage decorated. The backdrop was painted by students in a mere 15 hours, they are awsome. As for the slogan "Happy fight" i had nothing to do with it.

one of many flags decorating the gym. I don't know if he is the demon of graduation, but he is cool. However, if you ever meet him, you have to play the best song in the world or else he eats your soul (ref?)

a student, Noriko, receiving her diploma. If they had valedictorians here, there is no doubt she would be it. She is my best student, and also won the kanji contest (see previous post)

performance of the goodbye song

students with parents photo

token decorations. The students wrote goodbye notes on the birds.

the trees represnet the seasons. Here we can see spring (pink) and fall (yellow), there was also summer (green) and you guessed it, winter (white). The hanging papers have the students name on them

Mr. Taguchi, me and Ms. Ogata, the English teachers at the second party (Mr. Taguchi is also the homeroom teacher for the graduating class, so he was very emotional that day)

Swing, similar, prosper, flow; origin, aura, beautiful

2006-03-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Kanji

So, here is the long anticipated post on Kanji. Why do I so want to write to you about kanji? You will soon find out…

As I have already explained once, the Japanese writing system is quite complex. It is composed of 3 distinct “alphabets”. The first of which is kanji, the most important as well as the most difficult. Kanji are Chinese characters adapted by the Japanese for their own language. There are over 4000 kanji, but to be literate in Japanese you need only learn 2000. In short, each kanji represents an idea, concept or object.
For example, this kanji 本 means book. Each kanji has at least 2 ways in which it can be read; but it can have up to 8 different ways. In the above example, the book kanji can be read either as “hon” or as “moto”. There might be more, but I don’t know them.
Another important kanji is 田 which means rice field. It is read as “da” or “ta”. So if you combine 本田 you get the word Honda, which is a common name in Japan (so to answer your question, no Honda does not mean car).
However, if you combine 山 “yama” which means mountain, and 本 you get 山本 “Yamamoto”, another common name. So you can see how one kanji can have different readings.

In addition to kanji, the Japanese also have hiragana and katakana, their “phonetic” alphabet. Both are necessary but both are used for different reasons. Hiragana is used more than katakana, and hiragana often has very important grammatical functions. Katakana, the least used of the 3 “alphabets” is mostly used for foreign words, or some specific animal names or medical terms. As you guessed, all foreign names, including mine are written in Katana. Here is mine: da-ni-e-ru ダニエル su-ha-mi スハミ.
Now what you must understand is that katakana is by far the ugliest and most despised of the 3, especially by gaijin. We hate katakana, because it is so little used, easy to forget and easy to get mixed up; yet we have to write our names in them.

To rectify this, I wanted to write my name in Kanji, the coolest of the 3. But obviously, my knowledge in kanji is limited. To remedy this, I set up a kanji contest in my school. The students had to write my name in kanji, and the best entry (both in the complexity and meaning of the kanji) would win a prize, which happened to be a t-shirt from Montreal.

After I awarded the prize to the winner, I started on my true agenda for the contest: to write my name in the coolest possible kanji. The winner, a girl in my 9th grade has about 3 of her kanji in the final name I chose for myself. But the rest is a compilation of the best of each of the participants. The final result is this:
打似栄流 (danieru) 素波美 (suhami)
Da 打 means swing or attack
Ni 似 means similar
E 栄 means prosper
Ru 流 means flow
Su 素 means origin
Ha 波 means aura
Mi 美 means beautiful

Thus my name in Japanese is: Swing similarly and prosper flowingly. My origin has an aura of beauty.

here is a quick rendition of my name; the penmanship is not prefect, but I am working on it

next stop: the Yakusa

CARNAVAL (and no internet)

2006-03-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Before I start writing about the party, I want to say that the internet in my house is down, which has forced me to use my school's computer, hindering my abilities to check email and update my blog as efficiently as I would like; that is the reason for the delay in this post.

OKAY, now on to better things! Carnaval Brasileiro em Hokkaido no Japao. Uma primeira, e talvez uma ultima!!! Posso dizer, sem pretencao, que foi um sucesso!
There is so much I want to say about this party, that I could write more than a few posts on it.

Suffice to say that I am quite proud of this party because it achieved its two goals: one of internationalizing the japanese with Brazilian culture and the second by simply being a fun time.

There were about 70 participants, including some 20 students of mine and 20 other gaijin.

there was food, many drinks, dancing, videos, a soccer contest, a raffle and a power point presentation on the history of carnival.

No menu, tinha brigadeiro que eu fiz com a ajuda de algums amigos. Ficou bom, embora nossas bolinhas nao ficaram muito bonitas. Alem, disso tb preparei caipirinhas. Nego bebeu como se fosse suco!

O melhor da festa pra mim foi tentar ensinar samba para os japonese e estranjeiros. Realmente eh foda sambar.

In the end, there were about 10 of more people that slept in my house. A particularly funny moment was when Josh (another Jet from Montreal) and I returned to my house. We were the last two to return, and of course we were not sober and woke everyone in the process. But it was a riot, we started laughing and telling the dumbest jokes that got everyone craking up for a good 20min, and this at 4am no less.

well, no need to use words when pictures do just fine!

opening speach, I just said: "let's drink!" (no joke)

a few of the many samba school flags I made for decoration

brigadeiro a la japonesa

some of my adult English conversation class students

Misaki, Hane and Aya, boys I play soccer with (although in different teams)

Honda, steady as usual

Jin help out with preparations

Hide did a kick ass job of helping organise and clean up afterwards

Shinchan, another English conversation class student

My supervisor Harada. Hats off to him, without his help, none of it would have been possible; he is truly a scholar and a gentlman

special thanks to Francis who helped me all day and also the next day with some cleaning

Jason, an American who lived in Brasil and speaks both Portuguese and Japanese almost perfectly, helped me with the power point presentation with some translation.
(we can't see the screen in this pic, but it was there)

here is a pic of the screen used both for the power point and for a carnival video that played all night

ensemble cast pic

my Junior high school boys, I have trained them well, soon they to will master the art of saying many things that sound interesting but that mean absolutly nothing

pic just before we started the second party!

second party in a new room, with fresh booze

the Dragon reemerges....

the worst part is that I don't even know who could have taken this picture with MY CAMERA!!!!

come on, you knew it was coming!

next stop: swing similarly and prosper flowingly. The origin has an aura of beauty

fish

2006-03-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

Again, I will break my promise and postpone yet again my post about kanji. Instead I have two anouncements and an anecdote to write about.

First off, yesterday was my brother's, Mach, birthday. The big ol' 3-0. So there you have it, as the saying goes: "another year older means you are are another year older, and that's no secret; unless of course you are a mormon, because then, another year means another daughter as a wife". Apparently, this year, my brother decided to celebrate by jumping in water with the polar bear club, or something like that. I am not too sure what it means; and how come polar bears have clubs anyway? Who do they think they are? Arn't the polar bears supposed to be the dumb ones for choosing to live on ice? And that's another thing, how come on those discovery chanel shows, we never see a polar bear eat penguin? I bet penguin are delicious, and they must be so easy to catch. Yup, I don't see the polar bears replacing dogs anytime soon on the poker tables.

My other anouncement is that this Saturday, I am organizing and hosting a huge Brazilian Carnival. Many are expected to come, not all are sure to survive. As a treat, I will be making caipirinhas and brigadeiros, neither of which I am a specialist, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Since we are on the topic of cooking, let me tell you another of my "not so bright" moments in Japan...

Last week I took a Japanese cooking class. I learned how to make sushi, tempura and miso soup. I figured that was all the lessons I would need. How wrong I was. This week I decided to add to my cooking repertoire by actually buying a freshly caught fish, uncut, unwashed and preparing it all myslef. I will not go into the details, because this is a family blog; suffice to say that the fucker was not easy to open up, spuing blood all about, with guts and shit coming out left and right, with absolutely no regard for its environment. Quite frankly, I don't know why people even eat fish, "c'est tout plein de mercure!" (ref?). In the end I butchered the little shit so bad, there was nothing left to cook. I took pleasure in knowing that its final fate rests with trash.

On a brighter note, I also bought fresh calarmi, and fried those babies up with some sweet wild mushrooms. That was my consolation, and oh so good it was.

pics of the ill fated squid:

next stop: carnaval!!! (then Kanji, I hope...)

Hommage to Jin

2006-02-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

I believe another hommage is in order. This time, I will do it to a Japanese person, Jin.

Jin is my best friend here in Shinshinotsu. He is my best Adult English conversation class. he also plays basketball with me and we often go out to Sapporo together. We also go to the gym together regularly. But aside from being a social friend, he is also my biggest helper. When I need to make some translations or help with my Japanese homework, I almost always turn to Jin.

Jin has a strawberry farm, and also works in a nursury and occasionally helps his aunt in her restaurent. He has introduced me to some pretty good japanese music.

Jin is now applying to a university in Okinawa, where he hopes to study more english. If he makes it, he will be able to do an exchange for one year in Canada, which is what he really wants.

So Gambatte kudasai Jin and thanks for all the help!!

Next stop: Kanji (for real this time)

Wednesday night fever

2006-02-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

On Wednesdays I teach two adult English conversation classes. The afternoon class is for beginners, and the evening one is for more advanced students. This week, as a treat, I took my advanced students to karaoke instead of the regular class. The deal was that they were only allowed to sing in English; I in turn would sing at least one Japanese song, which I did. The song I sang, I learnt in my first week in Japan, during the Sapporo Orientation; all the new JETs had to sing it in concert. It is a very corny but famous song here. The title translates more or less to "look up to the stars while you walk" or something like it.
It was a fun night, and one of my students, Mieko, surprised us all by preparing some delicious food. It sure made it difficult for me to play basketball afterwards.

PARADOX

Japan, like Libya, is a land of contrast (ref?). Actually, as any other nation there are inherent paradoxes in their cultural behavior which are more apparent to the outsider, especially one with keen eye vision like me....

Japan is the cleanest place in the world; at least cleaner than any place I have ever been. There is a simple reason for that: kids, at a very early age, are educated in keeping their environment clean. How, do you ask? easy, there are no janitors in the schools; the kids have to clean it up themsleves EVERY day. It is as simple as it is effective. This way the kids know that if they make a mess of things, they will have to spend a longer time cleaning. Personnaly, I think it is a great idea and would gladly export it to other countries. As a result, Japanese never (or rarely) throw trash away in the streets. There is, however, a paradoxal down side to all this; THERE ARE NO GARBAGE CANS, ANYWHERE!!!! Seriously, looking for a trash can is a difficult task. It always amazes me how such a garbage can free country can remain so clean. I often find myslef with an empty can or a wrapper, or an orange peel in my pocket because I have not found a garbage can. This cultural aspect of their cleanlyness however, I do not feel needs to be exported....

pics:

getting ready

team eiakawa

Jin, a very good singer, but then again, most Japanese are

Mika and Mieko

Shinchan, an electrician who once fixed my lights, and me singing in Japanese

next stop: kanji....

new videos

2006-02-19T05:04:00.000-08:00

Hey gang,

so I have finaly uploaded the videos I made of the dragon new year and of the snow festival in Sapporo last week. You can check them out here: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=daniel+souhami
If you do not find them, it might be because Google is still screening them for obscene material, and I am sorry to disapoint that there will be none.
If you can't view the the videos, it probably means you have not downloaded Google viewer, do it. It is really easy and only 1MB.

This week, I saw the movie Munich. I quite liked it, lots of suspense and decent political commentary. I am not sure it is the best movie of the year, but it certainly it much better than the Interpreter, which is similar genre, but not as good as Thirteen Days, which I really thought was quite tense.

I have not really been following the Olympics, but I hear that the Canadian Women's Hockey team is simply destroying the competition.

Snow and Class act

2006-02-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

First off, to explain my previuos post. It is a bit random and very sarcastic. I just wanted to highlight the absurdity of the whole thing. Free press is a great thing, but it can have negative consequences. When one is offended, they have the right to complain and protest; but burning buildings is hardly the way to do it. TPing or throwing eggs is a much better way. In last resort you can always hose them down, leaving you relatively dry (ref?). I promise you I was not drunk, or writing in code, but reading Hitchhiker's Guide can induce increasd randomness.

Now on to better things. Last weekend was the Yuki Matsuri, Japanese for Snow Festival. It was in Sapporo and JETs from all over Japan came. I can't really describe how it is other than a bunch of quite impressive snow and ice sculptures, with live concerts (I feel bad for the musicians who had to play in such cold) and a ton of people. It was quite fun, and the JET party that followed was equally great, because there were JETs from all over Japan, so I got to meet many more interesting people and learn more about different places in Japan. Also, it was at Kirin beer garden (kirin means long or giraffe in japanese, it is also the name of a famous brand here), so you can bet there was a kick ass all you can drink deal.

On Sunday, when I returned to Shinshinotsu, my town, I was dismayed to see that 40cm of snow had fallen. I had to walk in knee deep snow to reach my house; and forget about being able to open my door without a struggle. I knew it would take me 2 to 3 hours to shovel it. In the late afternoon, when I finally took heart, as I steped out and with my first stroke of the shovel, I saw passing by my saving angel. It was my elementary school's handyman, who was passing by with a mechanical snow remover (not the small kind either). He came to help me, and we were done in less than one hour. I still don't know why he was walking with the machine at that time; it was an increadible conicidence, a truly class act and yet another testament to the Japanese unfailing and remarkable kindness.

as always, pics:

an awsome snow sculpture promoting the Narnia movie, which only comes out in March here...

a Montreal JET, Francis, and me promoting Cup noodle

The US may have bombed some temples in the Second World War II (ref?) but, not the snow ones!

in Vader we trust

need I say more?

an ice sculpture with real sea food inside. A shame, I bet they were tasty.

before you ask, yes I drank some Bailey's

This guy, is from Australia, his name is Todd, and if you back in time in my first post since I came to Japan, you might see him in a group pic. I met him during Tokyo orientation, but he is not in Hokkaido, I thought I would never see him again. It is encouraging to know that the world is still a small place and that lost friends can be found anew.

MONTREAL REPRESENT (Francis, Josh and me, in our token wigs)

the horrible sight upon my return

short post, as promised

2006-02-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

Hello again,

how free is the press, and how free should it be? It is a question that has recently been tested in Europe and the Mid East. Personnally, I think it should be free, because I hate paying for stuff. In this blog, for instance, I will write about whatever pleases me. No one is forced to read or like what I write. Just note, that I am in favor of caring for the children, so if you don't like my blog, it means you are against children, not only as humans, but also as a concept.

Now when it comes to political or religious satire, I am the first to say go ahead. That being said, caution needs to be excersized, so doing a few squats and pull-ups are recommended. Making fun of religion is my favorite passtime; but it doesn't mean I will deliberatly keep making fun of someone whose a tad upset (or has a laser gun). That's just bad politics (and bad math). Sometimes silence says more than words, and sometimes, a punch to the face hurts more than a kick to the groin. But I am no marine biologist, so it is tough to tell.

Don't get me wrong, the mob that burnt the embassies are the guilty ones in this story and to my mind, the perpertrators should be punished and the Syrian and Lebanese Governments should stop at nothing short from a full apology and full reparations to both the Danish and Norwegian folk.

But to keep hammering at the point of freedom of expression because of cartoons, well, that just does not seem to be a strategic fight (everyone knows that embassies don't even really exist; it is much more intelligent to first attack the mad cows and killer chickens who are spreading the flu).

In Sum, burning is bad, bad means good, good is groovy and whales aren't fish, which means that have feelings, except when they don't (which probably means they're dead).

By the way, about the title of this post, I lied, so what are you going to do? burn the internet? Ha I would like to see you try, Johanassen from China once tried, but failed because he forgot to take into account Davogadro's constant.

Japanese new year

2006-02-07T02:26:00.000-08:00

I know it is a bit late, but my time has been consumed by the vast amounts of snow I need to shovel every day. Alas, my house is completely covered in snow, it has become a dome, save for the front. I can't see out of any window, it is constantly dark and cold in my home. The amounts of snow that fall in Hokkaido are truely a huge thorn in this otherwise rosey life.

The Japanese celebrate the new calender year after January 1st. They usually have a party called "forget the last year" in late December, and a party in early to mid January to welcome the new year. Moreover, there are a few traditions and ceremonies that come with. One of these is to eat Mochi, a rice made cube, that is quite plain and dull when eaten alone, but quite tasty when prepared with other ingredients. Another ceremony is an ancient dragon dance.

I was privy to the dragon dance, to the same audience that saw me as the fabled Santa, infants. And I thought I scared the bejesus of these kids; the dragon truely scared the living daylights out of them. I have some pics, but also a video which I will upload soon.

Another ceremony is on Feb 3, it is a day to throw beans (or peanuts) to ward off bad demons. Then you must eat the amount of peanuts corresponding to your age to bring good fortune for the next year. This celebration is "supposed" to coincide with the coming of spring. So I guess now "in theory" it is spring, but then again, many things "in thoery" work. For exemple, communism "in thoery" works (ref?)

break it down!

eat that child!

one of 2 of my office's new year parties

HONG KONG

After Thailand, I spent 3 days in Hong Kong. Not much to tell other than the fact that I ate the famous Pekin duck and some shark Fin (really good!). Hong Kong is quite an impressive city, with perhaps the best subway system I have ever used. It is a haven for shopping and eating.

damn girl walked right into the frame. Who the hell is she anyway?

this bamboo is actually used in construction. Scary!

I hope Sheila Copps doesn't see this....

I went to 2 museums, a science and a history one. In the science museum there was a optical illusion presentation, this is one of them, pretty cool eh?

Hommage to the CORE (no, not the movie)

2006-02-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

I have been sitting on this one for awhile, but with the happenings here in Japan and South East Asia, just did not get the time to post it. So here is an another overdue hommage....

Le CORE est compose de plusieurs individus, qui seuls, n'ont que de pouvoirs modestes; mais lorsqu'ils sont ensembles,il n'y a que Pikachu lui meme qui peut les arreter. Le CORE est un groupe d'amis qui se sont rencontres a l'universite de Montreal a la Faculte de droit. LE CORE accomplit une belle oeuvre musicale en produisant le MEILLEUR CD DU MONDE, intitule: CARPE NOCTUM.

Voici donc, une petite bio de chaque membre en ordre alphabetique:

Alex "l'ours" Wery: De temperament plutot humain, Alex est toujours pret a une nouvelle aventure surtout lorque ladite aventure assure la defaite humiliante de ses adversaires. On dit qu'il parle 8 langues et qu'il a un diplome en droit ET en medecine. Il a par ailleurs, l'habilite de courrir a la vitesse du son, ce qui lui aide a remporter des victoires de bridge.

Ben "le sage" Guindon: de loin le plus mysterieux du groupe, Ben maitrise non seulement les forces de la nature, mais aussi les animaux. Bien qu'il est dote de tels pouvoirs, Ben refuse de se defaire de tous ses chapeaux.

JF "Maverick" Carpentier: Jf est l'autheur du seul livre invisible: "The art of being a gentleman and a vengeful ninja". Erudit et charmeur, JF est souvent le "visage publique" du CORE, et ce malgre son habilite d'invisibilite.

Louis "le Saint" St-Pierre: Seul membre du CORE a avoir voyage dans toutes les villes du monde, San Pedro a un intellect qui n'est rivalise par personne. En ce moment, "le Moldave" est en mission en France, ou il espere un jour etre capable de former une armee francaise capable de victoires militaires.

Max "le serieux" Gilbert: Meme si Max refuse de prendre un petit verre social, "le Prince" refuse de laisser la societe en peril. Il fait appel parfois a l'aide de son mentor "Laloux", mais refuse d'alterer la fabrique du temps et l'espace, meme si ce talent lui vient naturellement.

Allies du CORE

JS "McBain" Brandy: Fidele a la cause du CORE, "Brad" est la personne ressource lorsqu'on a besoin de recruter de cyborgs du 19e siecle qui operent a la vapeur. Son eternel rival est le chef des "Commie-Nazi", l'absolut mal du monde, sauf pour Barney le Dinosaur.

Philippe "le Duc" Gaudet: Aussi appele le "Puritain", "le Duc" refuse toute authorite non-authorise a lui authoriser des authores. Il est, par contre, souvent invite a jouer au "goon" durant des 7 a 5.

Fantastic Voyage (ref?)

2006-01-29T00:34:00.000-08:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (ref?)
Yes, that is my sentiment regarding Koh Tao ("Turtle Island"), a small island on the East coast of Thailand and final destination for our great journey into the land of freedom (thai means freedom in siamese; land means land).

It was the best of times, because it was there that we went scuba diving, an awsome experience; but it is also where I lost my wallet, hence the worst of times. I will start with the later, for it occured first. Alas, as Tao is an island, access to it is limited to sea transport only. We would have to take a 7am ferry from the mainland to the remote but beatiful island. As a result, we would have to wake at 5:30am to take a 6am bus to the quai. Consequently, we were tired. While we were in the relatively empty boat, we decided to sleep and make up for the early rise. I was wearing track pants because the boat was cold, but had shorts under because I knew once we arrived it would be hot. Well, when we did indeed arrive, I hurried to remove my track pants, with my wallet inside one of the pockets. Unfortunately, those pockets are loose and I can only conclude that my wallet fell from my pocket in the process, and with all the noise, coupled with my fatigue, I did not notice. So for the rest of the trip, Juliana would have to foot all the bills. I did not actually lose much money, only the equivilant of 70$CAN, but I DID LOSE, both my credit card, bank card AND my gaijin card (something I need to get back in to Japan; but that tale is for another day, since it involves, stealth, speed and lethal force). If Juliana was not with me, I would have been royaly fucked, because I would have no money and no means to get money; so moral of the story, don't take boats!

DIVING!! Truely an amazing experience. I really loved it, the sights, the weightlessness, the fish, the corals, and most importantly, breathing like Darth Vader (before you ask, yes I did say "Luke I am your father" under the water between breaths). Unfortunately, I do not yet have an underwater camera to capture the experience, but when I go to Australia in August, I suspect I will dive again and perhaps buy a suitable camera.

In Japan, much has happened, I am really late in updating, so you will have to content yourselves with brief highlights: last week I went on a ski trip with my 8th graders, it was quite fun, I only fell once attempting a 360 double axle triple loop or something...or not. Today (Sunday) is the annual snow ball fight in my town. It is really fun, the kids are in teams and have premade (hard) snow/ice balls to throw at each other. Nowadays, they wear halmets to protect their faces and head, but I bet that in the olden days, when Samuri ruled Japan with the way of the sword, they would have these contests without helmets, and would play until one person lost an eye, that would be the loser. It also gave birth to the famous expression, "its all fun and games until someone throws a snowball directly at an opponent's head causing said victim to lose the game and incidently to lose an eye". Sadly, beacuse of the advent of halmets, we can no longer employ such a deep philosophy. Anyway, soon the annual tradition became a yearly event (ref?)

Finally, I want to say that I have received a few emails from people I do not know who have seen this blog and/or my google videos. They have encouraged me to upload more videos of Japan, even though it is a bit of a long process (in other words, my lazyness). Also, they have asked me questions about Japan and living here. One wants to become a teacher here, another a pilot, and yet another just wants to visit. Anyway, to all of you, I wish you luck and I hope you do get a chance to come to Japan, it is a very interesting place, with loads to see, eat, enjoy and lots of whacky activities that no longer involve eye loss!

as usual, more pics of Thailand and some of Japan.

these are actually in kanchanaburi, but I like them so I posted them here instead

before

after

our last meal in Bangkok, sorta.

welcome! (I would eventually break the sunglasses. Not to worry, I bought these for 1$ in Brazil in 2003, its a surprise they lasted this long!)

ah, those crazy kids!

token Buddha statue

premade iceballs

man made slide for the kids

you gotta ask yourself: do I feel lucky

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=daniel+souhami&so=0
here is a link to more google videos, there are some old ones to

Next stop: a much shorter post

Krabi, Koh Pee Pee, New Years and Japan, again

2006-01-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

Hello Hello,

much to write and to tell, so I will try to condense as much as possible. I will start with our continuing trip in Thailand. So from the Khao Sok rain forest, we went to the beach town of Krabi. We stayed at a beach called Railey, famous for its "high end" cheap resorts and mountain climbing. We stayed in one such resort, it was quite nice to have a hot shower for a change and a closet and table to put our stuff in, not to mention towls and room service. We did not do any mountain climbing since our goal now was to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather and sights, but it was fun to see some folk do it.
Krabi is where we spent new year's night. We went for dinner in a restaurant that was showing a "legal" DVD version of the latest King Kong. I liked it okay, but to be fair, we could not hear all that well, and the image was not perfect, as can be expected from such asian "legal" copies. After dinner, we went to a bar called Cliffman's, a pretty laid back place, quite jamaican in style and music. People sat on these mats on the floor and drank booze from buckets. Meanwhile some folk would entertain us with fire shows, ballons and the lot. It was nice, but we did not stay too late, since we would have to leave early the next morning to go to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee).

Koh Phi Phi, was hit really hard last year by the tsunami, and it showed. There were many memorials, and there was still much damage, but I was amazed at how fast most of the island has been reconstructed. It is quite a breathtaking view and the color of the water is gorgeous. We only stayed one day, so we could not really explore that much of the island, but it seemed like a nice place to stay.

On the Japanese front, I've been having quite a great week. Saturday last, a Japanese friend Hane picked my up to take to his house for a terrific lunch. After lunch we talked for a few hours. Now let me tell you something about talking to Japanese people who speak very little English, and me with my limited Japanese. It is a hard task, it often requires drawing, charades and access to a dictionary. Let me give you an exemple. I wanted to tell him that I was reading a Harry potter book that my friend sent me from Canada. The thing is that this book was bought in Canada by a Japanese person, and she took it back to Japan. Then my friend went to visit her and she gave it to him and he brought it back to Canada. Now he has sent it to me here in Japan. Thus, this book has been in a plane 3 times. Now to explain this in Japanese....here is an extait of my explanation:
"my friend name is Louis
friend lives Canada
His friend is Japanese
Japanese friend visit my friend in Canada
Japanese friend buy Harry potter book Canada
Book go Japan
my friend go Japan
Japanese friend give book my friend
Book go Canada
Now, Book sent Japan"

All of this takes me about 20 min to say, because I have to think of vocabulary and try to use proper grammar.

Anyway, then we went to Sapporo for a soccer tournament. It was awsome, we won 7 of our 10 games (games last only 10 min). After that, we went out for drinks with some of my JET and Japanese friends. It was quite fun, with token nomihodai (all you can drink) and karaoke.

and now for something completely different (ref?)

So in Canada we have a new PM. Not too excited about it, but let's see how this all plays out.....

and now, for pictures:

Krabi, Railey beach, our resort

beautiful sight, and the beach too...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

here is a cute dog during the new year party that kept trying to drink booze all night, it was no doubt an alcoholic dog.

do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight

boat to Koh Phi Phi

Koh Phi Phi

token sail boats

view from a top

Snow, snow snow! my car is the lump of snow with 2 wipers sticking out of it..

Me (Germany), Hane (Sweeden) and his wife Aya (Italy)

Hane's dog Maku, a beautiful black labrador. J'ai pense a toi Sophie en prenant cette photo, puisque tu es la personne qui aime le plus les chiens de toutes les personnes que je connais.

outside with Hane the dog and snow....

M.F.C.

Next stop: School ski trip and Koh Tao an end of a journey

Khao Sok

2006-01-22T06:01:00.000-08:00

Khao Sok is a rain forest in the middle of Thailand; it is South of Bangkok. We got there by train from Kanchanaburi, it was an overnight train, not super comfortable, but not terrible either.
We spent 3 nights there, in a very small skack, that was just barely bigger than the bed. But the hotel grounds were pretty nice, and there were two really cute dogs, a baby pouddle and a huge one that I don't the name of.
The first day, we just sorta chilled and checked out the village. The second day we trekked all day in the jungle with our guide. We saw giant spiders, chameleons, and birds. It was nice, but Juliana got eatean alive by pesky leeches.
The last day, we went on an elephant trek, then we did some some river tubing. I named the elephant Mustafa, and he was quite brave, he treked on a pretty treacherous terrain. We also saw some really cute monkeys. Juliana tried to feed one of them a banana, but it did not want it, so the other monkey came and stole it with increadible acrobatics. They were really fun, we got to pet them and hold them. They are really cute.
In all, Khao Sok was not bad, although we got colder and wetter weather and the bugs were quite present. At the end, I was happy to move on...

our shack from afar

up close and REAL personal

During our trek, complete with leaf hat

Mustafa ready to go!

Swinging away

the vast forest

a spider

Next stop: Krabi

Bridge over River Kwai

2006-01-19T04:18:00.000-08:00

After our stay in Bangkok, Juliana and me went west towards the Burmese border to a small (yet touristy) town called Kanchanaburi. This area is attractive to tourists for 2 reasons; the first is because it is a wetland with many beautiful waterfalls, forests and caves as the pictures will testify; and the second, as the title of this post suggests, is because it is the region where Japanese occupents during WWII used POWs to build a raiload extending from Malaysia all the way into Burma, with the hopes of eventually occupying India. Part of the railway crossed over the river Kwai. The endeavour and suffering of the POWs was immortalized in a book and a movie starring Obi-wan. The railroad still exists today, but of course, it has been upgraded since.

We stayed a mere 2 days in the region, but they were perhaps 2 of the most profitable and enjoyable days in Thailand. Everything was really cheap, even for thai standards, with great food and drinks (best massaman curry and cocunut shake of the trip), great weather, fun swim with fish, amazing treck with great views, and a soft bed and pillow (something not so common in Thailand).

Ici au Japon, la neige tombe, et tombe encore. On a deja depasse le seuil de 100 morts causes par la neige au Japon. Hier et aujourd'hui j'ai du passe au moins 1h par jour a deneiger. Il m'est impossible de prendre mon auto. Au moins c'est de la belle poudreuse, ideale pour skier. Dimanche on a teste mes habilites de guerrier dans un petit combat de boulles de neiges. Je pense que j'ai gagne, mais il faut dire que mes adversaires etaient entre 5 et 7 ans....
Cote Sumo, le championat devient tres excitant, il ne reste que 3 matches, et il y a 6 sumos qui penvent encore remporter la coupe, incluant mon favori Kotoochu.

here are the pics, enjoy...

how YOU doing?

Erwan Waterfalls

Token monkey. Actually this SOB was quite the bad ass. Some Germans (ah, those Germans, nothing changes Ref?) started messing with it, and it absolutely when homo spiens shit. It scared them away..

If you look close enough, you can see a school of fish. We swam in this pond, and the fish were NOT shy let me tell you. They would start bitting you (naive people call it kissing) and they were tenecious. Fortunaly they don't have teeth so it did not hurt, but it sure startled the bejesus out of me.

Levitation is a difficult art to master

Me and my trusty bo staff. I used it to tame the mythical Liger (ref?)

Next stop: Khao Tao

He who enters airport sideways, goes to...

2006-01-17T04:41:00.000-08:00

BANG KOK!

This is one of Confucious more memorable dictums.
I was to meet Juliana at Bangkok airport at midnight. Unfortunately, her flight was delayed from Chicago, and we only met at 1:30am. But what a sweet meeting it was. If I were to decribe Bangkok in one word, it would be "a mess". Okay that was 2 words, but you get my drift. It is a busy, noisy, polluted, jam packed city. Its redeeeming qualities are that it is lively and oh so cheap to shop.

We would stay at the famous Kao San road, a street packed with backpakers, shops, kiosks, restaurants, clubs, street vendors, and the insufferable tuk-tuk guys. These fuckers are relentless, as soon as you step out of your hostel, they come to you offering rides to the fucking Big Buddha that does not even exist. They are all con men and not to be trusted. But if you are a good negociator, they can take you anywhere cheap, and risk your life in the process (they are mad drivers!!) It actually tarnishes the city, because I felt like everyone was a crook and could trust no one, it is not a good feeling to have, trust me.

Another highlight, of course, was the shopping. I purcahsed a tailor made suit for a mere 130$, "authentic" puma running shoes, and other souvenirs. Food was also quite delicious, the street vendors pad thai is a must, and for 50cents, its a wonder how they even make a profit. As Louis had commented previously, in Thailand, nothing is beyond negotiation. To be fair, Juliana was the chief negotiator in our lot. She even got some vendors quite upset at the offers she would make.

In short, I enjoyed Bangkok, but was glad to leave after 2 days to a more relaxed and pleasent setting (altough, to be fair, we did only see a fraction of the city, and the Grand Palace is quite fantastic). We spent Christmas in a very nice little restaurant that simply had the best lemonade iced tea I have ever had, EVER!!

On the Japanese front, I have gone back to work, and all is well. My boy Kotooshu is tied for second in the first Sumo Cup of the year. It is not too cold, but there is snow up the wazoo. In fact, about 100 Japanese people have died this month in snow related deaths, most from being buried under snow that fell off a roof.

here as promised, are some siamese pictures...

me on Kao San Road where it is day even at night (not sure what that means, but it sounds cool

this creature is the sacred bird that is good and always triumphs over the evil Naga (snakes). It is the national symbol and present in Thai archetecture

Grand Palace

Juliana and me at a temple

the infamous tuk-tuk

more pics: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/my_photos, see "Bangkok" album

next stop: Kanchanaburi and Erwan Falls...

Sad Post

2006-01-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems fate was delayed yet again my posts about Thailand. I have learned today that Little Jerry, my pet fish, whom I left in Montreal for obvious reasons, has gone to fish heaven.

Yes after recently completing his second birthday (I guess fish don't live 6 years after all) he has died.

The irony of it all is that Little Jerry is a Thai fighting Beta fish, (it must remain isolated from others of its species for they will kill each other) and he died whilst I was in Thailand. I guess I am glad it was not I who witnessed his ill fate. He was a loyal pet, he never left my room and would never fuss about his food even if at times he tried to bite me.

He was given to be by the lovely Juliana on my first b-day when we started going out. It was a strange gift to say the least in that anyone who knows me, knows that it is unwise to leave another living creature, even flora, in my care. But even with the odds stacked against him with me as his caretaker, Jerry would live through 2 more birthdays and live gloriously into the dawn of 2006.

I'm affraid I have no pictures of him here with me, so you will have to forgive me.

Rest in peace little buddy, you will be missed.

Prelude

2006-01-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

Stop!

I know you have been slashing your arm with a butter knife, desperately waiting for the first update of this new earthly revolution around the Sun. You need cut yourself no more, for it is here. However, this post is nothing more than a prelude to upcoming posts, and I assure you there will be many. As you know, I have returned from Siam and Hong Kong with many a tale to tell and many a picture to show. Therefore, I will not make one huge mega post describing my vacation, but instead, I will break it down into a series of posts, the total of which I do not yet know. There is more. Since there are also things happening here, I will divide the next few posts into two parts, one with stories of my vacation, and one with updates on my Japanese life; because as George W. Bush once said: "Life never stops in Shinshinotsu, Hokkaido, Japan" or mayby it was "make no mistake, don't mess with Texas" but you get my meaning.

When I returned to Hokkaido, two mountains awaited me: a mountain of snow (not fun) and a moutain of mail. Most of the mail was new year cards from locals wishing me a happy new year. It was quite heartwarming. Alongside was a book, Harry Potter II: The revenge of Ron, a gift from Louis, and a most welcome one.

Well, I'm off, but check out the blog regularly, more than usual, for in the next month, there will be many post to read....

cheers and happy year of the dog!

And so it is time to go...

2005-12-20T04:44:00.000-08:00

to THAILAND that is!!!!

that's right folks, I will be spending 2 weeks in the land of Siam with the lovely Juliana then I will spend 3 days in Hong Kong, filling my stomach with roast duck till my heart's content (which means that it will be stuggling to pump blood to my body).

In the Japan Times newspaper, there was an article about the record 41cm of snow in one day. However, that is what has fallen every day here! J'exaggere, mais pas trop. Seriously, I have had to shovel almost every day. I have yet not the courage to take a pic and post it here, I want this to be a happy place.

Well, as you may have guessed, I will not be updating this blog while on my vacation. So as it is, this will be the last post of 2005, thus I bid you all faithful readers a solid new year with money, power, and revenge on all your enemies; I mean health, happiness, peace and have all the children in the world come together and sing in harmony (ref? difficult one).

Speaking of ref, Bravo Alex, bravo garcon, kudos and kudos again. It also was used in Team America, world police.

well that's it, I have you have had as much fun reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

BECAUSE IN MY HEAD, I'M STILL 12

Next Stop: in beach we trust

santa, magic and the hybrid

2005-12-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

Picture, courtesy of Pedro's technical advice. I'm the one in the Santa costume, by the way

Last week I was asked to pose as Santa and give gifts to some infants between the ages of 6 months and 3 years old. I agreed of course with pleasure, it would not be the first time I impersonate Ol' Saint Nick, and I am sure it will not be the last.
So the nursery center had it all preped for me, they had the costume and gifts ready for me to hand out; I just had to show up, dress up, do a few hohohoes (boy that sounds dirty!) and earn my own gift which turned out to be quite a delicious piece of cake. Sounds pretty boring as a gig you say? but alas, the dark side, it would seem, was very strong with me that day. I can proudly say that I made EVERY single child either cry or run desperately out of fear from me. It was hilarious. Many a parent tried to have their child photographed on my lap, but none of the kids would have it; it was quite funny watching these infants use every ounce of strength they had to wrestle out of my arms. I, of course, would not hold them, for fear that the kids would go out of control. The adults present had a good laugh about it.
Now many a gaijin might feel sad that they invoke such fear from kids, but I blame the costume; I mean, dammit, would you not be scared of a jolly man in red with an obviously fake white beard on? Many kids would not even want to take the gifts, and I don't blame them, that's how you get hooked on crack. Sure that funny looking hobo seems harmless, but then kablamo! next thing you know you are in a public bathroom with Leonardo Decrappio (ref?)
But seriously, I did not feel alienated by the kids' fear, it was very entertaining actually, and they were all very cute, even crying so I could not but enjoy the experience.
[as for pictures, I have a few, but not from my camera, they were sent to me on a word document, so I can't post them on the internet, or at least I don't know how; so if anyone (and by anyone, i mean Leo, Pedro or Alex) knows how I can convert the pics into a friendlier format (i've tried all the tricks I know), I will be much obliged, and so will my thousands of readers.]

There is a shit load of snow, I actually had to dig out my car; I don't mean using the car snow cleaner, I mean using an actual shovel to unsnow my car. Don't even get me started on the driveway!!
Although, I have to say it is quite a nice snow, very powdery, perfect for skiing, and easy to shovel in as much as it very light. However, the shear quantity of it more then makes up for its lightness.

On another completely different and non-Japanese related note, last Sunday I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I quite enjoyed it, although I am not sure this is my favorite of the 4 movies out so far. I think my favorite is the 3rd movie, and this 4th one is on par with the 1st. Only the second movie did I not like as much.
I think the biggest problem with this latest movie is that they covered too many things, introduced SO many new characters and had lots of important events happen in a flash of the eye. I guess since the fourth book is the first of the really big books, it made it quite difficult to adapt into one movie; so I commend them for a good job, but obviously it can't be perfect. Although, something the fourth movie made me want more than the third is that it inspired me to continue reading the series. In all truth, I have only read the first book, which I liked, so upon my return to Canada, I will follow up on it.

Speaking of Decrappio, I saw this week probably one of the worst commercials ever. It was about a Toyota hybrid car, promoted by none other than the Aviator/New York Ganger/Beach boy/thank God he sank with the Titanic/ self-proclaimed "environmentalist" himself. In the advert, he elaborates at length on how he loves the "environment" (how does one love the environment exactly?) and that he is an environmentalist and that is why he drives a hybrid; because it is "good for the environment" (a car is never GOOD for the environment, it is only less bad) so that makes him feel good. Now how silly does that sound: "I like driving hybrid because it is good for the environment so that makes me feel good". Man, it was a pretty gay advertisement. Well done Leo, you certainly will pull off the Renegade/maverick (ref?) persona with that one!

Next stop: The king of Siam and me....

Consadole

2005-12-12T03:55:00.000-08:00

Consadole eh o nome do time de futebol de Sapporo. Algumas semanas passadas, eu fui ver um jogo do Consadole com um amigo Japones da minha cidade. O estadio de Sapporo eh bem legal, super moderno, foi onde teve o famoso jogo da Argentina contra Inglaterra na ultima copa. Inflezimente o Consadole perdeu o jogo. Na verdade, foi um vexame. O Consadole estava ganhando 2 x 1. Faltando um minuto de jogo, o outro time empatou. Ate ai tudo bem, mas ai nos descontos, o outro time fez mais 2 gols em 2 minutos!!! O Consadole acabou perdendo 4x2!!!! O pior foi que o ultimo gol foi culpa do goleiro que se apresou para chutar a bola pra frente a acabou chutando a bola em cima do proprio zagueiro, ai sobrou para um atacante que entrou no gol com a bola!!!

Agora que o sorteio da Copa foi feita vai ser muito interessante. Muita gente fala do groupo da Argentina, eu nao acho tao dificil. Eh um groupo com 2 boms times e 2 pessimo times. Pra me dizer que Serbia ou Cote d'Ivoire, dois times que nunca tiveram em Copa, ah vai te fuder baitola!!! O grupo do Brasil eh o mais dificil pra mim, com o Japao e a Croatia e Australia. Claro, nao tem Hollanda, embora, todos os times do groupo do Brasil sao capaz de ganhar jogos em Copa, talvez so a Australia mesmo que eh uma merda.

Aqui vai pegar fogo no jogo Japao x Brasil. Ainda nao sei onde vou assitir e nem com quem. Tb tem o fato que os horrarios dos jogos nao vao ser muito convenientes. Mas vamos ver.....

next stop: Santa is coming to town....

great week

2005-12-08T15:36:00.000-08:00

Hello folks,

Despite the onset of winter, I think this week that has just passed was one of the best since I arrived in Japan.

Starting last Friday, when I hosted my 3rd Texas Hold em Poker night. We were 5, me and 4 Japanese, and I won for the first time. It was great fun, and I was able to use much of the Japanese I have learned thus far. Continuing onto Saturday with chorus singing with an orchestra, then going out with some friends and coming home at 6am whilst the sun rose. Sunday was a great chilling day.

Monday I had 5 classes (unheard of, normally I have 2-3 classes a day) out of a potential maximum of 6!! Now, normally I would think 5 classes to be too much and to totally wear me out, but 3 of those five classes were speaking or reading tests I had to administer. I've come to realize that I like testing the kids, its fun. And I was generally satisfied and surprised at some of the kids improvement since I arrived in August. The other two classes went really well, overall a great school day. It was followed by a pretty good workout in which I broke my own time record on the treadmill for my bi-weekly (I am trying to make it a tri-weekly affair) 5km jog.

Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Sapporo for a JET Mid-Year Conference, in which all JETs from Hokkaido, some 300 gajin, participated. It was really fun reseeing some people I had not seen since August. And some of the workshops were actually interesing and useful, as opposed to the usual bore. For the boring ones, I chated it up with frinds, or studied Japanesed or read parts of an Encyclopidia with all the knowledge of the world (this book was sent to me by Alex Wery, thanks again buddy). I've learnt much about the world from this encyclopedia, including the ongoing hobo wars that most people are oblivious to as well as the potential attack of American Civil War era cyborgs, powered by steam.

Thursday was back to my town, and another day of 5 classes plus English club. And all classes went really well, basically, the Japanese English teacher and myself talked about Lennon (the John and not the Vlademir, ref?) and the Beatles and listened to some Lennon because it was the anniversary of Lennon's death.
The English club was also cool, I taught the kids black Jack, and we played for a good time. Instead of betting money, the students that lost had to answer in Enlgish questions of those who won.

Today (Friday) it is elementary school, which is always fun, and I will have to do a Santa impression, I'll let you know how that goes.
Tomorrow I have kendo and soccer, so should be a fun day.

The point of this post is that just when things in Japan were starting to get routine and lost much of their initial novelty, this great week has proved me that I have still much to explore and discover in Japan.

time to be bad....(ref?)

2005-12-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

So last weekend was Josh's, another JET from Montreal, b-day. He hosted a potluck type dinner party at his place. It was quite fun, I made a mushroom risotto, with 5 kinds of different wild mushrooms. It was pretty good, but Japanese rice is not the best for risottto.
There was actually too much food, I think we had to throw away the next day, at least half of the food.
But the highlight of the party was the fire...let me explain. Josh also lives in a small town (Furubria). Around 9pm, when his guests were supposed to arrive, also coincided with a fire that started in sombody's house in his town. The first 2 Japanese guests to arrive soon got a call on their cell, and after a brief conversation, excused themselves because their friend's house was on fire, so they left. Maybe 10 minutes after they left another guest came, dropped off a cake she baked and left, explaining that she had to go because her friend's house was on fire. Two more guests would do the same thing, come drop off their food and go because their friend's house was on fire. Only one girl had a different story; she said her COUSIN'S house was on fire. Who was this guy anyway, and was he friends with everyone in town?

We were starting to believe that it was an elaborate plan by the Japanese to not have to go to the party. Anyway, around 10pm or so, many of the guests returned, I guess they were successful in putting out the fire. Which begs the question: "what excatly did they expect to accomplish?" Unless in Japan you must call your friends to put out fires, what can they possibly do to help?

We at least learnt one thing, in Japan, if you ever want to get out of going to a social event, just say that your friend's house is on fire, it will be implied that you need to go and "help out". I can't wait to use that as an excuse: "Sorry Mr. Emperor, I really would like to attend your daughter's wedding, but you see, my friend's house is on fire, and you know how it is when those fires start, if I am not there for moral support, they will burn right through the wall..."

me and Josh, doing....I really don't remember

this picture is as much a surprise to me as it is to you

what are YOU looking at?

Sumo time

2005-11-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

This week ended the 15 day Emperor's Cup Sumo Challenge in Kyushu (South of Japan). The winner was a Mongolian yokuzuna (highest rank a sumo can have) named Asashyoru. He won 14 of his matches losing only one match. The match he lost was to another up and coming gaijin, and my favorite, a Bulgarian named Kotooshu (all sumo wreastlers must take on a Japanese name). Kotooshu tied for second, and even though he did not win the tournament, he got enough wins (11) to ensure promotion to ozeki, sumo's second highest rank, only second to yokuzuna, which I believe can only be held by one sumo and any given time (but I am not 100% sure).

Sumo is an interesting sport, and also very strange. Basically, the two fighters spend up to 5 minutes measuring each other up, trying to intimidate and psych out the other; then spend between 10 to 60 seconds actually fighting. One match can last a little as 5 seconds or as long as 2 minutes, never more. During the intimidation phase, the fighters throw salt on the ring, and often slap their belts to try and intimidate the other. Asashyoru has a trademark slap that I love.

But what I like about Kotooshu, is that he is not there for the ceremony or the intimidation part of it; he is there for business. I am sure that in his head he thinks: "Yeah slap that belt all you want buster, I am here to either push you out of the ring or through you down in 30 seconds or less." Thus, Kotooshu does not have a very impressive ritual of salt throwing or belt slapping as most of the other sumos.

In fact, until recently there was no 5 minute time limit to the intimidation part of it. Some old bouts could have lasted up to an hour (although actual fighting is always less than 2 minutes). The record, I was told is of 2 hours of slat throwing and belt slapping before fighting. Must have put some of the spectators to sleep...

Even though I am a Kotooshu fan, I respect Asashyoru, because he won all 6 sumo tournaments this year and broke the record for most wins in a year.Apparantly the top sumos have beautiful and famous wives, just like all superstar athletes, but I pity the poor lady who has to well...do I really need to draw a picture? Like a friend says, it must be something out of the discovery channel...

Here we see Kotooshu (in light blue thong) throwing down Asashyoru (in black)

Heavan vs. Hell

2005-11-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

I would love to take credit for this, but alas, I was not the one who did it. I ripped it off Fark, but I think it is brillant. Although, in my heavan, the food would be italian instead of French.

Next stop: Furubira again....

It is so...

2005-11-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

Japanese people are very kind, there is little doubt of that. I came here with many preconceptions of Japan, some have been confirmed, others have turned out to be pure Western sterotypes towards Japan; but the extreme kindness of the Japanese folk is hardly disputable. There are times when I actually feel bad after been treated to a completely random and extreme act of kindness.
For exemple, in Tokyo, I was carrying a number of things from a store in various small bags; a rival store clerk saw this and brought me a big bag in which I could put all my things in. She was not being shrewed trying to get me to buy something, it was pure altruism.
Last week, my Elementary school co-workers decided to buy me a DVD player for my birthday, I was speachless.
One of my adult English students missed a week because she went on vacation. When she returned the following week, it was with a box of sweets for me.
It is pointless to try and count the number of times that people will not let me pay for something.
Anyway, the list continues, a friend offers to change my tires no charge, students do origami for me, or my best pupil Jin whose parents made straberry jam from their farm for me. It is at times overwhelming. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme kindness of Japanese will be what I most miss about them when I return.

Mais a toute bonne chose, il y a un cote negatif. S'il est vrai que les Japonais sont tres gentils et generaux, ils sont aussi, paradoxallement, tres peu accueillants. Je m'explique. En fait, un japonais fera tout ce qu'il peut pour t'aider si tu lui en demende, et parfois fera comme j'ai dit, des gestes de gentillesse sans precedant. Cependant, c'est un peuple qui reste tres ethno-centrique, et en tant que etranger, on ne se sentira jamais chez soi. Au niveau social, il est difficile pour les japonais d'inclure des etrangers. Ils ne font pas par malice, mais simplement cars il ne savent pas comment; leur culture demeure tres ferme envers l'exterieur. Ils ne s'attendent pas a ce qu'un etranger puisse comprendre leur culture, et ils ne prennent pas trop la peine d'essayer d'expliquer.

Si je peux me baser sur mon experience, le Bresil est un pays infiniment plus accueillant, quoique les bresiliens sont infiniments moins gentils que les japonais. Le Canada se situe un peu entre les deux sur les deux plans. En fait, un etranger qui immigre au Bresil deviendra, malgre lui, comme un bresilien. C'est tres dificile au Bresil pour ne pas s'integrer a la culture locale, qui elle-meme est issue d'un melange heterogene de cultures. Au Canada, c'est different. La, on a toute la liberte de maintenir une identite etrangere tout en acceptant l'identite canadienne, qui elle-meme ne parvient pas vraiment a se definir compte tenu son multiculuralisme. Au Japon, l'etranger ne sera accepte que tres difficilement dans la culture locale et ne pourra jamais exprimer son heritage cultural comme on peut au Canada. Toutefois, au contraire du Canada, le japonais a une identite naitonale tres bien definie.
Je ne porte pas de jugement, quoique je suis bien-sur biaise dans mes propos. Il reste que les japonais sont le plus gentil peuple que je connais, meme s'ils sont encore enfermes sur eux-memes. In conclusion, it is a land of contrast (ref?)

Culture

2005-11-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have only been here 3 months, I am in no position to judge Japanese culture in any way or form, I mearly observe. That being said, I have observed that much importance is placed on the arts. Every Japanese I have ever seen at karaoke, sings flawlessly; it seems like every kid on the block can draw as well as professional comic book artists; finaly, just writing kaniji requires an advanced adpetion to calligraphy.

This has all been culminiated in the culture day a few weeks ago. Even here, in my small town, I was witness to superb pieces produced by both old and young, displaying not only creativity and imagination, but also mastery in technique and skill.

During the actual Culture day, which is a national holiday, I was lucky to be in Tokyo and witness a cultural parade, of which I have already mentioned in another post. But I want to concentrate on the quality of the exposition here in my own town. There were bonsai, photography, calligraphy, drawings, origami, flower arrangements, wood sculptures, paper mache collage as well as ceramics and much more. There is really no point in talking, or writing about art, unless it is litterary art, so I will stop short (ref?) here and post some pics just to tease you a little.

Flower arrangement, done by my supervisor's wife

This was my favorite bonsai, it was a bonsai of a maple tree

two origami of the Japanese crane (bird), each one of made of dozens of smaller origami, quite impressive

collage made with papier-mache, I think it was my favorite piece

On another note, I experienced my first earthquake this week, it was fun. Nothing broke or fell, but it did wake me from my slumber at 6:30am. My thoughts were not "oh shit, its the big one, I'm done for" no they were more along these lines: "God dammit, even the earth won't let me get my daily 10hres sleep."

next stop: I can always trust the kindness of strangers...

JET and Multiple bosses

2005-11-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

I have been sitting on this post for a while now, but here goes.

So why exactly am I in Japan? I bet many of you have asked yourself this question. I am here to travel and discover new cultures, sort of put into practice what I learned in University studying International Relations.

So how did I come to be in Japan? I came with the JET Programme.
What the hell is JET anyway? It stands for Japanese Exchange Teaching. In short, Japan, hires native English speakers around the world to help teach English as well as help internationalize Japan from its cultural isolation. So basically, I work for the Japanese Government, I am a civil servant here, a gaijin one noless.
I am hired by a local Board of Education (BOE) and I work in a Junior High School (JHS) 3 days a week, and an Elementary school once a week. I also teach an adult English conversation class once a week at the BOE. So there you have it, my normal work week. Weekends are mine to explore Japan and all it has to offer.
Now working in 3 distinct, yet related, places (BOE, JHS, and Elementary) means I have multiple bosses.

At the BOE, my immediate boss is Harada-san, also my supervisor (basically, my go to guy if I have any problems or questions). If I want vaction, it is him I go see, but before he approves, I need to coordinate with my other bosses. Beyond Harada-san at the BOE, my supreme boss is also his boss. It is the superintendant of the BOE. He is the one who officially signed my contract, and I suspect that if I ever were to get fired, he would be the one to do it.

At the JHS, I have sort of 4 bosses or so. My biggest boss, of course, is the Principle (Kocho Sensei), followed by the Vice-Principle (Kyoto Sensei). If ever I need some sort of favor or whatnot at the JHS, I must speak with them. However, I don't often deal with them; in fact, I never really talk to them other than for social matters and banter. More immediate are the two Japanese Teachers of English (JTE). The first, Taguchi-sensei is with whom I mostly deal with. He has the best English at the school, and perhaps the town. Almost all my questions I direct to him, and for anything I need to prepare for classes, I need (in theory) his approval. The second JTE is Ogata-sensei. She teaches the English Converstaion class with me, but her English is more limited, so she takes on a more organizational/manager role rather than a lead teaching one. Again, any ideas I have for those classes I have to run by her.

Finally at the Elementary school, I have two direct bosses, again both the Kocho-sensei (principle) and the kyoto-sensei (vice-principle). I don't really have any JTEs there, I just help out the homeroom teachers when there is English class. At elementary it is pretty basic, just vocab and games, it is really fun, and often I don't even consider it work but more as fun with kids.

Now it would seem that I have many people to answer to, but in fact it is all pretty relax here. No one really gives me "orders" per say. My JTEs tell me what they want to focus on next class and ask me to come up with an activity that can help teach the target English. None of the principles or vice-principles have ever asked anything of me, and at the BOE, there are no directives on how I should teach the adult conversation class; I do as I please, which suits me fine, although at times I run out of ideas, so then I whip out the ol' cards or TV show or listen to music with the class. I really enjoy the adult conversation class (but the elementary is by far my favorite).

Actually, all my bosses are really cool. Harada-san and Taguchi-sensei are both really funny and great to talk to. The superintendant is really cool, he always seems relexed and in control. The principle at the JHS is a really cool and funny guy, he loves joking around with me, and if I spoke better Japanese I would definately talk to him more. Both principle and vice of the Elementary are the sweetest guys I've ever met. The principle is like a nice grand-father for the kids while the vice is like a cool uncle to the kids. They are always smiling and in a great mood. The vice of the JHS is pretty low key, he used to be a boxer so I don't mess with him.

Sur une note completement differente, je vous dis tout de suite, puisque je suis au futur, que ce sera Andre Boisclair qui deviendra le nouveau chef du PQ. Sinon, je ne vous envie pas les elections imminantes a Ottawa durant les fetes. Encore comme je suis au futur, je peux vous dire que vous irez voter en debut janvier 2006. Et pis la France mon Louis San-pedro, est-ce vraiment une societe issue des lumieres? Je dirais pas moi, en fait voila ce qui arrive lorsqu'on remporte une coupe du monde avec des athletes africains et qu'on ne leur donne pas due reconnaissance.

Party Time

2005-11-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

hey there kids,

so last night was the big Shinshinotsu party to celebrate my 27th year of existance. It was awsome. I really enjoyed myself; many friends both Japanese and gaijin came to celebrate. I was really touched and heartwarmed by everyone's generosity, even people who I have only recently met came and brought me great gifts. I was honored.
We started with the first party at my Board of Education at 6pm. There was buffet style food, which was really good, and many drinks. Then we went to a bar for the second party at 10pm. So as always, karaoke was in order. It was really fun, I sang, as always New York New York as well as Bohemian from Queen. After the second party, we went back to my place for the third party, which was equally fun. Down side of the whole thing, the snow storm we had; we did however have a snow ball fight in front of my house, that was pretty fun, although we paid the price with ensuing wet clothes.

A special thanks to my supervisor Harada-san for helping me organize the whole thing.

here are a few pics for good measure:

welcome banner, a la quebecoise

one of my adult English conversation class students, she gave me the robe thing I am wearing, it is great, i loved it

Harada-san, up to his old tricks..

the bar staff, made a cake for me, they are really nice people, and the guy is an amazing karaoke singer

gaijin at the bar

more gaijin, plus some locals

everyone (well almost) at the first party

more pics:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ d_souhami/album?.dir=6fe4&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
(you will need to copy and paste, and remove the space between the "...ph/" and "d_souhami..."

Thank you Shinshinotsu (my town) for making me feel welcome and at home

It is inevitability (ref?)

2005-11-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

It was inevitable, but let me just say, that I was still in denial. I never thought it would hit so hard, and be so painful. My tears of joy, quickly became tears of sadness, anger, hate and suffering. I felt cold and useless to combat the onslaught. No sir, God is not good, She is the cruelest biatch this side of the Milky way. This curse that has been put upon me will kill me a little more with each passing winter night.

Yes people, you have guessed it, the white shit has fallen upon Hokkaido, and on my birthday noless. Yesterday, 3cm of slushy wet and hateble snow polluted this otherwise fine land. Consolation, at least here we are not plagued by fifty million decorations and annoying songs about some jolly old fart in red.
I hate winter....

On a happy note, yesterday 3 Japanese friends came to celebrate my b-day. It was a welcome surprise.

my gift, a new AC Milan tuque
Next stop: a party Shinshinotsu will not soon forget....

Homage to Leo

2005-11-09T00:07:00.000-08:00

The Leo

Time for another homage, this time to my best friend in Brazil, Leonardo. He is also the person who most inspired me to start this blog. He also has a very good blog called Mis Piensos (in portuguese) and he has been updating it regularly for some 4 years now I think. His writing is very good, I think he should become a journalist, since he studied international relations, has good opinions and writes them well.

I met Leo in 1996, when we were both seniors in high school. He was living in Montreal at the time since his father was working there. Unfortunately, he moved back to Brazil in 1999, but that did not impede us from staying good friends. In fact, when I lived in Brazil in 2003, he and his family were generous enough to let me live with them, and they truly made me feel like part of the family, I will be eternaly grateful for that.

Aside from sharing many common intersts, Leo also is a loyal and faithful friend (even though he has not commented of late in my blog, I forgive him). Even recently, he came through for me big time. A few weeks ago, in my adult English conversation class, the topic for the day was going to be TV shows. I decided it would be a nice treat to show them an episode of the Simpson's (one of my three favorite shows); and I wanted to show the specific episode of when the Simpson's go to Japan. But I am unable to download from my computer here, so I had no idea on how I could get my hands on a copy. I turned to Leo, and sure enough in the 24hrs delay I gave him, he was able to download the episode in his computer and the save it in a virtual file in the internet in which I could access.

Valeu Leo, vc eh tao dinheiro que vc nem sabe, espero que um dia podemos ir para vegas juntos. Agora, como vc gosta delas macas?

Leo, the cowboy years

I just had to put this picture, it is TOO funny. The other guy is Thiago, another great friend from Brasilia. The three of us had good times in 2003.

cheers mate

There and back again

2005-11-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

So a four day stint in Tokyo is just what I needed to rejuvenate my Japanese experience. Wednesday last, I went to Iwamizawa, a nearby city where I would need to take a train to Sapporo to take a plane for Tokyo. I headed out on Wednesday, went to a small party, then slept over at a friend's house, James from the State of Governator. Oh, did I mention that I would have to get up at 5am on Thursday to catch a train at 6am to Sapporo to then check-in and take a flight at 9am for Tokyo. Yeah, not much sleep that night, but a deep slumber in the plane to Tokyo where I was "supposed" to read my Tokyo guide to figure out what I wanted to do there.

So in Tokyo I stayed at two friends' house from Montreal: Sebastien et Jean-Olivier. Both engineers, actually they studied with my brother, who passed me their contact info.
Quite frankly, there is no sense in me getting into my whole trip to Tokyo, it would take too much time to write and would probably bore you, so content yourselves with highlights.

Now Tokyo is MEGA HUGE. In 4 days, I must have seen all of 7% of the whole city (which in fact is subdivided into many sub-cities who in turn are sub-divided into districts who in turn are also sub-divided into areas) Point of the story: Tokyo is BIG!!! (but oh so fun)

My visits included:

-Akihabara, the electronics capital of the world where a cell phone that has anything less than a state of the art GPS is outdated. I bought I shitty watch there.

-Ueno park and Tokyo National Museum, the biggest park in Tokyo as well as the biggest museum (also really nice). I was a little disappointed with the lack of samurai gear at the museum, I guess I will see more in Kyoto, we'll see...

part of the museum grounds

real life full scale kappa (see previous post)

me and the affable Kappa

-Asakusa, home of the biggest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. I also got to see a traditional cultural parade and many Japanese in authentic traditional wear, with live traditional music played by traditional instruments.

japanese cranes (bird, think origami)

check out the shoes!

Revenge of the humans, now we can crap on statues of pigeons

part of the temple

-Ginza, the shopping capital of Tokyo. But I cared naught for that, but I did go see a kabuki (traditional Japanese play) there, it was really interesting, the decorations and costumes are awesome.

-Imperial Gardens and Tokyo's business center, The Gardens are actually not open to the public so you can only see a little of them. The business center is impressive, but not that fun really, a lesser version of New York with more neon.

-Harajuku, the trendy place for teens and Japanese Goths. Words can't explain the strangeness and bizarreness of these folk; I will let the pictures speak for themselves. All I say is that these kids are not in Halloween costumes, it is their daily wear.

a normal shop in Harajuku

I repeat, this is not a costume. They are actually very good sports for letting tourists take pics of them, as you can see this gringo doing

don't you want to dress up as a panda on a WEEKDAY!!!

this is just scary

-Meiji Shinto Shrine temple. Possibly the nicest thing to visit in Tokyo, and I was lucky to go while there was a traditional Japanese wedding, so I got to see all kinds of great traditional clothes.

the shrine

Other highlights:

-the city is super clean, even by Japanese standards
-People are still very kind are generous, certainly not like New York
-Satoshi, a Japanese friend, took me out to a traditional Japanese dinner, where "salarymen" (white collar workers) go after work for a bite and a drink. He is a really cool guy, I hope I can see him again before he leaves for Switzerland in January

thumbs up indeed

-A really nice dinner and drinks with Sebastien and Jean-Olivier as well as some of their friends

Izakaya, a japanese style restaurant

bar, le Canadien

more pics: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=/158e
That's it folks, expect another post in 2 days, industry standard (ref?)

Happy ween

2005-10-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

So another Halloween has come and gone, and it is not quite as interesting here in Japan as it is back home.

Sexta, dois colegas de um dos times de futebol em qual eu jogo vieram pra minha casa assistir um filme do Zico: a trajetoria de um vencedor. Foi legal, mas eu estava cansado, entao nao sai com eles depois.

me and my soccer mates

Saturday last, was a long day and night for me. I went to a nearby, bigger town, for a Halloween event with kids and other JETS from that town. It was quite fun. Me and another JET named James coordinated the soccer games, so we got to play with the kids all day it was cool

Kappa! Kappa! Kappa! that is what they would call me, and it would equally be my response.

Kappa is a mythical Japanese monster. It lives in rivers and lakes and it is extremely powerful, hungry and mischievous. It eats cucumbers and little kids. It has a dish on top of its head that it must keep wet at all times, lest it lose its powers and even die. But for all his power and mischief, Kappa has also a chief weakness, its extreme politness. Alas, Kappa will always cause mischief and eat children when given the chance; but it is also very polite, so if ever you come accross a Kappa, all you need to do is bow, and Kappa will acknowledge such a generous social gesture by bowing itself. But alas, therein lies its weakness; as the Kappa bows, it empties its dish of water, thus preventing it from mischief.
I think this tale is told to kids to scare them into bowing and being polite. It worked!!!
Why am I telling you about Kappa? because it was my Halloween costume. I borrowed it from a co-worker at my JHS. Ce fut un franc succes, et la troisieme annee d'affilee que je porte un costume vert; l'an dernier fut Leonardo (non le peintre, mais oui la tortue ninja) et l'annee avant j'etais "Captain Watermelon"

Kappa in all its glory

Kappa up close and freaky

Please follow kappa, watch as it wreaks havoc

regular pumpkin before Kappa mischief

pumpkins after the mischief

So after the festivities with the kids, off we head to Sapporo for a mega Halloween party with other JETs and Japanese folk. The first two hours were really fun, but then the fatigue started to set in. Moreover, an increasing number of non costumed regulars were coming in as an increasing number of costumed folk were leaving, destroying the spirit of Halloween.

I spent most of the night with Josh, another montrealer, so it was good to see him again, he is a very fun guy to hang with.

Josh the playboy bunny with a "secret" and Kappa. If you notice, on the costume, there are only 4 fingers. Moreover, I could not take the costume off as it was a one-piece; for the entire night, I was a complete usless no handed Kappa; I had to hold my beers with both hands at all times, and forget about trying to open a zipper...

This is actually one person

Who you gonna call?

notice Jesus, he is back for a Passion with a vengence (ref?)

On another but similar note, when I came home last week, I found there was a Jack-o-lantern at my door step. I later discovered that it was one of my elementary students that did it for me. That was really kind, I rewarded her with candy as per halloween dictum....

B-Day and Moon Jog

2005-10-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

Today (Oct 27) is my mother Julia's birthday. Sadly, I will not be with her to celebrate it. I unfortunatly do not have any pics of her in this computer, so you will have to content yourslef with this one, in which we also see my father.
Feliz aniversario aqui do Japao.

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Moon Jog

No, I have not been to the moon...yet. But I did see last week one of the most beautiful sights ever. I was going for my weekly jog, and this at a particularly nice time in the day. On one side of the sky, I witnessed another of those spectacular sunsets, that you can only find here in Japan (it is no wonder why they chose the sunset as their flag); on the other side of the sky, was the biggest and most magnificant full moon I've seen in a long time. The night sky was quite impressive, reddish on one side, dark blue on the other with a huge with circle illuminating the path. I had a shadow from both the Sun and the Moon. Quite amazing.

So anyway, I jogged about town, and actually I went up the bell tower for the first time. I didn't know anyone could go up at any time. The view up top was quite nice, farms, mountains, a river, a bridge, and of course the full moon.

I even made a few videos, which I thought might be funny, but in fact are not, but I don't care, so if you have free time, go check them out.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=daniel+souhami&btnG=Search+Video

in case you did not guess, it is moon jog one, moon jog two and moon jog three.

I will shortly upload some old videos from the carnivals I saw back in August as well as some newer videos of my road trip to Kitami last week.

just for flavor, here are some pics of the moon jog:

This pic was supposed to have been on the Hommage to Louis post. This was last new Year's at my house party

next stop: Sapporo, Reloaded

Kitami, another road trip

2005-10-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so back to regular posting...

Kitami is a city North-East of where I live. Last weekend, was a JET "business" meeting. It is more an excuse for gaijin to get together and drink. I went, of course. But the main reasons I went was to meet up with Francis, another JET from Montreal and all around really cool guy. It was good to speak French. I also wanted to visit the region, but to be honest, we did not get much of a chance as it was raining.
Once in Kitami, Francis, took us to meet up with many other JETs in a cheap Mexican restaurant. It was pretty good, and Francis and I took full advantage of the cheap all-you-can-drink (nomihodai) special (10$/hour). After the Tacos, we went to the faithful karaoke, as usual. After karaoke, we went to the third party, which actually sucked.
I was exhausted, and passed out as soon as we got back to his place.

On Saturday, since the weather was bad, we decided to go to an onsen (hot springs) and spent the better part of the day there; it was awsome, I am really going to miss onsens when I go back to Montreal. We hit a buffet style, converyer-belt sushi place, it was really good.

At night it was the JET halloween party. I did not have a costume, but I would improvise a Phantom of the Opera, see pics below. I had a good time at the party, and once again, it was an all-you-can-drink (nomihodai) type thing. There were some pretty neat costumes, my favorite was a half-assed pirate, Spencer, with a penguin (Marcus) on his shoulder. It was really funny.

Sunday, more sushi then back to Shinshinotsu. Max, the closest Jet to my town, and i decided to hit another onsen, just because we can. Once back at my place, I fell alseep at 9pm.

DUMB AND REAL DUMB

I must have done the dumbest thing I have ever done in my entire 3 lives!!! On Saturday morning, as I start brushing my teeth (it was Saturday after all) with Francis' toothpaste, I can't help but notice how shitty it tastes and feels. It was not even making bubbles. Once I was finished, I complained to him:
-FRANCIS, you have the worst toothpaste ever!!!
-au moins ce n'est pas japonais
-De quoi tu parles!
-I brought it from Canada
-you're crazy, there is japonese written all over it!
-Dan, that is not toothpaste, that is acne cream, Clearasil....

Yes people, I have officialy cleaned my teeth from any potential pimples. How dumb could I have been. And it said on the bottle not to put in mouth.
Stupid gaijin, when will you learn...

Francis at karaoke, doing his best Frank Sinatra impression

Jamie from Winnipeg, he won best costume prize. He is dressed as some Japanese Animation character named Devil man, or something like that

Spencer, Kimberly and me at the party

the Montreal crowd: me, Stephanie, Francis and Gus (actually he is from Vermont, but he loves Montreal so he is an honorary member) We all stayed at Francis' house.

Captain Spencer and his penguin Marcus

Marcus the drunk

Max and me

Don't YOU want mint flavored winds?

Next stop: Moon jog...

a comment on comments

2005-10-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

Well I'm back (the ref is from Lord of the Rings, it is the last line of the book, I expected Dave to answer that one)

Alright this will be my first non Japan related post in a long while. As some of you may have noticed, I have updated this here blog less frequently. It is not because I have less to say or I am bored or depressed. It is quite the opposite, many things have happened to me in the last 2 weeks as many more will also happen in the next couple of weeks. As a result, I have not updated as often as I would have liked. That said, expect this blog to be updated very often in the next 2 weeks, I may post as much as 3-4 posts per week.
Now this may seem overwhelming for some readers. I say that's a bunch of crap; it takes me much longer to write posts than it does you to read, and I am just as busy/drunk/tired/sick/sleeping/smarter than the average bear (ref?) as any of you. It also takes you very little time to add a small, yet meaningful comment, even if it is as simple as: "cool Dan" or "Dan, you suck more than anything that has ever sucked before (ref?)"

Moreover, none of my posts are in any sort of order. I rarely refer to past posts, and even if you do not read 3 posts in a row, it does not mean you will not understand the next post, as each post has a beginning and an end. You need not worry about not knowing who is who in my blog. Names will never be a factor for the simple reason that I forget Japanese people's name the INSTANT they finish telling me their names. I know a whole of 5 names here, and I kid you not. So whenever I refer to someone, you will know who he/she is in relation to me (ie, my co-woker, my boss, etc.)
So if you are not reading and commenting, it is either because you do not care (a reason I understand and accept) or you have no time (a bullshit reason I do not stand for). The latter is a quitter's attitude.
-Did George W. Bush quit after became a cokehead and was caught driving under the influence? NO, he became governor of Texas.
-Did George W. Bush quit after being beaten by Al Gore in the popular vote in 2000? NO, he became President
-Did George W. Bush quit after EVERYONE told him that there were no WMDs in Iraq? NO he went in anyway to prove them wrong
(ref?)

Moral of the story, I care what you think and what you are up to, so please comment!

keitai, finaly

2005-10-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back.... (ref?)

so keitai is Japanese for cel phone. It is one of those words that gaijin love to use instead of the proper English term. So a typical conversation between gaijin (devil foreigners) here is:
-Hey what's your keitai (cel phone) number?
-5551234567
-cool, how much was it?
-one man (10,000Y)
-expensive. So, you coming to the enkai (party)?
-nah, I'm going to hit the onsen (hot springs), then I will catch you at the nijikai (second party)
-cool man, don't be late, it will be a cheap nomihodai (all you can drink)
-gambatte kudasai (make an effort please)
-peace out
-Fuck you (fornicate yourself)

So anyway, back to my cel phone story. Even before I set foot on the plane over here, I knew I was going to acquire a cel phone, not because I need one or because I like them, in fact I hate them for the most part (with a cel phone, people are always calling you and you are always reachable), but I knew that in Japan, the cel phones are the shit. All come equiped with a digital camera of 2.0 megapixles, and many other features I will describe later on.

So, I am in Japan, but I can't get a cel phone yet because I do not have two things: my gaijin card (alien registration card) and my inkan (stamp that replaces a signature). I was given my inkan pretty quick, but it took a good 3 weeks before I got my gaijin card.

Once I had both these things, as well as a bank account (which I could only get once I got my gaijin card) I was ready for the cel phone. Two weeks ago, I went to a store with Jin (adult Japanese student and a good friend). I chose my phone, chose my cel phone plan, went through the whole paper work. One task was left, that of signing the contract. No wait, in Japan we do not sign anything, but instead we use the inkan (personilized stamp). Shit, I had forgotten it at my office (where it is kept and used by others at their leisure). So no phone for me. Last week, I returned to the store with Jin once again. This time I had everything, I was ready; but they weren't. They were out of stock of the phone I wanted. FUCK. I would have to return a third time. This week, I go back, and I make a promise to myslef that if anything impeded me from getting the phone, I would simply not get a cel phone anymore, I would take it as a sign from the cel phone gods telling me to go fornicate myself. Fortunatly, this time all was fine. The faithful Jin helped me fill out the paper work and explain a few things. I went for the cheapest phone (it cost 0Yen) and the cheapest plan.

The next day, Honda (friend from work) came to help me set up the settings (set up the settings, are you kidding me?, that is horrible English!) on the phone and to pretty much explain to me how it worked. My phone, in addition to having a camera (both photo and video), has TV, radio, mp3 player, an English-Japanese dictionary, games, calender, agenda, calculater, internet, email, and I can also make phone calls with it. As I give out my number to a staggering 3 people I tell them never to call me, as that is not the purpose of this phone. Seriously, I intend to use it only for emergencies and games of course.

keitai in all its glory, as well as a superb backdrop/mousepad

keitai's screen

keitai's menu screen, not that you care. neither do I.

next stop: jogging on the moon

Back draft

2005-10-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

There was a big earthquake last Thursday. The result was the eruption of a roaring fire* in the Junior High School. This was my time, time to show my quality. And show it I did. After, finishing eating my school lunch, and brushing my teeth (meanwhile the fire is still growing in intensity). I dedided to take a small cat nap, after all, our hero needs all his strength is he is to subdue nature's fiersest beast.

Smoke is now filling the teacher's lounge, all have evacuated to safety, all except our hero, who bravely but stupidly stays and makes a stand. Hummans have mastered every aspect of nature except fire. We have cut down those demonic trees and made paper with them just to add insult to injury; we have depleated water supplies around the world so that we may heroically wet our grass lawns to make them grow so that we may then bravely cut them down with our lawnmowers; we have hunted and mastered every single other species on this evil planet, no rabbit will ever again dare plot fiendish schemes against us. And now, I faced earth's final foe: fire.

It was time to fight fire with fire, and by second fire, I mean water. So I geared up and dressed in my traditional samurai wear (and by samurai traditional wear, I mean modern firefighter overcoat and hat), and alone, I stayed the course and showed my texan style resolve (well alone, there were maybe 8 professional firefighters there, but who is counting, certainly not the fire, so why should I?)
Five minutes after intense hosing action, our enemy was defeated in glorious battle.
Our hero emerged victorious once again, ready to take on any other that may challenge our dominion over this world and all others. Bring it on Moon, we are ready for you....

(*author's note: there never was a fire, nor an earthquake for that matter, it was a fire drill)

me and the science teacher gearing up

ready to rock and or roll

die you rebel scum! (you can't see my face but it is me)

real life gun-fu in action

ah.. those apples

2005-10-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

hello gents and ladies.

First, I want to tell you about my weekend. It was quite nice, but very tireing. On Friday night, I hosted my second Texas hold'em poker night. I was the first one eliminated in an attempt to bully some players with an all in. Honda was again in full form and took the evening's winnings. The whole thing ended around 1am. I then went to sleep but woke up at 6am to go to a basketball tournement in another town. We lost but it was good fun. I returned to Shinshinotsu at 4pm, just in time to prepare diner for two guests that would arrive at 5pm. We ate and watched a soccer video I brought, then we went to play indoor soccer. It was pretty fun, but I was tired from the Basketball. On Sunday, got up at 8am to go to another basketball tournement, this time in a closer town. We were demolished by a high school team. I tried to intimidate the kids by fouling them hard, but they still beat us good.

After the game I went on my thrid road trip, this time to Otaru and Furubria. I drove alone, but found it no problem, I even inadvertedly took a short cut. I was pretty proud of myself. I went to my friend's Josh (from Montreal) house in Furubria. We played some PS2 and watched some Japanese anime. Then we met up with Steph (also from Montreal), Gustave (from vermont), and Saradia (from London). We went for diner, then to a house party (japanese style) with a buddist monk/priest. He is a really cool guy, funny as hell and drinks like a fish. After the house party, we went to a local bar, we were the only clientele, us the 5 gaijins plus 4 locals, friend's of Josh and the monk. It was really fun, there was even some karaoke action. On Monday I returned to my town (we had the day off) and watched many episodes of 24, season 4. Awesome series.

Kancho

Kancho means enima in japanese. It also is the name of a really "intersting" game the elementary kids play. Basically, a kid sneeks up behind you, runs at you with his two index fingers pointed out, and rams them in your ass whilst yealing out KANCHO. I have been the victim of kancho once, well twice, almost. The first time, many weeks ago, I was playing with the 1st graders in the gym, when maybe 10 kids were jumping on me, holding my hands, arms, legs, anything they could get a hand on. Then some of them started with the kancho. But they were many kids, so none could actually get in a position to hit the "target" (my ass) so to speak. That is when it got even more disturbing, because some kids decided to aim for an even more delicate target....So I had to fight off a bunch of little munchkins while avoiding the impending kanchos front and back. I survived..until last week that is, when I was leaving the cafeteria after lunch, one little sneak got in behind and kanchoed me good, direct hit. I told him that he was never again to walk behind me, EVER, he did not seem to care.

My question (and I have asked this to my supervisor) is why in the hell do kids kancho teachers? Why would a little boy want to perform an "enima" on a sensei? What could a child possibly have to gain by this? humiliation to the teacher? yeah I guess it is a bit humiliating, it certainly is disturbing and VERY awkward. I can see the down side of it to the teacher, hell I lived it. But I also see a big down side to the kids: YOU JUST STUCK YOUR FINGERS IN ANOTHER PERSONS ASS. How do you come out benefiting from this, unless you like smelly fingers. I mean the way I see it, there are no winners in this "game". On the one hand, the victim is violated, and on the other the kid gets a butt flavored finger. Even if you throw in a "how do you like them apples?" after the kancho, you still come out with a funky finger, and worst still, if the victim replies that he likes them apples, then things just got a whole lot weirder.

So, now how do you like THEM apples?

Culture and Tea

2005-10-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

Back for another read are you? Just as you should, for this is the best damn blog this side of the Pacific. So Sunday put an end to the school's culture festival. It had the lamentable name of "make an effort". I say lamentable, because it does not do justice to the festival, which was awesome. I truly envy the artistic talent of many of the students; they really put their hearts out preparing this thing. There was chorus singing, band playing, acrobatic break dancing, group dancing, painting, calligraphy, theatre and origami. I had a small participation myself in a little comedy skit. Actually most of the credit should go to the English teacher Taguchi-sensei, it was his idea and he provided me with the Japanese script. In short, I imitated a famous Japanese comedian who goes by the name: "Guitar samurai". So, I imitated him imitating the school's vice principle as well as another student. It is not my brand of humor, but it struck a chord (pun intended, but oh how lame it is) with the audience as they laughed it up pretty good (although again, they may simply have been laughing at the silly gaijin in kimono). After the festival, the teachers went out to an Enkai (party) at a Korean BBQ place followed by the Nijikai (second party) at the ever faithful karaoke.

one of the many paintings done for the festival, and among my favorite

one of the newspapers prepared by the students using calligraphy. It is alot more work than it appears from the picture, they have to draw some very small and complex characters and if they mess up, it's start from scratch

the lamentable name in all its glory

these have nothing to do with the culture festival, but they are hilarious; if you look at the boy on the first pic, you get an idea of japanese style toilets

theatre with a nice backdrop made by the students

another play with another cool decor, they made the fence, door and backdrop. I helped paint the fence

whacky teachers goofing off (and not goofy teachers wacking off, I know what you think Alex...)

chorus singing

acrobatics/break dancing

teachers in teachers' lounge (front center crouching is the principle, behind him is the gym teacher and behind him with 2 thumbs up is Taguchi-sensei

me and science teacher at the Enkai

karaoke, Taguchi-sensei is the one on the left. The teacher who's head is half covered by mine is the Japanese teacher, he was hilarious, insisting on singing in English with me every song. The other two are the principle and math teacher/baseball coach

don't piss me off....

...or you will have to listen to my guitar!! Sessha, guitar Samurai!

more pics: culture festival
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/my_photos

Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to a Japanese tea ceremony. Usually only women go to these things, but I was curious to see one for myself as this is a tradition that has lasted centuries. The tea itself is nothing special, just regular green tea; it is the ritual and philosophy behind it that are extremely interesting. Everything follows a close ritual, with very exact movements and rules of conduct. The hostess, who prepares the tea, does very deliberate and precise movements that must done in an exact order and in an exact way. There are many little rules that seem strange to a gaijin, but that are nevertheless very interesting (ex: when getting up to pick up your tea, you must use your right leg first, then when returning to your seat you must use your left leg first). The philosophy of the ceremony is the most interesting. It is derived from Buddhism.In essence, the tea ceremony is a way for the participants to "leave our world" and enter another "world" in which there is no class system, no discrimination, in short nothing negative. It is sort of a nirvana on earth. Only the host or hostess (more likely) has an elevated status and thus need not bow to the other. As the hostess prepares the tea, she "pours her heart" (another shitty pun) into the tea and hence offers a piece of her heart to her guests. The participants accept this most generous gesture by bowing low and drinking the tea most gratefully. The hostess also picks the topic of conversation, I imagine that in the past such conversations were more philosophical in nature whereas today they are more banter. Although, I must say that I really did feel like I was in ancient Japan, watching the hostess prepare the tea with ancient tools and methods. It was a very interesting experience, I am glad I did it. It is, after all, a tradition that dates back to the 14th century

next stop: how do you like THEM apples?

onsen and soccer

2005-10-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

So, I promised to talk more about onsens. So it is basically a hot springs, most of them natural hot springs. They are usually very nice and exotic. In an onsen, you pretty much pay a small cover charge, then go to the locker, change, and head to the main room with the various different hot springs and artificial hot tubs (with massage), sauna, cool pool and shower. Sounds amazing right? and they are, but there is one catch: you must be COMPLETELY NAKED. Yeah, pretty wacky. Some onsens are co-ed (ie: women and men share the same pools), but most are segregated, men in one pool room, and the women in another.
Now the onsen ettiquette is that you must take a thourough shower. Men will stay a good 40min showering before entering the hot springs. So at least it is hygienic. But I did feel a bit uneasy walking around naked with a bunch of old Japanese men in the nude. But hey, like the expression says: when in Rome....do like the Romans, unless by Romans, you mean pit various animals against each other in an oval stadium, then have men fight the winning animals, then have other aminals come in and eat the remaining men, and such and such. But if by do like the Romans, you mean conquer half of Europe by brutally killing other weaker tribes and imposing your own law, then that's fine.

Last night I went with a friend Hena, to play indoor soccer in Sapporo. I have been recruited in his team to play against other teams in friendly style match ups. Actually we did not play one single game, but rather a series of mini-games, around 10-12. I thought we were going to get killed every match since we were small town folk playing against city boys. We won some 7-9 matches, and some by blowouts. It was very fun, but I was exhausted the next day (today), and I had to wake up early to help prepare and participate in the culture festival, which started today. It was from 8am to noon. And it was really good. The English skits went really well, the winner will most likely be one entitled: "Daniel's chocolate" where the student who plays me, arrives late one morning and so to appease the anger of other teacher's, he/"I" offer them chocolate. However, the chocolate tastes bad and makes them all run and scream for the toilet. I swear I had nothing to do with the writing of this script, but I helped a good deal by directing the student who plays me to play me accurately. Consequently, he is now the most popular student in Japan.

After the festival I went to buy a cell phone (in a different, and bigger town, mine doesn't have such stores). After I picked my phone, chose my plan, filled out the required paper work, all they needed was my signature. Easy you say. Think again, in Japan we never use signatures, but instead, each person has an individualised stamp (INKA) that he must bring with him always. Ask me if I had it with me... So I vented my frustration by going to a gym that had machines older than Christ himself. I have never seen such antiquities. They had a tredmill, that was 100% mechanic, no electricity to power it, but only your own inertia. It was made with tank trails. Old, dude, Old!

Team Shishinotsu, fuck yeah!

(obviously I do not have pictures of the onsens, and you are perverted for thinking it)

Don't you want a concentrated burst of freshness that helps you stay sharp?

next stop: culture festival

Les Arts

2005-09-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

Un petit post en français pour faire changement. Je voulais parler un peu du talent artistique des élèves japonais. Ce samedi et dimanche sera le festival culturel de mon école. Donc les élèves, depuis un mois, sont en train de préparer une série de spectacles, films, photos, théâtre, chorale, origami, dessins, peintures et décors pour ces deux jours. Ils font vraiment de tout, de la calligraphie traditionnelle qu'ils utilisent pour faire un monstre journal jusqu'à des petits origami simple en papier. Pour les pièces de théâtres, non seulement les étudiants sont les comédiens, mais ils sont aussi les auteurs, metteurs en scènes et directeurs de productions. Ce sont eux qui font tout (ex: props, construction, portes, clôtures, décorations et costumes). Moi je ne comprends absolument rien de ce qu'ils disent durant leurs répétitions, mais ils sont très enthousiastes et j'adore le fait que c'est eux qui font TOUT.

De plus, chaque classe doit aussi faire une chorale, et c'est vraiment fantastique, la prof de musique ne les aide que très peu, en fait c'est une competition entre chaque classe. Alors il y a toujours un élève par classe qui est choisi (par les autres élèves) pour devenir chef d'orchestre et un autre pour jouer le piano.
Les dessins et peintures qu'ils font pour décorer et publiciser l'événement sont aussi très bons.

Moi j'ai un petit rôle dans tout ça, mais je le prends à coeur. En plus de faire une mini-pièce de théâtre, chaque classe doit aussi présenter deux équipes pour faire un court "skit" en anglais. Moi je les aide à la faire. Mais c'est très difficile pour eux alors ils sont vite décourragés. J'ai décidé de prendre un rôle plus grand de ce qu'on m'avait demandé, et je suis maintenant metteur en scène aussi des petits skits (j'ai même écrit certains des skits pour leur faciliter la tâche, ce que je ne devais pas). Chaque classe a été divisé en équipes de 6. Ensuite chaque classe devait choisir la meilleur équipe pour leur représenter dans le concours contre les autrs classes. Il y a maintenant 6 équipes finalistes qui présenteront un skit samedi. C'est moi et 2 autres profs qui seront les juges, mais je suis déjà vendu à une des équipes (je n'ai jamais dit que j'était au-délà de la corruption).

Bon tout ça pour dire que malgré le déplorable anglais de ces jeunes japonais, il n'y a pas de toute que le système d'éducation au Japon encourage fortement le dévéloppement artistique, et cela il faut leur applaudire car les résultats sont marquants. En fait, depuis 2 semaines on n'a pas de cours en tant que tel après le diner pour laisser les après-midis aux élèves pour préparer leur festival.

geddy up

Very busy Week!

2005-09-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

So in fact it was not a busy week at all, at least in terms of work, as it was only a 3 day work week. I had Monday and Friday off as both were national holidays. I could really get used to that, 3 days work, 3 days off, seems good to me!

On Monday (day off) I went to visit an adult class student’s strawberry farm. His family has some 3 green houses in which they grow strawberries all year round. They were pretty tasty. After the grand tour, we drove into a nearby city for some shopping (I bought many shirts and things I needed), after all, I just got my first paycheck which made it all the more sweet.

strawberry fields forever

green house

Jin

words escape me

So Thursday night after school, Gandalf came over again to play cards. It has actually inspired me to start an English speaking games club at my school. I think it would be fun.

me and Gandalf

After cards, it was kendo class; it felt good to pick up a shinai again (bamboo sword). My skills have really suffered from all this time off, but I think they will quickly come back. Beating people in armor with a wooden sword is as gratifying as say, sleeping, and I enjoy my sleep.

So on Friday morning off I go on my second road trip. I left at 10h15 to pick up a friend Max the next town over. The weather was shit, rain like you would not believe. We then headed out to Sapporo to meet up with 2 more JETs, Kimberly from Louisiana and Spencer a really funny Brit and huge football (real football, not American football) and Chelsea fan. After a nice curry lunch, we head south, to Hakodate, one of the more famous cities in Hokkaido, both for its history (it is where Mathew C Perry, the first American to break Japanese isolationism landed; and also one of the last cities the Samurai held before the Meiji Restoration in 1868) and for its glorious night view (which I of course went to see, but the pictures do not do it justice).

VEGAS BABY VEGAS!!!

landscape of Hokkaido

more visuals

Hakodate is a great town, and the weather for the 3 days was awesome, hot and sunny. On Saturday we did some walking around and touristy stuff, like visit temples, eat squid ink ice cream, you know the usual…(yes, you read correctly, squid ink ice cream).
After it was park time, with some soccer, BBQ and lots of beer; finally we go to a bar for the second party. Sunday, drove back to Sapporo, to enjoy some city life and shopping and then back to my little town. In total, for the whole weekend, I drove some 10hours, but they were well worth it, the views during the drive were outstanding. Bravo garcon bravo, take a bow; kudos and kudos again.

Name of a pub we went to on Friday night, you judge the slogan for yourself

inside the canon balls (where the fun began) a proud canadian flag on display

Ben the hotel dog, would go absolutely mad when he saw a soccer ball and chase it around like crazy

Token temple

I was a guest at a "rocking" wedding (that must THE WORST joke ever)

picture taken immediately after we ate squid ink ice cream, need I say more?

Practicing some Japanese with token Ronaldinho jearsey wearing local

next stop: I honestly don't know yet?

Homage to Louis

2005-09-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it's time for another homage. Since I did my first Homage to the person who helped me the most to adapt to Japan, it is only logical now that I pay homage to the person who most influenced me into coming to Japan.
Louis Seveno was the one who told me about the JET programme; he had previously come to Japan as a tourist and told me about all the great things about Japan that I have come to learn now that I am here.

Louis in Japan

I met Louis for the first time in my first year of Law school. We both participated in a model UN simulation organized by Jon Halwagi and Sebastian Silva. He was representing Canada and I Brazil. Funny how that works out today... Even though we were both physically in the same room, we did not actually talk to one another, I would only really befriend him a year later, when he started Law School himself. We collaborated together in many international related activities, such as model UN (we even created our own). So I guess at first, our relationship was more academic than social. But it would not take long before we became good friends and in the last 2 years or so, we have become very great friends.

Louis has 2 law degrees and is a lawyer in both Quebec and Ontario as well as New York. He is considering coming to work in Japan as a lawyer, and I have no doubt he will do quite well for himself. But beyond his academic achievements, he is more than anything a great person to hang out with, fun to the core and knows how to enjoy the good life as per the teachings of Peter Griffin. So that's it Louis, I hope you are reading this, and I expect you to come visit soon.

Do you think that is soup you are drinking? Do you think it is air you are breathing. Remeber, there is no spoon! (so true in Japan...)

teaching, dan's way and first road trip

2005-09-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

October 1 and 2 will be the JHS culture festival. The theme this year is "make an effort" which is a translation of a popular japanese term: gambatte. Although we do not use "make an effort" quite like they do here. Perhaps a better phrase would be "give it your best" or "do your best". You get the gist of it. Anyway, as part of the celebrations, the JHS kids have to do English skits that use the theme in some way or another. All this to say that I teaching the English conversation class, where the kids have been split into teams to prepare their respective skits.
One student, was just outright sleeping, he pretty much put his jacket over his head, sat on the floor counting Zs. Now anyone who has studied with me knows that me and sleeping in class are a common thing. This is why I have turned out this way, instead of becoming President of the World at 23 as that blind fortune teller told me (there goes 5$ I will never get back). But what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander. I was not about to let this kid get away with such blatant sleeping.
So I kept teasing him, by untieing his shoes, or tapping his head. When he finally took the jacket off his head, I asked him aside. I told him that his obvious display of lack of interest was disturbing (actually, he was disturbing no one). I mean, I slept in class, but I was more in cognito when I did it. So I challenged him to a game (sorta like tic tac toe, but more sophisticated). The deal was that if I won, he had to pretend to care about class, and if I lost he got outright lie down and sleep. I beat him in less than 10 seconds. He honored his end of the deal. After class, I took him aside again and told him that he should come up with more discret ways to sleep in class like buy glasses with fake eyes on them, or paint fake pupils on his eye lids, anything.
The point of this story is that even though I actually care whether or not these kids learn, I actually want to leave Japan knowing they have improved their English, I also don't want to be a boring teacher. I want to be on the kid's side.
So I am always teaching them slang, although they do not seem to care that much, I also teach them games and participate in their club activities.
For my "elite" class, basically the kids who scored highest in their English tests so get to spend 2 weeks in Australia for an intense English learning class, I have a very simple method of keeping them from speaking Japanese. I arm myself with a water gun, anyone speaks Japanese, boom, they get wet, and when they speak on purpose to provoke me, boom, I aim for the face. They actually love it. I may have to upgrade to a supersoaker 5000.

This weekend was pretty cool. On friday, after class, Gandalf and his badminton posse come over to my house. I taught them a card game (hook) and we played for a little while.
On Saturday morning, I went to play soccer at 9am. On the way there, I crossed paths with Harada-san. He told me the elementary kids were going to have races at 10am. So after playing a half of 45 min of soccer I went to check out the races. Many little munchkins were running their hearts out, it was really cute. The JHS principle (Kocho Sensei) was going to run the next race, he asked me if I wanted to run. I figured it would not be very long distance, since kids were doing it too. So I borrowed running shoes (I was wearing my soccer cleats), and just before the start gun (actually a whistle) they tell me its 5km!!! FIVE KM!!! fuck I'll never make that, I just played 45 min of soccer! Plus I could not loose, what about the gaijin pride. But I was commited now. I came in second. It turns out the kids only run 1km and the adults the whole 5km. It took me 30min to do it, and the Kocho Sensei, the only other adult: 23. And he is much older than me and a smoker! But actually he ran at a pretty good pace, I could not keep up after 2km. The good thing is that I got to run around the glof course which is beautiful and I also saw many farm lands I had not yet seen. The best however, was to see a beautiful, and huge, hawk fly down gracefully onto the golf course, maybe some 20m from me. I actually stopped running (also I was very tired) to observe the great bird until it departed again to the open skies.

After this great morning of exercise (I would later gain back the calories with many beers and wine), I was off to Yubari for a JET camping/party. My first road trip, and the sights were very nice, although the weather was not. The party was cool enough, got to hang out with some very cool people. Max, an american was my navagator for the trip and he proved to be qute usefull, his Japanese is very good, he is also the nearest JET to me. On the Sunday, we went to an ONSEN, Japanese for hot springs. Very nice. I will devote a specific post to ONSENS, this one has become long, and believe me, they deserve their own post....stay tuned

next stop: onsen? my ass!

very special day

2005-09-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Today (Sept 16) is a very special day.
First off, it has now been one full month since I have arrived in Japan. So far everything has been great. I have learned a good deal of Japanese, but I am nowhere near where I want to get at. I think it will take me a good 6 months to have a practiciable japanese.
But the real reason today is special is beacause it is the celebration of the day Deborah gave birth to a very perfect person: Juliana.
The sadest part of today is that I will not be able to celebrate her birthday with her. But that does not mean that I will not drink a toast to you today (as it is already the 16th for me) and tomorrow (when it will be the 16th for you).
Entao gatinha, tenha um otimo aniversario, te amo muito e estou sempre pensado em voce, vc eh a pessoa mais importante pra mim. Mil beijos

Juliana

ENKAI

2005-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Enkai is the word for party, often office parties. Monday night was my first Enkai, and it was my Welcome Ceremony enkai, no less. It was awsome, I really loved it, they are very nice, they really made a heartwarming welcome and made me feel at home. There was the staff from my Board of Education, the JHS staff and Elementary school staff, so around 50 people in all. The food was amazing, possibly the best meal I have yet had in all of Japan, all kinds of delicious stuff, including my favorite sashimis. The Superintendant, and both schools principles gave speeches, as did I. This was my most elaborate japonese yet. I even through in a few jokes, one was a play on words that only a gaijin can make, because no native japanese speaker would ever make such a mistake (i deliberatly said the town was ugly instead of nice, both words are similar; then I corrected myself and said it was a joke). People seemed to laugh at the joke (or at the silly gaijin and his poor japanese). The second joke was about driving in Japan, and how it was different for me. My english teacher suggested I add that I killed 2 foxes for extra effect. Personnally, I would not have thought that to work, but people again laughed. The final joke was a political one, that I will not bother to explain here.

After the dinner, most people left, but the top brass stayed and we started the traditional SECOND PARTY, that is when the serious drinking began. Whisky aplenty and beers to spare, with of course great food. I wish the party had been on a Friday so that I could have gone all out, but we drank enough. Harada-san and Honda were both on fire, especially Harada-san. He was up and about, making jokes left and right, quite an ace.

I asked the Elementary school teachers if they ever were victims of a Kancho, I will explain this in a later post, it deserves special attention. Well I am boring myself, so I will sign off with some pics, enjoy:

Superintendant (big boss) and me

invitation to Enkai

1st grade elementary teacher (soccer fan)

Honda up to his old antics

uh... I beleive I ordered the SMALL!!

more pics:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=/29c3

Bubba, your friendly neighbourghood frog

Me and Bubba

more pics:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=5573&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/my_photos

next stop: teaching, Dan style...

PS: I want to get serious for a moment here. Some may have noticed that I have pulled the pictures of the cute kids out of my blog. I have done this out of respect for their privacy, even though they are really cute and deserve to be published, it is in fact wrong and illegal. I write this mostly for the other bloggers out there, if you intend to post pics of your kids, be aware that you are required to get both your school and the kids parent's permission. I think this is very reasonable; if I were a parent I would also like to know if my kid's pictures are being used on the internet, which is, after all, public and accessible to all around the world, even lunatics.

Small school, another carnival, little hold’em and long post

2005-09-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hello again from Shinshinotsu. Shogakko is the Japanese word for elementary school. It literally means small (sho) school (gakko). So last Friday, I had my first teaching assignment at the Shogakko. It was amazing. I taught a class of 4th graders then of 3rd graders. They are great, really enthusiastic (much more than the junior high kids) less shy, really cute and outright fun. At the school there are some actual pics of me teaching; I will get a hold of them soon and add them to the arsenal of photos I will bombard you with today… The kids are great, they jump all over you, ask you a bunch of interesting and strange questions (I was asked what my favorite brand of sports attire is. I answered Adidas for lack of a better idea; I wanted to say something well known, just as here my favorite actor is Tom Cruise because he was the Last Samurai, no joke, but I did not want to say Nike, so I want with Adidas; after all, I had just bought a pair of Adidas soccer boots (the British word for cleats), and I love them). The teachers are also great, lots of fun. The first grade teacher is a huge soccer fan, and was wearing a Brazil soccer jersey. He invited me to play with him. I was amazed (and humiliated) to see he had way more talent than me. I used the ol’ “these shoes suck for soccer”, which they did, but still he is better than me. But that is neither here nor there.

B-Ball action

Pics: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=81af&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

After school, I went ALL OUT at the supermarket and 7-11. I was to host my first party, a poker night of Texas Hold’em. I was not sure if in Japan, like in Brazil, the host is expected to provide all if not most of the food and booze. So I figured it would be so. It turned out that most of the guests brought ample beer and snacks; so now my fridge and pantry, for the first time since I have arrived here, are full to capacity. Anyway, so after the splurge at the market, I go pick up my Gaijin card (now I am officially and Alien in Japan) then I returned home to make myself some dinner. As I am preparing what would later turn out to be a pretty good vegetable and seafood risotto, one of my JHS student’s rings my door. Naturally I invite him in. This kid is my number one fan, and still I can’t remember his name. In fact, it is probably easier for me to remember the chemical equation for sulfuric acid than it is to remember Japanese names. All I know is that his nick name is of a cartoon character that sounds close enough to Gandalf, so that is what I call him.

So we actually had dinner together, me and a 14 year old Gandalf. He really liked the risotto (although next time I will make it less saucy;). Once he left, it was on to the pre-warm up beer before the warm up beer before the hold’em. We were 6 in total: the ever faithful Honda, Jin my best adult English student, Taguchi-sensei the JHS English teacher and my principle colleague, and two of Honda’s friends, which of course I remember to naught the names. None of these players, save me, knew how to play hold’em style poker. They all had an idea of Poker, but that was all. Easy money, I thought, boy was I wrong. After a brief explanation of the rules, off we start. I laid down my first 2 hands, while the other players bet ridiculous amounts on trivial hands. I decided to step it up. On the third hand, I was the small blind, and a flush draw came to my favor, but I needed one more spade to complete the flush. I tried to bully my way to the pot, but Taguchi followed every raise and re-raise I made. I was counting on the fact that these guys would bet half their money on a simple pair. It turned out he did in fact only have a pair, a pair of Aces in his hand; they went pretty nice with the other pair of Aces on the table. Yeah, his four of a kind destroyed my flush. It was a crippling blow that would prevent me from winning, or even scoring 3rd. Honda pretty much dominated the night. I’ve never seen such fiendish betting. And forget about checking, there is no such thing in Asian poker, they ALWAYS bet, and high too, and re-raise is as common as, say…breathing. All-in-all, a great night, and the first time I got drunk in my house, and little town.

home style chips, made from cardboard paper

ALL IN! (except Honda who was taking the picture)

Pics: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=bf65&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

Yesterday was a busy day: soccer in the morning, baseball in early afternoon, then was the Jinja Matsuri: a more religious carnival in which once a year they parade a shrine all over town, until they reach the temple and deliver the shrine to GOD. Then GOD leaves the shrine (its home) and goes into the people’s hearts to bring peace and joy, or something along those lines. There was definitely lots of peace and joy, and also lots of beer and Sake. It was good fun, although carrying that shrine was no easy task. I got to see some Kendo, and sign up for next week. There were also dances, music, drums, Bingo, prizes, food, beer, Karaoke (I was “volunteered” to sing, so I went with an easy Beatles crowd favorite, Yesterday) and even an appearance by Darth Vader.

Holding the Shrine, and GOD!

Kendo Death match

Anakin, the later years....

Pics: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/album?.dir=e39a&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/d_souhami/my_photos

Enjoy all the 128 pics I have taken this week, they are great. Also, see my post below for some good ol’clean home movies of…my house, with guest narration by Quentin Tarantino.

Next stop: My first Enkai

Movie mania

2005-09-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

how YOU doing (a la Joey)? So this will be short, I finished uploading the movies I made showing my house for all to see.
You can find them at Google video:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=daniel+souhami&pl=1
If this link does not work, just go to google video sight, do a search for: daniel souhami, and there should be 5 mini-movies that pop up. You will have to download Google viewer, it is light and should take no more than 1 minute to download. The movies are not in order, so to proper order of viewing is:
1-house in Japan
2-living room
3-office and kitchen (this one sometimes stops in the middle, so make sure to see the whole thing, you'll know how, trust me)
4-Bathroom in Japan
5-Shower in Japan

I should point out that I sound like a silly Quentin Tarantino, don't know why, check it out and judge for yourself. I will soon upload videos of the Matsuris...stay tuned!

Old maid

2005-09-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

So last night we had a typhoon warning in effect. As a result, school was cancelled today (thursday). After work (adult teaching) last night, I played some b-ball with the locals, then went back to the office for some beers with my supervisor and some local youth. The winds were pretty strong and the rain intense. Went home and slept like a baby, with the wonderful sound of the wind brushing againts the trees and the rain trickling down the window sill. That or the beer and food. Anyway, I still had to come into work this morning despite the warning. Actually the rain had subsided, but there still were some strong winds, but nothing outrageous. Actually, as I write this post, it is quite nice and sunny, and even the wind has become tame. I don't know if we are in the eye and should expect more harsh weather or if that was it. Either way, there was no damage or uprooted trees, nothing like in the South, in Kyushu. So since I don't have any classes to teach, will have alot of time to study Japanese.

The title of my post alludes to the fact that my lifestyle has changed drastically, I cook every day, and even more absurd, I actually keep my house clean. Yeah, even I am blown away (no Leo, not that kind of blown). I mean, anyone who has seen my room in Montreal knows that me and tidy don't quite mix. But here in the East, all is different, I even wake before my alarm clock, something unheard of in the West where I adopt the PM mantra. I guess I have more free time here so I put energy into cleaning as opposed to studying Japanese, which is really tough. The grammer is simple enough, but vocabulary and pronounciation are something else. As for writting, I have learnt 8 Kanji so far, and I have one of my students teaching me more kanji, every week she will teach me 5 new kanji. I will also take calligraphy classes with first and second graders, yeah I am that bad.

I enjoy cooking, but I need to diversify my menu. Yesterday, for the first time I made soup, a sort of Minestrone type soup, with some added soy sauce for zest (needless to say, wild mushrooms aplenty). Soy sauce has pretty much become my base for anything I make, I love it. Damn you Kikkoman!

Well, that's it, tonight more b-ball and tomorrow, I will teach some locals Texas Hold'em. I'll keep you posted...

next stop: another carnival?

typhoon time...

2005-09-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, she is here. Some may know her as Katrina, she has devastated Louisiana, and has already hit Okinawa and the Kyushu yesdertaday and Honshu today; tomorrow she will hit Hokkaido. Today it is already raining pretty hard. So let us see how it goes, should be an adventure.

Also today is September 7 (for me) and Brazil's national day or independance day, which ever you prefer. Entao para os brasileiros lendo, bom 7 de setembro, espero que esse aniversario do Brasil traga um novo governo menos corrupto e bastante desenvolvimento economico e social. No mais, parabens pela seleção na vitoria contra o Chile, show de bola. A seleção ja esta bem encaminhada para o hexa....

Pour nos amis du Quebec, moi j'ai juste une question: ou est notre argent Patapouffe? ou est-ce que c'est Pitapouffe, ou Poutapiffe ou Pouffepata? En passant, un de mes collègues ici, Francis, va être sur vos ondes de radio pour parler de la vie au Japon. Je crois que c'est le programme Indicatif Présent sur les ondes de Radio-Canada.

So that's it from Hokkaido here are some pictures taken at Sapporo beer museum, they are publicity posters of old, some date back to the Meiji period, pretty cool:

Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum

Meiji era posters

Late 19th century

Early 20th, and move to western style clothing

the 1920's and most controversial poster ever, can you guess it?

next stop: old maid...

funny tales in a strange land....

2005-09-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

Hello again,

some funny and odd things to write about. First I will begin with my observations, then I will tell tow funny, but telling, tales of things that happened to colleagues here in Japan.

So first, let us discuss footwear. As most of you probably know, in Japan it is custom to remove one's shoes before going in a house, restaurent, place of work, or even a gym. In Canada, we are used to this because of the snow. But here is Japan it is religious. Even during the summer. And everybody has their "inside shoes" at their place of work. Now I work in three seperate places: JHS, elementary school and Board of Education. And I go to these 3 places every week, and many times to 2 or 3 of them in one same day. Now they are all within 5 min walk of each other, but I always have to remove my "outside shoes" before going in. This has lead me to make strategic decisions concerning my footwear, which shoes will I leave where, what will be my "outside shoes".

Now in Japan, they have a curious taste for shoes. You see, most men wear regular shoes outside, then take them off in favor of sneakers or sandals for inside wear. So it is pretty funny seeing all these guys in suits, but with running shoes or sandals. I do the opposite, I wear sneakers outside, and regular shoes inside. The first day everyone kept asking me if they were my inside shoes. It was funny to me.
But in the end, heck, why not wear sneakers, it is much more comfotable, and after a little while, it doesn't look so strange with a suit.

Eating in school. Now here is something that I really can't understand. The schools provide lunch for the teachers, which is great, and the food is pretty good. In the Elementary, we eat in a cafeteria with all the students, so no comments there. But in the JHS, the students eat in their respective classrooms and the teachers eat in the teacher's room. No problems there either. The kitchen brings the food in large containers to the school. Delegated students take their share to their classrooms and the office clerck picks up the teachers portions. She then brings it to our room, and serves the food onto plates and places them on individual treys. Each teacher then goes and picks up his/her trey and eats quietly on his/her desk (very little talking during the meal). No problems here either. Where it gets strange is after the meal. Teachers (and I imagine the students do the same thing) take the food they did not eat and put it back into the the very container it came from, with the remaining "clean food". My question is: WHAT do they do with this left-over food that has now been mixed with non-eaten food? especially the rice, because we eat rice at least 2-3 times a week?!?!?! Needless to say I NEVER go for seconds. Actually no one ever does, and even more curious, NO ONE EVER eats all his/her food. To date, aside from me, only the elementary school principle has eaten his whold meal. At times they will outright put a full bowl of rice back! Strange to me.

okay now two funny tales:

Francis, a qubecois friend in the North of Hokkaido was in a city and saw a farmer park a big truck on a road, pull out a sign reading: "sweet potatoes for sale". Francis then saw two sexy women help advertise the said potatoes. He then saw a man wish to purchase said potatoes and go into the back of the truck with one of the sexy ladies, most probably to show him the selection of potatoes. The man must have been really picky, because he stayed inside the truck for a long time. As Francis walked pass the truck, one of the sexy saleswomen called out: "hey Gaijin, come in me, good fun", poor sexy potatoe saleswomen, her grammer is all off, she probably meant to say "come with me, good potatoes". I guess here in the East, farmers are the pimps.... (none of this is made up)

Japanese are famous for being polite. That is very true, never have I crossed path with so many polite and kind people. They really go out of their way to help you out, i've been given gifts at random occasions, offered many beers, invited to meals, shown directions (they actually took a detour to walk with me to my destination so I would not get lost, and this in a big city, Sapporo). But the ultimate act is one I did not witness, but was told about by another friend Josh.
While he was in school, in his teacher's room, one teacher, started to hyperventilate, probably because of stress, overwork (they work like crazy here), insufficient sleep and possibly malnutrition. So this teacher is gasping for air and collapses to the floor, and with his last breath, before passing out completely, he mutters but one word: "sumimasen", which in Japanese means "excuse me or sorry".

So this guy, struggling to breathe, says I'm sorry. He probably felt bad for disturbing the other teachers, and I joke not!

So these are some funny tales in this strange but wonderful land. I am really lucky to be here and witness first hand all these different cultural behaviors.

ダニエル　スハミ　;　だにえる　すはみ　(my name in katakana then hiragana, if you only see squares, then get yourself an asian computer;)

...its a new car

2005-09-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

(theme of the price is right plays...)
So I finally took possesion of my new car this week, let me tell you, what a ride, and I am not even refering to the car.
The car is a Honda Civic, silver, prett nice. It is the first car I actually own, although not the first I drive...
Some of you may not know this, I didn't until about two weeks before coming to Japan, but here in Japan, they drive on the wrong side of the road, the British way.
And believe me, it takes some getting used to. It is not only the fact that you need to drive on the left side, it is also the fact that everything is opposite indide the car itself. Just as an exemple, the first time I was going to drive, I opened the passenger side because I am so accustumed to it. But even worse than having to shift gears with my left (every time I go to shift, I drop my right hand and reach for the window, only to realize that the gear box is on the other side, it realy makes me look like an idiot), is that every time I make a turn, my window wipers come on.... see, here the turn signal and window wiper levers are on opposite sides. This is very strange to turn on signals with my right hand (mostly because I keep trying to reach for the gear stick with my right). Anyway, driving here requires much concentration, lest I start to drift to the right side. I suspect that in a few weeks I will have gotten the hang of it and will undoubtly find it difficult to drive once I return to Canada.

I am super happy with the car and I will no doubt drive it everywhere in hokkaido and beyond.

Sapporo part deux:

This weekend I went to Sapporo to do some shopping and sight seeing. J'ai vu le musée de bière Sapporo, très cool, on y vendait des drafts pour 2$ le verre, pas cher du tout. Après je vais mettre des photos des anciens posters de publicités, génial. There was more Karaoke and Nomihodai action, and I Japanese local named Mick gave me a lift and his car is equiped with a mini-tv and DVD player on the front dashboard, really cool, and possibly very dangerous (imagine driving while watching tv). It was one pimped up ride.

"Li'l Bandit" as I have now baptaized it

next stop: funny tales in a strange land...

Elementary speech

2005-09-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back at it, back to elementary school that is....
My first day in Shinshinotsu's elementary school was actually quite good. I had to give my already rehearsed self-introduction speech in Japanese, so I was much less nervous this time around. However, I still have one more big speech comming up, at my official welcome ceremoney next week, in which half the town will attend....and the other half will hear about it. So I will have to modify my speech to not be redundant, maybe I'll just talk about baseball for 5 min, they are mad crazy for Baseball here in Hokkaido.

So my first day was nice, I did not give a class, just met all the staff and teachers and kids. Got to play with some of them for a bit. They are really cute. My favorite part is when 3 young girls, about 6-7 years old (of which one is my neighbourg) interviewed me for the school paper. It was really sweet, one was even quite good at understanding my english, the others relied on some gesturing and translation. I will work in the elementary school on Fridays, and I am pretty sure it will be the best day of the week. I am actually going to take calligraphy classes with the kids on Fridays, I think it will be really fun.

Today (sat) I played some badminton with the Junior high kids, it was actually quite by accident. I went to the JHS to pick up my sneakers I had forgotten (there will be a future post on footware in Japan), and saw that the kids had their badminton practices on Sat mornings, so I joined, might as well try to shed the extra pounds from all the beer in Sapporo (damn NOMIHODAI). It was fun, they were impressed that I knew how to play (although in a serious game, each and everyone of them could wipe the floor with me).

So here are some pics for fun, enojy:

JHS students during my speech on Tuesday

Elementary school principle introducing me, he is a really cool guy

token speech

"you are my master now, I will serve the Dark side"

next stop: And your prise, if the price is right is:.....

Homage to Mark

2005-09-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Penner is (or was) my predecessor. I’ve decided to start a little homage section in my blog, and I think it fitting that he be the first, not because he is a close friend, but rather because he has helped me the most in adapting to Japan.

I have never met Mark (at least not in person, we spoke only on the phone), but I know he is from Winnipeg, and it would seem as though he was pretty popular and well liked here in Japan, by locals and JETs alike. I guess I have some big shoes to fill. I have only been to Winnipeg once, and met only a handful of Manitobans, but they have ALL been, including Mark, the friendliest people I’ve ever met, and that is saying a lot because Japanese people are very friendly. I guess the license plate “Friendly Manitoba” is pretty accurate.

Mark took the time to answer my big ass long email bombarding him with questions; his reply was equally long, pertinent and most welcome. Moreover, he left me a ton of material I need like teaching books, web sites, maps of Japan, winter boots, sneakers, ghetto blasters galore, dictionaries, and a series of notes and post-its all around the house explaining how things work. This may seem trivial, but when everything is written in Kanji (Chinese symbols used by Japanese) and you can’t even figure out what the on button is (believe me, you can’t, just see my previous post), a post-it with English instructions is paramount. Finally, he sold me his car for a very good price and even left his mini discs so that I may be spared of Japanese radio.

Well I won’t go into further details of how he helped me, but all this to say that even though he was busy getting his owns things ready to return to Canada (and no doubt party like crazy) he took the time to make my arrival as smooth as possible, and it has been. So thanks Mark. By the way, if you are reading this, you left a nice suit here, I’m not sure that it was deliberate or not, but either way, I’ll find a way to get it back to you.

Next stop: Another Japanese speech in elementary Japan…..

PS: I have decided to incorporate these periodical “homage posts” to shake things up a bit. I figure that if I only write about Japan, things might get a bit redundant. So every now and then, I will “homage” a friend or family member so that all can get to know the people around me, since not all who read this blog know each other (I’m assuming at least someone reads this blog)
I do, however, have to point out that this is not a Dan original idea. I’m ripping it off my friend’s Leonardo Padovani blog (http://nalvor.blogspot.com) called “Leo’s People”; and he in turn ripped the idea off the Simpsons when Bart becomes a reporter and starts “Bart’s People”. So there you have it, keep an eye out, you just might be the next “Dan’s people”…..

The fly part III...

2005-09-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

you must be aganizing in despair, waiting for me to write about the darned fly, the smoke detector and the stupid gaijin. Well here is tale in which the hero does not fair well...
On Sunday night, after a great Matsuri, a damn fly snuck into my home. Not too serious huh? Well, the little bugger, annoyed the hell out of me all night, buzzing by my ear every chance he got, foresaking a good night's sleep, and this before my first day of school (and speech).

Well, so I wake up, go through my morning routine, and when I am in the kitchen finishing my breakfast, the little bastard showed himself again, annoying me beyond belief. That's it buck-o, you die now! I said to myself (yes, I really used the term buck-o). So I grab a bug spray can, I take aim, and I fire like there is no tomorrow (right there is the first dumb thing I do, spraying poison in the kitchen, the very place I prepare my food.... The fucker kept avoiding the spray so I followed and sprayed and sprayed, now it was a question of pride. But then I had to stop, a bigger problem had emerged.

The ringing was deafening, and even more anoying than the buzzing that had annoyed me so much and was the very cause of my initial anoyance. As it turns out, the smoke emmanating from the spray activated the somke detector, and it was loud, and even more so taking into account that it as not even 8am. Now before I continue the story, I have to say something about the smoke detector: IT IS ON THE GROUND (i guess smoke in Japan disregards the laws of physics), and it is PLUGGED IN (yeah so in case of a blackout, due, let's say to a fire, well the smoke detector won't go off). This is the first thing in Japan that I find to be technologically inferior to the West.

So back to the stupid gaijin, I look desperately for a on/off button, none to be found, then I try to open it to remove the batteries, opps, it is at this point that I realize that it is plugged in. So I scramble for the cord, look for it in the socket and remove it, to the joy of the whole neighbourghood. I plugged it right back in, but no more alarm.

The good news is that the fly would eventually meet its demise. I saw it on the ground, still figiting. As if I had learned nothing from the previous occurance, I take the spray, and punish the beast, removing it from its misery and mine. As the smoke detector started up again, I was quicker to the trigger and yanked that cord RIGHT OFF (must be read in a Seinfeldian speech).

So my JTE (shcool english teacher, who oversees my work) is showing me the shool. At one point he turns and shows me through a window: "look we can see your house from here" (litteraly my house is accros the street from the school, it would actually take longer to drive there than to walk). Then he asked me if I heard the big annoying alarm this morning.....I of course, told him my othello with the fly, forever my nemisis.

Ahh...silly gaijin, when will you learn

Back to school

2005-08-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

Hey gang,

Well it was inevitable, this day would come sooner or later, my first day of school. Not too bad, I only had to make a 2 minute speech in front of the whole school....IN JAPANESE!!! Actually it was not that bad, my colleagues helped me write the speech and with the pronunciation. I think I only butchered one or two words. After that, it was off to teach my first class. It was a class of 7th graders, so around 12 years old. It was a self-intro class, so I spoke (very slowly) about myself, and Canada and Montréal. Not too bad, they have very limited English. As an exercise I asked them to tell me (in English) some Japanese movies I should watch, comics I should read, music I should listen too, and so forth. They would love it when I tried to say the names of things in Japanese, and even more so when I tried to write them. My second class was a tough crowd, bunch of 8th graders that gave me no more than 10mins of attention...
Actually, their English is not bad, but they are very agitated (boys will be boys, even in Japan). I think once I indoctrinate them on the separatist spirit (vive Hokkaido libre) their French...opps I mean English will come around......

ja ne!

next stop: the fly, the smoke detector and the stupid gaijin...

Olha pra mim bola de fuder...

2005-08-31T09:45:00.000-07:00

Valeu Leo, por ter cido o primeiro a comentar 3 vezes seguidas. You have also earned yourself a Japanese prize (and it will not be Gustav Gustav)