Burgled

It appears that someone broke into my motorbike over the weekend. I was down in Kyoto over the weekend so I parked my bike Saturday afternoon at a local train station.

When I came back to the station Sunday night I noticed that my gas meter didn't rise and said empty. I knew I had plenty of gas, so I just thought that it didn't move because it was so cold at the time.

Monday morning it didn't move as well so I thought I would take it to the bike shop to get looked at, but as I was driving close to my house, suddenly the bike died, and I realized it really was out of gas. Luckily, I was close to a gas station, so I walked it over to fill up. That's when I noticed that someone had broken the lock. The gas cap was also gone and the tank was completely empty.

It's only a 5 litre tank and it couldn't have been more than half full at the time, so I can only wonder who steals 300 yen of gasoline?! Maybe they tried to steal the bike itself, but couldn't because of the lock I always have on it. If that's the case, I guess I got off light, but still now I have to go through a bunch of hassle with the police, my insurance company, and I have to bother my supervisor at the board of education to help me with it all. All for 300 yen of gas and a gas cap.

I'm thinking of trying to set up a sting Friday night, but I'm wondering what are the chances that they'll strike twice, and even if they're tempted, seeing the same bike in the same place, might seem a little fishy and scare them off. I still might give it a shot though, cause I'd really like to get this guy, and I'm sure the cracker-jack police force will spend little, if any time looking into such a small matter.

Go Lakes!

Last weekend I was down in Yasu to see Shiga's brand new professional basketball team, the Shiga Lakestars, in action. While it was no NBA, it certainly was a great game. We were up against the league leading Ryukyu Kings from Okinawa who were 9-0 at that point.



The first quarter was very sloppy on Shiga's part. Rebounding was terrible, they couldn't get the ball inside, and were moving it poorly around the perimeter. Down 14-33 at the end of the first quarter things were not looking good.



I'm not sure what happened after that, but the team game alive after the poor 1st quarter. Nailing threes, getting the important rebounds, both defensive and offensive, and controlling the tempo of the game much better. They went 20-3 in the second quarter to finish the half down by 2 at 34-36.



The second half of the game, they played just like the second quarter. The action was tight, and while the Kings were still ahead, one of the players decided to showboat on a break and ended up slamming a dunk into nothing but back iron. It reminded me of the jam that Jordan missed in the All-Star game. Everyone was loving it when the ball flew back to center court.



Shiga took over the lead and held on to a comfortable 6 point lead to finish the game 81-75, handing the Kings their first defeat and improving to 4 and 6 themselves.



The 52 game season runs until April, so you can bet I'll be going back to check them out. Quality ball at a quality price (2000 yen for 2nd floor, 3000 for 1st floor, 6000 for court side) and it's right in my backyard.

Halloween

With the help of my mom I was able to order and ship a Dark Knight Joker costume to Japan for this year's Halloween festivities. A buddy of mine who teaches with me in town was kind enough to go along with my theme and dressed as Batman. Aaron and Ken from Kyoto, as well as Sho an Komo from Tokyo made the trip out to Shiga for the party as well, and a good time was had by all.

The costume was fantastic and went over well both times I wore it. People kept saying how creepy I looked, and some people even had a hard time looking at me. I thought I was a shoe-in for the scariest costume prize at the JET Halloween party, but Sarah Palin beat me by a vote (good thing it didn't happen that way yesterday too). I can't complain though cause it was an excellent night and weekend. One of the best Halloweens ever even if I do say so myself.

すげぇ

The yen has appreciated so much to the Canadian Dollar in the past month that my yearly salary which was equivalent to 35,000 CAD last month is 46,000 at today's exchange rate.

じっくり考えないと。。。

Yesterday, I used my day off from work to visit Mori-sensei, an old professor of mine from Kyoto University. I had written him an e-mail last week asking if he would discuss some things about graduate school with me. He graciously invited me over to his house for dinner with his wife. We discussed many things over the course of the night, and Mori-sensei gave me a lot of good questions to think about over the next little while.

If I want to get into graduate school it seems like I have a good shot. However, before that, I really have to think about what it is specifically I want to study. I would like to do something economically related, but I am a little worried because I only did a minor in economics. I do know however that I would like to steer clean of analytic economics and take a more pragmatic approach, focusing on real world events and things like the why and how government policy.

Of course, I also really need to think about what I want to do with my life after that. Like, I told Mori-sensei yesterday, the most important thing for me is simply to find something I enjoy doing, and do that. Simply working is easy. Anyone can go out and get a job if they want to, but that doesn't mean a damn. Like my dad told me, "First you gotta find what you love. Then, you gotta find someone to pay you to do it." So, I've gotta think about whether grad school really is for me. I think it would be, but I have to be doing it for the right reasons.

So now, I think.

足痛い

Yesterday, a friend of mine invited me to the Taekwondo dojo he trains at in Kyoto for a trial lesson. The master of the school was (maybe still is?) the Japanese Olympic coach and seems like a really nice guy. He extended an open invitation for me to come back anytime I have some free time. One of the other instructors there took first prize at the All Japan Taekwondo Tournament for sparring. Lucky me, I had the chance to go toe to toe with the guy my first time back in real action in a year. Obviously, I got whooped, but I did manage to get him with a couple of the moves I picked up in Toronto with the Martial Art One team. He teaches at a place in Shiga on the weekends and also extended an invitation for me to come by anytime I had the chance. The other students as well were a really good bunch. Mostly university students, and the others were all adults, so it was all business and everyone was working hard. I tore up my feet pretty bad though since they've gone soft after a year of light training. I ripped up both of my big toes so bad they were bleeding. My legs are useless today as well. I've been hobbling around like an old man all day, but it was a fantastic night, and I'm looking forward to training more often with other people for a change.

この一ヶ月

Well, it's been about a month since I've wrote anything and that either means one of two things.

1) I've been too lazy and just don't care anymore
2) I've been busy doing all the things I need to get done leaving me with little/no time to write.

The truth is kinda in between the two, but for the most part I have been quite busy recently. The second semester kicked off Sept 1st, and we had our sports day event two weeks following that. This year I was actually given a job to do just like any normal teacher. I was in charge of video and photography during the event, and it was actually a very fun job, but there were times when I felt that some of the parents who were also trying to take videos were annoyed because I was up so close and maybe getting in their way. I told a couple other teachers about it at the party we had that night and they said not to worry about it cause it looked like I was doing a pretty good job.












After sports day was over practice began right away for the upcoming culture festival. This year I will be performing again, but not with an all girls band this time (unfortunately). This year I managed to get a couple other teachers and a couple of the older students to form a band for a one day only performance of Coldplay's Yellow. This year I'll make sure my camera is fully charged so I can get a video of the performance up.

There's been a lot of other stuff going on personally for me as well, some good, some not so good, but that's life, and I don't really feel like going into it much more than that on here. Hopefully, I'll write something else before another month passes.

噛まれた

Yesterday, I was out for a run and as I was crossing one intersection there was a lady with a huge golden retriever. It looked pretty chill as I approached, but as so as I had passed behind it, the beast turned around and bit my ass. I never wanted to kick a dog in the face more, but I just kept running as the lady wrestled with her dog who was looking for more. It didn't really hurt and I didn't think much of it until I got home and saw he had managed to break the skin and leave me with a reasonably sized mark. He didn't make any holes in my shorts or underwear though so I don't think I really have to worry about rabies or anything, but perhaps I should still get it looked at.

Summersonic 2008

Saturday, Andrew and I headed to Maishima in Osaka for Day 1 of Summersonic. For those unfamiliar with Summersonic, it's a big 2 day rock festival held annually in the summer in Tokyo and Osaka. The majority bands in Tokyo for Day 1 come to Osaka for Day 2 and vice versa. It's a good mix of Western and Japanese bands, and they tend to get a few fairly huge bands to come every year as well. The big draw for us this year was Coldplay headlining Day 1 in Osaka, but of course they were on dead last. So without further ado let's take a look at the line up we enjoyed throughout the day.



First up was Silversun Pickups. I really wanted to see them, and their show was at the indoor, air conditioned stage so that was just a bonus. They were pretty good, but the bass player was just standing around, not getting into it at all. She didn't even look like that good of a bass player either. Luckily, the singer/guitarist and drummer saved it with their enthusiasm.



Vampire Weekend was next on the main stage. The lead singer/guitarist looks exactly like my dad when he was young. The guy loves minor chords too. Too much, in fact maybe. A good listen, but I wouldn't pay to see them alone.



Moving to a side stage we saw the Japanese band, HY. I looked around and I was the only white guy in the crowd as far as I could see which was a little weird (there are a lot of foreigners at Summersonic). I had heard a bit about them from some of my students which was the reason I wanted to check them out. Overall, I'd say they're a very good live band. More specifically, a good summer festival band, but again, probably not a band I'd pay to see playing solo.

We took a break here and got some food and went back to the air-conditioned stage. Slept through a band called Biffy Clyro. From what I heard, they were nothing special.



Back to the main stage to see The Kooks. My buddy James, who taught here in my town and came the same day as me, is friends with the bass player, but aside from that I didn't really know much about them. They were very solid. Nice solid catchy (not pop-catchy, but riff-catchy) songs and lots of energy.



We stayed at the main stage the rest of the day. Next up was Radwimps. I knew nothing about these guys except they were Japanese, and I was blown away. Aside from Coldplay, hands down the performance of the day. The had the whole crowd going from the first song and kept it at the high the whole set. The bass player and guitarist had an amazing jam session in the middle of their set as well and it was just awesome. Very impressed, and I'm looking forward to seeing them sometime soon playing solo.



Alicia Keys was on next, and while I didn't think she really fit in with the rest of the bands on the schedule, she put on an impressive show and it was cool to see her, because I doubt I ever would otherwise. She is an impressively beautiful person as well, and has a fantastic voice.





Finally, Coldplay rounded out the day. It was a long wait, but well worth it. We were really close, probably about 100 feet away, and halfway through their set they moved to a side stage closer to us. At that time we were probably about 20 feet away and it was incredible. They played mostly songs off their new album, but mixed in some of their older number ones as well. Because it's in Japan too, they don't waste time talking to the crowd so it's just song after song after song.

It was pretty tight for time for me to make it back to Shiga cause their set went long, but I managed to see the whole thing and make it back home which just left me feeling good as I crawled into bed after a long, fantastic, music filled day.

The Past Two Weeks

Since I've been pretty lazy about updating this in the past few weeks I thought cover the past couple of weeks in one go.

Last Friday there was a 10,000 firework, fireworks spectacular in Hikone. I was sitting ridiculously close and it was fantastic.





Saturday, I had organized an event at the rooftop beer garden of the ANA Hotel in Kyoto. It's right by Nijo castle so the view was fantastic and it seemed like a good time was had by all.



Sunday, I headed to Taga to check out the illumination/festival they were having at the shrine there. Also very beautiful.





The new teachers for the year are here now. I've only met one of the five new teachers who are in my city. He's a fellow Canadian, and seems like a decent guy.

A couple days ago I also found out I passed the entrance exam for the JET translation and interpretation course this year. I forget how many people they take every year, but it's a pretty small number (40-80) from all over the country and somehow I managed to squeak in there.

Thursday and Friday night were spent at beer gardens in Kyoto saying goodbye to friends who are heading home.

Yesterday I went to Summersonic with my buddy, the Ha, who just started JET this year as well and is living down in Osaka. Summersonic deserves it's own post and it was only yesterday so I'll try and get my impressions up soon.

Today I've just been chilling, doing laundry and watching the Olympics. I've been pretty impressed with the coverage NHK has been doing so far, and I must say it looks and sounds spectacular with the LCD TV and surround sound speakers.

淡路島

This is a bit late but a couple of weekends ago we had a long weekend for Marine Day. What better way to celebrate Marine Day then by heading to the beach. Keiko found a nice cheap hotel on Awaji Island in the inland sea so we headed there for some quality R&R. The hotel was on top of a hill so it gave us a great view of the surroundings. There was a golf course as well and I was interested in potentially playing a round, but they had this asinine rule that golf shoes were absolutely necessary to play. Since they didn't rent shoes, and I only had sneakers (which are perfectly fine to play golf in by the way) so I couldn't get out on the course.

The beach was very nice and not crowded at all. Although I wish it would have been a little deeper. You could go out 50 meters or so and still only be knee deep. It's nice for little kids, but I wanted to get out in some deeper stuff.

Food was fantastic as well. The first night we ate at a small local restaurant and chatted with the locals. It seems to me that even more so than Osaka or Kyoto people, Awaji locals are intensely proud to be from Awaji Island. The second night we ate at the hotel which was featuring a Korean/Japanese buffet. It was nice, but I ate way too much.

The drive wasn't too bad either. We hit some traffic both way through Kobe. Why a city of 2 million only has 2 lane highways I'll never understand, but maybe that's just because Toronto's highways are massive. Anyway, once we got through that it was clear sailing.

涼しいっす

For the past 3 weeks or so it's been unrelentingly hot and humid here in Shiga with no signs in the forecast of any changes. Even at night when it gets a little cooler the air is still so humid that you feel a glaze coat you the second you step out of an air conditioned room. When you have crazy nappy hair like mine too it gets annoying when it's long in this kind of humidity.

I'd been thinking about it for a little while, but yesterday I decided to chop of all my hair and go for a buzz. Luckily for me, James, another teacher in my town had a hair clipper set so I was able to head over to his house and take care of business. Now I'm rocking a 6mm buzz and I must say it looks a fair bit better than I initially expected. It seems a little bit cooler as well, but maybe that's just all in my mind.

Deal of the Year

Yesterday I went to Nagahama to pick up a 32 inch LCD HD TV and surround sound system. A JET teacher who is leaving this year was selling trying to sell them before he went home. If was thinking of buying an HD TV this month anyway so when I saw he was selling his I jumped. After a tiny bit of haggling I got him down to 75,000 yen (about $750) for the set. A deal by any one's standards. I checked a Japanese used electronics specialty website and the cheapest they were offering the same TV for was 100,000. The speakers are 400 bucks new so all toll I got it for just a bit over half price. Probably half if you consider sales tax as well. Monty Hall would be proud.

Setup was a breeze, but I haven't got around to setting up the speakers. Playstation games look fantastic as do sports broadcasts. Can't wait to watch the Olympics on it.

耳鼻科

Last week I made a trip to the ear, nose and throat doctor to get my right ear looked at. When I was swimming in the school pool water kept getting stuck in my ear and wouldn't come out no matter how hard I shook. Eventually, it got so bad I went deaf in my right ear for a day so I went to get it checked out.

The best thing about going to a doctor in Japan is that you don't need an appointment anywhere. You just go. So I went, filled out a short form, and about 10 minute later I was in the doctors office getting checked out. He took a look and found my ear was packed solid with wax. He said the water got in there and the back and forth motion of my head swimming laps helped to pack it down so that's why I couldn't hear. He cleaned it out and I must say it was pretty gross looking earwax. I looked a bit like mud actually, but 10 minutes and 10 bucks later (the portion of my bill national health insurance doesn't cover), I could hear perfectly. Not bad at all if you ask me.

京都校外学習

Friday I was lucky enough to skip the days classes so I could go on a field trip with the second year students to Kyoto.

The first stop in the morning was the Yatsuhashi factory. Yatsuhashi are a famous Japanese style candy from Kyoto. They're very popular as souviniers, and I enjoy buying them just to eat myself because the baked/roasted ones are covered in cinnamon, and cinnamon flavoured treats are money.

After that we headed to a temple where the students were dropped off. They broke into their pre-determined groups and went off in the city to go about visiting various places. When I think back to field trips I had when I was in 7th/8th grade I couldn't even imagine being allowed to just roam free in a city the size of Kyoto. Everything was so tightly planned and supervised when we took field trips. Granted all the kids had to make it to certain checkpoints, and they all were given a cell phone to use in case something happened, but still, everyone made it back safe and sound, no problems at all. It was really quite impressive actually.

The weather coulda been better though. It rained off and on the entire day, pouring in a couple of instances. I got lucky though because when the heavy stuff came I was under a roof at Yasaka Jinja, the checkpoint I was responsible for, and managed to stay nice and dry. While I was there I also tried my hand at taking what would become my first HDR picture. I'm not even gonna try to explain what it is and how it works, because I don't really understand it myself. I just know the basics about how to make one, and personally, I think they look really cool. Click the link if you want to know more about the technical stuff.

All in all, a very enjoyable trip. Even as a teacher, field trips are fun.






Yasaka Jinja in HDR

At the beginning of every class there is a greeting where I ask the students how they are. No matter how they are actually feeling they answer in unison "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" Yesterday I told them I was very excited. When they asked why I said "because Metal Gear 4 is on sale now." The girls stared blankly while all of the boys in unison let out a big "OOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!" For the rest of the class they kept talking amongst themselves about Metal Gear which is kinda, bad, but it was the last class of the day on a Friday, so I didn't really mind.

Good Times (Part 2)

Well, on the way back from Tokyo we decided to take the long way home by driving through the southern Japanese Alps which run through Yamanashi and Nagano. It was a long ass 10 hour drive back, but the views in the Alps were pretty crazy. We found a nice waterfall and enjoyed some fresh spring water.









The next day we headed to an abandoned village called Ibarakawa located out in the Suzuka mountains. Driving to get there we quickly realized why it's deserted today. If you drive down the road I take to get to the tiny elementary school you continue for another few kilometers past the end of any of the still settled areas. Then, turning off the main road you have to drive 10 kilometers down one of the crappiest roads I've ever driven on. You can't go more than 20 kilometers down the thing cause it's so chunky so it took us somewhere in the area of 40 minutes to actually reach where the village is, or was. There is a barn type building there that was built and maintained by some students from a university in Nagoya. It looked liked there was a group of them that made annual trips out there. As for the leftovers of the village there were no standing houses left. A couple of collapsed houses and a well were all that was noticeable. There was a shrine that was in good shape, but it was most likely maintained by those university students as well. It was very peaceful out there. For me it was the most I've ever felt separated from modern society while I've been in Japan. The only bad thing about the place was because of the river that runs through the place everyone but the Legend ended up getting tagged by at least 2 leeches. A-bone and J-Mac especially got a couple really good bites on them.











Tuesday was A-Bone's birthday and to celebrate we went to Nagashima Spa Land which is an amusement park and onsen not too far away. When we got there they told us that the Steel Dragon, their main attraction complete with a 300 foot first drop and top speed of over 150 km/h wasn't running that day which was a let down, but about an hour after we got there it was up and running. We rode everything in the park at least once. There were some disappointing rides, but the good ones and the lack of lines on basically everything but the Steel Dragon made it a very worthwhile time.









Thursday we all went to elementary school. The elementary school kids are much more open from the start so it was easy to get them going. Recess is always a great time at elementary school as well.











Our final weekend was spilt between the rural and urban. Friday we climbed Amagoidake, the second highest in the Suzuka Mountain Range at 1238 meters. It was a long hike, but we made a really good pace, and the views were fantastic. We finished the day off with a dinner at Ousho, a chain Chinese style eatery. My local Ousho has a Friday special where you can get an order of dumplings for 120 yen down from 200 yen. Throw in a rice dish with a couple orders of dumplings and you've got a fantastic cheap meal. Actually, we finished off the day with a visit to Mano-san's temple. Aside from being the office worker at my school, he's also head priest of a local temple. It's really new and looks fantastic so we took a little tour of the place at night.











Saturday we headed to Kyoto and visited Sagano onsen. There are no pictures of the onsen, but let me just say it's money. 9 different kinds of hot springs, well one is cold, and a sauna make for a great way to spend a couple of idle hours even if you have to be naked the whole time. At night Mano-san had invited us to a BBQ he was holding at the LSD Consert House. A bunch of his friends were there and they treated us to an impromptu jam session complete with Zepplin, Beatles, The Band, Doobie Brothers and more. We at our fair share of beef and yakisoba as well, and one of Mano-san's female friends really seemed to have a thing for Peter. Too bad she was 50 something...











Now with all this stuff going on it doesn't sound like there was much time for good old-fashion jackassery, but oh you better believe there was. An NHL 08 best of 7 series between A-Bone and Peter which culminated in A-bone taking out the garbage in nothing but a pair of boots, me burning a hole in my jacket with a firework, a surprise beatdown on A-Bone, and the creation of a nickname for Peter "Can't Buy a Break" Hynd were among the highlights of our downtime.