If life were easy, it would be sooo boring!

Catching Up. Poll Result, Australia, Japan, and My Triumphant Return to USA!

2011-07-06T17:00:00.001+09:00

So first, THANK YOU to the 38 people who took part in my poll. Out of the 4 choices, an overwhelming 50% voted I ought to move to Canada and become a farmer, so I decided to go with option #5, and get a job in NYC working for the international arm of a Japanese television channel.
I say "I decided", but I was also very fortunate that they agreed with my decision to work there :D That, btw, will be starting September 1st, so I hope the Big Apple is ready for Greg Beck!

So... Australia! I went there at the end of April and visited my sister, who was coaching the Adelaide Roller Derby (ADRD, but please read that as "Ad-Rad") and the ladies showed us a simply amazing time! Not only did this happen:

Hold a Koala? Check!

Pet wallabies, kangaroos, dingo, and capybaras? Check!

River Dolphin-watching Cruise. Cheeerk

Our hosts also planned a bajillion other amazing things for us. We went strawberry picking, saw an Aussie-rules football game, went on a wine-tasting trip, and sampled the the large selection of delicious food and beer that Australia had to offer! It was great fun hangin with my sis as well. She is my hero, and you may notice I have a link to her roller derby blog (which does much better than mine, no surprise) at the bottom of my page.

After that I spent a couple days in Melbourne with my friends Kathleen and Jude! They also did an amazing job playing host, putting me up, and taking me all around town, even to the school Kathleen works at, and the restaurant her sister works at (Clay Pots, i think it's called...it's a great live jazz bar, and seafood restaurant! Check it out in St. Kilda!) Here are some photos you can click to view full sized:

And to wrap it all up I saw my old friend Anni from back in my study abroad days in Japan! Stellar!

Then it was time to fly back to Japan, but not home! I bot picked up by my Hiroshima friends, Yamaguchi pals, and Ehime girlfriend in Fukuoka for another... RAMEN TOUR! If I've never explained ramen tours before, shame on me. I'll check later and post a link if I have.
Here's what you need to know about that:

IT WAS FUN! (You can see Steve and his wife on his motorcycle behind us!)

After that, Wendy and I split off from the group to sight see in Nagasaki and visit some of my CIR friends who took us out our second night there. Again, awesome, awesome, awesome. Here's the abridged version:

But we were by no means done. On the way back to Hiroshima we spent a day in Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch-fashioned city in the northern cape of Nagasaki Prefecture, complete with gorgeous fields of flowers, a One-Piece (anime) themed harbor, real, working windmills, and a slew of attractions and restaurants. It was cool, overcast, and a wonderful day. Definitely a great place for couples!

Wendy brought her SLR so we got some very crisp shots of one another!

Since then, I turned 27, but worked everyday that week (and weekend). And in June we went to our annual touch rugby tournament in Tokushima, Shikoku. Wendy met me up there too, along with her prefecture's team...grrr ;D

Most recently, I had another solid date-weekend with my Wendy! <3
We saw the new film Super8, spent a day at Kintaikyo and Iwakuni Castle, and spent the next day traveling out to Okunojima, the notorious "Bunny Island" that was over-run by escaped lab rabbits after the Japaense abandoned their illegal, top-secret poison gas facilities during WWII!

For some reason Kintaikyo is also famous for selling 100 different flavors of soft-serve! These were our second, EACH!

Not only did Wendy get these wild bunnies to hop upon the bench for some snacks, look how well they behaved!

So this has been my life these past couple months. Of course I'm leaving out my new venture in to the world of MMA, but that will wait for the next post!
With all this stuff, I hope you understand why I haven't been updating my blog so often.
July 30th will be my last day as a CIR and PA on the JET Programme, and after a couple more weeks with my girl, we must part for awhile as I fly home via Seattle on the 17th to visit my relatives and then fly down to Tucson and re-organize my American life while catching up with friends and family there as well! So busy! And to top it all off, I have to fly to NYC at the end of August and find an apartment by my first day at the new job!
PHEW!

Good Idea: Volunteer Interpreter

2011-06-23T19:14:00.003+09:00

As promised, the other side of my week in Ishigaki, Okinawa:

Mayor's thoughts: "I see you takin' my picture"

So, I mentioned previously that day one I met some triathletes from the same flight to Ishigaki. What I didn't mention however was that the nice woman from Chile I met went on to win 1st place in her division (the highest womens' division, that is)! How did day two start? After the Spatan-style madness that was breakfast with my host family (see prior post), the other interpreters and I headed to the City hall and met the mayor! At the meeting, Stephanie, the local CIR who was in charge of organizing us (along with a million other aspects of the triathlon), explained what we were doing there to the governor.

After that we had several hours of orientation, including a tour of the facilities on the island that would be used by the international competitors, as well as the hotels they would stay at. These became the places we were posted throughout the week to help them in shifts. We also received our schedule for the week, and everyone had several free days and half days to spend with our host families and sight see.
Once orientation was over, we volunteers decided to grab lunch together and we followed Clayton, the only volunteer doing it for the second time, to Indian, but since it was packed, the four of us who had to work later split off to find local food and see the shopping arcade.

Orion, brewed in Okinawa released a special can commemorating the Triathlon

After getting to know each other over lunch, we shopped around and discussed our host families while enjoying the local color. Everyone in Ishigaki seemed to be not just friendly and approachable, but more tolerant (read: less gawky) of us foreigners and rarely made a big deal about us speaking Japanese (a point I really appreciate since I'd rather use Japanese to communicate the same things I would in English, not just discuss how, where, and how long I've studied Japanese). Basically, I was loving everything about this island!

This fishing shop sells the most ridiculously big and beautiful, old shells you've ever seen!

Tom's host father was actually the owner of a minshuku, a family-operated Japanese lodge, so not only did he have a hotel room for his room, his host, who had nothing better to do (thanks to the international panic after the March earthquake and tsunami, closer to MONGOLIA than Ishigaki), took us out for a tour of the island the next morning and snorkeling after lunch! We visited a recently discovered, ancient cave, and stopped all over the island to take photos of breathtaking panoramas and picturesque beaches with absolutely no one taking advantage of them!

See what I mean?

After sightseeing and lunch, I went snorkeling for the second time in my life, and let me tell you, it could not have been MORE different than my first time. The biggest difference was Ishigaki is covered in reefs, which might as well be the underwater nations' capitals they are so busy and crowded with every kind of fish and coral going their way and not caring one bit that you're there! I even saw 4 sea-snakes, which look like 6 foot long air-conditioning ducts painted with snake patters and a face like mollusk from outer space! Apparently they are one of the most poisonous things on the planet as well, but because they have tiny mouths, and are happy to creep along the ocean floor, we didn't have to call in the national guard.
Up to this point though, it had really only been the 4 of us hanging out, even though I already knew 3 of the other volunteers from conferences in Tokyo and online forums, and I was worried that everyone would be happy to go to bed at 9 every night and hardly hang out with each other. Luckily, that was not the case AT ALL!

That evening I was invited by a local English teacher, Sean, to a house party of mostly older Japanese people who volunteer every year to help the triathlon as well. He had stopped by my evening shift Day 2 at the hotel, to say hello and see this year's batch of volunteers. That whole week, he and Alex, a cool dude from England, also teaching English on the island, extended these warm welcomes, and this, the first of many such nights, turned out to be some volunteers who had also used their network to invite pretty much all of the other volunteer interpreters. What started as a quiet get together and drinks with a half-dozen older, but very pleasant folks, turned into an all ages party with 30 people spread throughout the kitchen, living room and front porch, with children and and dogs running around between everyone's legs, good food on the bbq, more coming from the kitchen, and the older men urging the volunteers to drink more Orion and shima, the local term for their long-grain rice alcohol, Awamori, that is famous all over Okinawa.

The next evening as well, we were invited to yet another host's minshuku and Jeff, the Taiwanese-American volunteer made ginger-chicken soup along a pot-luck of other food brought and/or made there in the kitchen by other guests. We stuffed ourselves on hamburgers, taco-salad and snacks, and talked with owner, who also ran a dive shop, and a couple other Japanese families who showed up late.

When I say "showed up late" it's because I didn't realize until about the 6th of 7 days there, that even though Ishigaki is very much a part of Japan, it was the first place in Japan I'd ever been where the entire island really didn't care about being punctual. Japan is right to pride themselves on how punctual their trains, planes, and subways are, but this town where everyone drove themselves, and liked to relax, had really embraced the island lifestyle and given up on worrying about being a couple minutes late. It was almost like culture shock when it finally dawned on me.

Finally, after a few more shifts sitting at help desks, and a couple trips to pizza and karaoke with my fellow volunteers and local English teachers, the big day had arrived:

The mass of white water is about 100 professional triathletes paddling the water like viciously fine-tuned machines

After the morning of local and amateur participants, the pro women and men had their go at tearing all over the island! The swam two big laps in the bay before exiting, grabbing their bikes and tearing up laps, including both ways across that huge bridge in the photo above, before finally running a MARATHON. INSANE!!!

Some more of the local color, out cheering for his Kiwi countrymen.

Jeff, Tom and I were chosen to be on the anti-doping committee. So our job was to watch the athletes we were told to after the race and make sure the didn't drink, eat, or take anything shading between finishing the race and being taken for the doping test. We got to wear cool head sets and communicate with the people back at the test facility, and my guy, who placed 3rd was extremely cooperative and just happy as hell to have placed so well since coming back from an injury.

We're officially DOPE

That night, at least half the island met out in park for a celebration with live music, and food stalls from various local organizations and school clubs. My host family took me there and After looking around, I joined the other interpreters. Not only was everyone and there brother there that night (including the athletes from that day), the mayor stopped by our little group sitting in the grass and started pulling beer after beer out from his jacket pockets, thank us each personally. What a great guy!

I took this on my cell phone, but that's the mayor giving the thumbs up!

Meanwhile on stage, Stephanie was busy helping with the English and Japanese emceeing, so when she finally finished and the concert ended, we all marched back downtown, past the main area of the triathlon, for more drinks and karaoke, celebrating late into the evening.

Most of our merry gang, with Jeff brandishing the case of cola he got from Olga at the park!

Ben, Sean, and me (holding some shima) at karaoke

The next day we took some of the different triathlete teams form their hotels to elementary schools to talk to the children about what they do and their impression of Ishigaki. Ben and I got the Austrian team and I got to dust off my veeery rusty 'ol German language skills!

The next, and final full day on the island was the first time all the volunteers had the day off at the same time so we all grabbed a ferry that morning to Hateruma, the southernmost island in all of Japan; it's so far south that they boast being able to see the Southern Cross constellation!

seriously, they're proud

We rented bikes, and rode all the way to the southern tip of this southernmost island, and after many photos on the wave-battered, volcanic cliffs, we returned to our bikes, pedaling back around to a place for lunch, and then the beach for more snorkeling!

Oh and did I mention we looked incredibly intimidating? That's cuz we didn't.

Then we barely returned our bikes in time to catch a bus back to the port and the last ferry of the day to Ishigaki. We all snoozed for those 2 hours, which was perfect because we had our own thank you/farewell ceremony and dinner to attend at a hotel conference room, and the City Hall
(Stephanie included) did a cute, silly, magic show for us, but mostly for the children of all the host families who attended that night as well. Knowing this was our last night together, guess what? That's right! We went out for more drinks and karaoke. I think I got to go to karaoke four times that week, and since it's one of my favorite things to do, yet sometimes so difficult to find people in the mood to go with you, it was one more thing about my time there that I absolutely loved!

This was a wild bar where all the staff, surprised by a sudden audience, got up and started playing us rock covers!

The final day we had to say good bye to our host families and each other. After going through security, I sat with a few of the other volunteers, in an odd limbo where nobody spoke, lost in our thoughts of all the memories this week on Ishigaki provided. Then my cell phone rang, and it was Stephanie. with less than 10 minutes before our plane started boarding she called me back out to receive a thank you gift from the city hall staff, a few of whom also came to wave goodbye. Thus making this trip excellent, right down to the final moments before takeoff. But I don't say "flying home", because I didn't fly back to Hiroshima. I flew to Fukuoka for my flight the next day...to AUSTRALIA....
To...
Be...
Continued!!!

石垣と書く。愛と読もう。 Ishigaki, Okinawa

2011-06-11T13:25:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I am ripping off some Radwimps lyrics in my title there, but basically it's just a cool way to say I LOVED ISHIGAKI!

This has been a long time coming so let's jump right in:
I stepped off the plane in Ishigaki, and island of Okinawa so far south that it is closer to THE PHILIPPINES than it is to the southern tip of Kyushu!
I went there as one of about 10 volunteers for a week-long home-stay while interpreting for their world-class triathlon.
A smartly dressed, young Englishman, named Alex, was standing outside checking in Triathletes who were on the same plane as me. One of the other volunteers, a friend of mine named Erica who was also on the same plane, was quickly greeted by her host mother and two children, and she introduced herself to me as well and offered me a ride to my host-family's house!
Half-an-hour later I am being shown to my own room and sitting down to dinner with my host-family of 6!


Breakfast the next morning with the Masuda Family :D

Over the week, I got to know my host family really well and they were SUCH amazing people! The mother, Nodoka, spoke English really well, and it turns out she had spent two years in Tonga with JICA (the Japanese Peace Corp.) Her Husband, Yoshi, had quit his job and moved to Ishigaki quite simply "to be happy." And he worked very hard at two jobs, one being his own juku, a Japanese night-time cram school where he taught English, science and math.
Their house was big and beautiful and infested by the noisiest, craziest, best 4 kids in the world!
At 7, 5, 2, and 1 years-old, there was almost never a quiet moment, but at the same time the dynamic between them was fascinating. Sometimes it was all-out every-man-for-himself war, although Ryuki, the eldest, was pretty good keeping out of it. Still, other times, though rare, the four of them would work and play together so sweetly you'd think you were watching The Japanese Brady Bunch.
The second oldest, Takeru, was the star of the show and demanded constant attention. Every morning I would laugh as he piled have of the bread on the table onto his plate, even though he only ate maybe 2 pieces. But even though he liked to talk and act like a bully, he was really very sensitive and sweet; quick to laugh, quick to cry; this kid wore a heart of gold on his sleeve.
Himari, their only daughter, was a darling example and sharp contrast to the boys. That first night she walked right up to me (I was sitting on the floor), handed me a hair clip, turned around and sat on my lap like "Ok, now you're going to play with my hair". She would sneak attack her mom with a hair brush. Without saying a word, she'd pull out Nodoka's hair band and start combing! My favorite thing about her though was that she would sneak off by herself and run little experiments. I found her in the bathroom one morning washing off rocks in the bathroom hand sink and getting water all over the floor, but I just laughed and gave her a towel and left her to it and when I came back later everything was clean.
Maybe it was actually Nodoka who cleaned it, but I couldn't even fathom the amount of energy those children must take. She and Yoshi both were excellent parents, and they always seemed to say exactly what I hope I'd say to my kids. They were infinitely patient, they'd speak English to their kids, have other families and children over, take Ryuki to baseball practice, catch bugs with Takeru, and all the while, keep an ever-vigilant eye on Kazu, The Vacuuming Fascist.

Maybe it was because he is always at home watching him mom clean, but at 1 year old, Kazu seemed to love sweeping and vacuuming more than walking. Seriously, his favorite toys were a small broom and the vacuum cleaner. Even turned off, he would pull it out of the closet by himself and push it around the floor contentedly. I liked to call him "Kazu the Fascist" because he always sat back and purveyed - not "look" or "gaze" - he would purvey the house and everyone and everything in it with a confidence that said "All of this is mine".

I spent the week traveling, sight-seeing, partying, and interpreting with the other volunteers and we had such a great time together, but my host family made the time there so unique and I loved coming home and seeing them, waking up and having the boys peeking in my bedroom, whispering to each other, and eating meals and playing with them. I'll talk more about the other stuff next time, but when I think of Ishigaki, the fondest memories and warmest emotions are of the generous and beautiful Masuda Family.

Oh the times♪ They are a'changin'!

2011-06-08T18:25:00.000+09:00

Okay, I swear, last non sequitur post before I write about my April/May Travels. There's just so much to do in life that pulls me away from blogging, but I guess that's a good thing and keeps these interesting!

FIRST! I've been reading the Japanese newspapers a bit more and here's some of the buzz:
Miyajima, home of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site ITSUKUSHIMA SHRINE was voted the best tourist location in Japan according to tripadvisor.com (which is according to the newspaper article I wrote :P)
YAY! I already knew that though. It is awesome. My friend Mike is here visiting Japan for the first time right now, and I took him there for the hiking, nature, temples, shrines, and food last Monday and we had a great time!

NEXT! Wifi is finally coming to Japan!
What a minute, wtf? Japan is technology central right? What do I mean "coming to"? Well, lots of people have wifi in their homes here, and even in the 90s Japanese people were the first to use their cell phone to connect to the internet on their laptops. But the concept of a WiFi hot spot never really caught on here like in the U.S.
...until now.
The reason is smart phones. After the success of the iPhone, iPhone3/3G/and 4, a growing minority of Japanese people are using smart phones and learning about apps, twitter, and facebook (yeah, now, finally!). Even though every mom in America is clambering to post their baby photos on facebook, the majority of Japanese people are shyly creating, and quickly deleting their scary facebook accounts.
Japan, as you can imagine, likes its privacy and being reserved, but the internet culture of voyeuristic friend-stalking is just too appealing to our monkey-brains, and nature is slowly winning out over nurture (i.e. Japanese Culture). I am basing this on my own suppositions btw, there's probably 5 different Master's thesis topics in there just waiting to happen.
But since Japanese people are buying unlimited internet packages on their shiny, new smart phones, and using them, they are clogging the cellphone networks and leading to the complaints Americans are all too familiar with. Japan's solution: make more WiFi spots so they can get their phone content faster without burdening the phone lines. Simplicity is beautiful eh?
So what are they actually doing? Well, NTT the phone tower company is planning to install 50,000 new Wifi spots in popular businesses such as cafes by March 2013, and competitor KDDI says they will be installing 100,000 of their own! This will probably destroy the 3G and 4G internet dongle (what a disgusting word btw) USB business targeting the previous netbook (cheap, light, and little laptops) boom, but it all spells PROGRESS to me!

Last: You may have read this in western media, but Mazda is axing their cooperative efforts with Ford in the US by 2013. You might see see this as weakness or desperate restructuring on Mazda's part, and even now, their main plant in Hiroshima is only operating at 70% due to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but they plan to be back at 100% by October and have plenty of other plans in the pipeline for Thailand, India, and China, so I think it says more (or less) about Ford and the American economy.

Interesting? Bullshit? Whaddya think? Notice any stories I haven't? Or, if you've read something about Japan and thought "Wtf?", lemme know under "Comments" and I'll get back to ya!

Crazy, Educational, Bizarre, Japanese Commercials - Mame-shiba!

2011-05-17T19:54:00.005+09:00

This will teach you so much! Mame-shiba literally means Bean-Shiba (as in shiba, the Japanese breed of dog), and the commercials are a series of characters that were invented simply to popularize themselves! This happens a lot in Japan, and another of my favorite examples is Relakuma (relax-bear). Once popular, the creators can make money off selling themed snacks, pencils, pillows, and kids accessories, so in that sense they are like their own 30 second cartoon shows designed purely for soulless consumerism, but I DON'T CARE! In these commercials the "dogs" are awesome because they are both cute and give off-colored trivia that make people lose their appetite! HILARIOUS!

Please enjoy! Oh, and keep clicking on the links that appear to see the next in the series (they're conveniently numbered). There are about 20 "episodes" that some kind people made English subtitles for! Number 10 is in English, and 12 is in Spanish, and both are horrible stereotypes of America and Mexico, but that makes them even better! Thank Wendy for showing me these!

Super quick!

2011-04-30T00:12:00.004+09:00

Okay, a picture is worth 1,000 words and this is almost 200 photos:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10100288407276402.2742924.10118973&l=b2549a5f84
ENJOY!
I am busy loving life on vacation!
P.S. This all took place in Okinawa Prefecture and the last few pics were in Fukuoka, Japan and Hong Kong on my way to Australia, so MUCH MUCH MORE to come...

Random Australia Update!

2011-04-25T23:25:00.002+09:00

**UPDATE: Back home safe in Japan and here are my pics from Adelaide! **

Okay, so I am in Australia now and even though i owe you a big juicy blog about my week in Okinawa, I wanted to paraphrase an email about these last two rdays in Adelaide, Australia...AKA "RADELAIDE" !!

Yesterday I woke up after one late night of drinking home brewed beers. I'm staying with an amazing artistic and culinary couple involved in roller derby here. I hopped in a large passenger van (driven by the father of one of the roller derby members) and 12 of us drove an hour north to Adelaide's famous wine country, Barossa. The scenery was GORGEOUS and I took lots of photos...until my camera battery died! But I'm sure as I slowly friend them on facebook more photos will pop up. ANYWAY. After grabbing some delicious bacon and eggs for breakfast, we did wine tastings at 3 vineyards, but the guys brought an entire cooler (called an "eskie" in Australia - "chilly bin" in New Zealand, btw) of beers and since we had our designated, dad driver, we all got really drunk by the time it was dark.

For lunch we had an amazing picnic-style lunch at a lake, with food provided by a nearby restaurant run by a famous Australian cook (like Julia Child-style famous). I ate pheasant for the first time ever! It was baked into a flaky pie crust, and it was delish!

At the end of the night we were dropped off at Bonnie's "homestay" and we had an almost equally amazing dinner cooked by Paul, Kit Cat Krunch's fiance. Then we played drunken Rock Band on PS3 (I played drums of course), and then they busted out an ukulele for me to play! By the time I got home I was so sapped, I passed out immediately!

This morning I awoke to the sound of my sister and others arriving. I got dressed and went out to coffee and croissant sandwich (BACON for breakfast: DAY 3!!! <3) - everyone cooks here and eats such amazing food, and today was no exception. In the morning a ref/roller girl couple "Brain and Foxy) drove my sister, another San Diego coach "Ringer", and me to a wildlife park were we got to PET kangaroos, wallaby, wombat, dingo, (okay, technically we shouldn't have tried to pet these last two through the bars, but WE DID! heh heh!), and even held a Koala!!!!

It was so magical!
After another oranic health food shop-supplied picnic, we went strawberry picking! After all this I was exhausted so I passed out for the last three hours after we got home, woke up, took a shower, and just ate a power bar and some left over potato chips for dinner. Good night world! Adelaide RULES!

人事異動 AKA Do the Office Shuffle!

2011-04-09T14:09:00.003+09:00

I've been at this "Blog" thing for almost a year now, so I forget if I've posted about this before. Hope you enjoy! BTW - apparently the word "blog" came from "Web log", when a guy moved the "b" over to make "We blog", thus turning blog into a verb. That's one of those things you've probably learned 5 times and forgotten 5 times.

Every new fiscal year in Japan (April-March) most organizations go through jinji-ido or "personnel transfers". For a government organization like mine, this gets even more complicated by elections, which bring about changes in policy that restructure the entire government. So it is not only "who works where" but entire divisions that are collapsed, reorganized, expanded, renamed, and shuffled around.

The Governor of Hiroshima, Yuzaki, was elected last September. He is a Stanford Graduate and fluent in English!

Halfway through my second year at the Prefectural Government Foreign Affairs Division, they not only changed several of our members, including my supervisor, and group leader, they also added a wall partition making our office physically smaller, to expand the neighboring room where some new chief of staff was moving his office. Everything had to be rearranged to accommodate this, which meant rolling up our shirt sleeves and moving huge desks and lockers full of over a decade-worth of paper files, all by ourselves.

Along with the transfers come office parties. By office parties, I mean everyone in the office goes to a restaurant and pays between 30 and 50 dollars for some version of an all-you-can-eat-and-drink dinner. This gives everyone a chance to get to know each other in a slightly structured, but less formal setting, and they can be really fun!

One such party, a year ago. This photo was taken by our Director, who was promoted to Chief this month.

Quick side note: The restaurant pictured above is a fried-skewer cuisine place called Hanbei. It is post-war era themed, so instead of a pitcher of beer, you get a tea kettle full! Our oldest member, and atomic bomb survivor, Mr. Tabuchi had never been there before, but since everything there reminded him of his early twenties (including the music, which he seemed to know all the words to!), he probably enjoyed it more than anyone!

The funny thing about these restructures is that they are not application based. They don't even decide based on what subjects you excel in! Basically, no one knows what will happen until the final weeks of March, and since many organizations have buildings in different cities (even different islands, and prefectures!), you can suddenly find yourself with less than three weeks to move to, for example, Tokyo! One of my co-workers announced just a couple weeks ago that he was being transferred to MAZDA to work in their PR department as part of a professional cross-training arrangement, so he won't be back working in the government offices for the next two years! We were all quite surprised.

This year, they also decided to reorganize my Foreign Affairs Division into the Regional Strategy Bureau. That alone didn't affect our office, but it meant adding a fourth, related group to our office, and expanding the physical size. To do this, they moved OUT the neighboring chief of staff, and took out last years wall partition. Since they had also knocked out the old wall behind that the previous year, it meant our office became LARGER than when I first arrived! Here are some pics of that:
One year ago:

And a few more from this year:

The number of people in my office has grown by 7, and luckily for me, two of the new additions were regular members of my weekly English Lunch, so I know them well. My group has two new women, and a former member of another group in the same office last year, and my new group leader last year was promoted to deputy director! Here is a picture from the end of our office party last week, with some new incoming and outgoing members in attendance:

It is unbelievable to me that this happens EVERY YEAR, but another reason for it is to accommodate new hires. The Japanese school year is on the same schedule as the fiscal one, and for many organizations, gaps of even one month in your scholastic and work record can disqualify you from the next higher pay-scale, so Japanese undergraduates spend the majority of their senior (4th) year job hunting, sometimes even starting during their junior (3rd) year! I would not be the first person to hypothesize that this has something to do with why Japanese Universities are considered notoriously easy to graduate from, once enrolled.
It is also noteworthy that while all of this is going on, people are still working on projects, balancing budgets, and undergoing end-of-the-fiscal-year audits. The whole thing is extremely stressful, and I am VERY glad my position is not subject to these transfers.

Did I mention... because I also split my time working at the Hiroshima International Center, I have to go through this twice as much as everyone else! He's a pic of me saying goodbye to our old director, Mr Kawakita, who has been transferred back to the Government offices after three years here. He has also been a good friend to me, and I hope he comes to visit sometime.

He joked that since it was me (a foreigner), we should hug, and when I actually did, everyone laughed, but then decided that since I did it, they would too. It was a nice way for everyone to say goodbye to those leaving.

That's all for now! I have an insanely busy schedule stating tomorrow, so i will be taking about a month off from blogging. Please fill your time by leaving me feedback and questions for me to work on new stuff when I get back! Muah!

Quick Update

2011-04-06T20:38:00.000+09:00

So last Sunday, at my Wendy's invitation, I participated in my first EVER official marathon!

weeeell, the 10k (6 mile) division anyway. ^^

But look how good I did! I don't know if I am proud or ashamed that I didn't train, but I am DEFINITELY GLAD I finished in under an hour. I guess the next step is to start running 10k all the time and go for the half-marathon eh?

In other news:
I got SO MUCH DONE yesterday!
Yesterday was my late shift so before work, I got up, got clean, ate breakfast, did laundry, went to the dentist (I had to get my new filling replaced because a piece came out the night before while I was flossing), went to the Immigration Bureau and had my Japanese visa and re-entry permit transferred to my new passport, went shopping, came home, and made lunch and packed a meal for dinner, ALL BEFORE getting to work at 1pm! That's what Charlie Sheen calls WINNING!

Sure buddy.

Had a great, productive day at work too, and afterward, came home and prepared the questions for tonight's quiz night which I am hosting with my good buddy Warren! (see previous posts for pictures and references to both!)

Bye for now!
greg

An open letter from a concerned UA Alumni:

2011-03-29T15:16:00.001+09:00

Study Abroad and Student Exchange Office, Department East Asian Studies, and Editors of the Daily Wildcat,

Greetings. My name is Gregory Beck; I am a 2006 U of A East Asian Studies graduate.
I am writing from my workplace, at the Hiroshima Prefectural Government's Foreign Affairs Division, in Japan.
Since graduating that summer, I joined the JET Programme and immediately moved to Hiroshima Prefecture, where I have lived for nearly five years now. Hiroshima has been a wonderful and welcoming home, and I feel every bit as attached to the community here, if not more than I do to my hometown of Tucson.

I write today regarding some disconcerting news I received from my mother, still living in Tucson. She reported to me that the office of study abroad and student exchange has called back their participants in Japan and would not participate in programs this coming fall as well.
If her news is inaccurate or incomplete, I offer my sincerest apologies in advance, However, I feel compelled to make my case against said action either way.

I do not need to inform you of the tragedy that has stricken Tohoku because I am well aware of the US media coverage. That is to say, I am aware of the disproportionate volume, inappropriate tone, and misleading inaccuracies of the mainstream news, causing all manor of panic and irrational behavior from Russia to Washington D.C. and every point in-between.
That said I also do not pretend this is anything less than the greatest hardship to befall Japan since WWII. Almost everyone I know, including myself, has been affected in one way or another by this tragedy, but I feel it my duty and yours to provide the U of A students with accurate information and pray that you give it serious consideration.

If you have already asked students to return, then I suppose this cannot be undone, but I hope you will at least consider allowing students the opportunity to decide for themselves, and the accurate knowledge with which to decide, whether it is safe to study in Japan this Fall.

Right now, in Tokyo, they are dealing with scheduled rolling blackouts, restricted train services, and at one point, even issued an advisory (since lifted) warning not to let infants drink tap water. I understand how these facts alone could cause concerned students and parents to withdraw from participating, but at the same time the realistic danger to a study abroad student living in Tokyo is minimal, and in my opinion, ultimately no greater than living in Tucson.

I spent my junior year participating in the Year in Japan program at Konan University, near Kobe, and even farther from the afflicted area of Japan. Saying my time there changed my life is no overstatement. The lifelong friends, knowledge and experiences I gained were not simply "worth it"; their value cannot begin to be measured. There is no way I could be the man I am today, or work as a translator and Coordinator of International Relations, as I do now, without that program.
If I imagine myself, two months from completing that program, being called back to Arizona over worries caused by the media, more than the actual situation here, I would be outraged, and probably refuse to return. However, I know from personal experience and conversations here in Hiroshima, that not all people, adults included, share my level of personal freedom. Some, for financial, cultural, or emotional reasons, do not have to the luxury to refuse a panicked family or school's demand. But for the University of Arizona, an academic, not to mention scientifically well endowed institution, to act based on emotional knee-jerk reactions, rather than the facts, both disappoints and saddens me. The Kansai area is as unaffected by the recent disaster as Hiroshima, or Okinawa. My friends, former professors and host family are still living and thriving there. While everyone is donating as much as we can in time, effort, and money to the relief effort in Tohoku, we are also starting to feel the warmth of spring, planning picnics under the cherry blossoms, and continuing on with our lives as best we can.

The average Arizonan has very little general knowledge regarding Japan, and the image of a small, island nation is disconnected and mostly relative to the considerably larger size of America. Imagine the world’s foreign exchange students fleeing the entire American east coast and as far west as the Mississippi River, or people in Hawaii buying potassium iodine pills, during the 1979 Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown and you will begin to realize the scope of the world’s current hysteria regarding TEPCO’s failing Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

Ultimately the point I wish to impress you is this:
Japan has suffered enough.
The University of Arizona has been most gracious to donate money and hold charitable events, but pulling the plug, even temporarily, on the study abroad program both adds to the socio-economic damage Japan is currently suffering and offsets those charitable wishes, by robbing both U of A students and the Japanese people they would meet and interact with, of innumerable opportunities, wisdom, character building experiences, memories, and friendships, made possible through international exchange.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Feel free to distribute and use this letter however you see fit. I pray for the continued health and success of everyone in Japan, you, and the University of Arizona.

In closing, I would like to explicitly state that the contents of this letter are my personal opinions and the Government of Hiroshima has not currently expressed an official stance on these specific matters.

Sincerely,

Gregory Beck

Shameless Promoting

2011-03-26T17:57:00.003+09:00

Alright Internet. Let's make sweet open-source love.
If I promise not to abuse you, will you help me promote a great program?
Most of my readers know me, and know I work for the Hiroshima Prefectural (State) Office, in the International Affairs Division. That's right. I am a JAPANESE Government employee. The only white guy in my building, actually. My point is, in case you stumbled upon this, my job is to promote international exchange and understanding in Hiroshima.

I'm in the middle somewhere...

I worked with a team of extremely skilled and experienced professionals at the Hiroshima International Plaza to develop a 2-week, summer program for intermediate-to-advanced level Japanese speakers to try out, and further develop their abilities here in Japan, while learning about the culture and history of Hiroshima.

Despite the short term of the program, it manages to include Japanese lessons, field trips, a weekend home stay, and even dinner parties and cultural activities. Other than the home-stay, participants stay at the gorgeous facility, which includes a dormitory with individual rooms, baths, toilets and internet connection; a rec center, full-sized, multi-purpose gymnasium, library, computer lab, classrooms, cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and even free bicycle rentals.

Taken from the third floor veranda: Foreground is reflection of behind me, background is the city through the glass

The program is open to basically anyone with a strong drive to improve their Japanese knowledge and understanding, and because it starts and ends at the facility, participants are free to plan their own personal trip around Japan before, after, or around the program dates. It really is just a pocket full of awesome.

Here's where I need your help: I've run into a few problems promoting it.
1) Universities aren't interested in helping.
Even though this is an incredible learning opportunity, we cannot offer college credit flat out, and even if we could, it would be up to each individual university, and I just can't contact every Japanese department, or study abroad office in the world. My own alma mater, the University of Arizona told me: We already offer enough programs to Japan.
2) It is hard to make people realize the full extent of the opportunity.
This is more than just two-weeks of study Japanese all day, every day. Besides the sight seeing field trips to Miyajima and the Hiroshima Peace Park (each home to a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site), participants also get to visit businesses and/or the University of Hiroshima, and ask questions about studying or working in Japan. We also want to invite participants from all over the world, giving them the added opportunity of creating bonds with people from Japan and other countries as well.
3) People are scared of coming to Japan.
Sadly, as I've touched on in a previous post, the news has been working almost 24-7 to confuse and misinform the world on the state of affairs in Japan, and the consequences will be devastating and long lasting.
As if a giant earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crises weren't enough, the unwarranted bad press has caused tourists, businesses, students, and even governments, to cancel plans, visits, deals, and opportunities all across Japan. That is their decision to make, and I can recognize the wisdom in erring on the side of caution, but HIROSHIMA IS FINE. No tainted water supplies, irradiated milk or vegetables; no damaged train lines or rolling blackouts: we are fine.

Better than fine, in fact. Hiroshima has an amazing effect on everyone who visits here. The same way those who come here are inevitably surprised by the level of revitalization and recovery Hiroshima City has achieved since the atomic bombing almost 67 years ago, we need people to participate in programs like this, not just for our economy, but to show the world that Japan is not the ruined picture of a country the mainstream media is so eager to portray.

Taken on my cell-phone camera, also made in Hiroshima, on the anniversary of the bombing, Aug. 6th 2010.

Finally, this program needs at least ten participants in order for the Hiroshima International Plaza, to make back the cost of holding it. Reversely, this means if you have or know of a group of 10 or more people who would like to study there, you can contact me and the HIP will help you set up your own, private, custom program for anything from a week to a month!

PLEASE feel free to share this with anyone you know who might be interested or know people who are interested. If you have ideas on how to help spread the word about my program or want more information, such as dates and prices, for yourself, please leave me a comment or message here, -OR- you can message me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/yogafire

Drinking on a Weekday

2011-03-24T18:19:00.005+09:00

I moved to Hiroshima straight out of University and had already experienced four years of rowdy fun and parties on random days when school and work allowed. But I settled in to my island home of Ondo and grew into my role as an ALT.


My first breakfast at my new apartment in Ondo (August 2006)

As a teacher, on a small island where everything closes at 8pm, I quickly associated drinking with the city (Kure City) and I only went there on weekends. Also, being a social creature, buying beer at drinking at my house never occurred to me, and I think I had a total of one beer by myself the entire year I lived in that apartment, which hardly qualifies for "drinking alone".

Drinks on the pier in Kure

Anyway, my point is, drinking was a "weekends only" thing for me, and has been, with few exceptions, for the my first three and a half years here. Once, I even recall hearing of "Hump Day Drinks" and chuckling! Oh! The immaturity!

What happened to make this clean-living boy crack? A violent break-up? Death in the family? Intolerable STRESS?!?
NOPE!
My friends opened a new bar.

When I say "friends", I mean, they are my friends now. back then one of the guys just owned a smaller bar I would go to maybe once a month on a weekend, and when it first opened, things were the same for Southern Cross. But being a new bar, they wanted to get a clientele and steady business, so one of the things they did was start a Wednesday night Pub Quiz. This is something I HAD NEVER DONE BEFORE, and had only seen ONE reference, in an episode of the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Not only was the quiz free to play, everyone got 100 yen off all drinks, and the winning team gets FREE DRINKS at the next quiz! That's how they sucked me in. This has been going on for almost one year now, and of course, I don't go every week, but even when I don't go I think about it, and every once in a while I volunteer to host the quiz (think of the questions, MC, and score the answer sheets), a task which also comes with free drinks and is a lot of fun.

Normally I don't get drunk or anything, it's just a fun night out. The "problem", if you choose to call it that, is that there are a few very intelligent ex-pats who usually win, so I have won a total of maybe 2 or 3 times, but 1 of those times was last week! So last night I went to play the quiz again, and enjoyed my free drinks, perhaps a little too thoroughly, and waking up this morning was... not so easy. No big deal, but next week some Japanese people will be hosting the quiz for the first time and on top of being curious as to what kind of questions they ask, etc., it is also a charity benefiting the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, so weekday or not:
I will drink to that.

The Most Dangerous Place in the world: Sitting in front of your TV.

2011-03-18T17:45:00.002+09:00

This gets a bit ranty, but here is an update for people who don't know how to find reliable news sources (sadly, a genuine problem):

Today: Ground crews began working on cooling the plant. TEPCO (the power company) hopes to restore power to the cooling systems as soon as tomorrow, and if any of you saw the American news talking about workers at the plants sacrificing their lives to work on the problem, I am happy to confirm that is total bullshit.

If you haven't figured it out on your own yet: STOP WATCHING CNN, MSNBC, and (do I even have to say?) FOX NEWS.


Yeah...that's not where Sendai is...Not even close. SHIBUYAEGGMAN...is a night club in Tokyo.

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: WATCH NHK WORLD.
It's online, streaming, FREE, and available in 18 LANGUAGES.
Here's the link:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

Some fair questions from cynics:
"Why can't I watch my countries news?"
-Answer:
1. Your countries news station can't name more than 3 cities in Japan, and even if they've BEEN to Japan, probably couldn't point to TOKYO on a map. You want to trust them?
2. Your news pundits are on a 24-hour news cycle. That means they have 3 minutes of actual news updates, and 23 hours, 57 minutes of POINTLESS CONJECTURE. What do they do in that time to keep discussion interesting? They talk about Chernobyl, and minuscule amounts of radiation understandably emanating from the damaged plant, without maintaining any journalistic, responsible sense of context. i.e. EVERYTHING emits radiation.

"But you can't trust Japanese news, wouldn't they cover-up how bad the situation is?"
-Answer:
Every country's media has an agenda. You may want to side with your country out of blind patriotism, or because you don't speak Japanese, but I do.
1) I am not Japanese. I do not have any nationalistic loyalties.
2) I have read TONS of articles, and watched HOURS of news in Japanese, and I have no reason to believe they are covering anything up. I have seen everything they have reported, confirmed by scientists and professors from Japan, America, and England, and if you can't trust an American nuclear engineer's opinion, why the fuck would listen to Glenn Beck?

I won't pretend to be the first foreign resident in Japan to point this out but:
If we here living in Japan are calm, collected, and moving on with our lives, isn't it strange that foreign communities are freaking out, hoarding supplies, buying iodine pills, etc.? What's the difference between these people and me? I don't watch the shitty mainstream media in other countries.

This is the internet age. You don't understand nuclear physics, the difference between radiation and radioactive material? Neither did I, until I looked it up and studied it. Don't have an internet connection? Go to a library. There is no excuse to let yourself be led into fear, except laziness.
If you want to understand what's going on in Fukushima, here is a video made to explain the crisis to Japanese children. (The translation isn't perfect, but it's not bad either) It's actually quite witty and may just cheer you up! So please watch!

Now... don't you feel better?
Have a great day!

Elsewhere in Japan...

2011-03-16T18:03:00.000+09:00

While the World news reported basically the worst of everything they could find, and tried their best to make the world think all of Japan had sunk into the Pacific, my region was blessed with nice weather and a whopping zero catastrophes.

While tsunamis swept the north-east coast and destroyed tens of thousands of homes, boats, cars, and most tragically, lives; I was sitting on a ferry crossing the placid Seto Inland Sea to Matsuyama, Ehime on the island of Shikoku, staring in disbelief at the awful footage streaming through the television on board.

But this is not about that.
After another 2 hours on a train, I was finally in my girlfriend Wendy's city of Uwajima, and we spent four glorious days together in which we celebrated St. Patrick's Day, visited Ehime Castle, saw Plum AND Cherry blossoms, made Hawaiian food, and I even got to go to the high school she teaches at and help her in two classes!
Here are a few pictures from this time.
I don't expect you to forget the horrible disaster going on in the northern region of Japan, but I also want to say we didn't forget either, and there were donation drives going on the entire time in both Ehime AND Hiroshima.

That said: Please Enjoy.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2720606&id=10118973&l=7d1a25d81b

As if the Tragedy in Japan wasn't Big Enough...

2011-03-15T18:31:00.003+09:00

I would like to keep this brief since I am so busy trying to keep everyone up to date on the events North-east Japan.
First: I am not surprised, but none-the-less displeased with the lack of accurate information from foreign media sources. It is sensational, overly-general (The affected area is not "JAPAN") and focuses almost exclusively on what the WORST CASE SCENARIO could be, rather than what we know and what can be done to help/prepare for the worst.

Second: ALL of us here in Hiroshima are safe and sound.

Third: If you want useful information I have two sources for you: one is a scientific community giving up to date, thoughtful, and detailed answers. It is in depth and in English.

http://smc-japan.sakura.ne.jp/?p=982

The next link is to NHK World, the multi-language Japanese News site with streaming news similar to C-Span, but for Japan:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

I recommend you use GOOGLE MAPS if you want to see WHERE in Japan things being discussed are happening, but keep in mind: Even if 3 nuclear reactors melt down and the wind blows it in my direction, radioactivity dissipates! Simply put, the worst case scenario would be awful for MILLIONS of people, but it still NO WHERE NEAR as bad as the foreign media has been claiming.

FINALLY:
If you want to donate money, please check this site and take note of their rating system for how much you can trust the charity organization: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1221

Run for your life! Updated

2011-03-05T18:09:00.004+09:00

Before I get started, lemme ask: Do YOU have a blog? If you do, please leave me a link in the comments section, or "follow" mine and I'll follow yours back. I like this means of keeping in touch!

You may or may not know, but Hiroshima City is the headquarters for MAZDA (zoom zoom).

Did you watch the whole video?!? I actually understand what they're saying, and I couldn't bring myself to. SO CORNY!
But seriously, Mazda and companies that supply them, make up 30% of Hiroshima City's job market (not an exact number). They have their own hospital, and enormous manufacturing plant, and they even sponsored the building of Hiroshima's spiffy new Ball park!

Their compound is amazing and huge and no outsider is allowed in, Chocolate Factory style...EXCEPT for the first Sunday of March every year. What happens on that day? The MAZDA 駅伝 (Ekiden). Translated as "Relay Race" this is a short race (less than a half marathon) and divided into 6 legs that are run by different team members, who pass off a sash (not a baton) to the next person at the end of each leg.

A river runs through it...

There are two divisions: Mazda employees, and everybody else. Anyone can register a team, or just come watch, and my workplace, the Hiroshima International Center, has entered a team every year, partly because 3 of our members are dispatched FROM Mazda. In fact one of those three, the president of the International Center, is the CEO of Mazda himself! But his title as President of the HIC is in name only, as far as I can tell.

Since coming here I have been volun-told, as my brother Bill says, to join the team, and both times I've run as anchor. It's only 2.2km, but it definitely comes with a lot of pressure, since everyone who passes me is guaranteed to directly affect our final score, and everyone I manage to pass improves it!

The Full Course (I run the highlighter-yellow portion)

My first year i was pretty nervous. I had never run competitively for any distance, and had no idea what was expected of me. I asked what our team's score was the year before and when they said 100-something-eth I was a little relieved.

We ended up coming in 67th! I think mostly because we had a marathon runner on our team doing the longest portion, but we have also had a 70-something man named Mr. Tanimura doing the shortest bit (1.2km) every year, but I did manage to pass about 6 more people myself, and was only passed by one person who I made sprint for it at the end! I felt even better about our score when we went in the auditorium for the closing ceremony and it turned out the winners were the Yamaguchi University track team. I remember thinking "Are they even allowed?!?" It seemed unfair at the time. But last year, even though I personally only got to pass 3 people during the final leg, we came in 39th place! (Out of 160+ teams)

Click to enlarge

Afterwards, we always go to yakiniku - grill-it-yourself indoor bbq restaurants made popular by Korea, but loved by all Japanese people - and undo what little health benefits we might have gotten from it, but last year, while we ate, the table next ours' smoke-intake lit on fire (it was also covered in grease after all), everyone had to leave the restaurant, and we wound up walking 30 minutes before we found a new place to start over! This year, we went to a Hiroshima-teppanyaki restaurant, which was fine with me, because I just ate yakiniku with my friends Kelly, Joe, and his father visiting Japan, last Thursday!

Joe and dad and glorious, glorious yakiniku

So I showed up at 8:45am on the dot, even though the race didn't start until 10:30, and waking up early was easily the biggest struggle of the day for me! :P I did have a good breakfast though (Bananas and some pork and potatoes). We got dressed out, and put on our blue Happi; the runners pinned numbers to them, and after the opening ceremony in the auditorium, we walked to our positions.

Notice I am rocking my Vibrams this year! ↑

Judging by our fastest runner (a marathoner we had run the 5km portion first) and our 5th runner, my higher-up Mr. Maekawa, who passed the sash to me for the final leg, we were around 60th place (out of 160 non-Mazda teams) for the entire race.
Greg time.
By the time I got the sash it had started drizzling. I had no idea how that would affect me since I've NEVER run in the rain EVER, but once I got the sash, and saw people with yellow tags in front of me, I started running hard. Harder than I thought I would be able to keep up actually. I kept second-guessing my breathing. Was I breathing too hard to keep up for the full 2.2km (That is almost 1.5 miles btw)? I didn't want to pass a bunch of people just to have them all pass me at the finish line, but I couldn't help myself. My competitiveness had kicked in, and I started reeling them in. In the first few minutes I had passed four people easily. Then a high school boy blew past me and I thought "that's okay, you're still up by 3" and kept my eyes on the next group of "marks" further down the road. They were clearly only ahead because their teammates before were faster than mine, but my team was better balanced. I passed them around the halfway point of my leg, and could see a few more ahead of them, so I pressed on. I had become oblivious to the rain, and as I passed the next two, I saw three more in the distance. I first thought that I they were too far to catch up with, but I could see the incline on the way to the bridge over the river was slowing them down, so I decided to run faster up the incline. I was on their heels as we reached the final straightaway, so I hit my final burners, charged all the way to finish line and improved my team's score by 11 positions to finish at....

49th

I was gasping for breath as one of my bosses (one of those who was actually dispatched to work at the HIC from Mazda) found me at the finish line, congratulated me and we went back in the auditorium to change and wait for the closing ceremony. That was my day yesterday. March, 6th, 2011.

This year's runners and support team (All Hiroshima International Center employees)

Givin' Me Something to Blog About

2011-03-02T03:09:00.002+09:00

yeah, so...

I've been going on some epic rants but only because so much has happened last month, for the shortest month of the year, it sure was crazy busy!

Most importantly, I now have a girlfriend!

I wasn't sure how to type about her in a way that wouldn't sound braggy or like I'm objectifying her, but my friend Hozumi asked me to describe her (via online chat), and this is pretty much all taken from that conversation (ありがとうズミ).
Her name is Wendy. We're both 5th years on the JET Programme, but it took us until this year to start hanging out! We crossed paths like 4 times since I became a Prefectural Adviser (PA) as part of my CIR duties, but for whatever reason I was always spreading myself too thin and never got to really know her until we had lunch together last October at a work conference.
She lives in Ehime, which is kinda far, but she's worth it because she is SO the girl for me!
Why? Well, for example, every nerdy thing I have never talked to girls about (at least successfully or enjoyably) SHE knows all about! She even quoted YODA to me...*YODA*!!!

SO, we finally started dating when I invited her out for snowboarding, and we decided we wanted to go on another, but were busy in February, so we actually set a date for mid-MARCH!

Luckily, after spending the weekend together and talking over Skype nearly every night, we couldn't wait and she was able to stop by for an official date (I got her a rose and took her to dinner, purikura, etc.) on her way back from yet another conference.

This is PURIKURA (short for Print Club)

The next morning I had to ask “So how many more dates do we need before you're my girlfriend?” to which she replied “You just have to ask”. So I took her rose away from her and holding it for her ransom, asked her “Would you be my girlfriend?” And the rest, as Wendy says, is history. ^^

Naked Woman, Naked Man, Where Did You Get That Nice Suntan?

2011-02-28T20:48:00.000+09:00

Okay, first I want to say thank you to everyone who visits my blog. I have really been trying to step up the appearance and interface and even made some small design changes since yesterday, so I hope there are a few people out there enjoying my efforts.

It's like "Thanks", with a Jamaican accent.

And I want to tell you that I've started using this RSS business I always see on other people's blogs and websites, and I really like it. Specifically, I am using "Google Reader" because I figure they already have so much of my private info, I might as well just let them know what I read online too. Anywho, it is a really cool and easy way to keep up with news, and people's updates to their statuses and blogs. Like Twitter for people who can decide for themselves whether they'd like to commit to more than 140 characters worth of input. It is also a nice way to bypass filters on your work computer if they block "blog sites" like mine does. >=D
You can now, also subscribe to my blog on the right hand side of the page. Or if you have your own "blogger/blogspot" than you can just "follow" me. The numbers aren't important, but keeping people (who want to be) informed on my life is very important.

One selfish request I have is that you vote on my poll honestly (if you already did ↑TANKS again!) with whatever knowledge you have of my ability and personality. You guys are my lifeline, and I am "polling the audience" before my "Final Ansa'".

Cerebral Side Rant OVER.

Also, please let me know what you think of my writing, or the content, or improvements, or requests for what you'd like to hear more about. I've added a bunch of simple choices you can choose from to the bottom of every post, or you can comment in detail. Because my favorite hobby is finding new challenges and life experiences, maybe you've already tried something you can recommend to me and I will get back to you with a post on my experience once I've picked up your gauntlet. You can do that here, or by email, or on fb, but I would like to know what you like and don't like or just your reaction to reading these entries. It matters to me.

So... anyone recognize the song I stole my entry title from? It's by a little band called "The Specials". And I thought of it because of the words "NAKED MAN".

Yes, after 5 years in Hiroshima, I finally went to the 裸祭り or "Naked Festival". This could also easily qualify as "Crazy Japanese Stuff", although if you're familiar with Shinto beliefs it actually all made plenty of sense. Still, it was that typical half-ceremony/half-competition that you commonly see in Shinto Festivals that purposely creates chaos for the joy of spectators and entertainment of the gods. So I feel "purposely insane" is an accurate description.
So I hopped a Hiroshima AJET bus to Okayama Saturday afternoon, Feb. 19th. and started drinking. The reasons for drinking were two-fold. One, I'm surrounded by other JETs drinking, on a chartered bus, so what better time to drink? And two, I knew by the time we reached the temple in the evening, the majority of the Japanese people there would already be drunk. So four drinks and several hours in, we were quite late getting there, probably because of traffic, and I was feeling drunk and a little bored, so when we pulled into a rest stop I decided to strip down to the cheap fundoshi (loincloth) I had bought last Halloween as a goof with my friend and run a lap around the parking lot. Brace yourselves; it looked like this:

But at least I was recycling!

There was a big tour bus of old Japanese people who had a good laugh and a few even applauded my scantly clad jog in the cold night air. Getting back on the bus our driver said "You're early! We haven't gotten there yet!" and laughed.
Looking back it was the closest thing I've ever done to streaking, but I wasn't really worried because Japanese people are much less sensitive to nudity as communal baths, hot springs, and the festival we headed toward had already made abundantly clear.
Keep in mind, at this point, I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to participate in the festival itself because I needed to have a team of at least 4 people and I was the only one on our bus even remotely interested, so I reasoned this was my insurance that at least I could say I wasn't too shy, even if the festival didn't work out.

Back, dressed, and on the bus to Okayama, the traffic made us later still and i was sobering up, which always makes me feel tired. By the time we got to the shrine, I wasn't really feeling "in the mood" to get naked in the cold. We walked around the grounds and went up to the alter and prayed.

There were TONS of cops there!

No Flash

Flash

Every once in awhile groups of "naked" dudes would appear running around in their fundoshi. Why and from where to where were they running? It was seemingly arbitrary.

This group was carrying the winner's of the "naked boy" portion. Calm down, you can see they aren't really naked.

I lost my group in the crowds and while I ate a doner kebab (my favorite Euro-food; for whatever reason you can always find at a Japanese matsuri (festival),

This sign advertises Turkish cuisine as one of the world's "Top 3"

I called some other friends who i knew would be there that evening. Finally getting a hold of one he said, "Come to the changing room, you can hold my shit for me". Okay, I thought, why not? I started asking around and as I got closer and closer to the changing room I began to think, "Why would I sit on the sidelines and hold stuff for someone else doing it?!? No, I want to be a part of this!!"So when I found the place and was looking for him, i ran into more friends and said "Hey, um, can I be on your team?" to which they responded "HELL YEAH!" and it was all good times from there! I bought my fundoshi and tabi (split-toe shoes) for 1000 yen (12USD) and paid another 1000 for the participation fee, and before I knew it an old Japanese man was wrapping me in the longest piece of cloth I'd ever seen, and friends were handing me large bottles of sake!

Haha John, thanks for that.

Not so bad yeah? You can't see it, but my but is hanging out with a thick white cloth covering my crack like a Kurosawa samurai film! The funny thing is, I wasn't the least bit embarrassed, despite my bare ass!

No pictures after that point, sadly. I left my pockets in my clothing and we commenced running laps around the temple like the groups of men we'd seen before. We probably shouted "Washoi, Washoi!" a phrase meant to to liven up our spirits and the atmosphere of the matsuri. We fell into a huge line of fundoshi-clad men, all still shouting. as we approached the temple. Even inside the temple, we were locked in on a path of follow-the-leader and followed them onto a detour into a small and ancient pool of waist deep water which we then sloshed and splashed around in. Keep in mind, this is February and after 9PM, so the water was freezing!
The procession continued to a Buddhist temple on the same grounds of as the Shinto shrine (this is common for Japan where they don't feel the need to choose just one religion), and broke into single file to pray at the alter before reforming and running up into the main shrine's covered (for lack of a better word) porch! It was so strange because less than an hour before I had been to all these same places, fully dressed and snapping photos: look!

Here's the Temple pre-being full of naked men and spectators!


This is the "patio" area's second floor.

But the patio area was now jammed in tight with similarly naked men, and it took only a few minutes of being jammed together to make us dream of that cold pool of water we so foolishly hurried through before! After 40 minutes of feeling like we were at the front of a U2 concert, the waves of people pushing us to and fro, and watching out sweat evaporate and rise visibly to the second floor, they turned off all the lights and under a strobe of photographers flashes, everyone tried frantically to grab the 神木, basically many sticks like what you saw young boy carrying in the photo of "naked men" above. If your group secures one and makes it out of the temple grounds, you win a large sum of cash! But that alone would not entertain anyone, let alone GODS, so being an all-male festival, anyone still within the grounds is allowed to try and take the sticks from you by any means necessary! So this is what it looked like when the sticks were thrown out:

That's me in the red circle!

In the end, I never even SAW a stick, only swarms of people already fighting over them. So once things died down, I changed back into my normal clothing, said good night to the friends I had met there, and walked back to the bus with my Hiroshima crew, stopping to buy a few celebratory drinks for the long bus ride home. I got home at 3 AM with work the next day, so my head crashed hard onto my pillow and I slept blissfully unaware, that as awesome a week I had just experienced, the next week (this last week, as I type this) would be. I really want to tell you about that now, but I will save it til my next post...

Cruise Ships, Oysters, and Pro-Snowboarders

2011-02-27T15:36:00.008+09:00

Sunday, February 13th, was going to be your standard day working at a reception for a cruise ship.

I was not excited to wake up before 6:30 a.m.
I had to meet up with the Port Promotion Bureau folks and welcome the 1,200 British passengers off a 45,000 ton cruise ship called "Artemis" at 7:45, in a suit. Since I took the last week off to go to Hokkaido, I was too exhausted Saturday to go to the Snowboard World Cup in Hiroshima I had been anxiously anticipating, and spent the day sleeping and doing laundry instead. This meant that Sunday morning, after donning my suit, I rode my bicycle to the International Center (which was still closed), and let myself in to the dark and lonely office to print out the speeches I'd be giving at the welcome ceremony that afternoon.

I managed to catch a street car from there to the port, on time, and say good morning. It had been almost a year since the last time I had gone there for a job like this, but I have done it so many times that I was very relaxed, almost to the point of being nonplussed. All of my co-workers (from various different government divisions) were all first-timers though, and so between changing money and helping directions into town and the occasional computer problem (there were a few PCs set up with the ever-coveted internet access), there was a whole lot to do in the A.M. so we got to know one another and shared small talk as tour buses shuttled the passengers to and fro by the dozens.

When lunchtime came, I left the information center thinking I'd grab a convenience store bento, and to my surprise a full fledged oyster festival had been set up next to the pier while I was inside. I went over to take some photos and check for interesting yatai (food stall) treats.

As I started to walk away I was greeted by who else, but Morikawa-san, my supervisor at the kencho, and her husband whom in two and a half years of working together I had still never met. Not only that, her sister and sister's husband where also there! They came to grill some fresh oysters for lunch and invited me to join them, their treat! We had a great time, talking, admiring the enormous cruise ship berthed behind us, and grilling and eating Hiroshima's famed oysters, along with scallops, turban shells, and some fried rice. I felt bad about being treated to all this great food so I ran back to the food stalls and picked up a pack of strawberries to share for dessert. Then I said my farewell and went back to the information center.

Morikawa-san's sister and her husband

Turban Shells (サザエ) look awful, it's true, but they are good!

What a great set-up, no?

Scallops (ホタテ)

After a couple more hours helping out passengers, it was time to gather everyone who was going on board for the welcome ceremony. We lined up at the security desk at the base of the gangway and i translated while everyone traded their I.D.s for passes to get on-board. There were also 10 young women from the Hiroshima municipal firefighter's band with us who would be performing for the passengers at the ceremony, but apparently everyone EXCEPT security knew about this, and we were severely delayed getting on board. By the time everyone was in the performance room, set up, and ready to go, we were half an hour behind, which was terrible because we also had to be OFF the ship in time for them to begin their departure prep for their next leg to Korea.

"Okay, we'll just cut the Japanese MC"... said THE JAPANESE MC. He's a laid back dude, I had done this with many times the previous year and he always joked that I should do it myself. This time though, he wasn't joking. So right then and there, I had to grab a mic, pretending like we had planned for this all along, and set in front of a standing-room-only theater of about 500 passengers, and MC the entire thing, based off the script I had prepared that morning as a translation of what he was meant to have said in Japanese first. In terms of the words coming out of my mouth, this was not much different, I just didn't have to wait for him to say it in Japanese, but the reality of the situation was I was no longer standing off to one side speaking calmly into a mic, but stood front and center and engage the crowd. And may I just say: *Nailed it!*

This is the only photo I had time to take, because I was busy MCing!

Beautiful, right?

After the band finished performing the ceremony was over and we all got off the ship and waved goodbye. An awesome end to a day's work, I thought...but it didn't end there.


Baked mac&cheese = Heaven

I decided to treat myself to dinner at my regular bar, Southern Cross, and as I ate from their menu (baked macaroni and cheese and a BLT) I got a call from Warren, a friend I hadn't seen for awhile, who basically said to wait up, and he'd join me for a couple drinks and discuss our mutual, recently non-existent love lives. As we did this, a crowd of about 14 of the whitest most obviously European looking people you'd ever imagine seeing, poured in with one Japanese family. The bar had been pretty quiet until then, but these guys were there to party, and as calls of "Prost!" rose through the air, I had to ask them, "What brings you to Hiroshima?" in my horrid, rusty German.

"We were part of yesterdays tournament" said the girl who turned out to be Marion Kreiner - Austrian Vancouver Winter Olympics bronze medalist. What?!? Wait... no... I thought, and as the reality of the situation sunk in around me... "So she's (pointing to the only young Japanese woman in the room) Takeuchi-san??" I asked slowly. "Yeah, Tomokaaaa"Marion called and the next thing I knew I was chatting with ANOTHER Olympic medalist and the spokeswoman for the event I had missed the day before, and of course, getting our picture taken!

Warren, Tomoka, and her uncle, a long-time resident of Hiroshima and cool dude.

I had the next day off (thank god) so i stuck around for a few more hours, drinking and chatting with all of them, including Swiss snowboarding Gold medalist and all-around nice guy Simon Schoch, and got all of them to sign a post card from the Artemis which I then mailed (in an envelope, duh) to my brother. It was truly a day AND night to remember.

Everything you need to know about Doris Günther

Hokkaido Part 2: AKA Some Crazy Japan Shit You've Never Heard of Of!

2011-02-26T16:43:00.003+09:00

Ever heard of Moxibustion? I HADN'T!

I went in to the doctor's with my fucked up foot hoping for a massage, MAYBE some acupuncture (which as you know I got!) and somehow or another the doctor and I started chatting about it. I think he seemed impressed at my complete readiness to let him stab me with needles and he said "So you're familiar with はり and きゅう?" Hari - literally "needles" is how Japanese refers to acupuncture. I guess it seems self-evident that you'd need to be accurate when stabbing yourself so they didn't feel the need to dress up the term? Who knows, but I was in my zone and my Japanese listening skills were peaked so when he said kyuu I thought "Scanning databases. . .kyuu not detected!" so I asked "What's kyuu"? The doctor, Dr. Hosokawa, was very patient without being condescending (a rare trait when Japanese people speak to me - they either accept I speak fluently and flip out or ignore me when i ask what a word I don't know means, or immediately act like I am a 6 year-old Japanese child and cease any adult level conversation - but not him!), "Kyuu is where we burn dried grass on you pressure points to relieve muscle tension."
"Really?", I asked in mild disbelief and genuine interest.
"Oh yes, it's been a tradition healing method in Japan for over a thousand years." he answered.
"I've only ever tried acupuncture in Japan and wrote a blog about it for my friends to read, but we still have it in the U.S. I've NEVER heard of burning people..." and he nodded and watched me pull out my cell phone to consult my JPN-ENG dictionary (yes it came standard on my phone) while he prepared my needles.

Acupuncture Reeeeemiiiiiix!

"'Moxibustion'. Huh, there it is, ever heard that?" I asked. He hadn't. "Oh well" I said thinking that was the end of it. He stuck my with about 6 needles, hooked them to leads and left me to nap for about 20 minutes while a machine electrically pulsed massaging waves through my foot. When he came back and removed them, we continued talking while he gave my foot a rub down.
"So you do O-Kyuu (the "O" is an "honorific" in Japanese), here?"
"No it's too smokey, so some people would complain, and we'd have to pay more for our building's fire insurance"
"Oh I see," I said, but did he detect some disappointment? The next thing i knew he vanished and returned a minute later with a box of small spit-ball shaped balls of - you guessed it - dried grass! "See, these are what they look like", he explained, "You can burn them like this or roll them tighter so they burn hotter". "Oh, but you have them here even though you don't offer it?" i asked and that was all it took to push him over the edge. Clearly the guy had a subtle sadistic undertone and had been itching to burn someone with these, because he told me to sit up and he would show me how it works (He wasn't asking either, his determination was clear, and I was in full New-Japan-Adventure mode so I smiled and asked if I could snap pics on my cell phone! In the end the pics didn't come out that great, but he explained, as he demonstrated:

First you burn a small amount on the nearest pressure point of the affected area, and pinch it out before it burns down to the skin. Then you set another wad on top of the smoldered one and let this one burn a little lower before pinching it out. You repeat this three or four times and then finally, you let one burn all the way into your tiny bird's nest of grass and yes, by golly it fuckin BURNS!

Before (lines are from taping)

After (actually...DURING!)

He sat there contentedly and offered to do it once more. Naturally, I accepted and as he calmly lit my foot on fire he talked more about moxibustion. He told me that he was giving me the real deal, and that it would leave me with a small blister on my skin, but, and I quote "You won't care about that". Oh? Luckily he was talking to the right person. I didn't care!
"Really, you can do it yourself", he said.
"To yourself? How do you know where the pressure points are?"
"Doesn't matter", he answered nonchalantly. "Anywhere that hurts is fair game"
"And people still do this?"
"Old people do it a lot, some young people do it, but they use store bought kits"
"There are store bought kits?!?"
"Yeah, they are called sen-nen kyuu (千年灸) and you can buy them at any drug store. You should try it out when you go home to Hiroshima. They have different heats you can choose from. The hotter the more therapeutic, but even the weaker ones feel nice."
"I will! Sen-nen kyuu right? Like..."
"Like 1000-years kyuu, yeah, just ask at the store. The clerk will probably be surprised someone looking like you is asking!" and we both laughed.

I thanked him and went on my way. I ended up going back the next day, but he was much busier, gave me the acupuncture only, and we talked about soup-curry. (SOUP-CURRY! SO GOOD!)
But when I came home, I remembered to buy the sen-nen kyuu.
The lady at the shop wasn't too openly surprised by my inquiry, but complemented my Japanese and urged me to try the second weakest one before going straight to buying the hottest one. Looking back, I regret listening to her. The 2nd weakest one was still advertised as being "normal" but it only really felt good when I tried it on my neck. I still intend to go back, maybe tell her "I told you so", and buy the strong stuff, which the chart suggests, is infused with garlic, so maybe I'll be protected from vampires too!

So here's how Sennenkyuu work: they are a little tube of the same grass, but affixed to a tiny cushion with a hole in the middle that supposedly channels the heat done onto the precise area you want, and an adhesive bottom, so you remove the paper from the bottom, light the tip of the tube (the same way as incense), and then stick it on whatever hurts! This kit cost 840 yen (10 USD) and came with a TON. Each one takes about 4 minutes to burn out, then you're supposed to leave it for another minute. The instructions included some very cutely animated warnings not to put too many on yourself at one time, but I think it's mainly because they are on fire and can burn other things if you brush against something during your five minute session. Best just to stay still and focus on letting the healing heat in to your muscles.


Sennenkyuu, try them anywhere!

Hokkaido Snow Festival AKA Ryan is a great host.

2011-02-15T17:47:00.002+09:00

Okay, I have one hour to blog the world to you! Then I have to get back to finishing my correspondence course! ん。

First off, THANK YOU to everyone who participated in my first ever POLL! There will be more. The results are in and surprise surprise: NO ONE wants me to write short fiction :P That's fine, I just thought I'd throw it out there, I didn't have any ideas anyway. What I WILL be writing about is....

CRAZY JAPAN SHIT YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF...probably.

First I have a two stories that will lead into that, so I will write them in chronological order.

Then, in true blog format, they will be arranged in "Most Recent" to "Oldest" order and you'll end up reading it all Tarentino style anyway. OH WELL!
So story #1 of 2 that leads into Crazy Shit You've Never Heard Of starts ...now:

Yeah... That's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Click for full screen!

Last week I went to the Hokkaido Snow Festival in Sapporo, not the beer, but the city the beer is named for. As it turns out, Sapporo is famous for a lot of great food: Scallops, Crab, Miso Ramen, anything dairy related (Hokkaido is Japan's number one source for dairy products, so everything from butter to ice cream is fresher and more delicious there), and my new love: "Soup Curry". More on that in a bit.

Not cold for Hokkaido, PLENTY cold for me!

So I arrived at the airport and ran from the plane where a baby two rows behind me had been wailing nonstop for the last 30 minutes (I cannot stress how much I hate the sound of crying children, but I guess no one *likes* it), and quickly found my way to the bus which took me all the way to my friend Ryan's house.
He was at work, but left his apartment open for me, and I went in, got settled, and played with his cats. After a nap I tried to figure out his shower, but it was impossible. I should have taken a photo, because it was basically a gas-powered hot water heater complete with pilot-light lighter built INSIDE the shower. In stead of blowing his house and myself top smithereens, I used some body spray and wandered around his neighborhood, ducking into the first ramen joint I found for lunch.


The portion was huge, but this was clearly not the gourmet Miso Ramen I was looking for...

Me and Hattchan

I went back to the house and played with Ryan's cats more, eventually getting up the nerve to turn on his intimidatingly huge gas heater and taking a nap with the kitties in the living room. Why so home bound? I was also getting over a a bad stomach-flu and had messed my foot up playing Ultimate frisbee the Sunday before, so walking hurt, I had zero energy, and I wanted to take it easy so I would get well enough to enjoy my trip, but surprisingly (or not), despite all of this, I was quite happy and enjoying just being on vacation and having the OPTION to take it slow.

OH! looking at this photo, I realize that I am skipping the story of renewing my passport in Osaka the day before, which was a story in itself, but I guess that can wait until I get my passport back.

So that evening Ryan came home, we caught up on each other's lives since we hadn't seen each other in person since we MET at Tokyo Orientation for new JETs a year and a half before, played some Tekken 5, then went upstairs to his neighbor's for a small laid back Nabe (hot-pot) dinner party. For all my pains and ailments, this was a PERFECT first day.

Day 2, I woke up feeling MUCH better! Ryan got off work and took me to his favorite Indian restaurant. Why Indian food? Some connection to Hokkaido? No, because Indian food is fucking delicious. 'Nuff said!

These are what the streets looked like outside downtown.

Ryan went back to work I walked around downtown Sapporo. My goal was to visit the Ainu Museum. The Ainu, for those who don't know were an indigenous people to northern Japan who have all but been wiped out by the modern "Japanese" people, so in many ways their history is similar to America and our native tribes. Along the way, I visited this amazing park where their Prefectural office and their historic "Old Prefectural Office" is. You might not care about this, but since I work every day at an old dilapidated Prefectural office, it was interesting, and the old building was super cool and reminded me of "Old Main" at the U of A, but with a frozen lake and an adorable, giant, Japanese-style snowman STRAIGHT out of Mario 64! Check it out:

Panorama WIN!

Afterward I wandered around trying to find the Ainu Museum. I KNEW I was close, but for some reason all roads kept leading me back to the great, big, CLOSED, botanical garden. Eventually I started asking strangers on the street until I got the answer I feared: The museum was INSIDE the botanical garden, and therefore closed for the winter. Damn. After three-plus hours walking around my foot was killing me as well. That evening I knew I would meet up with Ryan and his girlfriend and their friends, so I ducked into a promising looking sports doctor's office and wound up getting electro-massage acupuncture! (If that sounds like some crazy Japan shit you've never heard of, read my older blog about it!)

I love this pic cuz it looks like he's DJing my foot :P

Feeling MUCH better ALL OVER, and with my foot taped up, I met up with everyone, we went to an izakaya for dinner and drinks, and afterword starting getting into the snow festival area, specifically, the ICE SCULPTURES! I will just show you this one, but there were SO MANY amazing ones and just the sheer size of each one and how many of them there were, all in the same place was very impressive!

Day three I met up with some friends from Hiroshima after finally going to a famous Miso Ramen restaurant for lunch:

Yeah, THAT's the good stuff. けやき

We walked all over the main snow festival area, got lots of great photos and saw tons of snow sculptures!

This was just one small section...

We had a great couple hours hanging out and looking at all the incredible designs, but my foot was once again killing me, so we parted ways and I went back for another round of acupuncture. It was there I found out about some crazy Japan shit I had never heard of, but that will be a story for another time (Mwuhuhahahaha!)...

So I invited all my friends to meet me afterward for dinner at a Soup Curry (Calyi?) restaurant. Everyone bailed and Ryan said "What do you wanna do?"
"EAT SOUP CURRY!" was my response and it was the best decision I made that day!

After a snowball filled walk, we were ready, but I had no idea what glory was about to ensue...

I couldn't know the treat I was in store for, but Ryan clearly knew he was granting a wish I was too naive to dare dream. Soup Curry is a delicious soup broth fill a mountain of delicious ingredients and Indian curry spices. I have no idea if such a thing exists in India, but this should be served EVERYWHERE (same goes for Doner Kebab...) Ryan got the broccoli and Maitake mushrooms, which were as succulent as Fillet Mignon.

Behold....

Isn't it glorious? This was recommended to me by both Ryan and his S.African ALT neighbors, so I had to order the "Crispy chicken". It included a quail egg, pumpkin, eggplant, potato, bell pepper, carrot and gobo (burdock) root. I was in heaven.
After that we THOUGHT we'd meet my friends in town for drinks so we headed downtown. Turns out, no one has even STARTED eating dinner (at 9P.M.) so Ryan and I go to the bar to drink while we wait. Not to whine, but everyone flaked pretty hardcore on us, and only one person bothered to apologize, but i guess they were all in vacation mode, but so was I, and Ryan and I made the best of our time at this cool game and entertainment-themed bar before going back home.

As luck had it, we chose the exact right moment to go home, because we ran into four of Ryan's friends on the train and ended up going to karaoke until 3am! Basically, this trip was a series of unfortunate disasters (sick, maimed, locked out of a museum, and deserted) that led to great things making all of the bad shit mean nothing.

We spent the next morning sleeping off that night and headed back into town to enjoy the remaining bits of the Snow Festival I hadn't seen already. We had some delicious "hot cherry beer", German flavored almonds, more food, and laughed at people slipping and tripping on the ice.

Yeah...wait, what?

All in all and incredible journey right? But Hokkaido had one last surprise for me. As I waited for my plane to arrive, who should i see getting OFF the same plane but NINJA from Die Antwoord!!!
I talk about this guy so much, seeing him made me think of that book/movie "The Secret", like maybe I had attracted him to Japan. He smiled and said "Hey" and that was about all I could ask for since he was in the flow of people going toward the baggage claim on the other side of security. Seeing a rapper you like in the airport is just about the coolest way to end a trip. I guess I would have like to be sitting next to him on a flight, but I'd also constantly wonder if I was just bothering him, so this was perfect. If you don't know Ninja, watch this, and watch out for my next blog, where I meet more random famous people and really DO wonder if it's alright to schmooze with them so long! Until next time,
Ziegevergewaltiger!

Rated G for the Masses

2011-02-03T17:19:00.001+09:00

Here is a preview (two months early!) of the article I just wrote for the Hiroshima International Center's quarterly newsletter. That's right! I'm leakin' ME! Because the publication is made using our tax yennies, it has to be tame, but I still mean everything I wrote, even if it comes off as sappy. Enjoy!

I LOVE EXCHANGE 国際交流最高！－ 1月末行われた雪生活体験の楽しい一日について

By Greg Beck

Working at the Hiroshima International Center for the three years has truly been a blessing. As the resident English translator it can be hard. With a lot of last minute translation requests, long hours, and a constantly changing schedule it is impossible to commit to anything in my “free time”, because my free time is different every week! But, would I trade my experience for a “normal” Monday – Friday 9am to 5pm job? NO!

This photo won't be in the article, but apparently some Chinese people are equally clueless about what they wear!

Old dudes chillin' with hot sake

Most recently, I had the honor of working at the Life in the Snow Experience event for my third consecutive year. Even though I always have a wonderful time working at every exchange event, this was quite possibly the best event I have ever experienced! Here is what happened:

After driving two hours into the snowy north of Mizokuchi, located in Kita-hiroshima Town, we arrived at the Miwa-higashi Culture Center with participants from all over the world chatting excitedly in at least eight different languages. Outside more than one meter of beautiful, pure snow, had fallen on a hill with big, black inter-tubes, waiting to be used as sleds. After the opening ceremony inside, we split into two groups. A quarter of the participants went to the kitchen to make dishes from their home countries to share at lunch. Everyone else went outside to play in the snow. Also outside, some of the senior citizens had set up around the same rusty wood stove they do every year, heating sake in freshly cut, hollowed-out bamboo, and pouring the hot sake for anyone nearby into more fresh-cut, bamboo cups. This year however, they had outdone themselves, passing out fresh-stewed wild boar ribs for everyone to snack on in the hours before lunch.

That's one of my bosses with sake and wild boar ribs

Our participants from 15 countries went wild playing in the snow, and sliding down the hill. This year an quiet old gentleman had made his own sled out of skis, and everyone had a turn on it. “Can two people sit on it?” asked two girls, “Yes, two people is best”, he said sitting down and beckoning the closest one to ride with him, completely oblivious to the thought they may have wanted to go together!

Seriously...HILARIOUS!

Time passed quickly and at noon we all went inside for lunch and some amazing performances. The spread of Japanese food was amazing, with Indian curry, Chinese shrimp in chili sauce, Vietnamese fried spring rolls, and New Zealand no-bake cheesecake mix in among the dishes.


As you can see, the locals did NOT ask for my help translating these (Kabocha = Pumpkin)

While we all ate, I took several breaks to translate in between performances. After watching a traditional, Japanese, artistic dance, a Chinese participant played the Hulusi (a traditional flute), two, young, Korean ladies sang and danced, everyone did a Japanese folk dance, followed by a Scottish country dance, and for a finale, the local Kagura group performed an incredible play about a demon spider!

Left to Right - Japan, Korea, China

I fucking LOVE Kagura! Also, possibly the best-timed photo I've ever taken!

All day I kept pausing and thinking to myself, “I am so lucky”, and “This is my job? Amazing!” Everyone did a wonderful job of teaching each other about their cultures. Not just foreigner-to-Japanese, but every one learned something about the different nations represented that day. I know people sometimes fear the unfamiliar, but this job has taught me that nothing is more fun than sharing and learning about different cultures.

Later Skaters!

My Lovely Friend Daikyu

2011-02-02T17:28:00.001+09:00

Okay, daikyu is not a person, it is Japanese - 代休 - for "substitute leave".
Although I may rant and ramble sometimes on how busy my weeks can get, and sometimes I DO work 14 days straight. Every hour I am scheduled to work beyond my normally scheduled 40-hour work week, I get substitute leave. I have to use this daikyu within 4 weeks of getting it, so I can't save it up and take a month off, but I also can't let myself burn out for too long before it forces me to "use it or lose it".

Yes, it's true.

In the last 2 weeks, I have worked the equivalent of almost 3 full days of work when I was supposed to be at home playing video games or on a mountain snowboarding. But let's be honest here, some times when I work on a "day off" it takes place at an event where I get to participate, eat, sometimes drink, and MC/flex my interpretation chops in English and Japanese; I love that, and on top of it all, I get daikyu.


Taken "at work" last Sunday

So what am I doing with this substitute leave? I am going to HOKKAIDO!
Well, to be specific, I am taking a week off work, and only using one day and 2 hours worth of actual, paid leave for the following three reasons:
1)I need to go to Osaka to renew my passport.
2)There are DIRT cheap airline tickets from Kobe (a quick train from Osaka), with direct service to Sapporo, the largest city in Hokkaido (and YOU thought it was just a random name for BEER!).
3)When I get back, Hiroshima is hosting the first annual "World Snowboarding Competition in Hiroshima", so I will probably have a lot to blog about when I get back.

Yeah...that's not gonna cut it anymore.

Hope you enjoy the blogs to come, and don't forget to vote on my poll (top-right).
Kthxbye!

The Quickening

2011-01-28T17:23:00.003+09:00

It may not be THIS dramatic, but I am definitely much busier than prior years.
Although this is my LAST year on JET, month by month I've slowly expanded the range of responsibilities my bosses entrust me with, and with that comes the joy of being over-worked. It really is exhausting to run around helping some many different groups, but my feeling of achievement and overall sense that I am gaining valuable work experience makes it incredibly rewarding.

This week was no exception. My days off this week are Monday and Saturday, and by that I mean I worked last Saturday AND Sunday, translating, helping people, and standard mundane work at the Hiroshima International Center (by now I can just write HIC and you'll get it, right?!?). Monday being my first day off in eight days meant it was a quarter-past-laundry-time. I washed hung, and put away three loads, and consequently, have a fourth load that still needs putting away! I also cleaned my kitchen and bathroom sinks, washed dishes, vacuumed, and emptied two weeks worth of garbage! Whew! Not much of a day off? WRONG! I woke up at 11:30! That alone makes having a day off worth it to me. I hate waking up before nine, and I think I always will. I also went jogging and watched a couple movies, so it wasn't all chores!

These are what I jog in! <3

Tuesday and Wednesday i was swamped with written translations at both offices, and I was even asked to compose, not translate, a cover letter from my boss to the secretary for a Former S.African President! Heavy! (for regular readers this would be the same former president I shared a cruise through Hiroshima Bay with!)

Vice-Governor Jono and the Anna University delegation

Yesterday i showed 8 University professors from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India around the Peace Park and Miyajima, and today I took notes on the conversation between Australian Osaka Consul General Rees and Hiroshima Governor Yuzaki! DOUBLE whew! But I am all done now and tomorrow being my day off I will... SNOWBOARD!
Much love!
Until next time.

5 days in Shiga

2011-01-22T14:13:00.001+09:00

This past week I spent four nights, five days at a training camp in Shiga Prefecture, on the shore of Japan's largest lake, Biwako in Karasaki. I took this photo (click to enlarge) on Monday, and as you can see it was snowing and below-freezing that day. The training camp, called JIAM is on the middle-left above the tree line, and for some reason the middle school directly across the street had "YES WE CAN!" written on it.

This was not my first time here though. In fact, 13 months prior I had a similar stay for a translation and interpretation camp as part of a six-month correspondence course I took. This time I am studying Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy, but the format is the same.

Day one was the standard check-in, opening ceremony and lectures, followed by a welcome dinner, but unlike last year's camp of about 200 students, this course had only 60 students, so we shared out welcome dinner with a group of Japanese civil servants who, like us, arrived that day from all across Japan to attend a two-day course as part of their own English correspondence studies. It was fun and interesting to chat with people both, Japanese and foreign, from all parts of Japan.

The next three days we were divided into five classes of nine or ten students and each prepared and presented our own mock Japanese lessons to the other members. Our teacher, Nagasaki Sensei, was a very interesting woman who used to teach Japanese in Kenya, and gave us lots of sharp and insightful advice. I ended up going last in our group, and even though I had the benefit of the nine people who presented before me and saw their mistakes, part of me thought teaching Japanese would be no harder than when I taught English, but it was incredibly more difficult! I am very forgetful and much more improvisational, so trying to stick to a textbook and lesson plan proved to be awkward, but the experience was definitely interesting.

Oh, that's right. I rocked my Vibrams everyday!

But wait, there's more.
After we finished, we needed to create a presentation to give to other classes about what we learned from our experience, and what to remember when preparing a lesson. Two girls, Shannon and Halley, came up with an idea to do an Alice in Wonderland themed skit. I wanted to be the Cheshire Cat, but they made me the Caterpillar. Oh well. So we prepared for that until around 6pm and then I went to Kyoto City and had dinner with my buddy Sebastian (who btw, put my mom and me up for the night and made us Canadian breakfast when she came to Japan), which was great. The next morning our class met early and rehearsed some more (we had to go first!) but we nailed it and everyone seemed to like it. There were a lot of other good performances that day as well.

We had our closing ceremony after that and I took the train to Kyoto with Baek (my Korean brother-from-another-mother-country), and had lunch with Caleb (another kindred CIR) and after a couple rounds on the electric store massage chairs, grabbed a shinkansen home.
GOOD TIMES! I don't know if I will ever actually teach Japanese, but now I have a slight advantage over other people, not to mention it was great practice for my own Japanese and provided me with many useful resources if I do.

Now I am home in Hiroshima, but I have to work today and Sunday, so my one day off (Monday) I will be at home doing laundry all day!

Real quick, since I know my description was vague and weak on content:

Here's what I did well in my lesson:
I engaged the students directly and asked them to listen to my questions and answers all in Japanese (didn't use any English), and discussed topics the class would be interested in.
I got through review, and moved into explaining the new grammar points and lesson goals quickly, using colored markers to emphasize new words and structures.
I used to pair work and calling on students to drill and confirm they understood the new content.

Here's what I did poorly:
I made lots of small mistakes such as giving instructions using Japanese that was too difficult.
I was a little nervous and messed up the order, forgot to cover, or repeated unnecessarily certain portions of the content.
I gave two or three examples in class where my Japanese was just plain incorrect.
I didn't have enough time at the end of my lesson to let students be creative with the new grammar, which was the main point I was hoping to use so they would leave the lesson feeling satisfied.

Humanity, Struggle, and the Fallacy of Peace?

2011-01-14T17:24:00.002+09:00

When I started this blog seven months ago, I was already quietly starting to question whether "World Peace" is impossible, or even an unreasonable, ideal.

Back in my high school days I read this comic called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac:

This specific issue dealt with the concept of heaven, and in the authors imagination, heaven was a place without conflict, and free from want, which meant everyone sat around, completely still, and utterly content. At the time I did not think critically about society, but was getting deeply interested in religion and the content it espouses. If you were free from sadness, I thought, would joy even exist in its absence? Would you be moved from pure bliss to sing God's praises as so many paintings and stories of angels suggest, or would you, freed from all desire, just... sit there? I decided I do not wish to be free of desire. I want motivation to move, to act, to improve my situation and surroundings. After life ends, I may be faced with choosing between this world or contented perfection, but I doubt it, and I will put that aside for the rest of this conversation. But still, I think of this comic often, because now as I ponder the living world, I have to conclude that, my blog title still holding: If life were easy, it would be sooo boring!

I will not entertain the concept that you cannot improve your situation without putting someone else at a disadvantage. Most such modern philosophy quickly devolves into hyperbole-rich, hypothetical, meaningless pontification. What I do look to for the big-"T"-Truth, is the natural world, especially animals.

From the biological viewpoint, if humans had no new challenges, we would cease to evolve right? My logic for this comes from crocodiles. Basically the most successful dinosaur ever. It's a giant lizard, that swims, walks, and kills, and does it all with a smile. They have always lived in the same place, had plenty of food available to them, and reproduced unchallenged. So even after hundreds of millenniums passed, they stayed the same. I know that as a human, I will not do or see much human evolution in my lifetime (indeed, sometimes it seems like I can see the opposite!), but the thought of humans staying the same in physical and mental limitations and ability for another million years is a depressing one.

It's not too late. To whip it. Whip it good.

I thought about this, on a very personal scale, for years. Challenge, goals, mile posts, and even set-backs can all be good things for learning and growing. Then about three years ago, I moved to just outside the Peace Park in Hiroshima City, formerly Ground Zero for the first atomic bombing on an actual target, and began my current job, including lots of reading and translating regarding that subject.

I want to make something crystal clear before continuing: I am absolutely, and unabashedly against the very existence of nuclear weapons, their proliferation, and the absurd thought that by having them, you are any safer. Living here, learning about every aspect of atomic weapons, from scientific creation and application, to resulting devastation and lasting turmoil; and above all meeting and working with actual atomic bomb survivors, has taught me beyond a shadow of a doubt that no space in humanity exists for ANY weapon with such lasting and wide spread repercussions.

One thing I never hear anyone say as a reason for why we should abolish nuclear weapons: human conflicts don't last long enough to justify their use. Every last soul in country A and country B could hate each others' guts, and feel it justified in their hatred, but 56 years later, where are the first two foreign countries this American visits, the first international friends I make, and the best time of my life experienced? Germany and Japan. The "Krauts" and "Nips" that Popeye cartoons stereotyped in prime, racist fashion during the war. Even in the '80s I remember watching these cartoons repeated on television, although I didn't understand fully what I was watching. Despite Hiroshima proving to be more resilient in its recovery than any scientists estimated, it is still not fair to your own offspring to inflict such lasting damage on a people, since decades later when you are dead and gone, the children who survived your atrocities are now having to cope with being around your children, who also had absolutely zero say in the matter, and just want to get along in peace.

But WMDs aside, is it natural to wage war? "Huh! Good god!" Is it really good for "absolutely nothin!"? Obviously not; human evolution, technological development, and history, have come from fighting a series of wars. The first tools, fire, and shelter, can be thought of as developments from war with our environment for to survive. Castles, jets, satellites, and and many advances in medicine came out of necessity from being at war with other countries. Even in the business world, we call competition that leads to lower prices, "Price Wars".

But back to nature. Plenty of examples of war exist in nature. Chimpanzees, and dolphins are thought to be some of the closest to humans in terms of intelligence. Perhaps that is why dolphins will play with and even save humans they find in the ocean, the same way we coddle and care for other species which we find cute. Yet that same pod of dolphins may willfully go scouting and attack other clans of dolphins. Recently, videos of Japanese bees and wasps waging war against each other have become viral videos on YouTube and you can see there and on National Geographic videos about ants, that even very low-intelligence, hive-minded insects wage war.

I am not condoning war, but my current working philosophy is that war is at least natural. Possibly at the core of the heavy losses and devastation to life, nature, and humanity that have accompanied wars over the last century, is our own foolish pride and attempts, through complicated treaties, embargoes, and alliances, to avoid small wars between specific groups. Instead we strain both sides and threaten their sovereignty for merely acting in the best interests of their people. We always refer to small waring regions as "unstable", but what if they are unstable before fighting breaks out, and war is their way of stabilizing?

A microcosm of our current predicament can be seen if we look at the history of North American Plains Indians. For centuries many had a tradition of counting coup. Despite constant tribal wars, casualties were low, because prestige, or making your enemy look like a fool, was prized higher than killing. The introduction of deadlier weapons from European settlers escalated the scale of tribal wars, and because of a gun's obvious advantage the Plains Indians began using them and conflict resolution went from making the enemy look bad, to outright kill-or-be-killed.

Some may argue that the progression of technology is to blame. Now that guns and nuclear weapons exist, there is "no going back". Again, I disagree. I don't see any need to go backwards technologically, but most of society has to change their unrealistic expectation that there is never a need for violence. Physical violence may be brutal and animal, but to deny ourselves that part of our evolution is denying we too are animals. If you look at the proportionate strength of wild animals to modern man, we are a pretty pathetic lot. This was probably not the case before, but physically, each new generation seems less able to perform manual labor, and mentally less able to express their problems, resolve them, and move on.

Ultimately, I believe the only way to fix society's problem with war and conflict in general, requires a mental shift, and that starts with how we ourselves think and what lessons we pass on to the next generation. Religious holy war-waging lunatics have the advantage, since their dogma also includes a doctrine to have as many children as possible, but if they are forced to interact with sounder, more well-rounded children in their schools and playgrounds, maybe the notion that "it's okay to fight through something" will return to society, along with something much closer to actual peace than what we have today.

Not a whole lot to speak of in my personal life, so I will rant next about Japan's English education and American political shortcomings next. It will hopefully be a little more stimulating than how that just sounded though :P

In the meantime, leave a comment and let me know what you think. Am I totally off my rocker, or does this make sense?

Love, Peace, and War!
greg

Nagano, etc. etc.

2011-01-08T17:47:00.003+09:00

Happy New Year everybody. It's the year of the Rabbit and you know what that means? No, really, do you know? I don't. But I like rabbits.

I spent my winter holiday in Kobe and Nagano. The night before I left for Kobe, I had to use all my cash to cover a year end party I organized because they didn't take credit cards, but luckily for me, my buddy Tim was going with me and had the cash to cover my bus ticket, because it left before the ATMs "opened". That's right. 24-hour atms don't work for Japanese banks. Remember that.

Tim playing with his food. Yeah, the restaurant had cotton candy!

Anyway, we took the 4 hour bus to Kobe, which was actually fun with Tim there to chat with, and when we got to Kobe we met up with some friends and grabbed lunch.

Tim took this! Thank you, Tim. ...Thim.

In Kobe I met with like 5 old friends from my study abroad days, which is always amazing since there were 40 of us in total so that's practically a reunion!

My friend Masa who owns a Hawaiian restaurant in Kobe called Oluolu was SO NICE to invite me and Kui (visiting from Hawaii) to his home for a nabe (hotpot) party complete with fresh bought seafood from Okayama!


Me with my left-handed chopsticks

Then I took off straight to Nagano. The trains from Nagoya to Hakuba (specifically Kamishiro, where I stayed) took FOREVER but the view was incredible the whole way.

I met up with my buddy Micah, who also lives in Hiroshima and got settled in to our lodge Tabi-tabi (a play on words, cuz "tabi" means journey and "tabitabi" means repeatedly).

The lodge itself was really awesome and run by a young Japanese guy and his Canadian wife, who were both avid snowboarders. When New Year's Eve came they busted out all these crazy costumes and we all played dress-up. Such innocent, random fun! (Jesus Freak and the dude on the bottom right are the couple that run the place, bottom-middle are a couple from Netherlands, top-middle are a couple, Yellow from England, and Blue from Australia, and Carrot-Bear-Santa is Micah)

You guys know you can click on these pics to see them bigger right?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The morning after I got there the wife, Jesus Freak (her name is Angela, but i LOVE that shirt) drove Micah and I to Happone, the 1998 Winter Olympic resort, for a full day of snowboarding in the craziest conditions of my life! Micah, whose been doing it more than twice as long as me, also remarked that he had never been in as much deep, heavy powder. It was very hard for me to adjust, but eventually I got to the point where I was able to move around and enjoy it properly. We also found this sweet spot with about a 5 foot drop which Micah attacked and I tried timidly, but twice.

By the end of the day I was exhausted and actually took the next day off to relax and recuperate for boarding another full day at Goryuu (five dragons) with Micah, Warren, Emiko and their friend from Gunma, Takki.

It was insanely cold that afternoon and a wind started blowing that made them shut down a couple lifts and slow down the rest to a crawl. We parted ways to have dinner and get changed, planning to meet back up for the New Year's Eve countdown and fireworks, but the fireworks were canceled due to the wind, Taki's car got stuck in the snow, and we ended up meeting at 12:10 1/1/11. But we took it back to their lodge and had a low key party of potato chips and local wine.

Coming home on the Shinkansen (bullet train), one of my co-workers sat down next to me on the train! How improbable is that! He sat down right next to me, and neither of us even noticed for about 5 minutes! Not only were we both on vacation outside Hiroshima, he wasn't even on his way back! He got off at the next stop to bring some New Year's decorations to his parents' house! You gotta love Japan for those kind of coincidences, which seem to happen much more frequently than in the states.

Anyway, I took the next two days very slowly. Cleaned my apartment, a week's worth of laundry (which already needs doing again), and watched some movies. (I highly recommend Summer Wars, which is coming out in America soon, if not already). Great family movie, like Spirited Away, but at the same time, completely different.

Also, just to warn you, my next post is going to be long, rambly, and have nothing to do with my life per-say, but I want to write out some philosophical stuff I've been mulling for the last few months! Feel free to leave comments! (I've written some other stuff in the past I'm very proud of too, so if you haven't yet and you're bored, take a look at my older posts).

Resolute

2011-01-08T16:34:00.000+09:00

My New Year's Resolutions:
-find a new home (country)
-find a new job
-visit at least 3 new countries
-start studying German again
-continue to work out/シェップアップ my 上半身 (in the words of Jack Black "rock-hard abs, washboard-style!")
-get my shoulder done (tattoo)
-break 200 at bowling
-be myself more often
-start a comic strip
-make a stand-up comedy routine
-stop laughing at my own jokes
-cut done on on saying え～と～ and laughing nervously after saying something in Japanese that isn't funny.
-try other less than legal/taboo things I can't write here
-eat more animals
-learn a new skill or 5
-stop telling other people what to do
-let other people be wrong/make their own mistakes

One helluva great week!

2010-12-27T14:29:00.000+09:00

Ok, so I wanted to fill with awesome pictures illustrating just how amazing last week was, but I am a busy lad and on the road (currently in an internet cafe in Kobe with some friends) without my camera, so my words will have to suffice.

Last Sunday:
I woke up at 7 am after working 12 straight days and what do I do to relax? Grab my snowborad and go to my friend Kazu's to throw a layer of wax on, and then it was off to Mizuho with 7 other friends! This was my first time on real snow this season and although it may be obvious, I have to say it was SO MUCH better than the artificial crap a couple weeks before. On the mountain, I kept running into people I knew and going on different runs I waited 9 long months to see again. This time, with my new board, bindings, and gear properly adjusted, I was tearing it up! I worked on my jumps mostly, 180s - front and backside, ollies, board grabs, and spinning on the tail of my board. It has gotten much easier now that I lighter, better equipment and more confidence landing switch stance (the opposite foot forward than normal).

Great time, but it wasn't over! I went home, took a much needed nap and then rode my bike out to the movie theater to see Tron: Legacy. I have heard a lot of bad things from people in the states, and I gotta say, they have no idea what they're talking about! That movie was amazing! Obviously the special effects and the movie score, done entirely by the techno duo Daft Punk, in Digital 3D and sound were incredible, but the structure of the movie itself was spot on. The story is both a remake, and at the same time a continuation of the original Tron from the 80s, and the parallels between the real world, and The Grid, as well as recurring themes and lines, made it very fun and interesting. GO SEE IT. I think i will see it again tonight. Seriously.

Monday, I did NOTHING! Remember how I worked 12 days straight before snowboarding? A day of watching movies and relaxing at home was just what the doctor ordered.

Tuesday I went to work, had a productive day with lots of "thank you" emails from people I worked with last week, such as the American Consulate in Osaka-Kobe, and that night I got a huge care package with all my favorite candy and food from the states, MUCH needed bars of my favorite deodorant from my mom, and a nice new tie as a Christmas present from my brother James.

The timing was impecible because the next morning I packed that tie with my suit and went to Okayama to get ready for my good friend Darren's wedding! But first I went to the ISOLATION TANK in Okayama City! This was my 6th time in an isolation tank, but my first time at this one; I LOVED IT! The staff were all beautiful and friendly, the tank was even bigger than what I'm used to in Tokyo, and you could choose to have relaxing sounds playing while you're in the Egyptian-themed Day-Spa-esque room. Afterward I met up with my friend and fellow CIR John for some drinks and a walk around the city. We met a bunch of ALTs at a popular bar called Pinball, and I went back to John's and got plenty of rest for the next (Darren's) big day.

Thursday, John walked me to the hotel where Darren and Tomomi were getting married, and it was a lovely ceremony (Pics on my fb). The food was great, I met the rest of Darren and Tomomi's friends and family, and hung out with a couple afterward before going home to Hiroshima.

Friday I got another present in the mail! This time it was the Vibram FiveFingers shoes I had asked for! Iresisted the urge to wear them that day, because I knew I would be out walking around a lot and shopping for the Hiroshima International Center's Christmas Day Year-end Party, which I was in charge of organizing.

Saturday was the day of the big party. First, after our end-of-the-year cleaning of the center, we went to a Bowling Alley for our 2nd Annual competition. Everything went smoothly and although I didn't win, I played well by my standards, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Then it was on to the dinner party were we ate, drank, played games, and passed out prizes. Again, everything was perfect and that makes my day doubly, because not only did I have a great time too, it reflected well on my ability to plan and execute events.

That was my week! Gotta go now! Love you all (probably)! bye!

Photos from Ninoshima

2010-12-10T17:20:00.001+09:00

Photo Journal of My Trip to Ninoshima

By Greg Beck

This December I took a trip with some co-workers to Ninoshima, a small island between Miyajima and Etajima.

To get to Ninoshima, we took a 380 yen ferry from Ujina Port, in Hiroshima City. The ferry ride was comfortable and only took 25 minutes to get to the port. Once on Ninoshima, two vans picked us up and drove us to our ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn). We put our things down in our rooms upstairs, and got ready for dinner.

Dinner was incredible, and started out with boat-shaped trays of sashimi. There were so many different kinds, but my favorites were the lobster, stonefish, and sea urchin! Normally I don’t like sea urchin because it tastes like swallowing sea-water, but this was fresh, not salty, and even a little sweet! The food kept coming and everything was so good! Small islands like this are known for their fresh, delicious seafood with good reason. This is one of my favorite dishes of the evening, a fish called “Mebaru”.

After dinner we enjoyed their big baths and through an open window with a nighttime view of the mainland, I saw my first shooting star in years! Then everyone met back up in our large tatami room for talking, drinking, and games, but after a full day of work and a big meal, we couldn’t stay up too late. The next morning some of us decided to walk halfway around the island (only a 5km walk). At the time I agreed to go, I had no idea that would turn out to be the best part of Ninoshima!

Waking up before the sun rises, or even before 10 a.m., has got to be one of my least favorite activities. But once I was dressed and outside walking, and taking in the scenery of Ninoshima, I felt lucky just to be awake. I also got the urge to take lots of photos, but I’ll just share these ones with you.

Write...riiiight.

2010-12-03T16:27:00.000+09:00

Okay, I am super busy, but I needed to change gears to take a break without losing my energy or creativity. So I am blogging really quickly to let you know,　

1. I am about to be 2/3rds done with my Japanese Pedagogy Correspondence Course (finishing up the packet now to send off).

2. Wikileaks is awesome. Lieberman sucks.

3. I have decided to write a non-fiction book about my experience in Japan someday, but I might write it in Japanese because I want the title to be 「あなたは日本人です」 but I guess I could write it in English ("You are Japanese").

4. Tonight I am going with my kencho co-workers to some small island. It's like a team-building exercise, except with no other purpose but to get out of the city, get drunk, and eat delicious sashimi (raw fish). Tomorrow morning I have to wake up early though, catch a ferry, and come to work at the International Center again. Oh well.

5. Sunday is SNOWBOARDING! It will be the first time for the season, first time in my new jacket and pants, and on my new board and bindings! Super excited, even though it is still a little warm here and there will only be one narrow run open with artificial snow, but HEY! I takes what I can gets!

Back to work.
Love.

Update on my Apartment

2010-11-23T00:57:00.000+09:00

Just a quick update for people:

I am back living in my apartment again, and it's better than ever!
I have a new ceiling, new lamp, and new tatami mats! (Love that fresh tatami smell!)

The whole ordeal was relatively quick and painless so I am extra grateful to my landlord. I did lose a few photos (of the printed out variety), but extremely lucky none of my electronics got fried! If my hard disk drive was ruined I'd have lost 5 years of photos! Time to make a DVD backup of them methinks!

Just got home from watching the newest Harry Potter film btw. It was good, not great, but I probably would have been thoroughly impressed if I had never read the books.

Oh, and yesterday I played in an all-day Ultimate Frisbee tournament which was great fun. Now I have sore shoulders and crazy allergies from running around in dead grass, but it was perfect weather for it and I have the day off to recover tomorrow (Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day!).

Until next time!

When It Rains, It Pours...inside my apartment???

2010-11-18T17:37:00.000+09:00

Saturday I had the chance to spend the day with Nobel Peace Laureates, and even got to translate for a bunch of VIPs in the evening on their Cruise around Hiroshima Bay.
When I got home, the right-hand side of my apartment was SOAKED!
That's because my landlord's home the floor above mine had a pipe break in the space between my bedroom and his kitchen!

I realized this too late at night to do anything about it though, so I took my futon to a friend's hose and went to sleep. The next morning the landlord helped me move my fridge to the empty aparment next door and gave me a key to it. This is because, among all the other electronics, the water was dripping into my bedroom light and almost caused an electrical fire! So I shut off the circuit breaker and pulled out a tarp over my tatami until the problem could be solved.

Luckily for me, I had a three day trip planned to Tokyo for work so when i got home and checked it out last night, things look like the wont take much more time to fix! until then though, I have no internet at home, so I am writing this (after hours) from work.
Bye for now!
Greg

Reaction to "America's Losing Decade"

2010-11-04T18:09:00.001+09:00

This link was given to me on a forum during a discussion on American and Japanese economies.
In my reply I unintentionally ended up critiquing his blog post and restating my underlying economic beliefs (without getting into things like economic schools of thought and fiat currencies).
By all means please read his post and share your thoughts on my reaction below.

http://savingtheworldeconomy.blogspot.com/2010/11/americas-losing-decade.html?spref=tw

It was a comparison. I am hesitant to say "good comparison" because he failed to actually explain why his examples led him to his conclusions.
If I am right in interpreting his point, it is that Japan (and subsequently America) has shifted from a production based economy to a consumer economy, then I agree completely. But he seems to almost purposely leave out what he thinks his "new market structure" would look. Maybe because he is promoting his market synergy company he hopes someone will read that and PAY him for the answers, but his data and examples still support my argument:

1)Japan is structurally more sound than the U.S. because the individuals save more (even 0 is more than a negative number) and they are still comparably more, although not by much recently, production-based than consumption-based.

2)The "answer/fix" is to raise interest rates. In the short term (read: 1,2 years), banks will stop loaning, people and companies will go bankrupt, and more people will lose their jobs; yes.
But in the long run (read: 2-10 years) fiscally sound companies, entrepreneurs, and investors with excess capital will buy up those assets, stimulating an expansion of productive jobs, resetting of the over-inflated housing market, innovation, and an economic environment that encourages savings and investment.

Greg and the River

2010-10-06T17:15:00.001+09:00

This last weekend our group of JET programmers (Myself, ALTs, and Japanese friends) set out to Otoyo, Kochi, on Shikoku (one of Japan's 4 main islands), for a white-water rafting experience!
Click these pics to enlarge:

There were 27 of us altogether (I think) and half met to board our chartered bus at Hiroshima Station. Since we hired a driver, everyone was able to relax and drink some beers as we hurtled toward Fukuyama to pick up the rest of our bunch.

In Fukuyama, we had a restroom break, bought some more supplies, loaded everyone else on and rolled out for our hotel. Maybe our old, curmudgeon driver was trying to get us off his bus, or maybe we always drove like a maniac, but we got to hotel before we knew it and it was a beautiful, high-class ryokan. Even though it was now around 10 pm, three attendants in penguin suits waited to greet us and show us to our rooms which the lovely Myia, who was our trip leader, was kind enough to plan down to who would stay with who.

My room had a great time, but decided we wanted to keep it going a little longer, so we joined forces with some more friends to go searching the sleepy town for a convenience store. On the way we saw some dodgy-looking yakuza-type guys who seemed to be wearing some kind of festival clothing probably left over from the morning, but we steered clear of them and kept going until we eventually found our way. Our group of 7 got back to our hotel room safely and after a few drinks, songs, and stories, finally hit the hay.

The next morning I got up super early to use the hotel's bath house, before joining everyone for a huge, traditional, Japanese breakfast, then it was back on the bus for nap on the way to Happy Raft, the company in charge of guiding us down the Yoshino River that day.

Immediately I could tell the guides were gonna be a lot of fun. Most of them were from New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, and they wasted no time in giving us shit the way you treat an old friend. Everyone had crazy nicknames on the piece of tape on our helmets that was supposed to be used to I.D. people (mine said "Dick"), but others, like the girls on my raft, included "Shorty", "Bluey", and "M". Most of us put on wet suits provided by Happy Raft, and it took being in the river for about 5 minutes before I was overwhelmed with happiness at my decision to "bee one of the hive". The water wasn't ice cold, but the suit was most definitely a life saver.

After hearing our safety talk 3 times and splitting up into teams, we got on our boat for one last bit of training in following our guides commands. Finally, as our guide Adam, who introduced himself first by his nickname "Schmiegel", tightened down our life jackets one-by-one, he shoved, or asked us - depending on his whim - to jump in the water. From there we had to learn how to climb, or be lifted back in. Then we finally were ready to go!

Our guide Adam was really friendly and open. Before we knew it it seemed like we had all shared our life stories, and he even started teaching us the ins and outs of working for Happy Raft as a guide (in a nutshell: when you fuck up, you have to buy the other guides beer =P). He is only 24, but already had many years experience in both Japan and New Zealand. From the start it was obvious he knew what he was doing, but as the day went on and rafts got stuck and people flew overboard, our raft remained almost completely unscathed, and it was definitely thanks to him.

Adam kept mixing up the seating order so everyone got to try being up front through some rapids. We even sat backwards twice and watched him take charge, face screwed up in concentration. Whenever we hit a patch of calm river it was acrobatic diving time. He started it off by doing a running full gainer off the nose of the boat, and we all tried our own variations. (Micah also pulled off the gainer, which was pretty crazy). This went on for the entirety of the day and after watching just a couple guides sneak up and ambush the other guides, it quickly turned into all out pirate battles where anyone could be surprise attacked by another boat!

Just before lunch we pulled up at some rock cliffs and almost everyone climbed up and jumped down. One climb was about 10 meters up, but I was plenty satisfied with my 5 meter fall. Then we rounded the bend, pulled over on the other side of the river, and climbed up a cliff to where fresh baked bagel sandwich lunches awaited us!

We were almost 2/3rds of the way done with our 10k adventure done the river, and taking a break to get warm, dry, and fed was a double-edged sword. I felt both immensely better and incredibly tired, but I knew that once we got back on the boat and got our adrenaline pumping, everything would be all good, and sure enough, it only got better:

So that was our Saturday! We got dried off and changed back at their base, they gave us some tea and cake, and we had a considerably quieter bus trip home, but fun nonetheless.

Touch Rugby Tourny

2010-10-05T17:46:00.000+09:00

So picking up where I left off:

I felt great getting off work and caught a streetcar to the station where 6 of our team members were meeting to drive to Naruto, a township of Tokushima City on Shikoku. There were four Japanese players, (two in front, two in back), John the coach, and myself. Our driver, a lead-foot after my own heart, got us to our hotel an hour ahead of schedule, despite starting a half-hour late, and we went to a delicious, little izakaya (Japanese restaurant for drinking, with easy-to-share entrees). Since it was still only September 25th, I did not partake in the drinking part, but the food and conversation were both excellent. We left to stop off at a convenient store, pick up more snacks and drinks, and meet up with 6 more of our team, just arriving at the hotel. I had booked us a tiny and deserted, old ryokan (Japanese style lodge with tatami mats and futon), so we laughed and talked late into the night and took many pictures.

The next morning everyone was in surprising good shape. I guess they had not drank as much as it seemed, or maybe my coveting brain was simply torturing me that night. We dressed out in the morning, grabbed breakfast on the way, and showed up early to warm up. Although the weather had been cool and overcast all week, it chose this, one morning to be blazing hot and sunny, and even as I squeezed out my sunscreen I knew, I would burn.

Our A.M. preliminary matches were excellent. Of the three teams we faced we won them all, and one team gave us a great challenge, which honestly does make winning feel more satisfying. We stretched some more, ate some lunch around 12:30, and booted back up to warm up our muscles to match my burning skin.

Our next match was against the other field's 2nd place team, and they were good. They gave us a great run for our money, but the inexperienced ref calling the first half was so noticeably bad at calling the game, that a national level player who happened to be visiting to watch the tournament offered to step in and ref the last half of the game. The pace picked up, everyone got into it and gave it our all. Our two teams traded the lead 3 times and at the end of it all, we were tied 5 to 5. Now, in touch rugby, when a woman scores a try (goal), they receive 2 points. Therefor we were told that the winner would be determined by number of total tries, rather than a sudden death. This meant that we lost with our 4 tries to their 5 all male tries. And we played the losing team from the other pitch for third place. This definitely killed our morale for a while, but the last game was equally fun and we got our picture taken with the team we tied (who went on to win the tournament) after the closing ceremony.

Oh! Also, because we won that game, our team still managed to take home the third place, with the same or better win-record than 2nd place (depending on how you count our 4th game). All in all, the whole experience was one of the best we've had as a team and consistently fun. Probably for the first time ever at a tournament, there were no injuries and we had plenty of people for substitutions, which meant we kept up our level of play, even though our last game.

We rock. Go Ship-Heads!

Acupuncture WORKS.

2010-10-05T16:27:00.002+09:00

Acupuncture has existed for thousands of years and yet for the uninitiated the question remains: Do little needles stabbing your pressure points have any medical benefits? I was one of these people, until recently. Stretching, massage, Japanese Icy-Hot (called "Saronpasu", but basically no different than tiger balm), and ibuprofen, all failed to relieve my worn out knees and legs, and after two months of pain I finally decided to give acupuncture a shot.

I went to my local sekkotsu-in, a Japanese "bone-setter", which normally specializes in massage therapy for sports injuries, fatigue, and keeping the elderly fit. That said, there are many kinds of sekkotsu-in. Some are more dedicated to relaxation and chronic fatigue. These are not covered by health insurance (at least in my neighborhood), but my shop was authorized to accept health insurance if for the purpose of health-related injuries. Since I first experienced the pain after a day of mountain-climbing, I was approved and paid 1000 yen for my first massage, and 500 yen for each massage after. However after the second massage in a week, my joints still ached so I asked how much acupuncture was, and (not expecting an affirmative) whether health insurance could be used as well. To my surprise, they said the cost of acupuncture is the same as a massage, but required a consent form, signed by a general practitioner. This usually runs around 4000 yen, but I was desperate, and 5000 total for my first time still sounded cheaper than what I had heard of people paying for a single acupuncture session, so I agreed.

Flash forward to the fateful day and I am laying on my stomach, getting ready to be stabbed. "Can I take pictures?" I asked. "Sure" said the young therapist. He then offered to take them for me once he had finished inserting the needles. Great, I thought, and he got started. First he showed me one of the needles he would use and they were the same thickness as my leg hair. That helped me relax a little. He explained that in order to relieve the pressure on the tendons behind my knee caps.

Starting on my lower back, then my calves, and lastly my thighs, a dozen needles were slowly inserted into me. Although there was no piercing pain like getting a shot or a cut, there was a duller, deep ache as the needle reached the nerve that he was aiming for. Once he had finished I was in for a real shock, of the electrical current variety. Attaching leads to each of the thick heads of each needle, the therapist turned up the juice until I felt slightly tingly. I immediately imagined the scene from the Matrix when Neo is covered from head to foot in hundreds of similar needles to revive his atrophied muscles, but the reference was lost on the doc and he put a towel over me, closed the curtain and left me to relax for about twenty minutes.

When the gently pulsating currents wound down, the machine they were attached to played a little jingle and my therapist walked back and, with a cotton swab of alcohol, removed each needle, quickly and painlessly. He wiped each spot, but there was never any blood. Afterward I checked and some areas were pink like a minor mosquito bite, but that was it. He then massaged the same spots for another 20 minutes, helped me stretch out, and recommended I go to an onsen (hot spring) or take a long soak in a hot bath. So I went home and did just that, and the next morning I felt like a completely new man. I walked to work, did my thing there, walked home, and got packed for a touch rugby tournament the next day where I ran around on a grass pitch all day and my legs never once bothered me!
So, did it work? YES. Was it worth the money? YES. Did it hurt? NO! Why doesn't everyone do this? I have no idea. It really did help immensely. Obviously, I had been doing a lot of other things to aid in my recovery, including stretching daily, taking it easy, and getting massages at the same sekkotsu-in, but I have no doubt the acupuncture was the final push I needed to complete my recovery.

A Slightly Calmer Week:

2010-09-18T10:55:00.000+09:00

I may have mentioned previously, but I am not drinking alcohol this month. Just wanted to take a break.
I would have thought that would immediately kill my social life, but as you've seen from prior entries, I have been having a great time.

Last weekend I went back to Miyajima to camp on the same beach as before, but this time with my touch rugby team and we rented out a sweet cabin! The night I got there we jumped in the ocean and this specific beach has amazing blue bioluminescent plankton that only light up when disturbed. That means every time you wave your arm or leg through the water, little particles of glow-stick blue light up all around you, starting from your skin and sending a chain reaction out to the plankton around them. This has the effect of making you feel like a wizard. For the nerdier crowd, it is a lot like the kiss scene in the water from Final Fantasy 10, but I guess more people would understand if I said "It's like the planet/moon from Avatar."Of course, I was in the water the whole time so I don't have any pictures. Oh well, I got to live it and that was one of the best experiences of my life that I didn't even know I had been missing out on!

Back at work, I had to translate 4 pages of English into Japanese. Normally all of my translations are Japanese to English. This is easy because it is all about reading, comprehending, and repeating in my native language. But English to Japanese is much harder because, as we know from speaking our native tongue, there are a hundred ways to say the same thing, but in a foreign language, it is much harder to think of all those different ways, understand their meaning and context, and choose the most appropriate way. For example (this translation was about training teachers), "training" could be said as 訓練 (kunren), 育成 (ikusei), or 養成 (yousei), and by the end of 4 pages I had used each of them a hundred times. Luckily, mine was only the rough-draft portion so a native speaker then went over my chicken scratch and made it pretty.

Last night I mailed in the first of my 6 book correspondence course on teaching Japanese. Luckily I only had to mail in the five key problems from the lessons, because the book contained a month worth of work, but since I was so busy with my job, the first package sat un-opened on my desk until two weeks ago. I did plow through it all though and now I have a full month to properly take care of book 2. Between the course work and the Japanese translation at work, I have been writing (by hand) in Japanese much MUCH more than usual, and sure enough the more I do, the faster and better I get at writing kanji, such as the Chinese characters making up the three Japanese words in the previous paragraph. You would think that living here, typing and reading them constantly would make them easy to write, right? NOPE! At least, not for me! Reading kanji is easy after you've seen the character a few times, but writing a kanji that has more than 4 or 5 strokes in it is impossible for me unless I've looked it up and written it several times recently.

That's about it for now. Boring entry I guess. This weekend I am going to take it easy and next week I will be fleshing out my horror film script I mentioned before for the short-film festival.
love, peace, and chicken grease,
Greg

Greg Goes Guch

2010-09-10T18:18:00.001+09:00

Last weekend I took a local train to my neighboring prefecture Yamaguchi!

I was planning on visiting my buddy Steve and not much else, but it turned into an extremely awesome and eventful weekend!

So Friday after work I settled down for a 3 hour ride from Hiroshima City to Shin-Yamaguchi Station and read Book 1 of my Japanese Pedagogy correspondence course, which I get to take for free, thanks to my office and CLAIR, the people who organize the JET Programme. Needless to say, the subject of teaching Japanese makes for a slow read, so when I woke up, I was already across the prefectural border, and I went back to reading.

Steve picked me up and we decided on sushi for dinner, but not before finding a Mexican restaurant right by the station called "Amigo de Amigo". We tried to get a taco for the road, but they said they couldn't make them, so we went on to a cheap kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi joint that was INCREDIBLE. Everything there was so good. The salmon-miso was also awesome and Steve had two bowls. :P

The next morning we woke up and went to Tsunoshima, an island on the Sea of Japan, but the beach (which you had to pay to use!) had too many people to snorkel and too few people to enjoy we went back to the mainland side and snorkeled under the famous bridge to the island. This was my first experience snorkeling and I have to say, it was pretty amazing. This summer, finally, I have been really taking to the water, and loving everything about being the ocean. After exploring the private beach of the neighboring hotel and being confused for customers by the staff, we decided to book it before our cover was blown and we went to another beach with some small waves. I tried my hand at body surfing but mostly just ended up getting a lot of salt-water up my nose. It was still fun, but washing up from that I started to suspect I might be getting sick.

NO MATTER! we continued on to Hagi and our friend Shak's new place to play poker. Out of four people I came in second (second prize...nothing!), but went out on a pretty respectable hand. We then went to a bar called No Side to watch the S. Africa vs. Australia rugby match. Australia won at the last minute, much to the chagrin of our Saffer friend James, but the local color in the bar made it an interesting evening. James (probably thanks to his rainbow-esque S. Africa scarf he wore there) got hit on by some Japanese guy and two of Shak's former female students (meaning they weren't too likely old enough to be in a bar at 1 am) came in looking like Japanese trailer trash, but it all translated to a lot of laughs for us.

The next day Steve and I woke up late and drove back out to Hagi for a BBQ! James had bought a bunch of meat and some veg and Shak (i think) provided the grill. The BBQ was in a park by another beach, but when I woke that morning I knew for sure I had a cold, so I ended up not even setting foot on the sand. We DID however play cricket, touch rugby, throw a frisbee, and eat like kings.

To finish off the day, we went to an Onsen. This hot spring was especially nice and came with a hand-towel souvenir. It had tons of different pools, most of which were outdoors, to soak in and the sauna was the perfect temperature for me (89 degrees Celsius). Afterward, I felt great, and clean, but the next morning I woke up around 2 hours early, feeling like crap from what was obviously a full-blown head cold.

There was a redeeming aspect to this however. Some friends and I have been trying to come up with a plot for a horror film and in the time I laid there trying to sleep, i ended up imaging a great plot, so I hopped online, typed it up, and mailed it to the other players. Let's hope that becomes something worth blogging about later =D

Another Exercise in Amazing

2010-08-31T17:32:00.000+09:00

As promised, the continuation of my previous blog. That means this will appear on the top, but chronologically it's later.

Friday, August 27th
I worked the late shift at the International Center, 1-9 and the first awesome event of the day was when i wandered over to convenience store to buy something for dinner. I didn't know what to get until I saw this:

That's right. BECK Tonkotsu Ramen! You KNOW I had to get it!
Alright, so it isn't really "Beck" name brand, it was just a promotion for movie coming out this month in Japan called BECK, based on a great manga about some Japanese kids who want to form a rock band.
If you don't understand why the Tonkotsu Ramen part is significant, maybe scroll down and read my last entry?
It was good, and it smelled great, but ultimately, instant ramen is instant ramen and that means it met the threshold of it's design. Still I might try it another time.

Anyway, after dinner and finishing closing up the International center, I rode my bike home, got changed, and went out to Itto-Nyushin, a monthly event at a two-story club in Hiroshima City called Mugen (means: infinity). Perhaps this is a sign of how spoiled Hiroshima has made me, but when my friends who didn't go asked me how the event was I answered honestly "It was okay". Looking back, it was much more than ok. Not only was the club two stories, with DJs spinning on the first floor, live music and performances on the second floor, and people around the edges of the room getting tattooed; I didn't have to pay the 1000 yen (about $12) entry fee because my friend, and 2UP bar owner, Taka gave me a free invite ticket! He asked me to come early, and for the first half hour I was regretting that, because he was pretty much the only person I knew there and was constantly leaving to help out the workers, but then Andre came out and started fire twirling!

That and a drink got me feeling good and just then some Japanese friends showed up and great Japanese metal band took the stage and started rocking!

That plus a healthy mosh pit got the second floor heated up in a now-I'm-sweaty, literal way, so we checked out the first floor and the DJs were spinning some cool techno that changed later on in the evening to remixed reggae and later on, house. If you don't know what I mean, just think "techno" and that will suffice for imagination's sake. =P

Back upstairs the singing and dancing continued, more of my friends showed up, some really bad "artists" took the stage and we retreated back to the first floor. They ate curry, which for some reason was for sale in the lounge area of the club, and we kept on for another couple hours going back and forth between floors. At the end of the evening (or at least before I got too tired to stay out any more) I started chatting with one of the tattoo artists who turned out to be fluent in English from spending something like 8 of his 20 year career in NYC! He and his girl friend were really nice and after chatting over drinks for an hour or so we traded contact info, and vowed to meet again. So I made a cool new friend and, feeling satisfied, walked home. The friends who ate curry tried to get me to eat more ramen on the way home, but I managed to avoid eating straight before bed. They swear by how good the place they went was, but it wasn't tonkotsu. If it was... i probably couldn't have resisted.

Okay, so Saturday, August 28th:
I woke up late in the day and had a slow morning. Did some laundry, washed some dishes, went to the chiropractor, and dressed like a pirate. Yes, a pirate. Why? Because then I got on a train to Onomichi, and took the bus with about 10 other friends to the island of Innoshima for the Suigun Festival! This is usually translated by locals as the "Pirate Festival" but in reality there's nothing piratey about it, except boats, and old-old-fashioned rifles. The term suigun (pronounced sue-y-goon) refers to the pre-naval samurai in the area who rode boats, not horses. and protected the area. Not knowing this, some years before I ever went, some of the ALTs started a tradition of going dressed like a pirate, and I was happy to oblige.

We met up with another 15 or so JETs and watched the samurai fire their rifles at the ocean and lots of dance and traditional taiko groups came out to show off and entertain too. After eating some amazing steak from a food stall, and having an old guy thrust a mini-beer (half-sized can) in my hand, a Japanese friend of someone in our group came over and asked if 5 of us would like to volunteer to help carry torches on the boat to which I said "uhhh, HELL YEAH!" We sat on the boats with our kerosene soaked towels wrapped around long thick wooden rods, and when it was finally time, we rowed out into the ocean and lit them, circled around a few times, pulled up on the beach in the middle of the performance area, stormed the beach and then waited patiently while an old guy explained everyone should shout "Ay Ay OH!" I shouted "Arrrrr".

We ran back onto the boats, swam in a few more circles and returned to our starting point and extinguished our torches, and I for one felt pretty bad-ass.

The night continued on with a fireworks show, I brought my uke and played some tunes, and challenged and lost to Tom and Bob at our second annual shove match on the beach (it's a real game that is much less brutal than it sounds), and then it was time to get on the free shuttle buses back to the shore. Our groups split off into smaller splinter cells of people who live far away, or were tired, but I stayed with some of the Saijo group and we drank a round at a semi-American style bar and restaurant after giving up on finding somewhere to drink in Sajo's sleepy, subdued red-light district. I crashed with a few friends at my buddy T-bone's (okay, his name is Dave) and after drinking some white wine and drawing pictures of bugs (more fun than you might think), we fell asleep, air-con: on.

Sunday, August 29th:
We woke up late and walked through town back to the train station. After saying my goodbyes, I took the train to Karuga Beach where Simon and other friends were BBQing and swimming.
I know at this point you must be thinking, "Is Greg alright? やり過ぎじゃないか。” And sometimes I ask myself the same thing, but the reality is, I had a great time. I wasn't pushing myself, I didn't drink that much Friday night or Sunday, and I brought my sunscreen to the beach, got in a good workout swimming and splashing around, and spent the entire day Monday relaxing and doing chores at home. Taka, the same guy who got me in to the event Friday night, showed up as we were winding down and hung out for a bit, and I took this picture with him appreciating the view:

(Taka's the one dressed like an L.A. gangsta) =P
So, food, fun, fireworks, friends, and fucking beautiful views. Japan definitely rocks, and I'm extremely lucky to have some of these experiences, and even more glad that after 4 years living here, they haven't lost their ability to amaze and impress me.

When Japan is good, it's REEEEEALLY good!

2010-08-31T15:56:00.000+09:00

It's easy for me to get bogged down in news reports of political corruption and failed economic policies. As much as most people see me as a fun-loving, goofy, gregarious (not in a good way), fool, the reality is I have an extremely serious side that spends at least an hour or two everyday reading about global affairs and my opinion of the current situation is bleak; Quite bleak indeed.

That said, this month I wound down the arrival of Hiroshima's newest batch of about 45 new ALTs by getting wound up with them, and my "days off" were equally exhausting - the kind of exhausting where your head hits the pillow and you fall asleep mid-thought. Luckily for me, each night that thought was the same: "what an awesome weeken....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"!

Friday, August 13th:
I took the day off work, but woke up at 6am to pile in a van with Kazu, Mika, and Bacon (his real last name for those confused). We then drove non-stop to Fukuoka for another legendary RAMEN TOUR. Ramen in Japan in completely unrecognizable to the instant ramen college students live off. Without overstating things, it is one of the best, most indulgent, unique to each shop that sells it, dishes in existence.

Ramen is sold all over Japan at varying prices and qualities,
but there are more restaurants devoted to just ramen, than there are Starbucks in any given American city. Two prefectures, Fukuoka and Hokkaido, are reknown for having the best. Hokkaido is famous because they use their other famed products, butter (any dairy product from Hokkaido is considered superior though, really) and crab. Fukuoka, on the other hand, is famous for their Tonkotsu (lit. Pork Bone) broth that is fatty, bold, and delicious.

There are hundreds of Tonkotsu Ramen shops throughout Fukuoka Prefecture, so Kazu reads restaurant reviews, travel magazines, and online "rate this ramen" style reader based review sites and puts together his own personal tour. He also keeps a secret blog online where he gives his review in Japanese, but says it is top secret. I suspect he does this anonymously and wonder if he is something of an internet legend, but he is far too humble to admit it.

So we arrived just as the first few shops were opening for the day (It's not what you'd call a breakfast food) and not having had anything to eat, devoured our first bowl, said "thanks" and proceeded to the next shop. On the way there we decided that we would only eat half a bowl at each following restaurant in order to double the number of places we could try! By the end of the night we had been to 10 restaurants. That's 5 and a half bowls total for the day, but the next morning, we woke up and went to four more restaurants. The night before our friend Tamami came out to join us for round two.

Saturday, August 14th:
At the last of day 2's four restaurants, we all ordered a full bowl, and shared some gyoza too. We were full, but no one was tired of eating tonkotsu. That's how good it is. The five of climbed back in the van, and headed back to Hiroshima, but not home. We had a big night ahead. On the ride back, we watched Avatar on the DVD Navigation while nodding in and out of food comas. Once back in Hiroshima, we went straight to the port and grabbed a ferry to Miyajima for the annual fireworks competition. Like ramen, fireworks shows here are often a different animal entirely from what we know in the states. I wrote "competition" because several different firework companies actually bring their special fireworks and each take turns, so the result is several rounds of fireworks and finales that lasts around an hour! Having the luxury of being held on the Seto Inland Sea, this show included plenty of fireworks that are detonated at eye level, just above the surface of the ocean!

This year Kazu treated to something especially amazing when he invited us aboard his company's boat. The giant crane boat had at least a hundred people on board and there was free drinks and BBQ along with the show! This is the kind of thing I would imagine big Hollywood actors get to do, but never a regular Greg such as myself, yet there I was, and it was incredible.

Afterward, I said goodbye to my friends and hopped on a different boat going back to Miyajima where I walked to Tsutsumi-ga-Ura Beach to meet up with another group of friends camping there, but most everyone was tired and went to sleep not long after I arrived. I did still take a dip in the ocean, which had those luminescent plankton that sparkle when you splash around. Cool.

Sunday, August 15th:
The sun woke everyone up quite early, myself especially, and I took walk around and snapped some photos. It was weird to shoot in the early morning light, since I am usually asleep or half asleep on the way to work, but the deer were out grazing on a sports pitch, and turtle scuttled into the lake and everything was quite peaceful.

After everyone else had woken up and packed up their tents we went back to the beach and had a great morning swim. I played with Morgan's dog, who loved to play tag in the water, and took photos with everyone else.

After showering off went with some of the first years back to the mainland, showed them my favorite soft-serve place, and we took the street car back into town. Everyone was bushed, and after saying my goodbyes, I entered my apartment, pulled out my futon and slept for about 6 hours. Woke up, made dinner, and went back to sleep.

Believe it or not, that was only one of three amazing weekends this month, but I have blogged enough for one day. I will return with more soon...

Greg the Scrivner

2010-08-24T18:32:00.001+09:00

Here are most, not all, but most, of the essays I have written while in Japan so far. I have ideas for many more, but in the meantime this will have to hold you over till I get out some fresh word document paper :P
CLICK HERE for good (I HOPE) reads

Shrine in the Mind

2010-08-07T16:06:00.001+09:00

Last week I went into an isolation tank for an hour. This week, I went again.
What is an isolation tank?
Isolation tanks were invested by John Lilly, an American scientist who experimented heavily in the 1960's with altered states of mind. What he came up with, in his quest to isolate the mind from the body, is a light-proof, sound-proof, tank with about 8 inches of water made super-buoyant by magnesium salt. Both the water and the air are kept at around 93 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of your skin, and you float in this empty, weightless, silent darkness, alone with only your mind and the thought, "How long is an hour, really?"

I first heard about isolation tanks from stand-up comedian and UFC commentator Joe Rogan on his blog over a year ago. Apparently he is such a fan of them that not only did he get one for his home, when he moved, he got a newer, updated version and gave his old one away in a contest so that others could enjoy it. Since that time, I have continued to read his blogs and watch his pod casts and every time the subject came up I got more and more interested. He described it as being similar to doing hallucinogens, but without any drugs, side-effects, or hang-overs - a silent time for self-reflection insight. Recently he mentioned being able to search online for places all over the world where you could pay to use an isolation tank, and as soon as I heard that I hit up Google and sure enough, found one in Tokyo.

This was only four days before I was going to go to Tokyo to meet the new ALTs coming for Group A's Tokyo Orientation, and after dreaming of trying it out, price was no object. I just hoped I could get an appointment. Kazuo, the owner, got back to me immediately and said my first choice for my appointment time was fine. Awesome.

So three days later I was walking through Shirokane-Takanawa, near Meguro in Tokyo, looking for the tiny back street to his first floor apartment that he has converted into his, for lack of a better word, office. From the outside, it looked like your average, aging Japanese apartment, but inside, through the kitchen and into the waiting room, you soon start to notice this is no one's living space.

Kazuo is a very relaxed guy who gives off the vibe of a spiritual guru. He spoke to me in Japanese the entire time, but mentioned that in his nine years of doing this he has also had many foreigners visit, and has no problem communicating in English. As it was my first time, he gave me a verbal tutorial about what to expect, possible anxiety I might experience, and how to get over it and get back in the tank. The most interesting part of his talk was how some people's bodies will try to play tricks on them. The feeling of letting go you get from the tank, while ultimately relaxing and amazing, can be unnerving to some, he said, and their mind tries to blame it on the tank, convince them it is broken, and that they should get out. The reason for this, apparently, comes from being trained from when we are small, that everything in life is external - from our problems to our means of finding happiness, and that when we are put in an environment that isolates us from the external, our mind feels exposed and unable to project its problems elsewhere.

This all sounded very serious and heavy, and even someone like me, who thrives on new experiences and taking myself out of my comfort zone, started to wonder if I would experience any of these problems. I did not. In fact, walking back to the Metro line from his place, I wondered if I hadn't wasted my first hour being caught up in the novelty of such a uniquely new state of being. I will get back to what happened chronologically in a moment, but I want to say first that I had so much fun my first time, from the moment I stepped in, to showering off afterward, that the level of elation was euphoric. I felt so free and uninhibited. Looking at my picture of the tank, I'm sure some of you would think of claustrophobia, but it is exactly the opposite. Once you close the door to the tank, you instantly lose any and all perception of direction and boundaries.

So tutorial over, he took me into the room with the isolation tank for the first time. He had many Shinto bells and paraphernalia towels laid out ready on the tank, a toilet and shower. He showed me how the air and water temperature were monitored and maintained, and explained that speakers inside the tank would play music when my hour was up. He showed me the inside of the tank, how to open and close it, and then, most surprisingly, he started to discuss Shinto. Paraphrasing (and translating) he said 'I want you to think of the inside of this tank like a shrine. Shinto shrines are a place to reflect on yourself and are purified with what? Salt and water. This is no different. It is a place for meditation and to remove yourself from ego." He asked that before I got in the tank I used the toilet and showered off any sweat, smells, gel, anything that might distract me from the experience. He also asked that I draw an "X" across the four corners of the entrance into the tank to "seal" it. Finally, before any of that, he asked me to face a corner where I would listen to him use Shinto and Buddhist bells in order to align my brainwaves with a more meditative level. The whole thing felt like a religious ceremony, but it was brief and pleasant.

After that, he left the room and I did the other things I was instructed to before sliding into the tank and floating toward infinity. Inside the tank, I tried many different poses, trying to figure out which was the most comfortable. Ultimately, lying back with my fingers laced behind my head was the easiest to sustain for long periods, but most anyway I tried to stretch out, I was happy to find I had plenty of room to. Every so often my elbow, tow or head would bump up against the wall and with the most delicate of nudges, I would float away. Indeed, the first sensation I had was floating down a calm river. Despite hardly moving at all. Even my second time in the tank, when I was much more calm and relaxed, I could not help but marvel at the fact that after closing my eyes, then opening them, it still looked like my eyes were closed. And those patterns of faint light you sometimes see when you press your hands over your eyes, continue with them wide open.

Since both experiences I have talked to many people about how wonderful it was, and I wrote this because most people seemed genuinely interested in it. Most people want to know how it feels, but that is of course the hardest thing to put into words. I have described it as having just your mind, floating in a starless space, but that is not accurate, because your body is still there, under your control, and actually, one of the most interesting parts of the experience is hearing your breath and heartbeat from inside your own body. Most recently, I told a friend, it is like instantly falling asleep, but staying lucid the whole time. When the hour is up, as promised, some gentle bells thumped out a melody which got progressively louder to wake you in case you are asleep.

But best of all, I never felt bored or tired at any point, either time. I get bored easily too. I fall asleep on massage chairs, buses, trains, cars, boats, whatever, but this situation is so unique, and liberating, I think you would have to be immensely exhausted either physically or mentally in order to fall asleep and if that was the case, then sleep is what you need, but both my first and second hour went by smoothly and felt like some of the wisest investments I had ever made with my time.

After showering the salty water off and helping myself to his awesome citrus body wash and herbal shampoo and conditioner, I got dressed and joined him back in the waiting room for some cold mugi-cha and to discuss the experience and talk about life in general as well. He also took me to the second floor to try his Merkaba. Briefly, the Merkaba was a water bed and strobe light, combined with relaxing sounds and some scented oils or something, but basically, I fell asleep soon after lying down and woke up just before the half hour ended and the music (actually, sounds from the Amazon rain forest) stopped. I went back downstairs and Kazuo was talking with two other customers. One got in the tank and the other stayed to chat. He told me he had been coming for awhile and that day was about his 100th time in the tank. The older gentleman who had already gone to shower, they said, was a regular and came in almost every day!

With the tank all the way up in Tokyo, I won't have many chances to get there, but Kazuo also mentioned helping a psychiatric clinic a short walk from Okayama Station, in Okayama City, set up a newer, similar, but slightly different tank, and that it is available to the public on Saturdays. The name of the place is Hikari Clinic, and because he helped set up the tank, you can receive a member's discount there as well. This is great news, because membership is 10,000 yen. That may sound pricey, but after becoming a member, an hour in the isolation tank is only 4,200 yen. And both, I firmly believe, are wise investments.

Just as important as my experience in the isolation tank, was how I felt when I got out. I felt lighter, happier, and generally more carefree. I didn't feel like I learned any one profound thing about life either time, that I could share with you, because for me personally, I focused more on letting go and taking whatever came to me with open arms. Afterward, I felt more positive, and in fact, I still do. I can't wait for another hour in the tank, and I doubt three times will be "enough" either.

生まれ変わったか？！？

2010-06-19T00:46:00.000+09:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of new things and things I haven't in a long while!
For starters: STUDYING JAPANESE!
After much hemming and hawing, Simon and I have gotten around to drilling Japanese grammar.
I should really be embarrassed at the fact that I've all but lost the discipline to study by myself, but getting out Wednesday and tonight (Friday) and doing the damn thing, I'm amazed at both how fast the time flies and how much material we have gotten through.

I've also been doing sit-ups. At first only 50 a day, for a a few days, but then as it became a habit, I started doing them throughout the day, when I wake up, before bed, if I have a spare moment while my computer restarts or downloads something, etc. Now I've added 50 to 200 crunches on top of that initial number and I've been going strong for the past couple weeks. I know it wont get rid of my spare tire, but it is helping my posture and I swear I'm starting to see the first hints of definition. Washboard or bust!

Also, if we're being honest, the number of people who floss in any given area is much closer to World Cup scores than NBA finals. But I'm contributin'!. What was the genesis?!? Well, a couple weeks back, I had something stuck in my teeth. I searched for my floss, but it was nowhere to be found! Then I reorganized my room to compensate for my beautiful new computer and lo, my floss returned to me. Last year, I flossed all the time because I left it by the computer and used it while streaming the Daily Show. I'm happy to say both habits are back in full effect.

Lastly, I bought red wine yesterday. Me. Greg Beck. Okay, maybe nobody knows me well enough to find that strange, but I, on my own accord, bought a simple California red last night whilst shopping, had a glass before bed, and I am having a glass tonight as well. I dunno why the sudden change, but as long as I don't get a bunch of cats and start a knitting club, I think I'm still safe in my masculinity. Remember, I do sit-ups!

Open letter to my Mommy

2010-06-16T20:37:00.004+09:00

Hey mom!
I'm super genki as always.
No problems back here. I'm going to study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test tonight with my British buddy Simon.
That's awesome that James gets to see Laura in Germany. Just one more family member traveling to foreign countries without me ;)
It's funny, Kathy sent me an email about the same thing, on the same day as you. But I also sent her a thank you card for my birthday present so I guess it was just coincidence.

The new prime minister is....hmm, questionable. Time will tell if he's any good, but either way, I'm very proud that the leaders in this country pay attention to public opinion and step down when nobody likes them. In that respect America is closer to an African dictatorship than true democracy.

This month I also bought a new computer that is big and strong and does everything.
I also bought James his birthday present today. I know it's early, but I want him to get it this month while I still know his address. He can open it as soon as it gets there. I've addressed it so he'll know it's from me. Oh, and lastly, my friends Tim and Yuko got married and it is the first time I've been invited to participate in a wedding! It was super fun and we did a lot of traditional Japanese things, despite the style of the wedding being "Catholic". Very expensive, but an awesome time. You can see pictures here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2556037&id=10118973&l=04a21e0fbf

I'm going to post this letter on my blog too just cuz I haven't updated it in forever.

Bye for now!
love
greg

The Dregs of FY2009

2010-03-31T16:08:00.011+09:00

Today is the last year of the fiscal year here in Japan, and what an interesting week I've had. For starters, my previous entry "Eating Flipper" was published online at: and subsequently linked to by a bunch of Japan-related blogoshperes which I never even knew existed. the result is over 900 people have looked at my article in the 3 short days it has been online, and while plenty have people have offered their often ridiculous two cents, no one has said anything insulting to me (with the exception of one self-righteous troll) and many people commented just to say I'd written well! :D

I'm all over the internet apparently. the manager who organized our Mazda Ekiden team (see previous posts) also just sent me this link from the Mazda's homepage ! My picture is toward the bottom; I'm the white guy with the Abe-Lincoln-chinstrap. :p

Also, last week, I got to translate letters from the governor to none other than Barack Obama and Gordon Brown! I won't get into what they said, but it wasn't anything top-secret. Still cool though, yeah? My boss was really worried because of the high-level addressees, but after I finished my translation, we went over it together (he speaks some English) and he agreed it was solid, not that I had any doubts. ;]

There have been a few farewell parties for people in our division getting transferred, and a party for Mr. Kadoya who got married, and the best thing to happen ever was, for the after-party, we went to Round1 (a 9-storied amusement center) and played ping-pong, billiards, darts, and BATTING CAGES! Sadly I don't have any photos from the batting cages, but it was awesome and I had been in forever! Good, clean fun.

Yesterday and the day before we rearranged everything in my Ken-cho office, but to be honest, the hardest bit was done on Monday, on my day off, but last night was the construction of a new wall in our office , seriously, so this was some of the madness involved in preparing:

They're showing you where the new wall now stands.

Mr. Teraguchi (My supervisor for the last year) hurrying to finish his work.

Eating Flipper

2010-03-25T17:20:00.004+09:00

Last weekend I ate dolphin. Wait! Where are you going? Let me explain. I did not set out to eat dolphin. I went to an international exchange barbeque, held by my friend in Osaka. The participants came from Japan, America and Australia. We all brought food and drinks for each other, and learned how to play cricket. We fired up the grill and started throwing on what we brought, and one of the Australians said, “I have a bit of dolphin in the cooler if you want to try.”
Here is where I feel the pressure. I love trying new food and I have never said no to a challenge. I keep a list in my head of animals I have and have not yet eaten, and dolphin is one of things, like whales, that I KNOW I shouldn’t eat, but… maybe just once. So that is exactly what I did. I tried the steak part and the skin part, once raw, once grilled, each.
While I ate Flipper, I found out more. The Aussie who brought it said he loved the stuff, and always ate it raw with soy sauce. He bought it from Taiji, the very subject of the new film “The Cove”, which the (far-too-biased-to-really-be-called) documentary condemns for their annual killing of literally tens of thousands of dolphins. It is also the main capture spot for dolphins used in shows and aquariums worldwide. I had seen previews and wanted to see the movie, but I already knew the gist of it. Dolphins are intelligent, majestic animals that should never be caged or killed for food. I love, respect, and admire dolphins, but just like dogs or cats, if I find myself in a place where they are eaten normally, I’m going to try a little.

We all continued to discuss the subject and the man who brought it talked about how he, as a foreigner, couldn’t find it at the stores there, but if his Japanese wife went in alone and asked for it, they would bring it out from behind the counter; this sounds very diabolical, but given the threat protesters and demonstrators could pose to the businesses who sell it out of simple indifference, I can understand why they would be careful. Why are there no Japanese protesters causing problems in Taiji? That is a larger and better question for someone who wants to research the topic.
When I came home from Osaka, I immediately watched “The Cove”. But much like actually eating dolphin, the experience was unimpressive. Sure, the movie made a few good points about mercury levels, pollution, and the over-fishing of whales and dolphins, but this movie was less about the killing of dolphins, and more about how difficult and dangerous it was for the crew to get in to Taiji, and record the killing of dolphins. Their goals were admirable, what they exposed was deplorable, but the whole movie screamed of their own egos.
Ultimately, I do not feel bad about eating dolphin, because I was not actively pursuing it, I didn’t pay for it, and I didn’t create any new demand for it. I got to find out what it tastes like, and that was enough for me. The taste, by the way, was similar to liver but with the texture of beef. The skin, mostly fat, was obviously chewy, oily, and not very good. Now that I have crossed that line I can say from experience, it is not worth trying. But I also know that if you are like me, you want to make that decision for yourself. In contrast, I also tried crocodile that day. It was delicious, like sword fish, and came from an animal that is decidedly stupid, ugly, and disagreeable. So I’d like to conclude by saying, save a dolphin, eat a croc.

This is madness?

2010-03-18T15:41:00.002+09:00

THIS IS SPARTA! Oh wait, no. It's madness.
My office at the ken-cho erupted today after the announcement of the annual transfers. It's such a bizarre system. Every year, people who have worked in the same office for more than two or three years get transferred or changed to different duties. I guess it's good cross training and keeps everyone from getting too comfy and complacent, but you'd think the people who have been working for 20+ years would be used to the annual ritual. They are not.
My current supervisor is being moved to a new division, but luckily, like last year with him, my new supervisor is someone already in our office. We're also getting someone new who apparently is fluent in English and someone else who i know, but for some reason my boss says he's not allowed to announce (even quietly in my ear) who it is yet.
This year really is going crazy with change though. Even the office itself that I work in is changing! They are adding a new wall that will make where I currently sit part of the room next door! The door i sit by will also go to the other room, BUT the cool thing is, my group is being moved to the OTHER side of the newly-smaller office so I'll be right by the OTHER door which will become the ONLY door to my office. You follow?
This all happens April 1st btw. That's right; only two weeks for everyone who is being transferred out to finish their work for the fiscal year, clean out their desk and move to their new desk where someone else just did the same thing. The vibe in the air is similar to an anthill that's been kicked over. But I am addict for change, so I am looking forward to the havoc. Also, I get to have a second go at having a first-year supervisor. This means I won't have much help, but it also means I'll be able to make more independent decisions like this year and my supervisor will be more of someone who enables my direction rather than setting it for me. Yay for POWER! :P

Ahhh! My Legs!

2010-03-13T16:21:00.005+09:00

So last Sunday was the Mazda Ekiden (relay race). I may have mentioned before that our goal was do better than last year (67th place) and we DID it! it was cool clear day, but there was a bitter cold wind blowing in my face the whole way, but everyone of our 6 members said they were able to pass a few of the competition, bettering our position one leg at a time! The Mazda Ekiden is divided into two divisions, Community - like our team, and Company - for bragging rights around the Mazda plant I guess. Community is actually HARDER because lots of university track teams use the Ekiden as practice and devour the top 10 places or so. This year our score was 39th out of 160 teams though, meaning we got into the 75th percentile, and to cement that our overall score of 85th out of a total of a combined 338 teams!
After that, just like last year, the plan was to go eat at a yakiniku restaurant (like bbq'ing indoors and sitting down for those who don't know, it comes from Korea actually...) and we trudged over, exhausted, ready to eat! We sat down, order drinks that took forever to get there, and had a toast, and just started eating our first pieces of seasoned, thin sliced cow's tongue, when the waitress came to our table and announced, "There's a fire, we need everyone to leave. Please take your things with you and go"! Sure enough, the smoke intake at "table 2", as the servers kept saying, was blazing like a scene from Backdraft! They were doing every retarded thing to put it out (except use fire retardant), but they did put it out rather quickly. The manager then announced that they had to call the fire department anyway, so please leave, don't worry about the bill...which would be awesome if we had eaten a full meal, but we really only get enough to make us MORE HUNGRY! After checking about 4 more place and waking 40 minutes (after a race...) we did find a great place and it cost less than the first, and the service was very prompt, so it all worked out. Just you don't get the wrong impression, Yakiniku has been around a looong time and all the older Japanese guys I was with remarked that that had been the first time they'd seen ANY kind of restaurant fire, so it's not a common thing!
Since then, I've been running a couple times, and to touch rugby practice, so my legs feel like daggers, but hopefully they'll heal up big and strong :P
I went to the Oyster festival on Ondo and I also ran into one of my favorite teachers from my first year teaching, a P.E. teacher named Mr. Hirai. He was helping direct parking at a nearby elementary school, so we got to chat and catch up. Great times!

Frebruraryr

2010-02-27T14:53:00.005+09:00

This month was awesome, and painful, like a microcosm of life.
I decided, this being a short month and my gaining a few kilos over the winter, to take the month off alcohol. I don't know if that sounds like an amazing feat to you or note, but i do so enjoy drinking socially, that I for one was curious as to how hard it would be. The first test, Feb. 6th, my friends George and Jemma had a party to celebrate their getting married. The party was a mandatory 2500 yen for all-you-can-drink, and I drank two glasses of orange juice and some of the worst iced coffee of my life! But because I still had a blast and thanks to being there I got invited to play poker the following day with just the kiwis. Funny enough, I left that party early because I had already made plans for poker that night, too, at my friend Simon's house. I lost 3000 yen there, but if you subtract how much I'd usually spend on drinking while playing poker, I was guess it would have normally been a 4000 yen night.

The next day I woke up and went out to Hachihonmatsu (near/in Higashihiroshima) and played poker with those guys. It didn't even dawn on me until about 3 hours in that other than myself, everyone there was from New Zealand. I don't know if these specific Kiwis represent your average dude on the streets of NZ, but these guys know how to live. Lots of laughter, no one being overly serious or imposing, and humble. George ended up winning everything (it got to be a pretty big pot, too) but he didn't even say "I won" when the girls came back from their day out. I have yet to meet a Kiwi I didn't like.

The next weekend Sachi and I took 5 days off to see our friends in Fukuoka and then go sight-seeing around Kagoshima. We ate tons of great food, especially kurobuto, or black-pig pork, which is the Kobe-beef of "the other white meat". We also visited Sakurajima, home of one the most active volcanoes on Earth, constantly spewing ash, and Furusato Onsen, a Shinto shrine with pools of sea water heated by the volcano. On the way home we stayed the night with our friends in Fukuoka, ate Fukuoka's specialty, Tonkotsu ramen, for lunch and nabe for dinner while their two adorable little boys raised hell around us, and the next day stopped in Shimonoseki on the drive home for fugu-burgers, which is exactly what it sounds like. Delicious, poison blow-fish meat batter-fried and served in a bun with tartar sauce, and shredded cabbage. SO GOOD! Of course, all this great food meant my not-drinking only SLOWED my burgeoning gut. By the last night of the trip I weighed 69 kilos, up 3 from the beginning of the year!

That's why this month has also been all about getting back into jogging. I only managed to get out there 4 (I may go tomorrow, making it 5) times this month, but I've discovered that by tuning out I actually run much further than i thought before, so each time I've gone, I've jogged 4 miles, plus a 5 minute cool-down while I walk home and stretch. I really wanted to keep this up every day, but rain and bad health got in the way! Here's what happened:

Tuesday, my first day back from the Kagoshima trip, I got to go on board a 75,000 TON cruise ship making a round-the-world voyage, and interpret for the English Captain and Japanese government types. That was the biggest cruise ship to ever dock in Hiroshima Port and the first of several similar interpreting jobs for me this year, but next week's ship is less than half the size (although that's still massive). The weather had gotten unusually warm that week, and I mistakenly thought my suit jacket would be enough, but on the coast a super cold wind was blowing and that equaled over-exposure #1 for the day. When I got home I changed into warm-ish jogging clothes and went running in the freezing cold night - over-exposure #2. Then my buddy Kazu came over to give me a haircut. That was fun, but i sat in my cold bathtub wearing only my underclothes, and followed it up with a hot, hot shower. Three strikes, I'm out.

After the shower, I immediately broke a fever of 38.2 degrees (100.7F), and had violent chills where I thought my body was convulsing. Thank god I had my hot carpet on and I sandwiched myself between that and my futon, and after abuot a half hour, I felt well enuogh to crawl under my covers and go to bed. The next day I stayed home from work, went to the doctor, and had a blood and flu test. The flu test was negative, but the doctor told me, (and I think this translation captures the exact attitude and style in which he said it) "What else could it be?" Either way, the medication was both Tamiflu AND antibiotics, so whatever it was, it went away, but not before keeping me home from work, alone, for another 2 days. Again, this sucked, but I DID finally watch Slumdog Millionaire and I loved it! (Oh, everyone loved it? Okay.)
This week I managed to get back out there jogging, but by Thursday my legs were dead and last night it rained all day long. But I DID excercise! My buddy Dan came way out from his island to show me a 2nd floor, indoor skateboarding bowl/restaurant! It's called Fury Pool, and it's right by Diamond City. We spent the 500 yen to use it for an hour, and I must have ate shit about 5 or 6 times, meaning my right side hurts ALL OVER now, and I fucked up my wrist, but it was so worth it to get back on a board and dropping into bowls. What a rush! This year I plan to be back on my skate board MUCH MORE. Wish me life!

Ending my January right.

2010-02-02T15:45:00.007+09:00

I don't mean to make it sound like I only live on the weekend! I actually had a great Thursday night out after work with some co-workers who took me to a small restaurant that only charges 500 yen (roughly $5) for all you can drink soda, juice, tea, wines, beer, cocktails, whatever, for 90 minutes! Not only the drinks, but the food was quite cheap, and not bad. I don't know how or why it was so cheap, but I will be going there again sometime for sure! Work itself was a lot of written translations and the usual. I also do an "English lunch" every Wednesday with people at work who want to use what they know, but most are quite shy and need prompting/prodding. And Friday I went to an elementary school in Mihara for work. After giving them my standard lesson about American culture we ate lunch together, then some of the older members of the community came to help us pound mochi and play traditional Japanese games, like japanese spinning tops, gokokunarebi, a variation of Igo, kendama, and others. It was a fun day.

Saturday I worked, and at night played poker with my friends. I lost. heh heh. But the whole time we talked about goofy shit and enjoyed the highs and lows as the game progressed. I went around midnight because I had to work the next day too! Sunday I got up and rushed to work by 7:30am. From there, myself and some other members of the HIC, as well as volunteer staff, loaded onto a bus with 39 foreign residents of Hiroshima to Kita-hiroshima Town's district of Mizoguchi. Basically the boonies, but this was my second time going on the trip. The purpose was to show these foreigners, mostly from India, Indonesia, China, Brazil, and Mexico, what life is like in a region with heavy snowfall. Last year was waist-deep snow we made snowmen and inter-tubed downhill on. This year we had our big snowfall a few weeks early, so when we got there all that was left was the dirty, small patches left in the shade. "Oh no! What did you do??" you might fret, but fear not, the locals figured this out a few days in advance and whipped up some other traditional events, like...pounding mochi! Boring for me, since I had done just two days before, but good fun and a rare occasion for most people, Japanese included! There was Kagura as well, like last year, and I got to watch an Oni who made his way through the crowd to stage, stand right in front of me and reduce a 4 year-old Japanese boy to tears just by looming over him. I almost died laughing.
Don't forget this was for work. What work? I was translating constantly. Announcements before during and after, on the bus there and back, and speeches and explanations about the foreign and local food and cultures Japanese to English AND English to Japanese.

Best of all were the old men outside. The were there last year too, and only came inside for lunch. Despite the freezing cold, they preferred to stand outside around an stove pipe stove on wheels and they cut cups out of bamboo that morning to drink sake out of. This year though was an added treat. One of the old men had just come back from hunting wild boar in the mountains, and cooked up ribs for anyone who wanted them right there on the top of the stove! I ate about...5 ribs. They were sooo good!

As if my weekend, despite working everyday, couldn't be any better, Monday I finally got a day off. This was good timing being February 1st, the 2 year anniversary of my relationship with Sachi. We met for lunch at Swiss Fondue restaurant specializing in all you can eat dessert, and traded gifts at our table while the girls at the table next to us said "aww, that looks fun". Then we went bowling, strolling, shopping and finally stopping (see what I did there?) off at an elegant one screen theater with couch-like upholstery where we watched The Lovely Bones. It was long, and lame, but just like 2012, having Sachi there next to me made the whole movie seem better. We were still too full for dinner so we took another long walk together and parted ways so she could drive home to Kure. Later she texted me to say her mother was most impressed by the dozen roses I gave her. Bonus points.

How much was a picture worth again?

2010-01-27T18:53:00.005+09:00

==> CLICK HERE <==
...if you wanna see a few recent pics. I will keep adding to this batch every couple weeks too so you can come back here, hit it again, and see if you get more! Just like an old vending machine >:)

What my weekend looks like:

2010-01-21T16:26:00.003+09:00

**UPDATE**
Everything I wrote here came to pass and it was all fun, and all glorious! The only part I failed to mention was Monday. Monday I had three hours of interpreting for an American woman who was very nice. Other than that I finished book 5 of my interpretation studies and cleaned my house and TWO, count 'em two loads of laundry!

Friday I will go to work at the Ken-cho where I may or may not have anything important to do. Then I will go to the Hiroshima International Center, hop in a car and go to Kure to teach children at an elementary school about American culture (in Japanese). Then I will Have dinner with Sachi and take a bus back to Hiroshima to play darts with Steve and Tim.

Saturday I wake up at 9 to meet everyone at Hiroshima Eki (train station) for snowboarding at 10. We'll get there, eat the lunch we buy at 7-11 on the way, and troll the parking lot until we score lift tickets off people going home early. After that we will shred the mountain for 4 or 5 hours and drive back to Hiroshima for Chika's birthday party with two hours of food and open bar. This will be my last trip snowboarding for the month. I think it's trip number 11 this season.

Sunday I will wake up early, get on a train to Onomichi and meet up with other JETs to go to an orphanage and spend time with the kids. Hopefully this will become a monthly tradition. After that I will come home and watch Babylon 5, season 2. :P

I know this all very dry and straightforward. I just wanted to add a little something about what I'm doing.

My Trip To America!

2010-01-17T17:57:00.002+09:00

Don't say you weren't warned! Get out your calendars! Here's my itinerary:

I will be in Seoul for the day of April 28th and on the way home the 24th of May.

I will be in Honolulu April 28th to May 3rd.

I will be in San Diego May 3rd to the 10th (give or take a couple days).

I will be in Tucson from about May 10th to the evening of the 22nd.

Because I am taking such a big long vacation, with the exception of my flight back to work May 22nd, I will accepting any and all bribes/opportunities for free shit the airlines offer me! Adventure awaits!

Hope I can see you all! Here are my flight details for anyone who wants to surprise me with 1st class upgrades ;P

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Asiana Airlines # 161
Hiroshima International (HIJ) to Seoul Incheon International (ICN)
Departure (HIJ): April 28, 9:40 AM JST (morning)
Arrival (ICN): April 28, 11:20 AM KST (morning)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Seoul Incheon International (ICN) to Honolulu/Oahu International (HNL)
Departure (ICN): April 28, 8:50 PM KST (evening)
Arrival (HNL): April 28, 10:05 AM HST (morning)
--------------------------------

Monday, May 3, 2010
Delta Air Lines # 4014 Operated by: NORTHWEST AIRLINES -- NW 2116
Honolulu/Oahu International (HNL) to Los Angeles International (LAX)
Departure (HNL): May 3, 8:40 PM HST (evening)
Arrival (LAX): May 4, 5:21 AM PDT (morning)
LAX
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Delta Air Lines # 4690 Operated by: SKYWEST DBA DELTA CONNECTION
Los Angeles International (LAX) to San Diego Lindberg Fld S.Diego (SAN)
Departure (LAX): May 4, 6:15 AM PDT (morning)
Arrival (SAN): May 4, 7:10 AM PDT (morning)
--------------------------------

Saturday, May 22, 2010
United Airlines # 6391 Operated by: /UNITED EXPRESS/SKYWEST AIRLINES
Tucson International (TUS) to Los Angeles International (LAX)
Departure (TUS): May 22, 5:20 PM MST (evening)
Arrival (LAX): May 22, 6:49 PM PDT (evening)
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Delta Air Lines # 7860 Operated by: KOREAN AIRLINES -- KE 12
Los Angeles International (LAX) to Seoul Incheon International (ICN)
Departure (LAX): May 23, 12:10 AM PDT (morning)
Arrival (ICN): May 24, 5:10 AM KST (morning)
Monday, May 24, 2010
Asiana Airlines # 162
Seoul Incheon International (ICN) to Hiroshima International (HIJ)
Departure (ICN): May 24, 6:40 PM KST (evening)
Arrival (HIJ): May 24, 8:05 PM JST (evening)

Happy New Yearin' It

2010-01-14T14:37:00.002+09:00

Hey all! Just so you know, I'm still alive, despite my reckless snowboarding habits, and enjoying life as always!

The last week of 2009 was great! I spent Christmas day with Sachi, we exchanged gifts, ate lunch, and watched Avatar (2D).
The next day I was in charge of my International Center staff's year-end party. I had planned for it for a couple weeks, so it was just making sure things went off without a hitch, and herding everyone around (good little sheeple). Of course, one thing went wrong - best laid plans and all: after bowling we moved to the Chinese restaurant where they squeezed us into 2/3rds the space the promised us. But they gave us more food than anyone could finish and it was all delicious and authentic and a good time.

I spent the rest of the year snowboarding everyday. I went with my supervisor at the ken-cho one day to Geihoku Kokusai, my first time snowboarding in Hiroshima as opposed to crossing the border to Shimane where i normally go for Mizuho. It was fun and we hit every run they had several times each! I took great pictures on my new cell phone too.

Oh YEAH! I got a new cell phone! The number is the same. The new email is cirbeck@ezweb.ne.jp if you want to email my phone. My old phone broke about three weeks before the 2 year contract on it ended, and they told me that unless I shelled out almost 100 bones for a replacement on my phone insurance, I'd have to pay for a rental until the new year when I would be eligible for discounted rates on a new 2 year plan. WTF?!?
So I went down the block (Hon-Dori) to the AU shop, where they offered to give a new phone, FREE, with all the functions of my old phone, plus it's water-proof, plus it's got a 5 megapixel camera, plus a pedometer (what am I 50?), PLUS a solar panel charger!!! I can't make this stuff up people. On top of all of that, they are giving me a 200 dollar (more after the exchange rate) stored value debit card for keeping my old number, so even after the charges of canceling my contract with them I come out waaaaay ahead! In short. I love my new AU phone. Screw you SoftBank, a.k.a. Vodafone.

Back to the slopes, I hit up Mizuho every day after that and enjoyed countdown at the usual bar with some friends, but went straight home after the non-existant ball-drop to get some sleep and be ready for New Year's day with Sachi's family.
As usual they were great. They poured me copious beer, fed me til bursting and shared a wonderful day with me that had, really, the exact same atmosphere as Christmas day back home. This all took place at Sachi's grandmother's house, so we also swung by her husband's grave topay our respects, light him some incence and make sure his plot was clean and had fresh flowers. one of Sachi's cousins wandered off and came back to report that some of the other graves had artificial flowers and everyone seemed to thing that was poor form. Interesting.

Since then I've been snowboarding a few more times, came back to work, and things are settling in to a familiar pattern again.

Hope you are enjoying 2010 too.

Two Weeks and Star Trek

2009-12-19T14:46:00.002+09:00

So in my last entry it was Day One of Translation/Interpretation camp. I had every intention of writing something each night while I was there, but that was two weeks ago. Here's what happened:

The next morning when I woke up, I tried checking my email, and the internet no longer loaded. I checked every night and every morning after that, and there was no change. Some of the faculty had warned that directly after class, or after our 11pm curfew, it would be slow, but no matter when I checked, or how long I waited, nothing loaded.
Now this was not such a big deal. Tuesday evening after classes I had an early dinner, took a nap, and went down to the gym to play basketball. Other nights after finishing preparing for the next day, we would grab some beers from the convenient store and sit around the lounge area of our dorm floor. By "we" I mean the other participants, a few of which I knew previously, but many were new to me, and VERY INTERESTING!
One of the first characters I met was a Korean whose last name is Baek, pronounced the same as my last name! If that wasn't enough, the Chinese character for "Baek" was white, which I joked made us both "white Becks". And endless puns did ensue.
One man from Italy confirmed that, although I have no Italian ancestry whatsoever, I looked like I could have come from his hometown, Naples, so all those Japanese strangers who ask if I'm Italian: you're all off the hook. Another guy, Manny, who was as funny as he was tall, spoke very frankly and explained a lot of interesting things about real Mexican culture, which only makes me feel more embarrassed for never having been. Next Summer. Definitely.
I also talked to many more people from various countries on numerous topics which was all very international of me, but I balanced this out by returning to my laptop each night and watching episodes of Star Trek Enterprise. I've always love Star Trek, and Scott Bakula from Quantum Leap, but I somehow never saw this series, so I'm catching up now at a furious pace. In the last two and half weeks I've seen almost three whole seasons, but if you think I've been avoiding the real world, you'd be wrong.
On top of Star Trek, meeting people, translation camp and work, snowboard season has started! Last Sunday I got up at 5:00am with some friends, three people from three different countries, and we drove up to Mizuho Highland where we slid the day away on tons of fresh powder! It was so awesome that this Wednesday, the Emperor's Birthday, we're goin' again! Woooo!
Another thing keeping me busy are Japanese year-end parties called bounenkai (forget-the-year party). Because I travel in so many circles, I am obligated to participate in 4 this month. The ken-cho's was on December 4th and the restaurant we went to specialized in Suppon (snapping turtle). We ate its meat boiled in a soup, tried its eggs, raw in soy sauce, liver (also raw and surprisingly refreshing), and even the blood mixed with sake! Then there was the touch rugby bounenkai, and tonight is my English Lunch Club bounenkai, which I planned. Also last Saturday was an Exchange Party at the International Center. This wasn't a bounenkai, but since it was work, I had to stay late and MC the whole thing! Finally, this Saturday will be the Center's bounenkai, also planned by me. This one has 17 people, includes bowling, Chinese food, prizes and presents! Also since it's more formal than my English Club, I had to make seating charts, a budget, do all the preparation and receive approval for every step! Woo!
Luckily, Christmas will be just me and my girl. I got her a great present and she's planning the day for us, so i can relax about that one thing at least.
Next Sunday will be my last day of work this year, but I will pop into work Monday to pick up my much needed paycheck!
Hope your lives are as fun and filled as mine! Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

On the First Night of 研修...

2009-12-08T00:56:00.003+09:00

Today was my first of five days of translation and interpreting research. We checked in before lunch, I ate with many new faces, and attended 4 hours of interesting lectures based on the meaning, atmosphere, and note-taking for interpreters.

Our guest speaker was an old man named Mr. Komatsu, who struggled to speak through the pain from pulling his back the day before, but in true samurai spirit, came to lecture us anyhow. He talked of many things I won't bore you with, but at the peak of his first lecture before all 115 students, he gave a hearty speech of how diligence and care-planning allowed him to translate, only one month ago, for none other than the Dalhi Lama, despite conditions where it was difficult to hear the man speak. He closed his speech with a heart-warming resolution in which "His holiness" gave him a scarf with Tibetan written, although it was made by Chinese people who, according to the Lama had no idea what it said, and stuck his tongue out in irony.

To any American this may seem like a harmless tale of someone who scraped through a tough time at work, but to the Chinese students this sounded like an endorsement of the Lama by Mr. Komatsu. In fact, Mr. Kotasu, whose speech was entirely in Japanese, only said that the Dalhi Lama was an interesting character and quite friendly, but when he asked for questions, two students felt the need to defend China. The first did not so much ask a question as clarify that the Dalhi Lama represented many anti-Chinese political views. Mr. Komatsu then carefully explained that while his Lamaness does hold those views, the speech which he translated for him concerned only religious and non-political views. Then there was the second Chinese student, who asked, rather pointedly, that Mr. Komatsu (who after speaking for over an hour and a half had demnostrated considerable knowledge of current world affairs) understood that Tibet was part of China, and the Dalhi Lama's comment regarding China and Tibet as being linked by that scarf, ignored the fact that Tibet was linked to China as a part of their country.

Most of us unrelated folk cringed at the awkwardness, but Mr. Komatsu calmly explained that his account had nothing to do with his own political beliefs (in which he had previously even gone as far as to subtly encouraged more foreign, including Chinese, immigration to Japan), and that what the Dalhi Lama said only struck him as friendly and well-meaning.

I take no side in the matter, but it was indeed a fiercely interesting experience for this CIR (Co-ordinator of International Relations).

After that I met a Korean first-year CIR named Baek (written with the kanji for "white" of all things :p) and for the reception dinner we shared drinks with my English friend Nick and talked about many things from our respective countries. All in all the day was more international than....well, the movie "The International".

This month will fly.

2009-12-01T18:06:00.004+09:00

What am I doing this month? A LOT!
Work:
In addition to my daily work load: I go to two elementary schools this week to give talks about American culture. I will take a group of foreign people who live here in Hiroshima to a small town to learn about the Japanese traditions of making soba, mochi, and shimenawa (pronounced "she-may-gnaw-wa"). I also have to MC an "Exchange Party" for the Hiroshima International Center, which is basically a poorly disguised Christmas party for local people from many different countries. Also, I get to spend all of next week in Shiga Prefecture studying translation and interpreting on the coast of Lake Biwa.

More than all that, I have bounenkai, which are "forget the year" parties. Most people have one or two this month, but I have four. Two are for work - one for my International Affairs office and one for the international center, one is for touch rugby this Saturday (after playing the Saijo team in Kure), and the last one is for my English Lunch group! Of these four, I am actually in charge of planning and hosting two of them, and each one costs about 40 bucks per person! :[

Social:
Then there is the matter of what little free time I have left. I wish I could say "One word: Snowboarding." but the truth is, I have other things like Christmas shopping and boyfriend/girlfriend obligations as well.

All this adds up to no time or money, and when I wake up January 1st, 2010, this month will probably be remembered as a blur, but most likely a very fun blur.

The Tame Article (written for January)

2009-11-25T17:26:00.003+09:00

My Hiroshima Winters
By Greg Beck

This marks my fourth winter living in Hiroshima, and being an American raised in the hot, dry, desert, what an evolution I’ve experienced! I’ll never forget when I bought my first sweater. Probably because that happened only four years ago! Tucson, Arizona, where I have spent most of my life, is located in the Sonoran Desert, near the Mexican border. In the winter, after the sun sets, the temperature drops quickly and there is often frost on the windshields and lawns of dead grass. But if you own one jacket and drive everywhere in a car with a heater, you will never notice this nocturnal-only season.
I moved to Ondo, Hiroshima in August 2006, and it was hot, muggy, and beautiful. Fall flew by with amazing island views of deciduous trees, mixed with green pines and grey skies on deep-blue ocean, and jutting, mountainous backdrops. Then, all of the sudden, I was freezing. Not just at night either, the mornings, evenings, even most of the mid-days, I was cold, miserable, and wrapped in the same four or five layers of what warm clothes I bought that month. It wasn’t until late January when my friend came over and showed me my air conditioner had a heater mode that I started thinking positively. Before that, I worried and wondered every day how people can live in these conditions! It was also in January on a chance visit to Uniqlo that I discovered Japanese long-johns. These thin, warm pants and shirts provided me a desperately needed extra layer of warmth that helped me go outside, and stay out later, be more active and social, and all around start loving life again. Of course there were other factors; my friend Brian would drive me with him to Kiyomori Taiko practice, and I bought an electric heater and a kotatsu. I also took a trip to Hokkaido where I learned to snowboard, but that played more of a factor the next year.
My second winter started out completely different. I lived in Kure City. I knew exactly when it would start to get cold and I had my finger ready on the danbou heater button. I also bought clothes and a board for snowboarding so I was actually looking forward to the coming of winter! I was also jogging every night, by then, so the cooler air of fall was a welcome prelude to cold winter nights. Also, if you’ve followed my previous articles, this winter came just after the formation of Kure City’s touch rugby team. With all these things keeping me moving and enjoying my free time, winter quickly went from my worst, to my favorite season! I still needed to wrap myself in a hundred layers before going outside usually, but I happily put those layers on just to peel them off as I exercised.
Last winter was my third, and my first living in Hiroshima City. Surprisingly, it was both better, and worse, in many different ways. My new job here at the International Center meant I was warmer at work, but working weekends meant missing out on half the snowboarding trips I took my second year. We have a lot of fun events in the winter like our upcoming snow-experience in Kita-Hiroshima, as well as the exchange party every December. On the down side, my new neighborhood doesn’t have a track nearby like on Kure, so I stopped jogging, although that is probably just an excuse for being lazy. Lastly, I went home to the desert for Christmas. It was great to go outside again wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but when I came back to Hiroshima for New Years, I got the flu for the first time in my life!
This year, I feel like a winter warrior. I have adjusted my schedule and stayed in Hiroshima. No running away from the cold this year! I have sweaters, jackets, coats, and thermal clothes. I am taking multi-vitamins, working out at home, snowboarding every weekend, and next month my friends and I travel to Nagano for a snowboarding trip! I can’t stress enough how much Japan has helped me learn to love winter. But more importantly, Hiroshima has given me something more, the ability to see the bright side of something I misunderstood for so long.

Life as a Gaijin

2009-11-24T20:30:00.001+09:00

Here is an article I just wrote for the Hiroshima International Center's newsletter. In the end, I think I will write a new article that has more to do with Hiroshima, on a less sensitive subject. But I would like to get my opinion out there...

Life as a Gaijin
by Greg Beck

I am a gaijin. I accept it. I am not trying to create any debate or start a social revolution in Japan, but here is a brief description of my life in Japan, and my thoughts on the concept of the word, “gaijin”.

First and foremost, are you aware there is a huge debate over the word gaijin? There are two main sides to this argument. Many people feel offended by the word. They believe there is no linguistic relation to the word “gaikokujin”, meaning “a person from a foreign country”. They argue that because the origin of the word means “outsider”, that calling a person gaijin is divisive, condescending, and even hostile! With this group, using the word “gaijin” can cause problems quickly for both parties. The other side of the debate centers on the Japanese shortening of words. Gaijin, to them, is short for gaikokujin. By this definition, if you are from a foreign country, there is nothing wrong with being a gaijin.

I have always tried to stay above the fray. I believe both parties can be right. Your intent matters more than the words you use. However, some people interpret what they hear differently, so someone can still take offense regardless of the speaker’s intentions. But I believe how a word “should” be used and how people actually use it often differ. A third group deserves mentioning; there are people from foreign countries who have become Japanese citizens. These people spent incredible amounts of time and effort to become Japanese citizens and feel both “gaijin” and “gaikokujin” no longer apply to them. But in Japan’s traditionally homogenous society someone who does not look Japanese is automatically assumed to be a gaijin.

I do not fit into any of these groups. Everyone has the right to say and think what they want. When I first came here in 2004 to study at Konan University, I was oblivious to this issue. As my Japanese improved, I started hearing the word gaijin more and more. I learned it meant “foreigner” and to this day sometimes use the word in that context myself. Since those first months here some of my friends complained of hearing “Gaijin” immediately followed by utterance “Abunai” (dangerous). Also, on many occasions, a few of my foreign friends and I will go to a restaurant and a Japanese couple will enter and comment on there being “many gaijin” there, as if there is some deeper meaning to their observation. In addition to this I noticed people on trains and buses hesitate or avoid sitting next to me. This isn’t always the case, of course, but it continues to happen, even after living here for years. On a rational level, I don’t care if someone does not want to sit next to me. There are many reasons why they might decide not to. Still though, when I notice it, I can’t help imagining a voice saying, “Gaijin. Abunai.” and feeling a little insulted.

Being asked by total strangers where I’m from and how long I’ve been in Japan is another part of being a gaijin. I understand they are expressing their curiosity and an interest in me, which is nice. Also, because my physical appearance is different, I’m sure I stand out, but sometimes I do not want to act as ambassador of my home country, I just want to be another member of the community I live in. Also, these questions sound cold. When they come without a greeting like “Hello, how are you?” or even, “Nice weather we’re having”, it seems like I am being interrogated.

Let’s assume gaijin means “foreigner”, nothing good or bad, just a basic adjective. Calling me “gaijin” would be, technically, correct. But having grown up in America, with white, black, Asian, and Hispanic friends – all “American” with unique ancestry, I cannot remember one time in my life I’ve ever referred to another person in English as “foreign”. To me, even saying someone is American, or Japanese, does not say anything about whether they are short, tall, friendly, mean, greedy, or generous. So to describe a person as “foreign” seems so vague it is pointless.

As I learned more Japanese and traveled the world, I noticed “gaijin” really does not mean “foreign”. “Foreign” is a relative term. For example, if a Japanese person went to Guam, they would become the “foreign” person. But that same Japanese person could still refer to everyone in Guam as “gaijin”. So gaijin’s meaning is probably better expressed as “not Japanese”, and I do not appreciate being referred to by what I am “not”. I know I am not Japanese, and that suits me just fine. My nationality seems as relevant and important as the color of my shirt. A tourist here for the weekend, or someone fluent in Japanese, and living in Hiroshima for 30 years, being reduced to the same, simple term “gaijin” seems dismissive. It also fails to describe what they are.

I am often asked if I would like to live in Japan for ever. I love Japan, and I feel lucky for day I spend here. But if I lived here until I was old and gray, people would still probably call me “gaijin” and ask what country I am from. I don’t know if this problem exists in other countries. I don’t know if Japan will change, or if it does, how quickly. But it would not be easy to call this “my home” when people from the same town call me “gaijin”.

Heading toward Decemburr

2009-11-18T17:20:00.003+09:00

So, winter is most definitely here in Hiroshima.
The most awesome aspect of this is the mikan (mandarin orange). Mikan are proof that value is derived from scarcity. Since mikan are the very definition of abundance this time of year, they are completely worthless and handed out as gifts by everyone, to everyone. I have lived in an apartment since the day I moved here, so clearly I have no trees, yet even I have given people mikan, because I received so many! Delicious? Yes. Healthy? Yes! And yet, no one gets excited when you bring home a huge bag of them (for free) because it becomes a challenge to eat them all before they start going bad! Still, it is a very nice problem considering the alternate end of the spectrum: scurvy.

I just got over a cold too by the way. Where were you a week ago mikan?!? But remarkably, it was the first time I've been ill since January, when i caught the flu for the first time in my life. Good streak yeah? I have to attribute it to multi-vitamins, since that's the only thing I've changed since last year.

Next week is Thanksgiving and the DSK SNOW PARTY pre-season Kick-Off party! Woooo! Soon I will be slapping on my snowboard and shredding the snowy mountains of Mizuho!

Last but not least I just read a great article about the origin of modern Japanese people.
check it out!

Hiroshima News

2009-11-13T15:38:00.004+09:00

In case you were interested, the governor of Hiroshima Prefecture (my boss) is retiring this month after 16 years. His successor, independent Hidehiko Yuzaki, was elected by a landslide of 200,000 votes more than the runner up in the 5 way election last week. He is 44 years old, and an energy consultant. I'll let you know more when I meet him.