Tokyo

As you have probably seen on facebook, last weekend I went to Tokyo by myself and had an amazing time! The trip was full of randomness and a lot of me not knowing what the hell was going on, but luckily my infectious smile spread throughout Tokyo and they all loved me (or so I will like to think!! Why I will think this I do not know, since the most interaction I had with anyone was in stores where they basically asked me if i needed help, to which i stood blankly until they went away JK!).

Anyways, I boarded the Sakura bus (about 20$ to Tokyo) in Aizu Wakamatsu at 845 Saturday morning after a full out sprint to the train station in Bandai thinking I was going to be late but made it there with a bunch of time to spare. I saw a couple of my students at the station and was a little embarrassed by my winded state! Well from this point until arriving to Tokyo was extremely uneventful. I sat next to some old woman who might have been mute/deaf/or something else because sometimes she would talk, sometimes she would grunt and sometimes she would flail while talking to the woman across the aisle who I assume may have been her daughter... A rather uneventful time, until you start climbing the multi story highways, and start to feel slightly overwhelmed by the megalopolis that you know is right around the corner.

Getting off the bus, I realised it was raining but figured it was nothing for my trusty rain coat couldn't handle and headed down to the underground to Tokyo station to catch a subway to my hotel. Still no problems! Can you believe it! I got to my station in Shinjuku and exited only to realise it was no longer raining, but was TYPHOONING right over my head! I'm pretty sure my "waterproof" jacket was designed for rain, and not typhoons, so I got a little bit wet while walking well past my hotel, only to realise it was 6 streets back... oh well, the rain was - er - refreshing?

Got to the hotel finally and found out that check in wasn't until 4 PM, and they strictly followed this rule so they sent me out, into the typhoon, to fend for myself! Ahh well, with my trusty rain coat, 3 umbrellas (2 of them were a sacrifice to the typhoon) and my phrase book I was off to pound the streets of Tokyo in search of whatever the city has to offer (and it has everything). Something weird I noticed while in the typhoon is that every time you enter a store you have to put your umbrella in a bag, and then proceed to throw it out once you leave the store! Very wasteful if you ask me. The rain was really discouraging, and I found myself really not in the mood for anything other than chilling in my hotel room, watching shows I had downloaded... So after my dinner at WENDYS (God best hamburger I have had in 3 months) I headed back to the room and chilled.

The typhoon finally cleared up a bit for the night time, so I headed out again to see Tokyo at night. It is a completely different place at night than in the day. There are BRIGHT light, crowded, drunken streets, hostess bars, all you can drink bars, and lights! (I mentioned it twice on purpose because there are so freakin many!) Stayed out for a bit and then came back, gave a drunk dial and headed to bed.

One thing I noticed while walking around the streets is the cars in Tokyo are quite different than up here in Aizu! In Aizu you see plenty of very small cars and hatchbacks while in Tokyo you see Mercedes, BMW 7-series, Maybachs, and other luxury cars! A very different driving atmosphere than up here!

Sunday was my day to do some sight seeing and shopping. I woke up pretty early and took the subway over to Asakusa, Tokyo's oldest and biggest shrine. The street leading up to it is FULL of tourist shops that were all busy, making me think that the Japanese are the world's favorite tourists! I then looked around the area since it was only 12 PM and found a pretty nice park along the river, right across from the giant sperm! :p

After that I headed to the Imperial Palace. It's kinda a cool place, but everything is behind a giant brick wall so you can only see the giant gates inside. It is open 2 days a year - the emperor's bday and new years day but both times I will be out of the country :( There was also a really huge park right in front of the palace, but it was PURELY for looking at and had a barrier the whole way around it!

Well the rest of the day involved walking around Harajuku and Shibuya looking for some stuff to buy. Frankly, I was overwhelmed with it all and only managed to buy 2 tshirts, which are going to be way too small for us! Meh, they're still cool and can make good decoration or something.

So to summarize, Tokyo is awesome! I loved it, and cant wait to go back soon! My next trip will be to Osaka at the end of November for a long overdue reunion with Amy Baker and the rest of the Toronto Jets. I'm very excited about that!

A decent post... I hope

Hey,

I know it's been a while since I wrote something interesting on here, but not too many random/crazy things have been happening in this neck of the woods lately... One thing that has happened, was the crazy halloween party in Wakamatsu last weekend. It was probably in the top 5 of best halloween parties I have ever been to! Everyone was in such awesome costumes and DRRRUNK! It was a 6 hour namihodai (all you can drink -- and this all you can drink including shots, beer, mixed drinks, anything you could want) for only 1500 Yen.. thats about 10$! Yea, crazy, I know! This is one of the best things about Japan though, especially if youre in a group because you can get a set price, everyone pays in, and drinks as much as they want. Its a pretty awesome system if you ask me! So for the party we went as the teenage mutant ninja turtles, which I thought was pretty cool!

What else has happened... Well not much in the way of exciting activities, but school is progressing nicely. I usually dont have very many classes (avg about 10/week of 50 minute classes) which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It has been good lately because I have been prepping applications for grad schools and it has given me the time to concentrate on my statement's of interest and finding schools that will be good for what I'm interested in. This no class business is bad, because it gives me SO much free time! I have become rediculously good at Gold Miner (props to Cara for the introduction) and am excited to go back on Tuesday and play some SCRABULOUS on facebook (if you dont have it add the app and play with me!!).

I have definitely developed some favoritism in class... I dont know how teachers can say they dont have favorites, when it is insanely hard to like all students the same! The first and third graders in my school are hilarious! The first graders are so excited to learn and actually talk to me even though they dont know what theyre saying... This one kid, Daichi, has learned some new words and they have quickly become popular in the male first graders... these exciting new words are "sexperience", "penis", "sex", "hijack, or high jock (not too sure what theyre saying and neither are they)" and "American jock (?????)." How they come up with this stuff, I may never know, but it's pretty funny when they come up to you and ask do you have a high jack/jock? I'm like a WHAT? But theyre fun, I do daily cleaning with them so we've got a pretty good relationship!

Last weekend was also the school festival at Bandai chugaco (middle school)! At 7:30 AM I hauled my hung over ass out of Amber's place and headed back to Bandai with a massive hangover.... I was running a bit late so I had a quick shower and something to eat and headed to school expecting to be greeted by a carnival like atmosphere... What did I get? No commotion outside, and nothing going on inside... So i'm like, where is everyone, whats going on? Then one of the teachers comes in and is like Tyler-sensei, good! Come. I followed her into the gym where I was just in time for a very exciting part of Japanese culture... THE SPEECH. Ohhhh the speech. The speeches always last way too long and are so freakin boring partly because I dont understand and partly because everyone else looks bored out of their minds! So these speeches lasted a whopping THREE hours... in which time my head was throbbing, i passed out for about 10 minutes, and some inspirational speaker asked the entire school what their dream was... TOTALLY unnecessary...

Then it was lunch time and since I hadnt preordered a lunch, I went home for about 45 minutes to eat something and chill... When I headed back it was time for classroom exhibitions where each class had set something different up... It was cool for about 30 minutes, but lasted for TWO FREAKIN HOURS! arrrghh... this was followed by a pretty entertaining talent/air band show which was cool to see bc the kids were out of their school shells.

The day ended outside in the COLD and drizzle with the announcing of prizes and picutres (i swear I probably look like a demon in them because by this point i REALLLLLY wanted to get outta there). One of the funniest things was after the prizes were announced all the third graders were bursting into tears one after another. One of them would look at the other and then start bawling, then someone else would notice and start crying too - GUYS EVEN! My Japanese English Teacher explained that its because they are overwhelmed with their accomplishment and proud of what they've done... So it was pretty funny/cute to see...

Anyways, I'm off to Tokyo alone tomorrow, so this should be interesting... Tyler, the guy who stil speaks no Japanese, off to the BIGGGGG city by himself... Wish me luck and email my phone if you like!! :)

FB.A

Japan has made me crazy addicted... to facebook. I dont know if I should be ashamed of it... do you think that is a sign of addiction?? Maybe.

I dont know whether its the boredom at work, my interest in other people's lives or an uncontrollable desire, but facebook is always there, and open it seems.

I see notifications faster on facebook than I do in my gmail, which is also open 24/7, because I refresh my mini feed so often!

Maybe I shouldnt be telling you this... haha, you will all think I am some crazy creeper!

Anyways, the real reason for this post (which I'm also going to put on our rad forums page - www.fujet.net) is I'm wondering how you creep on Facebook. What do you check first? What is your creeping order? What inspires you to post? Lemme know!

I OBVIOUSLY check out notifications first.. then go on to mini-feed... then the 3 status updates on my homepage... then my wall... then who's online... then status updates... then who knows! Random I know, but if Japan has REALLY given me one thing, its the time to check facebook!

Haha, peace!

The canyoning documentary

Thank you Brian Adler!!

A little rant on Japan

Camping in luxury

This weekend I went camping for my friend Vicky's birthday at URRRRRRRRABANDAI and it was really cool. We got smashed, we got in trouble, and we got some pukage in the morning (an awesome sound to wake up to).

This was, however, not typical camping... we were in the luxury of a TRAILER! it was so sweet... i dont think I could count how many times someone said "I'd rather this caravan (ya, thats what they call it in England -- wtf???) than my house!" Whenever I hear these things I think about how lucky I was to score my brand new house!!!

In our highly intoxicated states we managed to have conversations about British politics, accents, the princes, the typical non-British question of "Did you know the prince?!", and a bunch of other stuff... when i say highly intoxicated i mean VERY VERY haha! We drank so much, and such a variety... no wonder we were climbing the trailer and having our own private party on the roof... not so good for the neighbors who came aknockin at around 1 AM (Clearly after I had passed out, thus no recollection of these events).

Anyways, I didnt take very many good pics, so I'll wait for Grant Vicky and Alexa to post theirs!

Another good weekend in Japan... looking forward to Tokyo (by myself it seems :( at the end of the month

It's beginning to get cold :(

It's beginning to get very cold in Japan and that means winter is coming! I am really excited for winter since I live 10 minutes from one of the biggest ski resorts in Fukushima-ken, ALTS Bandai (google it), I will be traveling to Thailand in December and I will be getting a visitor from Canada in February (wOOOOOOOOOOOt!). So all in all, winter looks to be shaping up to something awesome. The thing that WONT be awesome, is living in Japan during the winter. The houses here have NO insulation so it basically feels the same inside as it does outside. I was talking to my neighbor Arthur about this yesterday and asking him what I can expect to pay for heating. He smirked at me and said, I pay about 3man a month for kerosene (how we heat the house). 3 man = about 300$.... A MONTH!!!! I personally think that's insane. Apparently my pred lived in his bedroom for the entire winter, and Im starting to think that isnt such a bad idea... Im currently lying in bed and my fingers are freezing from typing!!! Oh well, I guess all that body hair will finally pay off for something hahahaha :p.


This weekend I'm going camping at Lake Hibara for Vicky's bday. Thankfully we're staying in a cabin, which should mean a little more heat, I hope! I'm not too sure who will be going, but I think it will be fun!

Also, last weekend we went canyoning (www.canyons.jp) and it was a crazy time! It was about 20 degrees out so the water was pretty cold. We had 4 layers of wet suit so we were all able to stay relatively warm.... well at least I thought so, most others didnt :)! It was crazy sliding down 20 m waterfalls, getting banged up, jumping off smaller waterfalls and going down streams... a lot of fun!!! That day was followed by a full moon party where Beth and I just went crazy on energy drinks and vodka! She ended up loosing her scarf and shirt near the end of the night and then went on a mission to find it again... it was pretty funny watching her be sooooo determined to find these things! In the end, she found her shirt and her scarf is being mailed to her (in Japan they NEVER steal, its awesome!).

Some funny things from school this week. Apparently some kids learned some new words and were trying to practice them! They came up to me and said "do you like p/tennis?" I was like "ohh yea, I do like tennis!" They then repeated do you like PENnis? I was like urgh youre bad! haha. Then they said "this has been a great sexperience" and continued it through the rest of the week! Where do they learn these words!? ahaha so random.

Well this was a long, incoherent at times post, but its cold. Im going to put my hands back under the covers and try to finish the Bourne Ultimatum which I was watching until I passed out last night.

61 days in this strange strange land!

As of today, the group B Jet's (the one's that arrived on Aug 5) have been in Japan for 61 days. Its strange to think that I have been in a country where I have pretty much no idea what's going on most of the time and have not run into any troubles. Hell, last night I dreamed of going through a red light in KINGSTON! Not Aizu Wakamatsu, not Bandai Machi, but freaking KINGSTON! Sure there are the inherent language differences, IE: i have absolutely no idea what you're saying and you have no idea what I am saying, but I think that people with the right personality are able to get by. You laugh, you smile, you gesture and you TRY to use all the words you know. It works, surprisingly.

On Tuesday night a lost in translation moment happened for the Three Musketeers (me, beth and katie). We went out to our favorite restaurant (i have no idea what its called) where they make katsu. Katsu is the most oiishi thing in Japan... I love it. I could eat it EVERY day (we usually go there once a week).... not to mention the unlimited rice and cabbage you get with it! mmmm mmmm good! So beth decided that she could not finish her meal and wanted it to go... so i pushed the button on the table to call the waitress over and beth says in some weird low-accented voice "tuu go"... the waitress looks at her like she has 3 heads. Then our Japanese master, Katie tries to think of how its said in Japanese and is sitting there "uh, um, uhhh, mmmm" and the waitress STILL has no idea what we're trying to get at. Then I pop in. Tyler, the person who still BARELY knows how to say it's a nice day today says "take out...o". No accent, no change in tone, no change in voice. Simply take out...o. The waitress goes crazy "OHHHHHH HI HI HI HI HI HI!!!" (Hi=yes) so luckily, we got that sorted out, beth got her stuff to go, and we left.

So what have i learned in 61 days in Japan?
- it's true, Jets really don't do a hell of a lot... i have between 4-10 classes a week, which i have to do all of 30 minutes of planning for...from time to time its boring, but i think we do play a useful role in internationalizing the Japanese. coming from Canada, i sometimes find it SO strange to look around and only see one race. anyone not Japanese stands out like a sore thumb, so even if we aren't in the class room as much as we'd like, we are still playing an important role in showing students, teachers and community members that other people exist outside of the television.
- First graders (grade 7) ROCK. Second graders (grade 8) SUCK (i nearly lost it on one class the other day... that would've been funny). Third graders (grade 9) are smart... it is very competitive to get into high school, so third graders are required to get very good marks so they can get into the schools
- driving on the left hand side is a novelty... for the first week. it's so normal now. i think when i get back to Canada its gonna be like WHOAAAA you drive on the right hand side here?!!
- the japanese know how to do ice cream! THE.BEST.ICE.CREAM(softu creamu).I.HAVE.EVER.HAD.PERIOD. and the flavours! you could have a different softu creamu every day and never get bored! personal addictions --> coolish (ice cream in a bag) and papriko (iced cappuccino flavoured stuff in a tube). if you're in japan and haven't tried it, what the hell are you waiting for!?
- environmentalism is a myth. i think people in Canada and elsewhere think japan is this oh so environmentally friendly country. sure they have smaller cars, but they drive EVERYWHERE! they wrap everything in at least TWO bags! they BURN everything (no room for landfills)... and they are the worlds largest importer of wood because they throw out 130,000,000 pairs of chop sticks A DAY! sure they do a lot in regards to recycling, but i think its out of necessity, rather than want.
- Japanese politics is wack.
- smiling helps a lot
- I "am similar to" Tom Cruise
- some things change back home over night
- I do not see Amy Baker enough
- the internet is your best friend. thank GOD for MSN/SKYPE/Facebook/Bittorrents/webcams ;)/online news
- getting things in the mail is the HIGHLIGHT of my day/week/month! so far only two people have sent me things. one of them was my mother so that doesn't really count... thanks to Phil for keeping my mailbox full from time to time...PLEASE mail me if you really love me :(
- alcohol in japan is CHEAP. a 60 of Canadian club... about 18$
- they really do pronounce r's as l's and vice versa
- Japan is not as beautiful as i thought it would be... earthquakes, wars and economic bubbles have paid a price on some of cities, especially in the north (but the landscape is awesome)
- Japan is big! It's not as small as it looks on the map..
- kindergarten is probably the best moment of my week! every Friday i mosey on over to the kindergartens and just throw them around for 3 hours then get the rest of the day off. its amazing how rough you can be with them, and how much they love it!

You probably stopped reading this entry about half way up this page, so I will stop for now. Thanks to Nikki and others who read my blog and consider it boring compared to amys. WELL IM SORRY! my life is just not as interesting as hers! ;) And thanks to those, who read it with interest! Domo arigato gozaimasu. In the end, I think this is a good experience so far.