Next Gen Politics

I have been contacted by a few friends, my family, and by a reader or two, informing me that it might be interesting, in light of where I live, to have a daily blog of my life and adventures in Japan. While I can’t promise a DAILY blog, I’ll do my best. I think that if anyone is interested in my life here, they may enjoy a few entries into my personal journal of just before I left, after I had just arrived, and perhaps an entry from a random day after that. From that point I’ll add, as daily as possible, entries about life in Japan. So, now that I have you on the edge of your seat, in the other room, here we go. I hope you find it interesting. The Newest entry is on the top. If you want to read from the beginning, please go to the bottom of the page. As you might have noticed, I moved all the old entries to archives. Because this is a page and not a post there is no other way to keep the size from getting out of control. So what I’ve decided to do is, that every month I will move the journal to archives. I will also post a link at the top of the 1st day’s entry directing readers to it’s location.

 

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12/17/2008 (Wednesday)

Well as you have probably noticed the posts are coming fewer and more far between. I have been spending all my time packing and getting ready to go back to the states for the holidays. I’ll be in the US from the 18th of December until January 5th. During that time I’m going to try really hard to at least keep good notes of what I’m doing and take good pictures for you all. If I can, I’ll make a couple posts, and if something really gets my goat back home, I’ll even write and article. I’m planning to play it by ear, and I really need the rest, so please understand if I don’t post while I’m home. I haven’t forgotten about you, and in the new year, we’ll be back on schedule. So until my next post, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. You’ve all made this new year an amazing one for me. See you all soon.

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12/15/2008 (Monday)

Today was a Costco day. I woke up fairly early for a weekend, did some laundry, and headed out with my huge backpack to get some groceries. I’m leaving for the US in a couple of days, but I thought that it would be better to come home to a full freezer than to have to worry about it when I got home.

Today was rude day in Japan apparently. No matter where I went or what I did, I kept getting walked into, cut in front of, and people kept walking really really slow in front of me. I arrived at Costco at about 2:30pm on a Monday, but the place was more full than if I had gone on a Saturday afternoon. It was insane. Don’t these people work? I have Sundays and Mondays off, and apparently so do they.

I had my pizza and hot dog, then fought with the crowds to get my groceries. After leaving Costco I went to Sannomiya to kill some time waiting for the girl to get off of work. She got off work about an hour and half later than she was supposed to, which actually is pretty normal, so I ended up waiting in the lobby of the hotel for her for about an hour. The staff just assumed I was a guest I suppose.

She finally finished and we headed to a Korean restaurant that we both like to have some Korean soup, Chi-gei. ( I don’t know if I spelled that right, probably not.) We were both surprised to see that 2 bowls of soup, two bowls of rice, an iced tea, and a small plate of Kimchi came to about $42. That was a lot more than we expected. Good thing we both had some money on us.

After dinner I walked her back to the train, kissed her goodnight, and headed home. After struggling with the over stuffed train, (the most full I have ever seen it), and the stuffed buss, (usual amount), I finally made it home. What A day. I was exhausted.

So that’s my day. I’ll end it there. See you all soon. Have a great day.

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12/14/2008 (Sunday)

Before I get into my extremely boring and ordinary Sunday, let me first apologize for the sorry excuse for a post yesterday. I just didn’t have the energy to write a post. All last week, I felt tired. I think my body knows I’m going home soon, and has started to move into holiday mode a week early. So, again, sorry.

Yesterday was a pretty busy day. Usually I only have 4 or 5 classes on Saturdays and they are pretty spread out. Yesterday I had 6 classes, 4 of which were right out of the gate, and to make matters worse numbers 2 and 3 were private lessons at the lowest level we offer. Usually these classes are taught by Japanese teachers, so we don’t have much experience teaching them. My being assigned these classes could be seen in two ways. 1st it could be said that since I don’t have much experience teaching these low level classes, that any experience I could get with them could only make me a better teacher. Fair enough I guess. On the other hand, it could be seen as an incredible disservice to the student to have a teacher teaching a class that they have no experience with, and one in which the text book is written in Japanese. Of course the teachers guide has English translations, but the class structure is completely different then the 99% of classes that I teach. I’m sure you can see from this that I wasn’t pleased, nor amused.

The management totally mismanaged the day. They had us doing interviews at the only times we were able to eat, so we were forced to wait to eat until the day was almost over. Keep in mind that our day is 9 hours long on Saturdays. It was not a happy day.

After work we had our Annual Christmas party. It became apparent during the week that our new manager and assistant manager had no idea the importance of this event to our students. They planned nothing, they contributed nothing, and they didn’t care. The only question my manager asked about was what kind of food would he be able to eat at the party. Lame. I was so angry. Our assistant manager was positioning herself near the buffet, thinking that she was going to be the first to eat, when, in Japan, and at our school, you should let your students eat first. It was pathetic. She seemed to think the party was for her. I was disgusted by her and my managers behavior, and I felt bad for the students. We had about half the students participate as usual because myself and a Japanese teacher were the only ones that were doing anything, and we are the busiest teachers at our school. It was just sad.

In the end, I think those that came had a good enough time, but nothing like the two years previous. After the party, the other foreign teacher and myself took some students out for a 2nd party at a local Spanish bar. I tried to go to an ATM to get some extra cash, but one of the wonderful things about Japan is that their bank ATM’s close at 9pm and their convenience store ATM’s close at about 11pm. Luckily I had about $20 on me for the evening.

I only stayed for one drink because the beer wasn’t very good and it was really hot. I was sweating in the bar in the middle of December. After I left, I rode my bike home, and by the time I got home I was exhausted.And that was Saturday.

Today, I was very lazy. I slept in until about 12:30pm. After waking up and walked to the convenience store to pick up some milk for my breakfast and when I got back I made myself my bagel and coffee and watched episodes 9 and 10 of “Fringe”. That’s a great show, by the way, if anyone is interested. I get my episodes on iTunes for about $35 per season. So far this year I’ve been watching Heroes, Burn Notice, Lost, Fringe, and Life. I’ve haven’t watched so much TV since I was a kid.

While I was watching T.V. I was also doing laundry, and after the show was over I hung up my laundry which consisted of about 10 white T-Shirts, 3 “pajama” T-Shirts, and some socks. In Japan almost no one has a dryer. Apparently they think it’s wasteful to use that much energy, and they may be right, but in almost every house they have a drying fan setting in their shower room and it takes about 7 hours to dry anything, so I can’t imagine that a fan running for 7 hours would use less energy than a dryer that runs for 45mins, but I could be wrong.

After hanging up my clothes I met my buddy online for some first person shooting action. We haven’t met online recently because I was so busy with the election and also because my XBox was broken recently.

After a couple hours we took a break to eat dinner and now I’m updating you all. As you can see, today was a much needed lazy day. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Sannomiya to do some shopping then off to Costco for my groceries. I’m sure I’ll have a slice of pizza while I’m there. Until tomorrow, have a great day. See you soon.

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12/13/2008 (Saturday)

Today was the schools official Christmas party. Needless to say, I’m dead tired. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to post late. Please check back tomorrow for an update, I’ll put up some pictures to make it up to you. Have a great day folks.

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12/12/2008 (Friday)

Today I was woken up at 4am by my good friend Scot. He had meant to leave a message and didn’t realize that I was anal enough to keep my cell phone on and within reach at night. Go figure. I finally got up and moving about about 10am. I did some dishes and made my breakfast. After breakfast Scot called again and we talked about the season and our project.

I left the house and rode my bike to work. I had to maneuver around every person in Kobe, I think. It was horrible and at one point I almost got hit by a careless truck driver. I arrived safe and sound at work, and got ready for my classes. The day went alright. Today was my class with my 4 year old that I love teaching. She decided that it would be more fun to stand on her hands with her feet against up on the wall and walk along the four corners of the room, telling me how impressive it was, than study English. Now, seriously, what do you say to that? Well, I said, “that IS impressive!” I love that little girl.

After school, I rode my bike home feeling a bit reflective and relaxed. I thought about my coming trip home and how nice it will be. In fact, I thought about everything except the fact that I had left my wallet at work. Now, this may sound like a small thing, but you have to understand that almost everything in Japan is in Card form; my bus pass, my bank card…..my apartment key. Yeah. Nice.

I turned my bike around and started calling frantically to anyone in my office that might have a key to the school. The problem is that getting into the school is the easy part, it’s getting the locked elevators up to the second floor that is the difficult. For this reason I had to call my manager, who was on his way home to his wife and kids. I felt about 2 inches tall. I met him at my office and to my surprise he didn’t even seem upset. In fact, he handed me my wallet, then handed me a can of Guinness beer and told me to have a good night and that he’d see me tomorrow. Is that not the coolest thing? Seriously, I don’t deserve my co-workers.

I finally made it home after coming home than back to work then home again. I watch an episode of Fringe, and then a friend called. That is my day. So with that, I’ll call it a night. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon.

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12/11/2008 (Thursday)

Today was a super slow day until 5pm. My 2pm private lesson canceled so I just prepared for classes that I won’t have for a month or so from now. All in all it was an OK day. I had a couple counselings and my group lessons were pretty good. I had to teach some really tough topics though, hypothetical’s in regards to ethical questions. Tough to teach to someone that isn’t a native speaker.

I had to start telling my classes that another teacher would be teaching their classes while I’m away in the U.S. for vacation. It was pretty cute when one of my 9 year old students told his mom he wanted to send me a Christmas card to the U.S. I love those kids.

My lunch today was two delicious Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. So good. I think I’ll have it tomorrow too. I rode my bike to school again today, and again today it was warm enough that I was sweating when I got to the school and when I returned home. This weather is so crazy. Flip the switch to winter already, will ya?

Nothing else really to write about. I downloaded the first season of Fringe. So that was pretty good. I highly recommend it. So, with that, I’ll leave you to your day. Talk to you soon.

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12/10/008 (Wednesday)

Well, I’m a little late, sorry about that. To be honest, last night when I got home, all I could think of was my sweet sweet bed. I’m not really sure why I was so sleepy. Work was pretty easy. I only had 3 classes, one of which was a kids class.

I started riding my bike to work again, since the weather warmed up the last couple of days. The weather in Akashi is strange. More strange than the Tri-Cities, (my home town), and that’s saying a lot. Just this weekend, it was so cold that people were saying that they had never seen it that cold in Akashi before. It’s only the beginning of December, but last week it seemed more like the end of January. Because of the huge shifts in temprature, a lot of students and teachers are getting sick, which means eventually they will give it to everyone else. Luckily, I have a crazy strong immune system, and I’ve already gotten sick once this year, so I don’t think I’ll be getting sick again. Thanks Mom and Dad for the super genes.

Honestly, there wasn’t much else going on yesterday. I’m still working on that project I hinted at before, and as soon as I get the OK from Scot and Sarah, I’ll let you all in on it. It’s going to be exciting. Well, I guess that’s about it for today. I’ll write more tonight (my time-tomorrow morning your time). Have a great night. See you soon.

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12/09/2008 (Tuesday)

Welcome back folks! Not a lot happened today, and I spent most of the first part of the day in my usual grumpy mood. I don’t know why my attitude is so negative in the mornings. If I recognize the problem, should I be able to prevent it?  Anyway, I was not a very nice guy this morning and felt a little bad about it. My poor co workers have to listen to me for at least the first couple hours of everyday complain about everything they do that annoys me. I really need to stop that. I actually love my co-workers like family. They are going to start hating me, if they don’t already.

We had our first business meeting in about 2 months today. I guess someone at Honbu found out about us not having them and put some pressure on our manager. I really think that these meeting are pretty worthless for teachers. They are meant, I’m sure, to make us feel like we are part of the team, but the meetings offer us no opportunity to change anything. If we make suggestions, the management would say that it was a good idea and ignore it. Japanese companies are very resistant to change. I’m surprised they are very successfull. If not for unflinching worker loyalty, I’m sure that they would not do so well.

I taught a kids class, 4 other “normal” classes today, and the A/C in my room was broken. Nice! I warned the manager that the system was broken and needed to be looked at on Monday, but he forgot. Then this morning my co-worker reminded him, and he forgot. finally at about 6pm I reminded him again and he called them. He is really busy everyday and has a lot on his mind, not to mention that he has only been a manager for about 5 months, but seriously, we were melting.

After work My co-worker and I were invited to a students house for a Nabe party. Nabe is a Japanese kind of stew that the Japanese eat in the winter. It’s really easy to make and it is awesome! A nabe party is when you get a bunch of your friends together to eat nabe. Not so complicated, but this is a really popular thing to do in the winter. If you come to Japan in the winter, don’t leave until someone takes you home for a nabe party. You’ll thank me later. Anyway, we sat around talking about our love lives, work, politics, and debated whether a tomatoe was a fruit or vegetable. For the record, scientifically it is a fruit, but for cullinary purposes and for that of tarrif laws in the US, it’s a vegetable. We seriously busted out wikipedia.org in Japanese and in English. -side note- pumpkins are also fruits.

After the party, I rode my bike home and wrote a nasty letter to iTunes for not having my Heroes podcast in my download que. It’s on their page, but not in my que…frustrating.

So with that, I’ll go to bed. Have a good day. See you soon.

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12/08/2008 (Monday)

OK, so I’m a lazy guy. I know. Saturday after work there was a big end of the year party with some of my students and fellow teachers. These parties are called Bon en kai. All over Japan in companies they are having these parties. They are so common in fact that many companies have multiple parties, divided by departments. Not only companies, but clubs and organizations will have them too. For this reason many people have to go to 2 or more of them a year. After the new years there are other parties to celebrate the new year. I can’t remember the names of these parties off hand, but it’s the same basic idea, but for the new year.

We held our party at my favorite bar Murphy’s and we had all you can eat and drink. I didn’t drink as much as last time we had one of these, but I still hurt a bit when I woke up. Here are some of the pcitures from the party.

Yeah they throw gang signs in Japan too, and they look just as ridiculous here.

All the guys at one table, and guess where all the girls were? Yep, at a different table. No matter the country, boys are clueless when it comes to girls.

We tricked a couple girls to come over. Don’t the boys look happier?…Well except for the guy on the right. He’s always a bit nervous. Super nice guy, though.

I always have at least one arm around a pretty girl. *Psst* Hey, guys….over here….like this!

This was the end of the party. The place had cleared out by this time, but I stayed to talk politics and get schooled by the owner in a game of scrabble…and I’m the English teacher…just sad. Blame it on the beer.

The next day I woke up with a killer head ache and sent my XBox back to Microsoft to have some warranty work done. I had the red ring of death, and luckily my buddy near Tokyo speaks Japanese enough to get them to come pick up the paper weight for repairs.

After I sent the brick back, I got showered, dressed, and headed off to meet the girl. We wanted to try the new mall in Nishinomiya again. After we got there we immediately regretted it. We ended up going back to her house to order Dominoes. She had drank too much the night before at a party with her co-workers and we both wanted something heavy and greasy. I ordered my regular pepperoni and pineapple pizza, (don’t mock me, it’s good. Try it!), and the girl ordered some eggplant vegatable thing. It was nasty. After eating it was still about 8:30pm so we went back to the mall and it was closing up. I wanted some gummy bears and she wanted to see which shops were still open.

After we got back, she put on season 1 of Sex and the City, while I pretended to be asleep. I wanted to hate it, but it was pretty funny. Damn those funny women. Oh well.

I woke up this morning, and rode with the girl to Sannomiya and headed home to meet Scot for a quick meeting. After that, I did some internet work, and basically sat around all day. I should have cleaned my room, but I felt really lazy, so I didn’t. Oh well, I’ll do it next weekend.

All in all it was a decent weekend. Next weekend there is the official company party, so I’m sure the weekend will turn out similar to this one. I hate this time of year in Japan. Have a mentioned that I really don’t like drinking. From reading this you might not know it, but it’s true. You just, honestly cannot survive in this culture without drinking, at least not as an American. They expect us all to drink more than two of them. I’m not doing wonders for our image, but I drink enough to not be rude.

With that I’ll sign off. Sorry for the late post. It was a crazy weekend. Next weekend may be the same, so don’t get too mad. I’ll take pictures. Have a good night. See you soon.

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12/05/2008 (Friday)

Today when I got to work I knew immediately that it was a mistake to have come in. I was sick and I told my boss that I probably should go home as soon as possible. Unfortunately, if they can’t find someone to teach your class and you are not passed out, you’re teaching. Guess what? I wasn’t passed out.

I struggled through the day, but I made it. They offered to let me call in sick tomorrow, but I have a big party tomorrow and I didn’t want students seeing me at a party after missing classes. So, anyway, I’ll be going in tomorrow.

So, again, I’ll have to keep this short because I’m sick. I’ll be taking a bunch of pictures tomorrow at the party, so I’ll share those with you soon. Have a great day.

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12/04/2008 (Thursday)

Again, today, I felt sick. It’s in my stomach so I don’t know if I ate something bad, (unlikely, as it’s lasted this long), or if I’m genuinely sick. I plan to go to bed early tonight, to see if it’s just stress and lack of enough sleep.

Today was my rough day. One private lesson at 2pm then a kids class at 5pm followed by 3 group lessons. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but having 4 classes in a row is actually really rough. They usually try to avoid that, but there just wasn’t any other way in this situation. I survive every week, so it’s no big deal. The only thing that made it slightly worse today was the fact that I was sick.

A few months ago I went with my girlfriend to get a massage. The lady that gave me my massage spoke really good English and I encouraged her to come to my school and continue her English studies. Last week she finally came in for an interview, and today was her first class. She did really well. There was an awkward feeling in the room though because the class she went into was usually a one person class because everyone else had moved up in levels. The girl in that class and I had set a different tone for that class, and the introduction of a third person, kind of threw us off a bit. I know that sounds strange, but if you’ve ever taught classes, you might understand the importance and the uniqueness of each classes “feel”. The new girl was a bit hesitant and the other girl was very gracious, so I’m sure the class with take off again in a couple of weeks.

After class I rode my bike home. the weather here is a lot like my home town, with lots of starts and stops when the seasons begin to change. It was really cold for the last couple weeks, then today it was warm. Of course that play havoc with peoples health, and also makes it difficult to choose a coat to wear in the morning. I ended up with a silk lined pea coat that was much too warm for the weather. By the time I got home, I was pretty sweaty. Nice.

Because I’m still feeling a bit sick, I think I’ll end it here. So, I’ll see you all soon. Have a great day.

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12/03/2008 (Wednesday)

Today I felt sick all day, but managed to make it through. I had a kids demo for a class I usually teach, and of which I’ve done a demo for at least 5 times, so it was no big deal. After work I headed to Nishinomiya to have a pint and talk politics with the boys, and this time my girlfriend came with me. It was great. My friend just got accepted to grad school so we celebrated a little more than usual. I’m currently at the girls house, so I can’t write much more. So with that, I’ll let you go. Sorry it’s so short. I’ll catch up to you tomorrow. Have a great day.

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12/02/2008 (Tuesday)

Today was a pretty uneventful day. I got up, had my bagel and coffee, ironed my shirt, and headed out to work. My first bus was about 5 mins early so I missed it, and my second bus was about 12 mins late, so I was almost late to work. I clocked in 2 mins early. SAFE!!

After my first class, I went next door and got my hair cut. The staff doesn’t speak English, so I kind of take my life into my own hands when I go in there. They’ve never completely destroyed my hair, but often they don’t cut it exactly like I would have liked. I guess it’s my fault for not learning Japanese after living here for over 2 years. Shame on me, right?

The day went pretty smoothly, and I really can’t make any complaints. Nothing about my day really stood out to me. One disadvantage about living overseas for this long is that in some ways it becomes hard to see distinctions between my home culture and my adoptive home culture. I’m sure when I go home for Christmas, I will have more to say. Things will stand out, and culture differences will scream at me to point them out.

So, with that, I’ll sign off. I’ll see you all soon.

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November Blog

12/01/2008 (Monday)

Today I woke up at the girls house and walked her to work. After I dropped her off at work, I started my phone calls to the U.S. I called Sarah to talk about our newest project, then called Scot to check in with him. After that I called my travel agent to pay for my plane ticket to the U.S. on the 18th.  This whole time I was walking around Sannomiya and it was a beautiful day.

I ran into this display. Every year the a lot of people in Kansai make stuffed animals with a pattern provided by this charity. They submit the stuffed animals that they create with this pattern to this display and then the bears are shipped overseas to be given to poor children. Pretty cool right? My girlfriend’s mom does this every year, so we come here to see all the other animals that were created. Here is a picture of just one side of one of the four main displays.

Pretty impressive, right? I guess the people who make the animals can choose what to make them out of, because some are knitted, but most are made with cotton cloth.

Although Christmas is considered a “lovers holiday” in most of Asia, the tradition of charity and caring for your fellow man has managed to be passed along with the holiday. This is the sort of thing that makes Christmas special for me.

On the way home I had lunch at a curry restaurant and then headed home to do my laundry and get ready for the start of another week of work. After I did a little work, I took a nap for a couple hours then watched “Chinatown”, with Jack Nicholson. I had never watched it, and it was the $.99 movie of the week on iTunes last week. It was worth the more than 2 hours it took to watch it. If you are a fan of noir detective movies, you’ll definitely like this one. I am currently downloaded “The Two Jakes”, which is part two. I’ve seen most of this movie, but I’m not sure I’ve sat down and watched the whole thing. I can’t wait until I have time to watch it.

With that, I’ll sign off folks. I hope you all have a great day. See you soon.