taiwanese update

hey y'all,
i finally found a fast internet connection and will post a quick write-n-run while i have the chance.

JAPAN
So my brother Dan came out to visit for a week in Japan and we had a blast, running through a high-speed tour of Kansai. First we went to Kyoto, had a tea ceremony with a Maiko (young Geisha), which was awesome. Then we went to Kiyomizu Temple and ran into these two old Japanese ladies that were at the tea ceremony, who we ended up having Okonomiyaki with (random, right).

Day two we went to Kinkakuji and Ryoan-ji, the first the famous golden temple of Kyoto, the second the famous Zen garden of Kyoto. After Kyoto, we headed back to Himeji for Okinawan dinner with Ayame (she and her guitar class gave us a special performance of Sha-In, Okinawan traditional folk music guitar), and we met these two guys from the Kinoshita Circus (which is in Himeji until mid-January). It was wild talking to this one guy, he is the wild-animal trainer for the circus and works with tigers, lions, elephants, etc. on a daily basis. He had really big hands! Ayame and I are going to see the circus show on January 8th. It's gonna be cool.

After spending the day in Himeji walking around the castle, eating eel lunch, we headed home where Dan cooked awesome homemade pizza and we lounged around. The day afterwards, we headed out to Osaka to meet Markane for yakiniku and an all night Warcraft session. It was awesome. The morning afterwards we scrambled to get to Kansai Airport, and off we flew to Taiwan.

Taiwan was an awesome time with Dan. We chilled with my Dad a bit, and hung out with an old friend of mine from SF that moved back to Taipei, and even my crazy uncle Da JoJo, who is like the Chinese version of the Marlboro Man. We ate tons of good chinese food - dumplings, noodles, street stalls food - the best was HAO DA JI PA "big huge chicken steak," dim sum, and more dumplings, homemade wontons, and a bunch more that I'm forgetting. We managed to get in a bunch of shopping and hit a couple of night markets, and saw a bunch of new parts of the city that we hadn't explored before.

Anymore that's all I got for now. It's 5am and I've just come back from the NYE fireworks from downtown, they lit up the tallest building in the world - Taipei 101, it was AWESOME... pictures to be posted later.

g'night y'all! happy new year. i sure am looking forward to a kick ass 2007.

love,
-m.

Recently

Sorry for the deliquency in posting, Life has revvvved up to manic pace again. Here's some of the stuff that's been going on:


I went to Universal Studios, Japan (in Osaka) with Kanako and Momo-chan from my school. It suuuuucked! It was cold and rainy, and we had to wait 2 hours for the Spider Man ride (which was cool), so we only rode 1 ride the whole day. Boooo. I could see how USJ would be cool for Japanese people, with it's American-like villages and facades, but it fell on deaf ears (and eyes) with me. I was like, um, "so what, a brownstone, a parking meter, an American flag." Otherwise, it was pretty okay.


Here's the calligraphy club, we're hanging out after the big culture festival, where we had showed off some of our badass penmanship. Calligraphy isn't the most popular club (in fact, I think it's the least) in school, but the kids are cool and we have fun. Most of them are from the special education class, which I don't get to teach, so it's nice to hang out with them once in awhile too.




Kerosene heaters that we use at school. It's soooo cold lately! Ah, the sweet sweet embrace of the Kerosene fumes. Makes my head all swimmy.


Maikeru sensei's desk at school.

Ugh... sick.

I hate being sick... I came down with a cold on Tuesday last week, and came home early from school to sleep it off, but it got even worse on Wednesday so I called in. On Thursday I rallied and went to Kyoto to see the leaves changing and hang out the Janet, her friend Wynne, and my buddy David, who was visiting Kansai for the long weekend vacation.

After talking all day and walking around in the chilly early winter air, I felt like crap when I got home and decided to take it easy on Friday. My voice was getting more and more hoarse, and on Saturday I went to the doctor's office.

(according to the Internet, this is what my throat looks like right now... totally closed and swollen)

Guess what? I've got laryngitis, as well as a mean cold. So I had to skip the trip to Koya-san (buddhist temple overnight stay), and also didn't get to go to Osaka this weekend.

Sucks!!! So I have been unable to do anything for the last week (stayed up all night coughing last night, so I called in today so I can try to beat this cold/get my voice back).

Ugh, I hate being sick, and I'm bummed that I missed out on a good part of David's trip, and that I can't do anything when I'm sick. On the upside, I don't mind missing school though! Okay, back to bed for me.

Kyoto

So last week on Thursday, Janet and I went to Kyoto to meet up with our friends David (visiting from Tokyo) and Wynne (from Wakayama). It was such a cool day. First we went to Fushimi Inari shine, which I had never been to before, and then over to Kiyomizu-dera, to check out the leaves changing.


Here's the explanation sign in front of the main gate. Fushimi Inari is a shinto god of grains, and since in the olden days wealth was measured by rice, the god has associations with wealth and prosperity. Since Kyoto is a world famous tourist destination, most of the stuff is bilingual, which makes it nice for me to understand what's going on.


Janet and David, in lovely sepia tones.


So this shrine is famous because it has thousands and thousands of these "torii" gates along the path. It's actually quite a hike, we were stomping around the woods for nearly two hours, and we didn't get to cover everything. Every inch of the path is covered by these gates, so it's really beautiful to see. According to Janet, the chick from Memoirs of a Geisha was filmed running through the gates (dunno, my bootleg version is unwatchable, as I bought it in Shanghai and it's dubbed in Russian... go figure?!).


Torii upon Torii upon Torii.


Here's us, actin' a fool at the top of the mountain.


Once we started getting into the more heavily wooded parts of the mountain, they had these cute signs for "entertain your dog by putting out a fire," or "wearing funny hats makes my dog laugh at me." Or something...


This is typical at the entrance of shrines and temples in Japan, there will often be a hand wash so that you can "cleanse" your worldly sins and purify yourself before you enter the holy area, through the symbolic hand washing. The red bibs are actually to do with abortion (the god of unborn kids? I dunno), I am a little fuzzy about the exact meaning but I think that because abortion is used as a form of birth control in Japan, you see a lot of statues with these red bibs hanging out.


So the fox is the messenger of Inari, and there are a number of fox statues throughout the grounds. The fox, or "kitsune" in Japanese, is believed to have magical powers and can sometimes assume human form. Foxes are associated with benevolent trickery, which is kind of like Native American folklore too - I wonder how foxes throughout the world have this reputation?


Here's my artsy lantern/shrine shot.


On the way back through downtown Kyoto, there was a company doing some sort of exhibit for their new product, and had hired a Geisha to sit in a tent and get photographed by tourists (yup I'm a sucker too). Geisha in Kyoto proper are called "geiko" in the local dialect, and "maiko" (underage geisha). I'm lucky enough to have seen a few in Kyoto, but to even catch a glimpse is like seeing a shooting star - quick and fleeting.


BUT, the ladies can rent costumes for the day and get their faces painted. I see this quite often and the girls usually get dressed up and walk around Kyoto a bit and snap photos. I snuck my camera in on a photo shoot - I doubt that real Geikos give the peace sign when they are being photographed.


Here's us in front of the famous Kiyomizu-dear ("Pure water temple"). That's Wynne on the right. She can speak Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English all with equal fluency. Isn't that rad?!


The temple was a mob scene when we got there. I've been there 4 other times (it's one of the most famous sites in Japan, and everybody always wants to visit... with good reason, it's beautiful). The fall "kouyou" season, when the Japanese maple leaves turn colors ("momiji") and it's really pretty. Unfortunately, we picked a national holiday to go, so it was butts to balls at the temple - not exactly the peaceful mountainside setting one hopes for, but entertaining in its own way.


My artsy shot.


Here's a panoramic (ish) of the temple. It's famous because it's such a large wooden structure that is supspended off the side of the Eastern Kyoto mountains. It's got a great view of the city skyline and the maple trees below are nice too. Too bad I was shooting with my crappy old camera, next time I go I'll try to get a better shot.


Here's David and Wynne lookin' silly, bringing luck on themselves by "bathing in incense."


So one of the famous parts of Kiyomizu-dera is this rock. There are actually two of them, in this courtyard area off the side of the main temple grounds, and the are technically called "Love Stones." Japanese lore states that if you can walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed, you will find true love (or something like that, I wasn't really paying attention). If you need help to get there then you will need help to find your true love (again, or something like that, wasn't paying attention). This place is always mobbed with young people who are bumping into each other in their attempts at finding true love. Is that some kinda metaphor for love I just made?


by planet_janet
(photo credit: Janet)
Here's me, getting ready for the attempt. The place was so super crowded, I ended up trampling a couple of people in my attempt to find true love. I had the right path for a bit, but in the end veered off and ended up waaay off course. Modern day cupid, David, had to steer me back.


The temple is named for the pure mountain water that runs off of it, hence the name. Again, you can bring luck/fortune onto yourself by drinking the water that runs from the mountain. Funny thing is, it was so crowded, I saw a lady whack a kid with the metal pole (on accident... maybe) right after they had both finished drinking. So much for good luck!


The area surrounding Kiyomizu-dera is full of old style Japanese gift shops with all kinds of curious. This one is for mochi-sweet bean snacks. (photo idea credit: Wynne).


Here's a night shot as we are leaving the area. Nice, huh?

...for more pictures, check out Janet's collection at http://community.webshots.com/user/planet_janet.

Chillin' with Taku

I had a cool day today - I got into school and found out that 2 of my 4 classes for the day were cancelled (aw yeah), so I had a chance to study Japanese all day, which I haven't been able to do at school since maybe September. It was cool! Afterschool, I went to the gym in the first time since I'd like to admit, and then met up with Taku for dinner after the gym.


Taku is graduating from university this year and is thinking about his plans - he wants to leave Japan in about a year and go travelling, so we were talking about options and hanging out. His family has an awesome restaurant in town, so I ate a ton of food there and am ready to pass out.

I also handed in my application for the "leaving JET" and going home conference - it's in Yokohama (just south of Tokyo), in February sometime. I'm not sure if I want to stay another year (teaching is getting really old) or if I wanna resign (17 weeks of vacation and a free apartment - can't shake a stick at the benny's). More to come on this one... big decisions in the air!

You know you live in Japan when

This is the stuff that's for sale at the grocery store. Looks tasty!

Mmm, glad they have the octupus tentacle, it's a real impulse purchase.

Kim-sensei models the squid in aisle 3? Or is that cuttlefish? Is that the same thing?

So I was on my way home tonight, I had just finished teaching an adult English class (Kim dropped in to help me out, guest speaker, rock on Kim), and we popped into the local supermarket to get some ice cream. Taking pictures of the funky stuff made me realize that I've been taking Japan for granted lately. All the weird and abnormal stuff has gotten to be normalized and it doesn't really shock me that much that there is every possible sea creature in my local grocery, or that people are bowing and apologizing profusely all the time.

I've been wrestling around lately with the idea of signing on for another year or not. I'm on the fence - the job is starting to feel a bit like that movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray has to repeat the same thing over and over. I think though it's because I've been broke and haven't done any big travelling, and my camera has been in the repair shop so I haven't had the inclination to look closely at things with a thoughtful eye. My friend Ross has a blog (A Surface Below) which aims to do just that - look deeper at things, and I think that actively doing it as an observer gives you a much keener appreciation of things.

Anyway, I'm making a new resolution tonight to start appreciating Japan again, and get back on the travel/photography/writing tip. Will keep you updated ;).


... plus playing less of World of Warcraft will help too. Man that game is the devil!
-m.

Sunset

Here's the view from today, biking home today.

It's gotten butt ass cold in the matter of a week, man that season change came hard! I went from wearing flip flops, a t-shirt and jeans last sunday... to busting out the wool socks, down comforter, and scarf and gloves. Jeeee-eez!

The Return of the Aoki Clan

Two weeks ago, I met up with Aaron Jones, his wife Hiromi, and super cute and cool kid, Beau. You may remember them from their last year's visit (the crazy underwater ninjas that ate raw octopus on the beach). Bummer that my camera was out of order this time around, but I had a good time hanging out and seeing them again.


(I managed to snap one with my cell phone... Check out this Handsome Stud. What's up ladies?)

So this year we had a more mellow time, we met up in Kyoto, and had lunch with a couple of friends of Hiromi's, who were really cool! We had a picnic lunch at a temple, and strolled around the grounds. Hiromi's friend is a travel writer, and he was really knowledgable about the area. Afterwards, we went to a sushi restaurant in downtown Kyoto, which was one of the best meals I've had in Japan. Definitely top 10 of all time.



We had this awesome blowfish dinner: everything had blowfish in it - the appetizer was Blowfish skin, lightly fried, the sashimi course (oh man it was awesome - octopus, sea urchin, blowfish, squid, tuna... all super fresh and great), deep fried blowfish (kinda like fish and chips... for rich people) for the pre-main, and an awesome blowfish "nabe" for the main. Nabe (pronounced "Nah-Beh") is a wintertime dish, it's basically a hotpot in the middle of the table, and you add meat, vegetables, tofu, and noodles to it. Afterwards they take the broth and make a rice-soup for the final course. Oh man you better believe I passed out after that meal.

Anyway, all I could think about during dinner was the Simpson's episode where Homer eats the wrong part of the blowfish and thinks that he's going to die. Ha man I love the Simpsons, and man I love blowfish, and man I love it when the Aoki clan comes to town. Thanks Jones-san!

Wanna go to the Pants Party?

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Himeji Fighting Shrine Festival (Himeji no Kenka-Matsuri), which was a wicked fun day out in the sun, watching naked dudes carry and crash giagantic, heavy shrines into each other. There are a lot of festivals this time of year because of the rice harvest and the seasons changing, the Japanese of olden days would carry these shrines around their rice fields so that the crops would be blessed and the local god of the village could take a tour of the land. It's a total contrast to the ceremony I went to last year, which was somber and religious - this one has more of a carnival atmosphere with lots of food/drink stalls, and tons of tourists - they even sold tickets for stadium style seating!

Here's some pics, courtesy of Sara Revell, since my camera has been out of order:


This was the scene of 99% of the dudes at the festival. They had been drinking all weekend - getting ridiculously tossed, and having a ball. The thongs they are wearing are more casual versions of the ones sumo wrestlers wear, and are called "fundoshi." I bet you the sunburn takes the fun right out of the fundoshi (sorry, I had to).


I dunno how many, it may have taken like 50 or 60 dudes to lift and carry one of these things. I'll post my shots later, and you can see the agony on their faces as they are straining to avoid death by 2 ton shrine. After they hoist them up, while chanting "YOOO-YA-SA!" (it's supposed to power them up, like the mushroom in Super Mario), they crash them into the opposing team's shrines, in an ultimate display of Japanese manhood. As if the funny underpants weren't enough.


East meets West. Nobody told me abou the dress code!


Even the kids get into it.


I love the look on this guy's face. This is during the lunch break, all the shrine-bearers take lunch and lounge around for awhile, and re-whet their whistles for the final showdown.

... You know it just occurred to me how similary this festival is to the Folsom Street Festival in San Francisco. FSF is a bondage/S and M/kinky sex festival in San Francisco, and it's basically throngs of dudes dressed in leather chaps, harnesses, exposing their bare asses and getting ridiculously hammered all day. I guess Japanese and American culture aren't so different after all!

Gakko-Enkai

Gakko-Enkai is Japanese for "school drinking party," meaning that you go out and get smashed and stuff yourselves with your co-workers from school. I've been doing this for the last two days and man my liver is starting to hurt! Enkais are common culture with Japanese co-workers, especially at the "salaryman" level - they'll often go out with co-workers, clients, etc. on a weekly basis. Since school teachers are super busy, we only do ours about once every few months. It's a great time, because the teachers that never speak to me are super chatty after they get a few in them.

On Friday, I went out with my Junior High teachers, about 12 of us, to get "tabehodai" (all you can eat), and "nomihodai" (all you can drink for 90 minutes), at this yakiniku place. Yakiniku is Korean BBQ, but with a Japanese name. They have grills in the middle of the table and they bring out plate after plate of meat, veg, meat, meat, and more meat. It's awesome, it's like the 4th of July, but everything is bite sized and there are a bunch of small sauces to dip the meats into. Yum.

I sat across from Enoki Sensei, who I have never had a conversation with in my life... so, to break the ice I asked him how to read a Japanese character that was on the menu, and he responded in Engrish! Not only that, but we chatted throughout the entire meal, we talked about snowboarding (he's a bigtime skier), being married (he hates it), students (the kids are always talking shit), American beer (I explained that the big companies are crap, and that I would try to get some Newcastle for him), and other stuff that drunk people chat about. His favorite phrase was "Maikeru, speed up, speed up" as he pointed to my beer and then his watch, indicating that we should drink as much as possible during the nomihodai. I was like "Dude! I didn't know you spoke Angrish! We should'a been hanging out a long time ago!!" He and I are planning to go skiing/snowboarding together this winter. Cool, huh?

And... tonight, as I was walking back to the train station after frisbee practice, I ran into the principal of one of my Elementary schools and a couple of teachers - they were going to dinner and invited me along. This was a "special dinner - Kagoshima style," which is the prefecture that my principal is originally from. As we sat down in the restaurant, he explained that the house he grew up in also had a chicken farm on it, and that people from his neck of the woods eat every part of the chicken - from the rooter to the tooter! SO, I had my 2nd experience of raw chicken tonight, liver, heart, and a bunch of random parts that I couldn't identify but were super chewy and tasty occasionally. It was weird, but kinda fun. We had a bunch of other courses, chicken for the most part, and a special Japanese potato-liquor called "Sho-Chu," which is like whiskey, but not brown. It tastes like crap, to tell you the truth, but it was cool hanging out with this old Japanese dude hearing stories about back in the day.

Anyway, that's it for me. I gotta go, I think I got the runs from the chicken!

Bo-ru-rin-gu

I went bowling last week with 3 of the teachers from school. Man did I get my ass kicked! I bowled an 86 (alltime low score) and a 126 (meh), compared to a whopping 176 and 165 from momo-chan (means "little peach"), the school nurse. WTF?

Momo-chan, rubbing it in my face that she beat my ass. "Go home and practice, Maikeru. You need it."

That's Hagitou-sensei on the left, and Shirai-sensei on the right. Hagitou-sensei is a PE teacher, and she beat my score by a healthy margin. Shirai-sensei and I teach English together. We tied.

Man I gotta get some more practice in before I embarass myself anymore. I can't believe I lost!

Sports Day

Here's some pics from Sports Day at school. Finally got them uploaded. It was funny to see the Sports Festival the second time around, it's still interesting but it's the first of my "repeat" events going into the second year of being here. It wasn't that big of a deal to watch the events this year, I actually ended up horsing around with the kids all day. It was cool!

This year, the weather forcast was for rain, so we made these "Tero Tero Bozu," which you are supposed to hang in the windows to appease the weather gods to give us sunny weather. This one is mine. Cute, huh?

This is a 40 man, 20 leg race. This is one team, and they all have their legs tied together. They all have to cross the finish line, and usually there are some pretty spectacular wipeouts, followed by the prone person being dragged by their feet across the finish line. Ouch, talk about some wicked road rash.

Here's the fighting event again. Man this one still freaks me out, thank god no kids cracked their skulls open this year. Man, look how high that kid on the right is!

My artsy shot of the mucade race - the one where they tie their legs together and run like a Japanese centipede.

This is Saori! She is a 3rd year and captain of the tennis team. Super smart and nice girl. She's carrying a spear that has all the ribbons that the school's tennis club has even won.

Here's Imoto (l) and "Perfect Body." I keep forgetting Perfect Body's real name, but that's his favorite English expression. Imoto has a dimple in his chin, and so his nickname is "ketsuago" - literally meaning "ass-chin." Kid are so cruel.

Here's my boys! On the left is Takeomi, who is a big loudmouth 3rd grader. He has a great sense of humor and is funny as hell. One the right is this dude named "Shu" (!!). He is also a 3rd grader, but his girlfriend is in high school (and taller than him). He's pretty much the stud of the school, all the girls love him (of course, he's named Shu).

My boy Kazuki. He's another 3rd year and captain of the soccer team. He learned all of his English from hip hop records and our typical conversation goes like this:

Kazuki: Maikeru, what's up?
M: Nothing what's up witchu?
Kazuki: I-mu just keeping it real.
M: Oh cool. How's the hip hop?
Kazuki: H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay.
M: Cool man, see you Kazuki.
Kazuki: Peace out Maikeru.

Cool, huh?! He's one of my favorites.

This is Ai-chan, she is a 3rd grader, captain of the Kendo club. When she was in elementary school, she won the All Japan championship in her age group for kendo. That's Japanese fencing, where they wear the armor (what she has on) and helmets, and practice samurai swordsmanship. She wants to be a cop when she grows up so she can teach Kendo to people. She's badass.

Here's the two class clowns of the school, Fukumizu and Sho. Sho is a bully and a jock, and dumb as rocks, but he really loves reggae music and tries really hard in my class. He was a big screwup until the Sports Festival, when he got elected to lead his group (purple team), and then became really responsible and a good leader. Now that sports festival is over, he's back to old tricks again. Gotta love 'em.

Here's Sho's little sister, Misuzu. She's super smart and really funny! She kinda looks like Sho with a wig on.

After the sports festival, we had the big teacher enkai (dinner/drinking party) again this year. The all got really wasted and acted crazy - I on the other hand, exercised restraint after last year's debacle and decided to take it easy. The got so drunk this year that they accidentally dropped 65 year old Principal Ikeda on the ground when they were trying to human trampoline him. Jesus!

Even Habatan made a guest appearance, that's Nakae-sensei in the suit. He's a new teacher this year and super cool. We've chilled a couple of times and his English is pretty good. Funny guy.