hey, thats not some random 70s guy

yes, ive changed the ron burgandy lookalike picture temporarily for a hockey canada logo, as though itd make some difference in canadas hope for gold in hockey (or in japan, ice hockey, or with japanese pronunciation, isu hokee).

go canada go.

japanese valentines day

so today is valentines day in japan, a time for department stores to show their unabashed love to their customers by charging 10 bucks for 3 pieces of belgian chocolate or 20 bucks for a single red rose.

actually, im not that bitter to suggest that valentines day is just an excuse for big department stores to sell chocolate. but in japan its rather amusing how they celebrate it. it was first introduced to the japanese after world war 2 because at that time it was the only day where wives could say to their husbands "i love you." japanese couples arent quite as open in their feelings as western couples, and when i say "not quite as," i mean "nowhere close as."

its evolved into a day where the type of chocolate you give indicates how you feel about someone. if a girl really likes a guy, they make chocolates for them at home and wrap it up in a nice pink package. if they just wanna be friends, then they go to the nearest department store and just by some hersheys and pop a bow on it.

but thats the thing...here, only girls give guys gifts on v-day. guys do nothing. its quite nice. the catch is, in true japanese gift giving fashion, in march theres another day called white day where guys who received valentines day gifts from girls reciprocate and buy the girls something. im not sure what that something is just yet but im sure its chocolate coated in some form.

olympics this, olympics that

in the last few days ive been watching olympic coverage non stop. it always amazes me that events that youd normally never take a look at (ie: the luge, men in tights using a sled down a ice tube, or the biathalon, combining cross country skiing with, of all things, target shooting) become the sport of the hour. you cheer for canadians youd never heard of and are happy when they end up in 43rd place.

i must say that the japanese coverage is much better than, say, nbc. on nbc you get to see all the americans go, a big sappy human interest story on how that athlete overcame all odds or battled through all types of adversity in his/her life, see them finish in 16th place in alpine skiing, and then get a glimpse of the norwegian, german, and austrian skiiers who take the gold, siver, and bronze. on nhk they actually show the entire event, from the person who finished 60th to the gold medalist. very little bias is given to the japanese athletes (or maybe there is, i dont know, i cant understand the japanese commentary).

and speaking of the japanese commentary, it always amuses me how the japanese show each other theyre listening to what each other is saying. in order to make sure youre paying attention, you respond with a "hai" or an "ehh" or an "umh" every five seconds when someone else is rattling on about something important. you could very well pass off as a japanese speaker by just uttering those phrases every time somebody is talking, and when its your chance to speak, just say that youre very quiet and have nothing to say at that moment in time.

super bowl post game thoughts

while it snows outside i thought id just give a quick opinion on the super bowl, which i watched this morning starting at 8am on japanese tv...they basically just use the abc feed and use 2 japanese commentators, but theres no commericals of any kind (usually a good thing except for the super bowl with those special ads) and nhk seems to send one cameraperson to the game to take video during the breaks and zoom in on any japanese person they can find. ie: during two timeouts there was a water bottle girl on the pittsbugh sideline who looked japanese, so the camera followed her and whichever steeler player she was providing h2o to at the moment for about 1-2 minutes. i think she was probably chinese, but whatever.

for the game itself, it was a bit disappointing, both teams didnt play very well but the team that played better lost. seattle was the victim of both poor officiating and bad luck. darrell jackson got a td taken away for no reason and i still think the football never crossed the pane of the goalline during ben roethlisburgers draw play. and every time they were driving down the field and went for a big play it was taken back either by a bad penalty or a jerramy stevens drop. at least im not my roommate mike, who bet my roommate paul 10000 yen on the game (about 100 bucks canadian)...he might struggle for money this week.

ramblings 4

events in north america that have caught my eye recently...

- tonight (or this next morning) the super bowl is on, so im excited for that. but its on at like 5 in the morning, so instead of eating pizza and drinking beer, well be eating pancakes and drinking coffee. should be an awesome game though...it looks like pittsburghs year but i think everybody is really underrating seattle because of their geographical location. so ill take seattle in a close game. my fantasy football league fizzed out, as my team decided to have terrible games in our "playoffs" in week 14 of the season. have to wait until next year for that again.

- the canucks dont look good because they cant win in their division at all...that division is brutal, vancouver, edmonton, calgary, and colorado are going to beat each other up so that in the playoffs they wont be in any shape to play any other teams. in other hockey news, i hope to watch some olympic hockey somehow, someway...but im not sure if it will be on tv. theres one place where i know they will show the games, but the bar is run by the same sleazeball housing agent that screwed us earlier in the year, so i might have to go against my personal convictions and go there for 2 weeks to watch the games.

- the conservatives won the election...no big surprise really i guess, i didnt want the liberals to win so i think its good for the country that at least theres somebody new in charge. the problem for stephen harper is that he really has noone to work with except the bloc quebecois. he could work with the bloc on increasing the power of the provinces and getting corruption out of government but in terms of social conservatism i dont think they can do very much. another problem is that unless they do really really well as a government then conditions will never be as good again for them as this time. which means that their current minority government might be as much as a harper led party can win. if theres another election soon then this might be like the joe clark conservative government...calgary guy comes in, has no other party to work with, cant do anything, needs to call an election within the year, and the liberals regain the government.

more later.

whiskey in the jar

last night amanda, me, and our friend mike (not roommate mike, another mike that lives upstairs in our building) had a board game and whiskey night. aparently mike is really into board games and, more specifically, german resource management games.

sounds nerdy, and it probably is, but we played a cool little game called katan where you and the other players are stranded on an island and have to build roads, settlements, towns, ect...and accumulate points for doing so. first to 10 points wins, so it only takes about 1 hour to play, unlike a game like risk that can take all night.

while it was snowing outside we also bought some japanese whiskey. if you wanna drink alcohol in japan, whiskey is definately the way to go...its dirt cheap, popular, and pretty good, as companies like suntory and sapporo make a wide variety of whiskeys. it was the first time i had whiskey in a long time and while im not in a rush to drink it again its quality is slightly above the fake beer.

on an alcohol related note, ive found that unlike the czech republic, where beer was bountiful, excellent, and cheap, and as a result i had beer almost every day...in japan i hardly drink. maybe a few beers every few weeks, nothing spectactular. we rarely go to pubs, too, mostly because the pubs here are gaijin-friendly pubs filled with drunk 40 year old englishmen looking to either pick up japanese girls or watch premier league soccer. instead we usually head to the japanese izakayas, where you can have a few beers and a bunch of small dishes in a much better atmosphere. they can be pricey, though, which may be one main reason for the lack of said drinking.

minna no nihongo

coming back to japan after being home for a few weeks, i came to the realization that i know an embarrasingly small amount of japanese for living in japan for 10 months already. when you cant have a conversation a 5 year old japanese kid could have, maybe you havent quite been hitting the books hard enough.

i couldve learned more if i had the motivation, but i havent had the motivation to seriously study it until now. perhaps it was the scope of the project...japanese is a language with zero similarites to anything other language (with the exception of english words that theyve "katakanaized", ie: shirt becomes shirutsu, tv becomes terebi, radio becomes rajio, ect...). it even puzzles linguists how the heck they ever came up with the language in the first place. add to the fact that reading and writing is extremely difficult...they use 4 different alphabets, the most common one being kanji, of which there are about 20000 to learn, with 2000 being considered essential by the japanese board of education. they say it takes 4-5 years of hard studying and living in japan to begin approaching full fluency. i guess i figured i had no chance, so why bother.

but then i thought that it would be an absolute waste to lose a chance to learn a second language, even if i only achieve an elementary or intermediate level for it. i squandered the chance to learn french, but i blame that on the age i was when i was studying it and the uninspiring nature of my french teachers through school. i wasnt in the czech republic long enough to learn czech, but even if i was i dont think id do very well because the pronunciation of it is so difficult.

plus, learning japanese is pretty fun, especially when you can use what you learned every day. i bought alot of new texts last month and the lessons are actually fun to go through. amanda has become my sensei and is good about correcting me or giving me grammar points or conversation practice. and learning kanji, despite how impenetrable it may seem, is pretty fun. you start to learn that theres a method behind the madness that is japanese.

so hopefully ill start seeing some rapid improvement in the coming months...im not holding my breath, as im notoriously slow in learning certain new things like languages, but some improvement would be really rewarding.

25 ways to fall

last weekend amanda, me, and our friend rumi went snowboarding for the first time in our lives. on tv it looks pretty easy, just go in an s motion down the slope and keep your balance and youll be ok.

coming away from the experience, all i can remember is physical and mental pain and anguish. i think i fell about 3 times every time going down the mountain, and i went down the mountain about 6 times, so thats about 20 falls in total. they included faceplants, somersaults, backflips, cartwheels, and unintended jumps that had me landing on body parts where i wasnt sure i had body parts. coming away from the thing i had bruises on my knees, wrists, back, and hands.

despite the physical toll it took on my body that is now healed, it was fun. the ski resort itself was in gifu prefecture, at a resort called whiteopia. the way it works here is that you go to a travel agency, buy a package deal for about 8000 yen (about 80 bucks), which gives you a chartered bus ride in the morning, a lift pass, and a bus ride back at night. the bus is loaded with other boarders who bought the same deal. when you get to the resort you pay another 4000 yen to rent a snowboard, boots, a jacket, and pants. in japanese style everything is perfectly layed out for you and organized to the minute. everything except the actual boarding of course.

when you get there you basically take the lift to the easiest hill and start going down. at the start you dont go anywhere but on your face or your derrierre, but after 1 or 2 times down the mountain you start to find your balance and can stand up on your board without falling down. then, if youre like me, you start getting ambitious and try stuff you maybe shouldnt try your first time and pay the physical price afterwards. i think if i went again id be good fun and id be much better but im not exactly the quickest study the worlds ever seen.

so i recommend snowboarding to anybody...just remember to bring some heating pads/ice packs for the bus ride home.

a cold winds ablowin

the weather here is getting pretty nasty and has been nasty for a while. i think i told most people but the day before i went home for the holidays, on dec 22, we got a massive record snowfall that shut down trains and closed the airport. luckily they got the snow plows out in time and i was able to go on my flight the next day with only a one hour delay, but it was stressful nonetheless.

now, the snow doesnt fall much anymore (although we got a few hours of snow late last night) but the wind chill is just nasty. right now the temperature outside is about 0 and the wind chill is around -5 or -10. i used to tell my students about how cold canada is and say how much snow accumulation vancouver receives every year, but now i have to admit that nagoya is colder than vancouver. you dont get the ice frozen on the car windows or that wet cold that makes it seem colder than it really is on the west coast, but vancouver doesnt have the bitter wind here that makes walking down the street quite uncomfortable at certain times.

high speed internet...

...is a wonderful thing. for months at our apartment complex weve had a slow, unreliable connection provided by the apartment owner, who is actually a pretty cool guy compared to the sleazeball housing agent we dealt with earlier last year when we got here.

now we signed up with yahoo and got a broadband high speed internet connection, which is finally giving us the reliable goodness weve all been craving for a while. no more writing an email for 20 minutes only to lose it while trying to send it.

so i guess that means ill be in better electronic communication, both through email and through this blog. i know that the ratings and website hits for this thing are at an all time low due to a lack of interesting updates (or any updates at all) by yours truly, so im sorry if youve come here hoping for something only to see the same heading thats been the topic title for the past month. itll change now, even despite last months "ill update now, promise" plea that went unanswered. because if i cant find anything interesting to say or any time to post anything, ill start to wonder what im doing and how im spending my time. i do lots of interesting stuff and i like to write so there shouldnt be any problem.

so i digress. bottom line...ill update now. promise. at least i think.