on this update

this is the biggest blog update ive ever done. it should be since its been 3 months to the day that ive updated the stupid thing.

it also might be close to 3 months since ive sent some people emails, ie; karsten, marc, and joanna. please forgive me if i use this update temporarily as an email while my fingers recover from 3 hours of typing and i get my thoughts together to send you much better written emails individually.

ive talked about getting a new computer and its coming, just at the end of the month as i bought it off a guy from a sayonara sale. i have to wait until july 30 when he leaves japan for southeast asia to pick it up.

so please read and please check again in the future.

on the second parents visit

from saturday, may 20 to tuesday, may 30, my parents made the very wise decision to visit japan. the strict itinerary was to visit nagoya, kyoto, nara, hiroshima, and tokyo. amanda and i both took a bunch of paid days off work to travel with them.

the short story is that it was a great time. everybody involved had a blast. my dad had the time of his life. he travelled to europe for 4 months when he graduated university and we still hear stories about greece or yugoslavia or italy to this day. im suspecting well get stories about tokyo or hiroshima or nagoya for at least another 25 years after this, which is great. my mom also had a great time, as she did very well walking everywhere with us on what was admittingly an ambitious schedule. amanda had a great time meeting mom and dad and got along with them very well. and i had a great vacation. ive toured japan quite a few times up to that point and theyve all been very fun, and this time was no different.

we started with 3 days in nagoya. i originally thought that it was too long, but my dad insisted that he must see our "daily life." having no idea what our daily life consisted of, i was at a loss of things to do, but we ended up filling 3 days quite comfortably. amanda and i got off work saturday night and headed straight to the airport to pick them up, who were surprisingly not jetlagged. dad thus presented amanda with a bag of canadian beaver droppings. after that, we took the train into nagoya station and dropped everything off at the hotels quite cozy double room. amanda had prepared a nice dinner for us all so they came to see our apartment and were shocked that it wasnt a dump.

the next day we had breakfast at the hotel (which was conveniently only 2 minutes away from our apartment on foot) and set off to see nagoyas main sites...nagoya castle, atsuta shrine, osu kannon temple. dad loved atsuta shrine due to the japanese weddings being held there...it was a good example he said of japanese "daily life"...i was relieved. for dinner we went to yamachan, a japanese izakaya where i think jetlag finally hit mom.

on monday, we went to inuyama in the morning to see the castle. it was my 3rd time to the tiny castle but its still the oldest standing castle in japan so it was worth it. mom and dad got to see a working ecc so that was good too. amanda had to teach a 2 hour afternoon class so mom had a rest while dad and i went for some beers in nagoya station. for dinner, we met amanda in kanayama and had a great dinner at one of our favourite nagoya restaurants...great except for the disgusting seaweed tea the friendly owner always kindly serves us after were finished eating.

the next day we took the shinkanses to kyoto and went to the traditional sites...kiyomizu shrine, nijo castle, and sanjusangendo temple. the real highlight though was the hotel...dad mistakenly booked into an expensive hotel, so we had flash rooms and maybe the best dinner buffet money can buy 2 nights in a row. seriously, thats maybe the highest quality all you can eat all you can drink buffet ive ever seen. tempura, filet steak, and lobster bars? sashimi and crab crepes and tons of other fish? great dessert bar? beer and sake and wine all right there too.

on wednesday we spent forever getting to the golden temple, kinkakuji, before heading to nara in the afternoon where it proceeded to rain. home to the hotel for another buffet after.

the next day amanda had to leave the tour to go back to nagoya to work for 2 days, so mom, dad and i headed off for hiroshima. after seeing the a bomb dome we decided to head for miyajima, the famous water temple youve probably seen on japanese postcards. it was nice weather and there was a beautiful view that day. at night, mom went to bed while dad and i had drinks.

on friday we went to the somber peace park museum where its tough after seeing that to justify the use or even production of nuclear weapons. unfortunately it rained hard that day so we couldnt really walk through the peace park too much. we did drink some more beer at hiroshima station before taking the shinkansen back to nagoya for my parents second tour of duty at the hotel sunroute nagoya. we met amanda and unsuccessfully tried to find a restaurant on a busy friday night before settling on our favorite ramen restaurant.

on saturday morning we took the shinkansen to tokyo for a great day...ueno, tokyo national museum, asakusa, and our favourite place in tokyo, the donki restaurant. an all you can eat all you can drink barbeque establishment where we all got stupid. i had way too much beer and sake (theres a beer fountain for crying out loud) and mom had way too much ballantines scotch...so much so that the walk into ginza subway station was one i wont forget but one im sure she has.

the next day we made the excellent choice of forgetting about sightseeing and about shrines and temples and castles. instead we went to tokyo disneyland for a day of fun. awesome rides, awesome dinner at the blue bayou restaurant, great day.

on monday we saw some of "new" tokyo...ie ikebukuro and shibuya, but the highlight was finding a cinnabon and eating a great cinnamon bun after a long absence of doing so. i think it was amandas highlight having never tried a sugary cinnabon before. we took the shinkansen back to nagoya for the third tour of duty at the sunroute nagoya before going to our favorite izakaya, watami, for even more japanese food, beer, and sake. by that time i think dad convinced himself that hed like to live in japan for the rest of his life.

sadly the next day amanda and i had to drive them to the airport. they provided us with such a great trip that we really didnt want it to end and go back to work. i havent got my pictures developed yet...i think dad took about 400 on his new digital camera so those should be developed soon. it was a really great vacation and one were all still recovering from i think.

on the first parents visit

from wednesday, april 26 to sunday, may 7, amandas parent lois and jeff visited japan from perth, australia. the itinerary was to spend a few days in nagoya, then head off to visit tokyo, hiroshima, kobe, himeji, and nagoya during the japanese golden week period.

the short story is that it was a great time. i think amandas parents had a great time and it was really nice meeting them. amanda organized the trip wonderfully so there wasnt much problem with trying to figure out where to go.

tokyo was fun. we took an early morning shinkansen on saturday morning and stayed at a place called the sunright hotel (which i jokingly referred to as the sunwrong due to it being less than what a 3 star hotel should be). we took a pretty boring cruise down the sumida river where i saw a beautiful straight bridge, went to asakusa to do some shopping, went to shinjuku to the notorious district of kabukicho which is essentially tokyos red light district for some seedy people watching, and then went to our favorite restaurant, the donki, for some all you can eat all you can drink good times. the next day was busy...ueno park, ginza, roppongi, shibuya, then to an izakaya for dinner. we saw alot.

on monday amanda and her parents took the shinkansen to hiroshima while i stayed in tokyo an extra day to save the first time experience of hiroshima for my parents. i basically went to akihabara to do some video game shopping and then went to harajuku just so i could eat wendys and then get a mcflurry from mcdicks for dessert. i took a cheap night bus from tokyo to kobe to meet them there.

the first thing i did in kobe was go to the internet cafe since it was the only thing open at 630 in the morning when the bus dropped me off at shin kobe station. at 10 i went to the hmv and bought pearl jams new cd, then listened to it about 5 straight times while walking around the european style old buildings of kobe before meeting amanda and her parents at the shinkansen station in the afternoon. i had some trouble getting a hotel...amanda and her parents booked a triple room in advance, while i decided to just get there and get a single. dumb idea during golden week...i had to walk around abit to find a cheap hotel.

after 2 good days in kobe we went to himeji to the site of japans best castle. at night we took a cable car up a mountain in kobe where you have no idea how there was ever a devastating earthquake here only 10 years ago. the next day was back to nagoya for some recovery and relaxation.

on the friday, amandas japanese friend ichiro drove us around abit...to inuyama castle, to a boring outdoor museum, and then finally to his house for an awesome dinner that his wife cooked. ive never seen so much food and beer in my life. we didnt even come close to finishing it all.

the saturday was back to work, which was promptly followed by a gigantic dinner at the outback steakhouse, which i still consider to be one of the best restaurants in nagoya. on the sunday, we unfortunately drove amandas parents to the airport. they were on their way to kuala lumpur to spend 3 days but they were clearly sad to be leaving amanda and leaving japan. we all had a great time and it was a great way to spend golden week.

on the new school year

in the middle of april, we started the new ecc school year. that means every teacher gets a new schedule, new schools, new types of classes, ect. for some, that means a change for the better, for others, a change for the worse, and for others, no change at all.

for me, it luckily meant a change for the better. heres what i mean...

sunday - off
monday - off
tuesday - nishiharu school, about a 10 minute train ride, 2 kids classes, 1 regular 80 minute adult lesson
wednesday - meieki school, about a 10 minute bike ride from my apartment, 0 kids, 0 regular lessons, all drop in/no prep classes
thursday - sakae minami school, about a 20 minute bike ride from my apartment, 0 kids, 2 regular adult lessons
friday - nishiharu school, again about a 10 minute train ride, 1 kids class, 1 regular adult lesson
saturday - obu school, about a 15 minute train ride, 0 kids classes, 1 regular adult lesson

so lets add that up...only 3 kids classes (which really require the most preparation and the most energy) when last year i had 5. 5 regular adult lessons (which require prep time but are much more fun than drop in free time lessons) when last year i had 0. and the rest is just free time drop in lessons which require no prep.

plus, the schools...nishiharu and obu are close on the train, while meieki and sakae minami are accessible by bike only. extremely convenient.

to sum up, i was quite lucky and have one of the easiest yet most rewarding schedules of anybody i know of. so the long and short of it is that my working life is going much better this year than last year. plus, im just much more comfortable with the task of teaching in general, so from the start of the year i actually know what im doing instead of just pretending that i actually know what im doing.

on the apartment

i think ive mentioned this thru emails but to be honest its been so long that ive kind of lost track. but i still live in the same apartment with 3 people, its just much cleaner and neater now because my roommate mike moved back to canada at the end of the ecc contract period (end of march) and amanda moved in to take his place. mike plans to come back to japan at the end of august, but hell live in a different place (but hopefully still in the same apartment building, freebell).

but so far the new living arangement has been working out really well. amanda and i take the big room, while paul still stays in the small room. we are all paying the same rent now, i think. since amanda has moved in the place gets cleaned much more frequently...dishes are washed, floors are dusted, bathrooms are scrubbed, sheets are cleaned, and the toilet is, uh, aired out.

before the move, amanda and i would spend a ton of time travelling back and forth to each others place to see each other. now, with us living in the same place, we are dumbfounded by the amount of free time that we each have. its great, really. no more rushing around to get to work, no more subway rides, no more freezing cold bike rides in the winter or blisteringly sweaty bike rides in the summer. instead of using our time for transportation we can use our time just to hang out and have fun, which is a big relief.

some comments on sports i care about

first on the nhl...

good to see edmonton in the finals. i was worried they were going to be swept but they came back with a good effort in game 3. to see tampa come from behind to beat calgary two years ago, and then maybe see carolina beat edmonton this year...that would be an insult to a true hockey fan as everybody knows that calgary and edmonton are true hockey cities. hockey might be the number 12 sport in raleigh-durham and tampa bay, right behind horse racing and bowling.

the canucks crumbled yet again, that wasnt surprising...what was surprising is that they did it before the playoffs even began. and to anybody who said who cares, who wants eighth place to get whipped by detroit in the first round, well, tell that to any edmonton oiler fan. they rightly fired marc crawford, who the players had obviously tuned out even before the lockout began and who treated the team facilities like a country club. next on the agenda is to unload bertuzzi to an eastern conference team, resign ed jovanovski, and finally, finally find a goalie either thru a trade or through free agency. its clear cloutier cant stay healthy and that auld is simply good at being mediocre.

and onto that other sport i care about...soccer...its just huge over here. even people that care nothing about sports (ie; high school girls, housewives, ect...) know the japanese soccer team and are going to watch the japanese soccer games. in fact, the first japanese game is tonight, versus of all countries, australia. i predict a japan victory. the teams im going for are england for heritage purposes, the czech republic and japan for solidarity purposes. the teams i think will get near the finals, in this order, are argentina, england, and the netherlands. luckily (and unluckily for amanda), every game is on tv, which means a night of soccer every night for the next month. woohoo!

hanami

around the beginning of april is the annual cherry blossom season in japan, where japanese people go to parks, celebrate the new seasonal change, and get absolutely trashed with ridiculous amounts of beer and sake. so on the weekend of april 9 me, amanda, and a bunch of our friends headed to tsurumai park in nagoya to have a big party.

we got there around noon, and about half of the people at the park were already drunk, or hadnt stopped drinking from the night before. it sounds extreme but its really par for the course for this time of year in japan. companies dont even mind if some of their employees come into work after lunch with a little alcohol on their breath after taking a break at a hanami party for an hour.

it, as to be expected, was a good time. some of our friends got a little too drunk, but nothing bad happened...everybody to my knowledge was generally happy. the cherry blossoms were beautiful and so were the copious amounts of beer.

osaka

on vernal equinox day (one of the many national holidays in japan), amanda and i decided to take a trip down to the 3rd biggest city in japan, osaka. as an fyi, the 4 biggest cities in japan are as follows...tokyo, yokohama, osaka, and nagoya. it was a tuesday and ecc was closed for the holiday, so it seemed like a good idea for a day trip.

we took the shinkansen which conveniently was only about 30 mins from nagoya, arrived in osaka, and immediately went to work. we visited shinsaibashi, home of a famous shopping arcade and where japanese line up by the bucketfull to eat fresh takoyaki, essentially battered octopus balls which i love and my dad heroically tried during his visit here. we visited namba, home of the trendy shopping mall zep five and where osakas high school students flock to after schools done. we visited americamura, translated the american village, to eat some more takoyaki and to see what fashion disasters had appeared in the past ten years. at night we went back to shinsaibashi to check out how much neon there really is in a japanese big city.

one of my personal highlights was a visit to dotomburi, the home of den den town, translated electric town, which is where you go if you wanna buy cheap electronics. right out of the subway exit i found a vintage video game shop called super potato which had more classic video game systems and games than id ever seen in my life. if it existed in a video game format, you could find it in that store. aside from the massive collection of nintendo, super nintendo, genesis, and game boy games, they had rare stuff for systems like the sega 32x, atari 2600, 3d0, atari jaguar, neo geo, and even the virtual boy. i did something i had wanted to do for a long time...buy an old japanese super nintendo and about 12 classic games with it, including everything from super mario world to super metroid to contra to nhl 94. all for under 10000 yen, or under 100 dollars. i feel like i stole from the place legally.

yoshinoya and the dangers thereof

so one of the best japanese fast food joints (or so i had previously thought) is a "gyudon" joint (basically beef or pork on a rice bowl) called yoshinoya. for about 500 yen you can eat a pretty hearty lunch or dinner and its really popular with cash-strapped university students, time-strapped salarymen, food-strapped foreigners, and lots of other groups of people.

i used to visit the place on a ratio of about once a week until about the middle of april. then one sunday night i decided to take a stroll down to the local yoshinoya and munch down a quick dinner of beef, rice, miso soup and green tea. tasted a bit funny at the time...thats because i dont think either a) it wasnt cooked properly, or b) was just meat gone bad. in any case, about 5 hours later i was in the john with a powerful punch of food poisoning.

luckily, monday was my day off work so for i was able to throw up all day on my day off instead of having to use a paid sick day or an unpaid day off. that said, i havent been back there since and have done my best to educate my students on the inherent health risks taken by visiting whats been called the most popular fast food chain in japan.

tidbits

some other things that require comment before i sign off...

the new pearl jam record is their best work since vitalogy and some of their best work period. if any of you havent picked it up yet then i strongly suggest you get to your local record store and buy this masterpiece. songs like severed hand and marker in the sand are rock songs that just dont get made that often anymore. and i read from the internet that they really are having a great tour so if you can see them this summer (especially going from vancouver to the gorge ampitheatre in washington state in july) you should seize the opportunity and go for it.

i rented walk the line the other day on dvd and watched it for the first time since watching it in the theatre in december. its still the best movie ive seen in a while and i also wholeheartedly recommend going down to your local video rental shop and spending a night with joaquim phoenix as johnny cash and reese witherspoon as june carter cash.

thanks

so again, thanks so much for reading this long overdue update. im again sorry to everybody i havent contacted in the past few months...ill do my best in the future but even my worst would probably be better than the lack of communication ive given out since the beginning of march. thanks for hanging in there and even reading this thing when it looked like a relic of times gone by.

so yeah, go england, czech republic, or japan! im off to go watch japan play australia tonight as amanda and i fight as to where our loyalties lie. ill update in less than 3 months, i promise this time!