It's about time I update. This stay in Japan is proving to be very different from study abroad a year ago, mainly in that I am actually bored sometimes now. I actually do have a job and responsibilities, and I get tired. Sometimes I pass out at 10, but I do spend time out and about as well. For anyone who ventures out into Japan, you will find that people are impressed (how genuinely is unsure) by even a basic understanding of the language. My everyday Japanese is constantly improving and hits little plateaus and peaks, but it's hard to know when to feel satisfied. My impression is that I will never know enough; I know enough now to make friends but still struggle with the ability to forge very meaningful bonds. There are moments when it is very desirable to sit at home all the time, and it's a frighteningly available option. So then what are all these pictures? Every weekend is a new opportunity to involve myself in some way with local happenings. Each weekday sees me leaving the office between 6-7, and I usually hit the gym and cook for myself, and the night is pretty much concluded by 10 without much else to do. I joined a Taiko crew (more accurately, Wadaiko, Japanese drumming) that meets on Mondays and Thursdays and have the blisters to prove it. If you are a drummer, notably a left-handed drummer, try Wadaiko and experience the difference. First, I feel like the son of an old Orthodox Jew, as my left-handedness is unacceptable for the hobby. Wadaiko, if you've ever seen it, consists of some small snare-like drums with high-tension, high-pitched hollow notes and a range of larger drums that produce deep notes and resonating bass. Almost everyone uses massive sticks that fill your fist, you strike the drums with incredible force, and most strikes are preceded by raising the stick to the sky emphatically. This means that the sound produced is important, but so is the presentation and the coordination of the group. You can see the accuracy of a group by watching their raised sticks, and if one person is raising his left stick while everyone else raises the right, it's no good. So I essentially must re-learn how to drum. Right, so on the weekends, I've been hitting a number of local festivals. More recently is the local festival. The local area, famous for its wonderful household Buddhist shrines, holds this festival and has a small Buddhist service that runs midday. The morning is kicked off by three runs: a 1km family course, a 3km course, and a 10km course. Given my regular runs of 4 miles or so, the 6.5ish mile course was bearable but not fun. What was fun was seeing my students and all the local people cheering all the runners on, handing us water, and also being incredibly shocked that a foreigner was participating. Later in the day, I ate festival food; the representatives of this are typically yakisoba (fried soba noodles with sauce and veggies, good), udon (soft, thick noodles in broth, good), yakitori (seasoned grilled chicken, good), and takoyaki (fried balls of batter and octopus meat, surprisingly awesome). I should note that the prior sentence made me realize something. Being an English major, it is always my intent to use the most appropriate words to express a given idea. I knew what I wanted to say about typical festival food, but I could only express it on command and in the way I wanted to in Japanese. So I translated it to "representatives", which is not ideal, but it is the translation of what I wanted to say. That's the first time I can definitively point to knowing what I want to say in Japanese but not in English. What does it mean? Probably nothing. So, this festival: the "marathon" ended, I hobbled around with a couple blisters and watched an adult Wadaiko performance, a children's Wadaiko performance, and some children's sumo (kind of bizarre). Pictures for those are above. The week before this, I went to a festival held every year in Kagoshima City, about an hour's moped drive away. It consists of contingents of people from various companies or clubs congregating on the closed streets of the city and performing a few traditional dances. I had a lot of people taking pictures of me, apparently for newspapers, but I am yet to get any info on whether or not the pictures were ever printed. The rest of the five pictures are from that festival and show the group I participated with, some effeminately dressed men, a Doraemon, and me in make-up acting coy. So life here is full of stories if you know how to find them. Luckily, many foreigners living here are approached with curiosity and don't always have to make the first steps for communication. But a constant effort to learn will not only make these experiences more rewarding, it will also allow us to find these opportunities and pursue them. I would have never run in the festival if I did not know how to talk to people, fill out an application, and read directions. I'm living here, and as it turns out, living and existing are two very different things. Enjoy the pictures, I'll try to live more and exist less to bring you more pictures and stories. Bring me some questions and prepare for Hurricane Chris, coming your way December 2008.

Satire? No, It's Just Funny

While perusing through some news stories, I stumbled upon the first picture, and immediately recognized that the facial expression Marc Morial is making likens him in creepy ways to the faun from Pan's Labyrinth. It of course also helps that in the edited photo, McCain is making a now well-known "somebody tell me what's going on, I need my reading glasses to see the guy next to me" face. Enjoy.

"She has a lot of conservative values. She hunts. She fishes. She does it all."

The title is from a Virginia-Pilot news story that quotes Phil Wignall of the (presumably local) Newport News saying just that of Alaska governor Sarah Palin. I cite his affiliation because, ideally, those working in news should be held to a higher standard of analysis than a random rally supporter. Before I delve into radical left-wing partisan politics, I am glad to discover that Palin has values. Moreover, she has conservative values. I typically imagine conservative values to be overwhelmed by heedless patriotism and wherever that may lead. It reminds me of the police officers in a New York Yankees baseball game who kicked a fan out for wanting to pee during "God Bless America", noting on his way out that if he hates the country, he should just leave. I embrace my American citizenship and enjoy the life I have in the country, and this is partly because I am afforded the opportunity for dissent where I see fit. I have many Constitutional rights, but I don't believe I have a Constitutional obligation to vocally love and blindly support all sectors of the nation.

That said, I have long believed that a major issue growing in America was our economic momentum. Everything and everyone seem endlessly driven to the ultimate (albeit deceptively unreachable) goal of desired wealth. Many of us work hard in high school so that we can get into a good college, then we select a major, perhaps one we don't even enjoy or have interest in, and follow it through four years in the hopes that all the money we are paying in the meantime will eventually work itself out in the unspoken promise that the sheet of paper we receive upon graduation is a guarantee of an adequate salary for our well-being in the future that likely consists of working tirelessly toward an ever-higher position and ever-higher salary that can never truly slake our thirst for the wealth and comfort that we believe, we have to believe, is within our reach. Was that a run-on? I'm sorry, I got carried away and just couldn't stop. Kind of like our lives.

But given the recent market plunges (dare I call it a crash?) and year-old warnings from a man just crazy enough that I kind of trust him, mogul Jim Cramer, drinker of Red Bull: Market Edition, I am beginning to speculate that a stop to this momentum may be exactly what we need. We need regulation, and I'm not talking about the kind of regulation that gets mired in politics; I mean that we need to find our course and get back on it, slowly. We are a young country, but we have been proven a strong country. Stocks made an upward swing today, and even if this doesn't signal an immediate end to our troubles, which it doesn't, it should at least inspire some faith. Instead of submitting to the apocalypse theory that the "era" of American power is coming to an end, let's invest not our dollars but our faith in the country and a government that can gradually guide us where we need to be.

And if my instincts serve me correctly, I can find my answer by looking to the core values of our two political parties. My gut tells me that I should turn to the Republicans, because they historically show faith in America despite the looming harbingers of disaster in current events. I believe that it is a conservative value, and even though it is frequently misinterpreted or even abused by its own proponents, it is a value nonetheless. Ah, yet I stand corrected. This is indeed not a conservative value. If we look at Mrs. Palin, a beacon of hope that "has it all", we will discover that values actually have nothing to do with the essential traits we must muster up to effect change in America. When it comes down to it, it's about the stuff of legend, keeping the simulacrum of America alive by killing animals. Gee golly.



I live in Japan. But I only have one citizenship, and living abroad can't make me ignore the fact that our country is, in numerable respects, at a crossroads. I have to keep an eye on what's going on, and every so often, I may weigh in. If you tire of this or simply want to hear about current Japan happenings, I'd be more than happy to share. Just let me know. Take care America.

Chris

Update on Thursday morning: I will make no attempt to be eloquent about this, but I stumbled upon another Palin gem. She said of McCain's current campaign status, "He knows something about being the underdog also, and still being victorious at the end of the day. So there's something to that." In her veiled attempt at a Vietnam POW allusion, she chooses her diction fairly poorly. I don't know many who consider our stint in the country "victorious". Maybe she meant to say, "He knows something about being in a situation that looks absolutely dire and hopeless and still going home at the end of it all. So there's something to that."

Not a Massive Update

We all know there's some financial news stirring stateside, but there are plenty of other countries keeping a watchful eye on what we do. We may make some pretty large errs in both domestic and foreign affairs sometimes, but many countries still recognize that we have a fairly impressive track record in matters of wealth. Japan, for example, frequently follows our lead to a certain extent and, consequently, they have run into the same issues we have in the past. Coverage in national news on the whole kit 'n caboodle in America lets people know what is happening, a fairly objective view. But it also serves to remind people that America is not infallible. Back in March, due to the rising yen and falling dollar, the exchange rate briefly hit 96 yen to the dollar, bad news for travelers. Last July, when I withdrew funds from my American account, I was getting 117 yen per dollar. It has been declining gradually ever since, but in the last week, it plummeted. The first picture shows the first time I have ever witnessed a single yen valued higher than a penny. Although if you pick up a yen, it's amazingly light weight and weakness make it feel all but worthless. In the midst of all this, I've read that confidence in the American economy is fairly strong, at least abroad. Foreign investors are not likely to get too timid; in fact, their confidence may show a surge in the dollar's value after the Fed starts hacking away at interest rates. Today's slash apparently didn't do the trick, but I guess we'll see. Personally, it's hard for me to know how to feel. Monitoring the news from abroad gives me, despite being an American, a typically foreign view. I'm not out and about in the society daily, so I just can't understand how people are feeling about it. I hope that people are optimistic but not blind. Awareness is possibly the most important thing to have, because we can't act without it. And surely we can't individually fix these issues, but we can certainly work to protect ourselves. How do we do that? Wow. I'd ask someone who knows. I read, but I don't claim to know much about money. Anyway, take it easy America, I'm trying to come home in December and I'd be glad if I saw everyone smiling.

Bye!

As an addendum to matters of exchange rate, I just logged in to my American bank account. I recently was charged for an order from an Amazon Japan site, but the product was unavailable. Three days later, I received a refund for this charge, but since the charge and refund are both conducted with yen as the base currency and my bank uses dollars, I profited 38 cents on the affair due to rate changes in the last three days.

Hisashiburi - Long Time, No See

Hello to all the readers out there, however few of you there may be.

I probably could keep more attention on this blog if I updated more than once a month. My mistake and my apologies. A lot has happened since the last post, and I'd be able to remember and comment on it all if I wrote about it as soon as it happened. Instead, I need to cluster my memories of the last month into this post. We'll start with a peculiar recycling note that relates to the last post: how efficient is the recycling in Japan? Well, I'm convinced it's effective, and I presume that recycling facilities have separation devices to keep metal and glass out of the plastic. At the same time, they have bins that clearly demarcate a plastic and glass / can receptacle. If you lift the lid to the bin as I did in my curiosity, you will find that everything falls together into the same can. So, I assume that this gets worked out later down the line, but it's quite a farce and disappointing for anyone who has felt guilty for using the wrong hole. After that, what have I spent my well-earned money on? I bought a moped, a two-wheeled monster that can move me around at speeds of up to 20mph (legally) or 40mph (physical limitation). It's not fast, but I have never had to travel more than 30 miles, and for the moped itself and all the fixins, including three years of insurance, I paid the princely sum of about $950. My birthday also came and went, so I bought a monitor at a local PC store. The cost was originally 44,700 yen (about $430). By chance, I went into the same store the next weekend to check out some other prices on items because I was in the area for work-related business. In particular, it was Saturday and I drove to the city to watch a girl who I had been coaching perform in a speech contest. She didn't win, primarily because my Mr. Rotondo-esque inspirational skills are not yet up to par. Anyway, the price on the thing had dropped 5,000 yen ($45!). I brought my receipt in the next day, which used a couple hours and a full tank of gas (3L / 500 yen). To my surprise, however, their policy was different than I have ever seen. They refunded me 150% of the price difference. So the final cost of the monitor was 37,200 yen. Not bad. So, what else? I just registered for a 10km marathon. 6.2 miles is apparently a marathon, much like how a tiny apartment is a mansion. It's part of a November festival. I found out about the event through sheer luck in a conversation with my landlord, and this proves that I need to be in touch with the locals more. They can certainly 1) be good friends and part of valuable relationships and 2) keep me informed on local happenings that I may otherwise miss. Such events aren't hugely advertised, and while I receive a monthly newsletter, I can only read some of it without extensive dictionary help. My reading, at the same time, is moving along nicely. Sometimes, as I read kanji, the Chinese character set that gives all foreigners the greatest headache, I consider the progress I've made, and it's probably significant. In keeping with the humility around me, I'll be attaching "maybe" and "probably" to about everything I say. Anyway, classes have been in session for the last month, and it's going quite well. The students have surpassed the initial "OMG there's a foreigner here and he's a male and he has facial hair and a short haircut" and are more accustomed to seeing me around. I have already established a kind of niche; i.e. I help the English debate club and try to help out any and all students who personally come to me for help. A girl asked me yesterday about what is the best path of English learning if she wants to become an international guide in Japan. I told her that pronunciation is key and perhaps that grammar is not so important, given the nature of the job. It hurt me to put grammar down like that. The Japanese have trouble with it, and hell, Americans do, too. Some classes are more enthusiastic than others, some are more skilled than others, and some are more eager than others. I naturally have become fond of the more energetic and eager ones. There are classes where students frequently fall alseep and there's essentially nothing to be done about it. You can wake them up, but that lasts 10 seconds and they simply don't care. There is a balance of kids who care and those who don't, so I'm beginning to think that it's better to focus my energy on fostering those who care and not worrying so much about saving those who don't. After all, English is a language they are required to learn, and many of them do NOT care and will likely hardly ever encounter it in their lives. If those kids fall asleep, it may be better to just let it go and save the effort. It's hard to decide. On my birthday, 10 students wrote up a card and gave it me along with a cup of my favorite local drink, Aquarius. It tastes just like the god himself. As I read, they sang Happy Birthday in an embarrasingly loud manner. A few days later, the English debate team threw me a mini-party replete with similar drawings, food, and even a couple of presents. It was incredibly sweet for the students to do that and I was in relative disbelief. So, it's picture time. Pictures 1 and 2 are the letter from the 10 students. Picture 3 is most of the debate team at my mini-party. Picture 4 is from a beautiful, secluded beach. Picture 5 is one of the most amazingly surreal sunsets I have ever witnessed. Pictures 6 and 7 are from an island where an annual reggae dance party was held. We had a barbeque in the afternoon, drinks in the evening, dancing in the night, and a visit from the numerous and friendly local deer who wanted breakfast the next morning. Picture 8 is an INSANE spider. The spiders here are frighteningly large almost across the board, and one night, I was talking to a friend and eyeing up a cockroach that was walking along a bridge. Then I saw a flurry of motion and walked over to investigate it. This massive spider (see the cockroach for scale) does not weave a web but instead actively attacks and devours its prey. It was grotesque enough for me to put my camera inches away for a good shot. Picture 9 is from an old favorite, Fukiage Beach. I walked out into the shallow water and found a heart-shaped sandbar protruding. It was charming.


Ask me questions, people! It's starting to get a little lonely here, so contact would be wonderful.

Chris

I Anticipate Your Questions

You may be wondering at this point: Chris, what's the climate there like? You made a silly comment yesterday about the rain that intrigues me ever so much. I've only been here during the height of summer so far, so I just know that it can get quite hot, probably around the high 90s pretty consistently, and the persistent humidity makes it much worse. Bananas, while a personal favorite, do not keep very well. Fortunately, I consume them with vigor. Even more fortunately, I have air conditioning (a wall unit that is sufficient to cool most of the apartment quickly and even get me quite cold on the couch), but it can get expensive to run that consistently. A woman in my office who seems mostly in charge of my expenses and living arrangements approached me yesterday to inquire about anything the apartment may be lacking. In hindsight, this may have been a passive test to which I was supposed to answer, "nothing". But given the laid back nature of Kagoshima denizens and my propensity to second-guess the intentions of others, it was likely just good will. So I said an electric fan would be nice, and we bought it today. It has a remote control. I like it. I do not like that it came in a box, one of the most troublesome items to dispose of. To get an idea of what I mean, take a look at the attached photo. From left to right, front to back, these are the items: bag of trash that I cannot categorize, bag of plastic beverage bottles, rinsed after having the caps and plastic rings removed, another bag of the same, bag of hard plastics and said caps and rings, can with bag of burnable food waste, paper products, etc., large diagram explaining how to separate all trash and recycling into over a dozen categories, two bags of soft plastics, a bag of white styrofoam, and a bag of colored styrofoam. Not pictured are empty milk cartons which I am yet to cut open and flatten before tying them together. Most of these bags must be taken by hand to a collection location on specific days. Burnable trash is collected regularly, and some plastics are collected at home once a month. It's kind of rough, but if the system lives up to what it purports, they are saving a lot of materials here. What they are not saving is wood, as demonstrated by the tens of thousands of pairs of disposable chopsticks that are used every day to be burned later. There seem to be efforts to raise consciousness about this, and one way to do so is to bring your own chopsticks everywhere. It's a passive reminder to others and an active effort on your own part. We can do it, world!
Classes start next Monday, and so I have not been teaching, but I just visited one of my two schools for the first time today and met some teachers and students. It was a positive experience and small test of my conversational Japanese with teachers. It also introduced me to the first impressions that many male JET teachers experience. Male students tried to act very cool around me and busted out some fairly impressive English phrases (which unfortunately don't translate to actual communicative ability), while the girls mostly stared and had no qualms about loudly saying a range of comments about my face or overall appearance that ranged in translation from "cool" to "pretty" to "handsome" to "your face is small" (which I've never heard and is apparently a compliment). So let's deviate from that before it develops into stereotyping. To give the kids some credit, there are very few foreigners that ever get involved in their lives, and when a new one comes around, it's got to be quite a shock to the system. They'll probably be bored with me soon enough, but I am going to do my best to avoid that. So that's what today was, plus some grocery shopping in a massive store larger than Wal-Mart (of which there are 2 in the prefecture and go figure, one is in my little town) that sells everything from cucumbers to cars. I only bought one of the two there. So today sounds eventful, but I just wanted to shed some light on the hip happenings in rural Japan. And perhaps there were some deep cultural insights mixed in there somewhere. I can't find them. Maybe you can!

To everyone, I miss you.
To my family, I love you.
To fellow '08 Yetis, make money money, make money money money.
To those still at Lafayette, how are classes going? This year started pretty early, eh?

Hey, also check out the recently posted video of my stand-up comedy piece from last month at a comedy club in Philadelphia. It was my second time at a club, and while significantly better than the first, was a baby step on the track to earnest development as a comic. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPnNtsCJf2s

Later, America!

Chris

Let me begin this blog by noting that I was going to embed a video of myself and my humble yet adequate apartment, but I noticed first that I needed some pants and then later that I needed a microphone. So maybe next time. It's coming up on the one month mark since my last post, and I am horribly tardy on an update. Now that I actually have internet, however, these can be as frequent as possible. For anyone who actually visits here, thank you. Now, onto the update. It's difficult to catalog all of the important events in the last month. It's honestly been a strange balance between minor culture shocks and a little too much English. There's a significant amount of hand-holding that all of us in the program receive at the outset, and rightfully so. Many of us are beginning with little to no knowledge of Japan or its language. And when you have to live here and pay bills that come in the mail with your name as the only English on it, some help is appreciated. Still, I have yet to settle in entirely, and each step gets me a bit further. I have to already take a vacation day soon so that I can go into the city and take a test for a moped license (do you need a license for these in the US?). All around, they are the best cost-efficient option, given the license fees, insurance, gas efficiency, and so on. And I have a short distance to travel to get anywhere I want to be. After that day, actually, my life might settle down. I can be a bit more independent and go to the gym or beach or karaoke or anywhere here without a hassle, unless it rains...which it does. And I don't think I've ever seen it "sprinkle" here as much as I've seen torrents of rain somewhat reminiscent of the worst rain I've ever seen in my life, which was coincidentally two days before I came here in Philly. So enough of the future; what have I done? I rode my bicycle for a few hours last weekend to find a beach. I stopped in a fishing port city on the way and played baseball in a park with a couple of little kids. I later exchanged phone numbers with their mother (not what it sounds like), and I got a pleasant call the next morning from all three saying thank you for playing and let's maybe do it again sometime. Oh, to trust people. Then I went to the beach and hung out with some incredible bugs. They came en masse out of the ocean and onto the rocks around me. They were little segmented creatures not unlike giant pill bugs that skittered away at the tiniest commotion near them. It was an exodus. I was scared. So I then rode / walked my bike back through the mountains for another few hours and caught some unwanted rays. I visited another beach the weekend before that, and have done some sightseeing around various mountaintops in the region. I am cooking a lot for myself, but I can't acheive a genuine Japanese flavor on my own. Nonetheless, sometimes I need to eat several hundred grams of chicken and yes, the metric system is starting to grow on me. Also, I only have a few TV channels here as of now unless I want to pay more, but it's still enough to watch the Olympics (with interesting Japanese narration), coverage of Obama's running mate, and an interview with a boy who has a nearly sexual fondness for cold water all in one evening. Ain't Japan great? I don't know, but I intend to find out. Leave me some questions, and for now I'll leave you with some pictures. 1 and 2: some views of the landscape in Nagoya, where last week's orientation was held as my modem waited for me at home. It was pretty desolate, in a good way. 3 and 4: views from a mountaintop. 5: I try to find my keys in Daniel's kimono during a workshop. 6: "Oh sunset, now you're making me feel romantic", a quote similar to the one half an hour before, which was, "Oh jellyfish, now you're making me feel significant pain in my leg". 7: The very same beach with the sunset, viewed on a different day from a mountaintop. 8: Is it racist if it was my first one ever? 9: Fukiage Beach, the same one as the other pictures. I never bothered to snap photos of my bicycle adventure. Also of note, a couple weeks ago witnessed the 30th anniversary of a Japanese man's disappearance via Korean abduction at no location other than Fukiage Beach. And finally, 10: As far as volcanoes go, this one is active. Hey! Leave comments. Let's talk.