Enhanced Invigoration

My apologies for the lack of updates! My camera is currently broken, which means my supply of pictures is limited, and a post without pictures is a post without joy. Here's a post about January, however, for your reading pleasure.

For the bulk of January, my schools were on break - this is the break between the second and third trimesters of school, and lasts about a month. Hokkaido is filled with snow, mountains, and cows; during this break I decided to exploit two of these three resources and learn to snowboard (and I could always have a hamburger afterwards),

Snowboarding, like do-it-yourself piercing and teaching English abroad, requires a special kind of idiocy to attempt, a brand of gleeful obliviousness to consequences. It was in this spirit that I traveled with friends to Kamui, a mountain a few hours away. In the grand scheme of things, Kamui isn't that big; to somebody from Minnesota, it's a monster. With a great sense of foreboding, I got on the gondola and ascended into the fog... and ascended... and continued ascending. I estimate when we finally got out, we must have been at approximately the cruising height of a commercial jet, or possibly a weather balloon.

The next step is to grunt and struggle like a beached whale while you attempt to strap your feet to a (borrowed) plank of wood, or fiberglass, or whatever those things are made out of. Then you just flop around until you end up with the board end down, and fall down the hill. Easy!

My first day snowboarding was a disaster. I am told that this is a common experience. Since that day, midway through January, I've been out a little over a dozen times. Monbetsu has a ski hill in town; while it isn't quite on the same sub-orbital level as Kamui, it gets the job down and provides a good place to practice.

Here's me and Adam at the top of our local hill:



You can see the ocean behind us! Here's me a bit farther down, looking about as cool as I ever do:



Beautiful!

Meari Kurisumasu!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a Krazy Kwanzaa to friends and family around the world. I hope everyone had a good one, and enjoyed New Year as much as I did (I'll write another blog update about New Years later; this one's about Christmas). In this update I'll give a little overview of Christmas in Japan, as well as my own Christmas celebration.
Like many things imported from the West, Christmas in Japan resembles the Christmas most of us know in many ways, but it is unlikely to ever be mistaken for the "original" article. For one thing, opinions here differ as to the actual date of the holiday; many of my students have politely informed me that Christmas is on the 24th of December, rather than the 25th. My theory regarding discrepancy is that, since Christmas day in the West is often largely idle, and many big Christmas events take place on Christmas Eve, many Japanese got the impression that the 24th was the actual holiday. Remember that for many people here, impressions of the West are often based largely based largely on TV and movies, and in any case Christmas here is a fairly minor novelty holiday more akin to something like Valentines Day back home. Nobody expects to get Christmas off of work, for instance.
Back to the holiday itself. Christmas in Japan is first and foremost associated with one person, that patriarch of holiday cheer without whom Christmas could not exist: Colonel Sanders. Yes, nothing says Christmas in Japan like KFC, or "Kentucky" as it is known here. Lining up around the block to enjoy Kentucky is often the main event of Christmas (and is usually done on Christmas Eve, contributing to the confusion about the date). If you weren't aware, KFC is far more popular in Japan than it ever was at home, probably because Popeye's doesn't exist here.
Another indispensable ingredient of Christmas in Japan is, of course, the traditional Christmas Cake. This is a completely normal cake, usually with strawberries, adorned with a Santa figure to signify that it is, in fact, a Christmas cake, and not a birthday or wedding cake. The closest parallel I can draw to this is the unique Western holiday fruitcakes that have been politely gnawed at during family Christmas gatherings since time immemorial.
Santa does exist here, but he climbs into houses through the window and and is pulled by a single reindeer(unnamed, has a red nose). Also, as is fitting for Japan, Santa is a much slimmed-down version of his Western self. Must be all that fish.
As for my own Christmas, I celebrated with a relatively low-key day with friends. In the run-up to Christmas, my plans all fell through and I was in danger of spending the holiday alone in my apartment with a bottle of champagne; probably not something I'd want to blog about. At the 11th hour, however, I was invited to a turkey dinner on the other side of the island, and thus saved from my lonely fate.
After Christmas, I hit the mall before heading home. My mission was to buy keychain figures of Marimokkori:



He's a ball of moss with an erection. He exists because of a bad Japanese pun. He is very popular with children. If I had to choose one thing to represent Japan, I might choose Marimokkori.
We also had dinner in the mall, at an okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is a sort of Japanese pancake or pizza, filled with various toppings and grilled at the table. This night I tried Monjayaki, a variation which was introduced to me via the description, "It looks like cat vomit and foreigners never like it". Of course, it was delicious.

Decemembered

Here's an update without the usual heart-wrenching pathos, thought-provoking themes, and literary sleight-of-hand that usually characterizes my blog updates. It is, if you can believe it, a collection of mostly-pointless unrelated blurbs. Shocking, right?

Last week I posted about the Sapporo Orientation. I then proceeded to get snowed out of Monbetsu, and had to stay overnight in Asahikawa as the major expressway that runs through the mountains was closed due to blizzard. It looked like this outside:



I actually took this picture because of the political poster, which is my favorite one in the world and features an older Japanese guy leering like he just saw Sailor Moon's panties. You can't really make it out that well in this picture, but it's really the worst-advised political portrait I've ever seen. Regardless, it also serves to show that it was very snowy! Note the person in my side mirror, who will soon try to pass me because I have the audacity to only speed by 10km in a blizzard.

On the plus side, I got to eat some delicious curry.



This particular restaurant, CoCo Curry, allows you to add on spiciness levels to your curry for extra money, up to a spiciness of level 10 for something like an extra 500 yen. To go beyond level 5, however, you need to have a card proving you've eaten a level 5 before and didn't die or sue anybody (the menu includes the gastronomically ominous phrase, please consider the consequences). Since I'd never been to this restaurant before, I had a five. It was delicious, but I don't think I'm in any hurry to go up to a ten just yet.

Back in Monbetsu, I finally got to try my hand at ping-pong in an environment other than an elementary school. As it turns out, the school is the probably the right place for me. I went to the local sports center on Tuesday, which is when the Church of Ping-Pong meets, and when it became evident that I was no match for anybody there I was kindly and gently schooled in the proper art of the game for two hours.

Linguistic note: When I went to the sports center to ask about it, I was told that the "Ping Pong Kyoukai" meets on Tuesdays. At this point, "kyoukai" meant "church" to me; so I thought that's what the guy said. I later discovered that a homonym for "kyoukai" is "society", which makes more sense but is less entertaining.

This weekend I once again went to Asahikawa, because I never learn. I had dinner with friends and failed at bowling, but made up for it by being able to reap the bounty of Kaldi, the local foreign foods store:



Mangoes, Mac n Cheese, and cayenne pepper. Yum!

Lastly, I turned in my form today indicating my intent to seek re-contraction for 2011-2012. So, Monbetsu until July 2012! Hooray!

Mid-Year Conference

This week, I headed out from Monbetsu to go to Sapporo for the annual two-day mid-year conference.


From this:



To this:



Mid-year conference (MYC) is a two-day all-prefecture meeting for ALTs. We cover business concerning the prefecture's JETs, like the upcoming establishment of regional advisors to supplement the single prefectural advisor. We also run workshops and discussions of teaching and living matters, which were pretty hit or miss. And of course, there's a great party.

Sapporo is a bit of a hike from Monbetsu, so I don't get out there very often. It's nice to take the opportunity to really enjoy myself; Sapporo is a cool city. I'd like to share some pictures from around town.



This is probably the worst picture that's ever been taken of Sapporo Tower (my camera is broken and I'm relying on my cell phone). This is similar to the famous Tokyo Tower in, uh, Tokyo, but it's smaller and it's in Sapporo. The city is laid out in a grid, with intersections labeled in relation to the tower; for Japan, this is the height of convenience and navigational ease.



Much of downtown Sapporo is connected by a network of underground shopping streets. These areas are meant to keep the city walkable in winter, and are also great parts of the city in their own right; they are always packed with people, and are lined with shops of all kinds. There's a lot of cool things to be found down here, if you can navigate the maze.

Sapporo also contains a large Don Quixote, a store that sells, well...



Just about everything, laid out in a fashion completely incomprehensible to any foreigner. Designer knockoff clothing shares aisles with car stereos, and the grocery section segues directly into the marital aides department. The main Don Quixote in Sapporo is five floors tall, and should be explored simply as an experience unto itself. It also carries a lot of "Cube Mouth Mickey" items, which is a popular franchise in Japan that makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable:



Yeah, I don't really get it.

Sapporo also has great food. Popular among us foreigners is Taj Mahal:



So delicious I ate there two nights in a row and wasn't even ashamed.

That's about it for the pictures - luckily, no pictures exist showing at the party that night, as far as I know. Lets hope it stays that way.

The Winter of our English Content

On the tail of Thanksgiving, winter has finally come - sort of. A single day of heavy snowfall, blanketing the town on Monday, has given way to melting today. We get one day of winter wonderland before moving into the grey and slushy middlingly-cold that's all too familiar to anyone who's ever been to North Dakota or Minnesota between March and June. Here's hoping it's just a fluke!




Additionally, here's a short conversation that played out in class today:

Me, In Japanese: "In Middle School you'll have homework in English class, so it's a good idea to practice writing now."
Student, in English: "OH MY GOD!"

Nothing can terrify Japanese students like English. I think I give them nightmares.



That last picture is of Temple Dog, who lives next to the lot where I park my car. He's called Temple Dog because he lives in a temple, and is a dog. I've never been accosted by demons of any sort near that parking lot so I think Temple Dog is doing a good job.

Thanksgiving: The Fattening

Being an American is similar in many important ways to having herpes. Among the myriad similarities is the fact that once infected, you're a carrier for life. It was in this spirit that I decided a good thing to do would be to invite an improbably large group of friends to my apartment and to cook two Thanksgiving turkeys, something I've never done before.

I'm still waiting for the pictures to come in but my kitchen looks like this right now:



Here's a picture of some food that I stole from Justin:



And we looked like this:



Look at all those foreigners crammed into my apartment! Who needs fire codes, anyhow. Despite a harrowing all-day journey, everything turned out well and everyone was made comfortably bloated. After eating, we all headed out for a night of dancing and karaoke, which I'm not really looking forward to seeing pictures of (although I'm sure I will). God bless!

Good luck 2011 applicants!

Yesterday was the deadline for US applicants to submit their initial applications for the JET Program for 2011. I just wanted to post a short update and say, good luck! My best advice now is to find something to keep yourself busy, and to apply for other things and make plans for if you don't get in - the JET application takes forever, and it really helps to pass the time. And the unfortunate reality is that many otherwise qualified applicants won't get in, simply because there aren't enough spaces for everyone CLAIR would be willing to hire. So don't put all your eggs in one basket!

Nevertheless, I hope this blog has been a help to applicants and that I'll see some of you in August! Good luck everyone!