Mo' Boardin

When I initially heard that I would be heading to Hokkaido, I decided that it would be pretty silly to waste the opportunity and not learn how to snowboard. This was despite the fact that I had never done it or anything similar before, and despite the fact that I am rather uncoordinated.

Almost three months after my start, the season is now nearing its end and I finally have some decent pictures to show for it. On Sunday we drove out to Kurodake, a mountain in the middle of nowhere and still snow-covered. Since I have a new camera, I documented the experience here for the enjoyment of all!



We headed out in the morning in high spirits, despite it being 7:30 AM. Full of dreams of snow, energy drinks, and beer, we made the roughly two-hour drive into the mountains.



We rode a large ropeway gondola up the mountain, which I didn't get any good pictures of. The ski course at Kurodake is fairly short, but its almost all the way up the mountain - good snow and good views abound.



This is the view from the top of the ropeway - there's still a short walk and a chairlift to ride to the top of the snowboard area.



Here's the view of the mountain peak from the chairlift. One of our party hiked the whole way up. Myself and another guy tried to do it carrying our snowboards, and made it about 200 meters before giving up. As you can see, however, we had a beautiful day for the attempt.



Later on the weather turned worse, but still tolerable. No night skiing at this mountain, however, so we headed out at 3 for ramen, hot springs, and the drive home.

Graduation Day

Have you always wondered what it looks like when a bunch of Japanese 12 year olds graduate from their elementary school and move on to bigger and better things, like junior high? If so, you've come to the right place!

In Japan, the school year starts in April and ends in March. As it is now March, you may have deduced that the school year has just ended. All of my schools thus had graduation ceremonies, ranging from six students to over seventy at the largest schools. Like in American schools, these kids are all 6th year students who are now entering junior high school. All of my graduation events took place at the same time, so I was unfortunately only able to attend one of them; I would have liked to see all of my students graduate, but it was not to be.



The school that I went to was the smallest of my "big" schools, with around 60 students in grades 1 through 6. This school had 11 graduating students. In the morning, all of the non-graduating students assembled in the gym, with the stage all made up for the ceremony. Behind them were stools for the parents and relatives of the graduating students, who hadn't arrived yet. The banner on stage says "Congratulations on Graduation".



The teacher of the 6th year students came in, followed by the graduates, one by one. They walked through the audience to the front of the gym.



Here you can see some of the 6th years at the front. In Japanese elementary schools, students don't wear uniforms; in junior high and high school, they do. The graduating students here are wearing their new uniforms - black suits for the boys and blue skirts and blazers for the girls. These are formal uniforms, for occasions like this and the school entrance ceremony - for day to day class they have school-issued tracksuits. The kids are quite proud of their new uniforms.

Speeches are given and diplomas handed out. After receiving their diplomas, each student says some words of thanks to their family and teachers - one of the advantages of a smaller school. After all have been handed out, the graduating class and the rest of the school sang a few songs.

After the ceremony ended, there were lots of pictures taken, which I'll probably get a hold of later. I did get my picture taken with the teacher of the graduating class:



Some teachers wore traditional ceremonial dress, like this, while others were dressed in western-style suits.

Next week I'll be able to go to the entrance ceremony for one of the middle schools, where I can see some more of my students who's graduations I wasn't able to attend. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this look at an important event in students' lives.

What's Shakin'

My apologies for another long wait. As I'm sure anybody reading this is aware, Japan was struck recently with a magnitude 8.9 earthquake off the eastern seaboard, followed by a devastating tsunami. In case anybody reads this that I haven't contacted yet, I am fine; Hokkaido in general was not very strongly affected, and Monbetsu suffered no ill effects at all. Apparently the actual earthquake was vaguely noticeable in town; I didn't notice, as I was busy working on my computer, so that tells you how strong it was. Some towns on the southern coast suffered tsunami waves, but nothing of the level of areas further south. At present, I believe Hokkaido has had a total of one death.

There are a few other things I'd like to say about this disaster. This may sound bad, but bear with me: a disaster of this magnitude could not have picked a better country to happen to than Japan. It is my firm belief that while the damage here is terrible, the cost in human lives and suffering would have been many times worse in any other country.

Japan is a nation well-equipped for disasters. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are not a possibility here, they are an accepted part of life - it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Japan has extensive procedures, infrastructure, and training put in place for the purpose of disaster warning, evacuation, and recovery. All of these factors, I believe, have helped and will continue to help ensure that Japan passes through this challenge with a minimum of suffering.

Additionally, while Japan may be in an economic low point, it is still a wealthy country. Those who have lost everything to the tsunami - and they are many - will have a much greater chance of recovering a semblance of normalcy faster than they might in a poorer country. Japan also has a relatively functional social safety net, so people who have lost everything are not truly as screwed as they might be elsewhere (not pointing any fingers).

Finally, the Western media seems to be focusing a great deal of attention on Japan's so-called "Nuclear Disaster". Because nuclear power generators were threatened by the tsunami, they have become part of the struggle, but there is no chance of a Chernobyl-style meltdown and the loss of power is far more devastating to Japan than any released radiation might be. There are many sources that can explain the technicalities of why the nuclear shutdown is not the disaster that nuclear-phobic sources want it to be; here is one. Please read this and other sources if you are concerned about the nuclear situation.

Life will recover and go on as normal in Japan. This disaster should be a lesson to us all; disasters do happen, and when they do it pays to be prepared.

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.