Sunrise Chronicles

I ordered a couple things at Amazon Japan yesterday. However, as my credit card expires this month, they didn't want to take that as payment. So, I switched the payment method to "pay at a convenience store," which is a popular method here. There happens to be a 7-11 two blocks from my school, so I thought I'd saunter down there during my free time, pay, and be all set.

The way this is supposed to work is that they type in a little number on the cash register, you pay, and they print you out a receipt. I opened up the email, wrote down the big number at the top, and walked down to the 7-11...in the rain. (Yes, it would choose today to rain.)

The cashier tried to type the number in, but it wouldn't take. The register just kept beeping at her. There was nothing for me to do but walk back to work.

I checked the email again, and this time I scrolled down to the very bottom to find a much smaller "payment number." It seems the number I had written down was Amazon's order number. Oh, well. I printed out the entire page (just so I could show it to the cashier, so she could read it and know I'm not crazy, just dense) and took it back to the store.

It still didn't work.

I walk back to school again. Still in the rain.

I open up the email again and input the web address they listed for questions about payment. After clicking through several links, I discovered that the "payment number" only works at certain convenience store chains, not including 7-11. For 7-11, I had to open a special page and print out an order form with a barcode that they can scan into the register. Joy.

I get that printed out and hike back to the store. This time it works, thank goodness.

At least I know my order is paid for, now. Oh, and one bright spot is that I was able to buy some packs of Korean-style Nori Tempura Chips, the taste sensation to which I am quickly becoming addicted, while I was there.

Before I start the tour, I thought I would comment on something from yesterday. My family had sent me a package of chocolate, so I decided to share some with the school. I filled a bunny-decorated basket with chocolate and left it on the front desk of the faculty office with a note saying "Happy Easter."

I'm pretty far away from the front desk, so I didn't hear many comments about it, but one was loud enough to reach me.

Student: What's "Happy Eater"?

Teacher: That's EASTer.

Student: ...What's Easter?

Easter as a holiday is almost completely unknown here. I doubt this is because it is a religious holiday--Christmas and St. Valentine's Day are practically Japanese traditions now (and are both considered approximately equivalent to each other). Halloween is gaining ground as well, probably due to the wild popularity of Nightmare Before Christmas on top of a decade of JET ALTs teaching their classes about it.

I'm pretty sure that Easter's obscurity is related to its timing. When it comes early, it's in the middle of spring break, so ALTs have no way to teach classes about it. (This year, for example, classes don't start until Thursday, by which time Easter has been over for days.) When it comes late in April, it's right before the week-long string of national holidays making up Golden Week, so not only does it pale in comparison, teachers are scrambling to get some kind of actual teaching done before the students lose concentration entirely and don't have time to spend on a just-for-fun topic.

Whatever the cause, 99% of students have never heard of it. (The remaining 1% would be those from the appropriate religious backgrounds.) I think it's a shame, because Easter can be a really fun holiday, but oh well.

Anyway, on with the tour. Today I will concentrate on the gymnasium.

The big concern about the gym is keeping the floor clean. The main entrance on the ground floor has an area for visitors to remove their outdoor shoes, plus shoe lockers for students to change into gym shoes. However, the second floor entrance does not have such an area. Therefore, the second floor entrance will be considered off-limits for most purposes.

The ground floor of the gym has practice rooms for various clubs. The first is the kendo room. This school has a very strong kendo club. The next is the judo room. The rubber mats on the floor have been molded to look like tatami (closeup). Finally, there is an all-purpose fitness room with stationary bikes, treadmills, weights, and other exercise equipment.

The restrooms in the gym are supplied with several sets of bathroom slippers. This is to keep "bathroom germs" out of the rest of the gym.

The second floor of the gym has the basketball court area. The far end of the court is the stage. This is where all school assemblies are held. Note that there are no bleachers. All students and faculty either stand or sit on the floor. (Folding chairs are supplied on occasions where parents/guardians are present, such as for graduation.) I have never seen bleachers at any Japanese school.

The third floor of the gym is just a balcony that circles around the edge of the court. I believe it can be used as a track for running practice.

Outside the gym is the ground for more sports practice. In the foreground of the photo is the tennis area, with a soccer area in the background. There is a further sports area beyond the range of the photo, where groups such as the baton-twirling club can practice. Note again that there are still no bleachers for spectators.

A while back, I reported about the hospital that instituded a non-smoking taxi stand. Last night on the news, there was a story about the hospital patients complaining that the non-smoking taxis still smelled of smoke. The news program researched this, and they found that the problem is the drivers.

When a patient comes out the door of the hospital, the first stand is the non-smoking taxi stand, and the regular taxi stand is behind it. The taxi drivers, knowing that human nature is to take the first taxi one sees, all want to be at the first stand in line. Therefore, they buy magnetic non-smoking signs and slap them on their taxis so they can line up at the first stand.

However, they don't particularly care about being non-smoking. The drivers themselves smoke (when passengers aren't in the car), and they allow passengers to smoke when asked. When they are working other areas of the city in the evenings, they take off the non-smoking signs and run as regular smoking taxis.

The news crew went to ask the people in charge of regulating taxis what is being done about this, since there have been so many complaints. They were told, "We're leaving it up to the morals of the drivers." The news crew was particularly concerned about this because Nagoya (and here I'm not sure whether they meant the whole city or just the train station) is requiring all of its taxis to be non-smoking starting in May. There needs to be some kind of penalty for smoking in a non-smoking taxi.

Edit: Oh, also, I saw the funniest commercial during the news. It was a commercial to prevent people from doing something terrible that causes the commercial's creators to worry about the future of society. (Yes, they actually say that.) Go ahead, guess. Doing drugs? No. Dropping out of school? No. Gay marriage? Of course not.

It was a commercial to prevent people from eating fast food on trains. Yes, that is on the verge of causing the downfall of society right there, folks.

At school, the closing ceremony is tomorrow. Next week is spring break. The first week of April is mostly break, but there are a couple of days that teachers are required to show up for departmental meetings and such. The official opening ceremony will be on April 9.

I neglected to mention this past weekend that I finally scraped together enough to purchase my epic flying mount. (It costs 5000 gold to get the necessary training to ride it, plus 200 gold for the mount itself.) It flies SO FAST. I love zipping around on it, dropping out of the sky to pick random flowers, then zooming away again.

Japanese Oreos come in bags of 18 cookies. (This information is displayed right on the package. If you look at the image in the link, the text reads: "Contains 2 packs of 9 cookies.")

US Oreos come in packages of what I estimate to be 45 cookies. (The web site doesn't tell you this. It only says it contains 18 ounces, however many cookies that may be. I looked up on a nutrition site that one serving = three cookies, and Nabisco's nutrition info says there are "about 15" servings per container. 3 × 15 = 45)

Make of this trivia what you will.

Personally, I prefer the bag that tells me how many cookies are inside, rather than how much the cookies weigh. But maybe that's just me.

This message brought to you thanks to my sudden craving for Oreos (after spotting them at the supermarket), which I hadn't eaten in well over two (three?) years.

I've been slacking on updating my journal lately. Sorry about that. (But I've gotten Snowbunny up to level 55...)

Last week was my school's annual three-day culture/sports festival. The theme was Cultural Fusion to show that the cultures of the previous girls' school students and the new Ritsumeikan students are blending together. (Their first suggestion was "Cultural Assimilation," but I vetoed that because it sounded like the girls were being assimilated by the Borg Ritsumeikan.) The new school nickname, by the way, has apparently been fixed as "Ritsumori," although it is often shortened just to "Ritsu."

Wednesday and Thursday were the "cultural" days of the festival, during which the students put on performances and clubs showed off their products. For example, a couple classes performed Cinderella, like this version in which all the supporting characters were wearing traditional Japanese clothes. My senior class did a retrospective of their three years--this is the one where I was recruited to play myself (except even more melodramatic). They had one scene where three girls had a conversation in front of a "mirror," with three other girls acting as their reflections as they fixed their hair and did such things as accidentally drop something. That got cries of amazement from the audience. Friday was the sports competition portion of the festival.

This week we were back to classes as usual...though getting the students back on task after all the festival excitement was a bit of a challenge. It will be interrupted yet again next week, as the second-year students are going on a class trip to Hokkaido. Friday afternoon I gave an after-school lesson to the group of students who will be going on a two week homestay in Australia over winter break. That was rather interesting, because about a third of them are freshmen, so I've never taught them before.

They also handed out the information about this year's faculty year-end party. The plan is for it to be held at a fancy hotel, and the meal is a Western food buffet. The price is about $80, about a quarter of which is for all-you-can-drink privileges. I looked at the sample list of items on the brochure for the buffet...out of about a dozen items, the only vegetarian offerings were a tomato/mozzarella dish, garlic bread, and an apple dessert. At least it's a buffet, so I can theoretically take as much as I want of the things I can eat. Tomato + mozzarella + bread is practically pizza, right? ...$60 pizza, to be sure.

The weather has turned cooler now that fall is here. The one thing I enjoy about the Japanese obsession with the seasons is that the food available during the fall is absolutely delicious. Sweet potatoes and pumpkins in particular abound.

...And speaking of pumpkins, I saw something interesting on the news the other day. Universal Studios Japan has recently opened a new Wizard of Oz attraction. As background, I must mention that there is a traditional summer beach game here called "split the watermelon." It's similar to the tradition of breaking a piñata in that participants are blindfolded, given a stick, and sent out to whack something. The main difference is that they whack a watermelon that is lying on the ground. (It doesn't even move! Where's the challenge in that?!) What I saw on the news was that USJ was having a special "split the pumpkin" event at the Wizard of Oz attraction in honor of Halloween. They gave out wicked witch costumes and brooms to children and had them whack on a giant pumpkin. It was certainly amusing.

Warcraft Update: Several weeks ago, my guild managed to reach the final boss of Molten Core, Ragnaros. We didn't take him down that time, but we got him to about 14% life. Today we ventured into another instance, the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. It's a 40-person instance, but we only had 24 people show up. Still, we managed to fight our way to the first boss.

I got a first look at the planned script for the skit my class is doing for the festival. They want me to play myself...except speaking really bad Japanese. Literally, the stage directions read "speaks haltingly with a strong accent."

They had me practice a little to make sure I could do it. It's kinda hard, but somehow I managed. (I felt like a character on Conan.)

To follow up on my previous discussion of Japanese taste preferences, one of my classes talked about likes and dislikes. The teacher announced to me that most Japanese people dislike pumpkin pie.

Me: Really? O_O (I've served pumpkin pie before, and the students who ate it always gobbled it up quickly.)

Teacher: Yes. Most people love pumpkins (that is, Japanese pumpkins, which resemble acorn squash). But pumpkin pie has cinnamon and other spices in it.

Me: Um...yeah. That's what makes it GOOD.

Teacher: Many people don't like it.

To prove her point, she asked the students to raise their hands if they liked/disliked pumpkin pie. Only one student responded in each category, though, so the results are inconclusive.

Last Friday was Tanabata, a ceremonial (not national) holiday here. It is based on the myth that the lover stars Vega and Altair are separated by the Milky Way and can only meet once a year. The seventh day of the seventh month is their lucky day.

The day is celebrated by writing wishes on strips of paper and hanging them from bamboo branches. This year, the students at my school were all given colorful paper rectangles to write on, and at lunchtime they hung them from two large bamboo stalks in front of the main entrance.

Today the seniors began their final exams. I had two bright and early, so I spent most of the morning grading papers. After that, I'm pretty much done until the last exam on Friday. I do have a couple lessons with the second year students, but fewer than usual because the schedule was rearranged for another teacher who will be gone at some point. Next week we will only meet to give back the seniors' test results, and then I'm through with school for the summer.

In addition to my usual free time activities, this weekend I decided to try a little cooking adventure. I had previously bought Thai mango ketchup at the import store in Kyoto, but they stopped carrying it, and I eventually used up my supply. This was quite sad, because it tasted very good.

I read the ingredients on the label, and it said simply "mango, vinegar, sugar, spices," so it didn't seem like it would be complicated to replicate. I didn't have any mangoes on hand, but I did have some old plums that I bought on a whim and never finished. I decided to experiment with those.

( Here's what I came up with... )

In other random food news, I found a new item on the fried-goods table at my local supermarket: breaded quail eggs on a stick. I bought some to try. They're really good with takoyaki sauce and mayonnaise.

...Officially, that is. The equinox is a national holiday here, so I got to spend the whole day at home playing on the computer.

I really can't wait until we get internet at work. They came and put new outlets in over the weekend...without saying anything about it. So when I brought my laptop in on Monday and plugged it into my extension cord as usual, I was shocked to get the message after a while that my battery was low. I thought my cord had stopped working. I jiggled all the connections with no luck. Finally I followed the extension cord and discovered that someone had unplugged it from the outlet. The new outlets are a type where you have to twist the plug after putting it in.

The students have no more classes for the year. Instead, they have two sports days (Monday and Wednesday, sandwiching the holiday), and then a cleaning day before spring break. The kerosene stoves will be packed away on Thursday.

They announced on the news yesterday that the sakura are officially open in Tokyo. It was the funniest thing to watch. They had this guy carefully examining a tree. "There are seven flowers open!" he exclaims excitedly. "Seven?" someone confirms. "Yes, seven!" (Close-up shot on several flowers.) "Okay, then. We can announce that the sakura are officially open!" They then go on to interview random people on the street, asking them if they like sakura. There is a comparison with last year's official flower-opening date. (They're a week early this year.) They discuss how the stormy weather will affect the flowers. They REALLY take their cherry blossoms seriously.

...But since when has the weather ever listened to me?

Today is what is known as White Day. In Japan, Valentine's Day is a holiday specifically for girls to give chocolate to boys. White day, exactly one month later, is the day for boys to give back some kind of present in return for the chocolate.

Theoretically, all this gift-giving is taking place to express Love. In reality, however, a lot of the chocolate-giving is what is known as giri, or "duty." That is, on Valentine's Day, women will take in boxes of chocolate and pass it out to the men at work because it's expected, and then on White Day the men will reciprocate. At my school in Niigata, I recall discovering a sack full of chocolate on my desk and not having a clue why it was there. I kept expecting someone to show up and claim it.

At this school, it seems chocolate-giving isn't a custom among the faculty. On the other hand, we did get...snow.

All right, now. Whoever's in charge of the weather...you have one more week to have your fun. After that, it's officially spring. And everyone knows that Japan has four seasons that all start on schedule.

I saw on the news that there's a guy in Osaka campaigning to make pie the official gift food of White Day. (...Because it's 3.14, and people in Kansai just love puns.) The fact that pi goes on forever makes it a symbol of eternal love, he says.

Thursday evening I made a batch of gingerbread cookies to take to school the next day. I like baking...I just wish it didn't use up so many dishes. ;_; I spent what time remained packing my suitcases.

Friday morning I took the cookies to school. I wound up giving out about four dozen to students, who appreciated the unexpected treat. I set the rest of the cookies out for the teachers to snack on. I used my free period to make a set of Christmas-themed Apples to Apples cards to use in my last class of the day. That went over all right, though I had to do a quick run through of various terms (holly, mistletoe, stable, shepherd, wise man, etc.) before playing.

Friday evening, the teachers got on a bus and headed for the bounenkai ("forget the year party"). Several students waved as we left. I really wonder what it must be like as a student to watch your teachers leave for their year end party, knowing that they're all going to get drunk and bathe together.

The location of the party was an inn on the opposite side of Lake Biwa, so I rode across the bridge to the other side for the first time. I also watched the moon out the window of the bus. It was full and beautiful. It was even tinted faintly yellow, like a pale harvest moon...but I couldn't see a bunny in it, no matter how hard I tried.

The bounenkai is a Japanese tradition. People in all lines of work have them. I've talked about them before, but it's hard to convey the full impact. This year I took my camera and snapped shots of as much as possible. I posted the pictures, in chronological order, with descriptions.

Pictorial Guide to a Bounenkai

One of the other teachers thoughtfully gave me a ride back home. Her car had a navigation system that displayed the route as an animated map. It showed the position of the car, surrounding roads, and important buildings such as police boxes, schools, and shopping centers. I practically drooled. I get lost so easily, I really could use something like that.

When I got home, I sent a request to a delivery service to pick up my suitcases to take to the airport. That should be all taken care of in a couple hours. Now I just have to finish last minute chores such as laundry and dishes, and I'll be ready to leave on Monday.