And I'm off...for vacation

Hey all, I'm off to the "Land of the Morning Calm" (Korea) and the "Land Down Under" for the next 2 weeks.

I will post when I return. Hopefully with pictures. Cheers all.

Argh

If anyone knows how to align blog posts properly please let me know. I don't know why that last post keeps coming out all wonky.

I've lived in Japan now for almost 9 months. And what have I gained during this time? Here is my top 10. (note: the following list is very trite)

1. I finally, after months of hoping I'd never have to touch one again, learned to drive a stick shift. Although most people rave over and profess great love for a manual car, I see it as a lot of unecessary extra work. I am a lazy being.

2. I learned to say "I can't speak Japanese" in Japanese. Watashi wa nihongo de hanashimasen. Very useful, particularly when you look no different than
the natives.

3. I also learned to say "I'm Canadian" (Watashi wa Ca-na-da jin desu) and a
very sloppy way of explaining my parents are Korean. I used this phrase to
prevent the locals from thinking I am mentally challenged.

4. I perfected the art of looking confused and bewildered whenever anyone attempted to speak to me in Japanese. To accomplish this, simply widen your eyes and then furrow your brow. Follow this by shaking your head while apologizing (either in Japanese or your native tongue). I began inadvertently studying this craft in China and have worked extensively at improving it during my Asian travels.

5. I learned to read Hiragana and Katakana. I would describe Hiragana as the curvaceous alphabet. Katakana is it's rather angular sister. As with many siblings, while there are differences, you can tell they're related.

6. I developed an unhealthy negative attitude towards Kanji, a distant relative to both Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is a tease, sometimes enticingly simple and yet disturbingly complex.

7. I've become increasingly fond of Japanese fashion. I find myself wanting to wear multiple layers, perforated pastel-coloured mules, insanely uncomfortable stiletto heels, brightly coloured striped knee-socks, long shirts that could double as dresses, and arm warmers. I mean c'mon, arm warmers?? I bought three pairs!

8. I discovered I don't like udon. This is a great tragedy since udon shops are a dime a dozen here and the cheapest meal to be had. I've tried on numerous occasions to reconcile myself to the thick-noodle-in-fish-broth mixture but to no avail. I just don't enjoy.

9. I can now waste countless minutes rifling through the menus on my cell phone. Exactly what new thing I think I'm going to discover after 6 months is
beyond me but I still do it.

10. That better sushi is to be had in Vancouver. Admittedly I haven't tasted too much sushi here, being rather pricey, but what I've had wasn't anything to write home about. I actually look forward to eating at Sushi Boat in Calgary again. It's too fun to watch the endless line of boats float by, holding various pieces of sushi.

Cram Schools and Kaiyo Academy

The past 3 years of my life have been split living between Canada, China, Korea and Japan. In China, I taught at a university. In Korea and Japan I taught at a hagwon and juku respectively. Both are the country's names for "cram school".

Today I read an article about a new elite private school, for junior high/high school students, opening in Japan. It is meant for the cultivation of future leaders. The school, Kaiyo Academy, is apparently fashioned after Britain's Eton, but the strictly regimented schedule makes one wonder what the students are going to gain, aside from a penchant for punctuality. Classes are naturally scheduled, but so are free time, reading materials, phone calls and the like. Video games, comic books and bicycles are prohibited. I was confused as to exactly why bicycles weren't allowed but I'm not a school official. Perhaps riding a bike fosters bad behaviour. Kaiyo Academy is meant as an expensive alternative to both public and cram schools. Now the two are blended nicely together for the ultimate in time-crunching, educational achievement. The cost to send a child there is 3 million yen per year. That's around 30,000 CDN.

For those of you unfamiliar with the cram school system, it is an after school school. Kind of like tutoring centers in Canada except they can be much more rigid. In Korea I taught at an English hagwon, that specialized in students that had previously lived in an English speaking country for a minimum of one year. So, I was spoiled as an English teacher since almost all my students could easily converse with me and could read and write English to boot. My English juku in Japan didn't boast the same standards but had the same philosophy. Which was: Teach the kids as much English as possible in the time allowed.

Public schools, in both Korea and Japan, end around 3pm, sometimes earlier for the lower grades. Afterwards, it is common for many children to be bundled off, either by bus, car or bicycle to a cram school. Be it for English, math, social studies or the like. It's also common for students to stay at one or other cram school virtually ALL evening. Many of my students were frequently late to class because they had to come running for another school. Often they also looked bone-tired but would try to stay awake and alert for class.

The reason for cram schools is the overwhelming pressure and competition that surrounds getting into a good university. All families want to be able to brag that their child attends or attended (either tense is fine) the greatest university in the country. The top universities in Korea and Japan respectively, are Seoul and Tokyo. For my father's generation, if you went to Seoul University you were made for life. I assume the situation would've been similar for Tokyo. Entrance examinations for universities are cut-throat operations. If you failed, you didn't get in and had to wait another year before trying again. Then there was the whole dishonoring and shaming your family thing. Failure is not acceptable in any form. Failing means you don't respect all your family has done for you nor do you respect yourself. You didn't try hard enough. Suicide rates among students usually rise during entrance examination season. Thus, in order to lower the chance of failure, students are sent to cram schools.

I'm just glad that I was brought up in a country where the education system is a little more lax. I can't imagine spending every waking moment of my teenage years studying.

Tokyo again

Now that I've got my bearings and have organized most of what needs to be organized (flight home, soon-to-be-trip, additional inconsequential details) I can now write about what else I saw in Tokyo.

Our first day in, with the extra early arrival of 6:30am, due to the overnight bus schedule, we wandered around, bleary eyed, sleepy, and wondering what the hell to do with ourselves for the next 10 hours or so (as this is when we could check into our hotel). Nothing was open, hardly any shops, restaurants or museums. The subway, if nothing else, was up and running so we hopped on and then hopped off at Ueno Station. This lead to Ueno Park.

At Ueno Park, the sakura trees or cherry blossoms, were in full bloom. They were beautiful to look at but the scenic view was ruined by the huge amounts of blue tarp underneath. The first weekend in April gave way to tons of hanami, or cherry blossom viewing parties. This means groups of people stake out spots underneath the trees, usually with tarp or newspaper, and then proceed to drink and eat, ALL day long. A few hardy souls were already camped out before 7am. They'd probably been there all night to save their coveted places. That early in the morning, there were only handfuls of people there. However, later on, after we'd eaten breakfast and taken a tour of Tokyo National Museum, the crowds were horribly oppressive. I've never seen so many people literally pouring out of a station and into a park before. Even though I was still outdoors the amount of people began to feel suffocating. I wanted to run and hide. So, we left.

Around 3 in the afternoon I began to grow weary of the constant crowds and of being on my feet. We decided it was close enough to the time of check-in so we ventured back to the hotel. We were 20 minutes early and asked to wait until it was exactly 4pm. If there's one thing I've discovered about Japan it's that they are extremely punctual. We checked in and I fell asleep for a good hour and a half.

Once up again we headed off to Shinjuku, the young party area of Tokyo. With all the lights and huge monitors, it looks similar to Broadway in New York. After wandering around the decent part of town, we started looking for Kabuki-cho, or the red-light district. Why is it that the seamy, seedy parts of town are always so much more interesting to go to?

Kabuki-cho is made up of rows upon rows of hostess clubs/bars. Meaning a place where only Japanese men can go to "relax". Walking around you could sometimes see some scantily clad women bidding a man farewell in front of the club. There were a fair number of host clubs as well. Though the men advertised on the billboards were rather effeminate in looks. What is with the hair here? It looks like they shocked themselves with electricity and then patted it down before leaving the house. Oddly, we also found a good number of Korean restaurants in Kabuki-cho. Meaning that Koreans find a good living in the red-light district perhaps?

The first day Will followed me to Harajuku and then I duly followed him to Akihabara, the electronics district of Tokyo. Here there are a great number of buildings whose entire floors are devoted to cameras, computers, cell phones, walkmans, mp3 players, video games and etc. Will was in heaven but I could feel my eyes glazing over within 10 minutes of a video game hunt. On a later day we returned to Akihabara, but this time to visit a Maid Cafe. What is this you ask? It's odd but this is a cafe where girls dress up like maids. Sometimes with bunny or cat ears on their heads. There is a sitting fee and the prices for drinks and food are about what you'd expect at a bar. You can choose to play a game with a maid for 3min for the bargain price of 500yen (5 dollars). Once an hour the lights would dim and the maids would engage the audience to play a variation of "rock paper scissors". The winner won some gold memento coins of the cafe. I believe they sing on occasion as well. Some cafe's cater more to manga readers and the girls will dress up like some famous manga characters. The one we were at seemed to be a standard Maid Cafe.

The last thing I'll write about is the Meguro Parasite Museum. I had heard about this from a friend and it came so highly recommended I couldn't pass up a chance to see it. I don't think I've ever seen so much information about parasites in one place before. The museum consisted of two floors in a modest looking building. Both floors held various jars of parasites preserved in solution. The second floor was more traumatic with the pictures of what certain parasites could do to the human body. There was also an 8.8m tapeworm, taken from a human male, incased in glass. Next to it was a length of rope, cut to 8.8m that you could unravel to see in all its lengthy glory. Also on display was a dolphin heart ridden with pinworms. It was truly disgusting. The gift shop on the 2nd floor had an English booklet explaining the displays, which Will and I avidly read to see what we had missed. I started feeling a little queasy as the booklet went into great detail about the effects of parasites. One particular fact that was great to read was people often don't realize they have a tapeworm until they seeing it hanging out after going #2. Both of us left the museum feeling as though we should go straight to the doctor to get checked out.

I had a great time in Tokyo and even relished taking the subway/trains. I guess it was just the accessibility that I missed. You can jump onto the train and go somewhere interesting. This isn't as easily done in the inaka unless you own a car.

I set my return date!

To all the Calgarians out there. I finally booked my flight home. I'm back on May 21st! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone!

Tokyo - Starring Harajuku

Last Friday found Will and myself waiting at for an overnight bus by Tokushima Station. I had just finished my last day of work and was pretty damn excited about going somewhere and relaxing. It duly arrived and we boarded. I was interested to see that there were bottles of green tea supplied as well as pillows and blankets. Once the bus was really on its way, we were required to pull the curtains closed and all the lights were turned off. This,coupled with the rather intense heat, created something of a feeling of claustrophobia but otherwise, all was good.

On Sunday, we hopped onto the infallible JR Yamanote line (it goes to all major Tokyo hotspots) and headed to Harajuku where we had read girls of questionable fashion tastes congregated. They are known as the Coz-play-zoku (Costume play gang). After walking through a long street lined with shops and boutiques (I starry-eyed, Will blank-eyed). We came across jingu-bashi and one of strangest sights I have ever seen in my life. All long the bridge sat/stood groups of girls garbed in a bizarre variety of clothing. Maid outfits, huge platform knee-high boots, goth-like makeup, the works. As I walked around I saw a number of tourists, all looking exactly as I felt. Astonished and bewildered with cameras in hand. I must've stayed on the bashi (bridge) for a good half hour just staring, open-mouthed like a yokel.

The next day I returned to Harajuku (while Will shopped in Akihabara the electronics district), not to stare but to shop. And what did I end up buying? Socks, and lots of them. Striped, glittery, and plain, knee-high socks. I also bought arm-warmers, skirts and extremely long pearl beads. When am I ever going to wear all these things? No bloody clue but it sure was fun buying it all! I also snacked on crepes. There must've been at least 10 crepe vendors on the one street alone.

I hope to write about other spots we saw in Tokyo but knowing me I might not get around to it. Hope you're all enjoying yourselves.