February 2006 Archives

Its kind of funny how a sale makes you buy things in quantities you normally would never ever think of buying in. Like my recent purchase of 4 big boxes of oatmeal from the local foreign import store which is going out of business. So I guess you could say that if there ever is an oatmeal shortage, I'm set. Most of us around town have been buying way too much at the foreign import store because of the 20% discount thats now being applied to everything. Like the Snapple I bought on Friday. It retails for 220¥ here in Japan. With a 20% discount that falls to176¥, and with the exchange rate being currently 116¥ per $1, I'm actually paying less in Japan for a Snapple than I would in the US.

Thursday was an evening of meat galore. Graham turned 29 so a large group of people went out to have an 'all you could eat' yakineku night. The place didn't run out of food, but I can imagine that they when they saw the crowd of foreigners come in they were a bit scared. Then again, I was scared that many of us would have to be carted out of the place due to a meat induced coma. I most certainly had the worst wrapped gift at the birthday, both in coverings and in actual wrapping, seeing as I wrapped my gift up in a newspaper that was stuck in my door and about three feet of tape. I hope Graham enjoys his GBA copy of チューチューロケット (Chu Chu Rockets) and a manga book about hamsters.

I never miss a chance to get a photo taken with someone in a big ass hot pepper outfit. Or any outfit. So far I've seen quite a grouping of strange creatures in front of my train station. The hot pepper, a big, a bear, a giant sun, and some guys from Peru playing pan flute Simon & Garfunkle songs. Usually these giant and silly creatures are up for a photo of two. That or we have to tackle them down and beat them into submission.

The school year in Japan is almost at an end. Which doesn't mean that I stop teaching until the fall. It just means that my third years go off to high school and I get a group of very small first years who will all be afraid of me. If I'm lucky. This Friday a group of little elementary school kids came by to see one of my classes, so that they would know what they were getting into. With any luck I can see these newbies for the next two and a half years, and annoy them as much as possible. Well, annoy them as much as possible without them knowing what I'm really saying. What actually gets me is how small the new students are compared to the first years I'm teaching in class. We're talking hobbit sized.

So Alun and I were out hitting up all the local junk stores in town, again, and I came across this gem of a CD. Junichiro Koizumi Presents My Favorite Elvis Songs. I mean seriously, why wouldn't you but this? We found the photoshoped pictures of Koizumi to be more then entertaining. To be just pure comedy bliss. I never figured the Japanese PM to be obsessed with Elvis, but I guess this CD will stand as proof. If nothing else I can always use it as a gift for someone's random birthday, random holiday, or occasional batmistfa. (Actually I find the idea of the PM hanging out with Elvis to be rather amusing, and think that if time travel is ever invented that we should send Koizumi back in time to pose for real photos. Though that may cause some strange time looping effect.)

I've been reading a lot of comics lately. Most of them downloaded stuff, such as Hellboy and X-Men, and have provided countless hours of random entertainment. But what I have really trying to find were old copies of Sam & Max, which seems next to impossible. Though the next best thing has happened.... a new online comic. Yeah, its just as demented as the original.

Nothing is more fun then a long lunch in which to eat your bacon pizza. Or, as I would call it, pizza with some slices of ham thrown on top. Just what I needed. Though what I also need is a super cool new Canon camera! I went to a local camera shop over lunch and was looking at some of the middle range Canon cameras. The Canon 'Kiss', or as its called in the US the Canon Rebel Digital, is such a nice camera. I saw several used ones with lenses for around $600 USD. Not too bad really. Something that would be nice to have, but a bit heavy to carry around. I've been looking at the a newer version of the Canon IXY, aka Canon ELPF, to replace my older one. I figure with all the traveling I have planned this year I really want a nice camera that takes a nice picture, but is also easy to travel with. Eh, I'm sure I'll figure something out before these SUPER COOL NEW ONES ARE RELEASED! HOLY CRAP!

Skype, the popular and free voice over IP program (for the non geeks, computer to computer phone calling via the internet) is now being developed for phones running on 3G networks. Like mine. Which would mean I could call the US of A via my cell phone for next to nothing. This probably will evolve into cell phone to computer video chatting eventually via 3G phones. Though I bet phone companies will start charging people up the wazoo for data packets sent and received from phones.

Want to know what happens when a giant electronic billboard in Times Square runs Windows XP? Well, I'm sure these photos will show you how funny it can be.

I read this article on Yahoo.com today about how Japanese housewives are keeping secret bank accounts with massive amounts of their husband's money in it. Like on average, $20,000 USD. While this may shock you, it doesn't the least bit shock me. Women in Japan control more then we give them credit for. Its been tradition in Japan for a long time that the wife is in complete control of the domestic sphere, which usually means she's in control of all incoming money. She holds the bank books, and she gives her husband money to spend. This is quite common. This is actually a major scare factor for foreigners marrying Japanese women, and I have heard several horror stories where the guy loses all control of his income to his wife. Crazy. Now the fact that many women are keeping a slush fund behind their husband's backs probably makes perfect sense in a country where its widely assumed that every husband is fooling around behind their wife's back. No seriously. You don't believe it until you start hanging out with middle aged Japanese men and you hear it all. And you even had to wonder why Japanese women keep trying to pick up foreign men?

Look at this! My videos are done! I put up two. One of my Surprise Xmas Visit Home, and one of (some of) the fun that went on at Hadaka Matsuri. Enjoy!

No one ever informed me that I have a lint trap in this weird Japanese washer of mine. Which explains why when I did discover it I suddenly was confronted with a massive amount of crazy lint. Really. You could insulate my apartment with the amount I have.

At my weekly dinner over at Michael and Julia place I was able to get my hands on some more photos of this past weekend. Some of them were extremely funny. Some of them deserved to be blown up and put on someone's wall. Clearly we may never know how much fun was really had by the Fukuyama JETs in Okayama last weekend, but if this picture is any indication of what went on, the answer must be 'A whole lot.' (Name of person in photo withheld to protect their naked ass identity)

As to the video of this past weekend's fun, well, its been delayed. Seems I'm having issues uploading the video to the file server I use. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get it working soon enough. Then again, I also need to do a second editing... one that is a bit more... enlightening.

Saturday was the annual Hadaka Matsuri festival, which translates into "Naked Man" festival. Though no one was entirely naked. The rundown is like this. A very large number of men run around in little sumo diapers, getting water thrown on them, and then cram into a temple where four batons are thrown down and you try to get one. All of this in the very cold nighttime air. A large group of us JETs headed down to Okayama to see the ordeal for ourselves, and also to have a fun time in the big city. The event draws people from all over the surrounding area, and the number of naked men in this thing was around 9,000. Several of them were silly foreigners I know.

To make the night more interesting for those of us not running the event, we all went and had some dinner with our 'all you can drink.' To which, many people attempted to drink all they could drink. Which made the subsequent bus ride rather interesting. Due to the massive number of people, both Japanese and silly foreigners, I lost track of Bill and Matt who were both naked in the crowd. What I did see was a massive amount of Japanese ass. No really. Just look at the picture below. Now think of like 9,000 Japanese men (and Bill) in those things. Not a very pretty sight overall.

So you may be asking yourself "What is the appeal of watching thousands of mostly naked Japanese men run around in the cold?" But honestly, what isn't entertaining about an event that will most likely cause broken arms, broken feet, bruises, concussions, black eyes, and a lot of very cold Japanese men. Even Bill managed to get himself knocked around, and has quite a few Hadaka Matsuri injuries to show how much of a fun time he had. I on the other hand was all too happy to take some video and pictures, and not be extremely cold and naked. The Japanese really do know how to party. (Word on the street is that matt was interviewed by NHK and somewhere in Japan his video is being shown as we speak)

Hopefully I'll have that video up as soon as I can connect to my video file server.... I also need to be making a video of all the crazy ALT things that happened between dinner and actually getting to the event. Oh... its soooo entertaining.

In very sad news the foreign import store at the train station is closing down. Jupiter is no more. This is quite the blow to the local ALT population, as it was a prime source of taco mix and skittles. Now we will have to travel half an hour to get to the next nearest foreign import store. Luckily the 20% off sale has allowed me stock up on some much needed items. Which is why I have 20 cans of soup in my apartment and 8 bags of bow tie pasta.

ALTs should not make ALT rap videos.

I finally got around to going to an onsen on Sunday. You'd think that in the total year that I've been here I would have gone to one once. Oh well. I can only say one thing about Japanese onsens. You feel real good afterwards. Nothing like a super hot bath to make you forget about the winter. Also, not bad for 700 yen. Even better still: going to a tucked away onsen in the mountains, sitting outside surrounded by snow while being in a very hot pool of water, with your buddies.

Today is Valentines Day. Heres how it went for me. I got a little box of candy from one of my JTEs, and several bits of candy from people at my office. I handed out some super cool Fantastic 4 Valentines Day cards I got in the US, giving them to both my students and everyone in my office and confusing everyone. A couple of my first year year girls though it would be funny to yell out "Do you like sex? Do you play sex?" over and over again while making some fun filled hand gestures. Just another day at a middle school.

Happy Valentines Day, Star Wars style.

Rumors have been flying around for a while now about Apple putting out a touch screen tablet computer of some sort. Most of this is speculation surrounding several patents Apple filed for, showing a very cool touch screen interface. The kind of interface we saw Tom Cruse use in Minority Report. Heres a video of what such a system might look like running on OS X.

A couple of cool OS X applications for you to look at. First off is Kotoba, which is a nice little Japanese language study aid brought to you by the same brilliant mind that made ecto. I'm already using it, and its quite handy. The second program is DTV, which is a nice little open source program that manages all your podcasts and internet TV stations. I find it to be a lot better at dealing with podcasts compared to iTunes, and the best part is its free.

I somehow got a bunch of people to come over last evening for a little house party of sorts. Just a fun little crowd of peoples. The group was made up of the evil Canadian block: Graham, Natasha, Julie, and Michelle. The America block featured: Bill, Matt, Theresa, and myself. Plus we somehow gained Kuni, who was a very neutral force in the evening. It was just your usual gaijin party. Drinks, snacks, trivial pursuit, taboo, some good music, some good conversation, and no party would be complete without some Chu Chu Rockets. Though one randomly silly thing about the evening was where the four girls sat around and spoke French for a good half hour. Then played the French version of Taboo. I guess no worse then Julie and Theresa speaking Chinese to each other. But I guess you kind of have to expect that sort of thing in Japan.

One of the randomly fun things about the evening was watching some very silly remixed movie trailers, once again proving that people have way too much free time and a very encyclopedia knowledge of movies. But then again, I never like Sleepless in Seattle, until it become a horror movie. It could be worse, you could turn The Shinning into a family film. With the success of Brokeback Mountain many other openly gay films have come forward. Like Brokenback to the Future. Think McFly, think. But nothing is more fun then the love story between two Mac users. Broke Mac Mountain. It reminds me of a certain relationship between Jared Lee and his physics partner, Dave Fowler. Sniff.... its so nice to see two people in love.

A very smart man came up with a hypothesis that went something like this: "In the future satire will be indistinguishable from nerdom." After reviewing his evidence, I have to agree with him. Its a scary world we live in. Especially when I know people who would do this sort of thing.

I wrote about how the Japanese like whale meat the other day. It seems the whole issues is very complicated and very dumb. According to some new articles it appears as if Japan is in a glut of whale meat. Prices are falling everywhere because no one is eating it. Yet they want to increase their catch. There are several reasons for this. First off, despite what certain officials say about how hunting whales is a "national heritage" and "It's in our DNA" no one actually likes it. Young people don't like it because it tastes bad and has a weird texture. Old people don't like it because it reminds them of post war Japan where whale meat was one of the few meats available. Maybe they should listen to the market and stop catching whales. That or stop forcing kids to eat it in schools. Though I guess it could be worse, I mean, they could resort to feeding whale meat to dogs because no one will eat it. Oh wait. They did.

Adding to my ongoing posts about the problems of sex and relationships in Japan is this little number about the popularity of Maid Cafes in Tokyo. Sure, my co-workers and I have enjoyed several visits to our local Fukuyama Maid Cafe, but I think we're going there for completely different reasons. Reading the article is rather disturbing in many ways, but yet in many other ways I have to ask myself if its any different then a Hooters in the US? Sure, they're targeting completely different groups of people in the society, but the point is the same. Paying women to provide some sort of fantasy environment for guys. My Japanese tutor Aki was telling me how arranged marriages are still very popular in Japan. Several of her friends have entered into these. Maybe things would be better in Japan if all marriages were arranged. At least that way you could get a guy in the same proximity as a woman.

I had a little Josh flashback yesterday thanks to some photos on Albert Brown's webpage. nothing like a classic picture of Josh at dusk. I look really bad in that picture.

This long week has had quite a few 'firsts' for me. The first time I taught in front of 60 teachers. The first time I got suck in a Japanese blizzard. The first time I made a joke and my JTE got it. The first time I dropped the f-bomb in class. The first time I took a nap while at school. First time I showed a video in class. All in all a good week.

Monday was a massively open class at Utsumi Junior High School. Me, my JTE, 18 students, my boss, some professor from Tokyo, and around 60 teachers. We had so many people around that many were in the hallway looking through windows to see things. Most of my JTEs from other schools were there as well. I was nervous as hell, and I can only imagine what the students were thinking. It went well, except for one thing. Monday was a massive snow storm in the Fukuyama area. Many schools wee let out early because of it. Even on the island of Utsumi we had a good amount of snow, which never happens. This caused massive issues getting home. I was ridding with my boss, the speaker, and the speakers wife. There was a car accident, or something, and so the main road (which was a narrow two lane thing) was blocked up for miles. Eventually my boss turned around and went another way back. The half an hour ride turned into a nice two our ordeal. Luckily I got back in time to watch the Superbowl at Coaches. Games are so much better without commercials.

I was super tired on Tuesday, so I took a nap at my desk during two off periods. A lot of JETs do this in their spare time because a lot of JETs work in situations where the English department has their own room. Or in situations where other teachers openly take naps. I don't have this luxury because my desk at every school is in a common teachers room. Some of my fellow BOE JETs have found interesting ways to get around this. One person, whose name will not be used, goes into the bathroom and takes naps on the toilet.

My kids were doing a worksheet where they were asked "What is the largest animal on the planet." The correct answer is "The Whale." This prompted me to tell the kids "Don't eat whales!" (because the Japanese just love eating them). My JTE responded "Whales taste good. You should try it." To this, I replied "I hear babies taste good too, but you don't see me eating them." She laughed. A lot. I'm glad one of my jokes got through.

I couldn't remember how to spell koala. I dropped the F-bomb. Only my young JTE understood me and laughed a lot. I turned to the kids and said "Don't listen to me. I'm bad news." As usual, no one understood me, and for once I was glad.

The third year students at all my schools are either 1) Studying for High School Entrance Exams or 2) Killing time before they leave school. So I've been told to 'kill time' in all my classes. Today I showed The Nightmare Before Christmas, mostly because all the kids know the characters from the tons of merchandise they see (or have). Oddly not one of my kids have ever said that they had seen the movie. So we watched it, in English, and sadly I had kids who kept looking at their watches or were looking annoyed. You'd think a day of video watching would be better then a test or real work. Kids these days.

At one other school I had two classes of third year students do comics. Comedy gold. Many of the students did two or three comics in the class period, and so I now have a giant stack of comics to scan in. Natasha has already claimed several for herself, due to their clear comedy genius. I'll scan them in sooner or later. Add them to my list of ever increasing media projects that I don't have time to do. Luckily I scanned a couple in anyways.

My Dream of Becoming an Actor
I Had Expected
Nice Body
Last Years

I had my Japanese tutor Aki help me with the Sega Dreamcast karaoke webpage. Its a good news bad news situation. The good news is that if I hook up my Dreamcast to the internet I can use the karaoke system I bought. The bad news is that the service is shutting down in two months. Looks like I'll have to have a massive karaoke party at my place. Like I really needed an excuse.

Video games turned movies have never been good. Ever. Seriously. Must we remember the Super Mario Brothers movie? Or the more recent Doom movie? Usually I watch them because they are so bad that they're actually funny. But I was cruising the new movie trailers on Apple's Quicktime page and came across the Silent Hill trailer. The Silent Hill games are freaky scary, and quite good. Not that I've played them all, I actually have only watched people play through large chunks of the game. But this movie adaptation looks nice. Nice in the way that the Resident Evil 2 movie was nice (as opposed to the first one that blew). Its nice to see a video game turned movie that is well produced, well shot, and rated R.

Seems my little joke about not being re-contracted due to a 'noodle' incident was taken a bit too seriously by one of my JTEs, who called me worried that I was not going to be around next year. Let it be well known that I will be around next year as well as every other JET at the BOE here in Fukuyama. So it seems like next year will be just as fun as this year, except probably with even more JETs at my central office. We'll have to move some desks around...

I got a CD as a kind of late Christmas Gift from the principal of one of my schools. It was one of those situations where I faked knowing what he was saying through our car ride to school, and I'm sure this CD is more significant then just a gift. Walk by Akihiko Igame is quite good for a CD in which I don't understand more then a handful of words. So if my memory serves me right, I think this guy may be related to my principal. Yeah. Just another day of me being confused in Japan. But with music.

I finally had a fun weekend out. Thanks to my wonderful illness a couple of weeks ago I haven't been out in quite a while, and I've been itching for some fun. Itching. A lot. Friday I hung out with Michael, Julie, and Helen. We spend the evening having some drinks and playing quite a few card games. Poor Michael, who has fallen quite far thanks to the old saying "loose lips sink ships." An evening of popcorn, cards, and drinks was exactly what I needed.

I also needed a silly evening out with a very large group of other foreigners. Mark had come into town for his Birthday and his group clashed with another group at my favorite sports bar Coaches. So the place was packed silly with foreigners. So much so that the owner had to order another keg to be brought in. With the closing of Flower I guess the foreigners of Fukuyama had to find another venue to hang out. An evening of crazy Billisms, burgers, and drinks was what I needed. Then again, it seems Alun needed a good nap part-way through the night.

Taking full advantage of Alun's car I was able to make a run out to a second hand store on Sunday where we browsed around a large selections of books, games, movies, and little action figures. Alun, as always, was on the prowl for really cheap GameCube games. I, as always, was on the prowl for randomly silly figures and Dreamcast games. The store we first went to seemed to be lacking what we both were after, though I was able to find this really cool figure of Ash from Army of Darkness for only 700¥. I'd always wanted to buy him back in high school, but it was usually quite expensive. I love you Japan.

Now on the way back we stopped at this used electronics store, aptly names Hard-Off. This was quite the treat for us. It had lots of used computers, video games, CDs, game systems, nick knacks, and oddities. We were both quite impressed by the odd selection of vintage video game systems and also that they were super duper cheap. A Playstation for 1,000¥. A Nintendo for 1,000¥. Games that were actually 41¥. It was really odd, and really funny. I almost bought an original iMac for 4,000¥ (about $35, which is funny, because my family bought one new eight years ago for $1,300) but then realized that I really did have no use whatsoever for it but more importantly that I had no where to put it. But the real gem that we found was a Dreamcast karaoke system for only 1,000¥. As cool as that may seem, it actually needs to dial-in to some place via a phone line to download songs at the tune of 500¥ a session. Something I'd be more then willing to pay for an evening of home karaoke. I'm sure I'll get it figured out eventually. (Seriously, someone who is fluent in Japanese help me)

Bill, Alun, and I managed to find a really really good italian place in town that is also super cheap. We completely gorged ourselves on pizza and bread. I can't express how good that food was. Clearly I need to be going back there. Afterwards we stopped at Book-Off (which we all assume is run by the same company as Hard-Off) to check out the used DVDs and games. Alun bought a really cool book about The Art of Totoro, which I really need to get a copy of before I leave Japan... in like two years... and that probably means I'll end up picking up several other books in that series as well. They'll make great coffee table books. I was also finally able to find myself a copy of Chu Chu Rockets for my Dreamcast as well as the very weird game SEAMAN, which is a game where you take care of a half man half fish. The world's most crazy virtual pet. Plus it comes with a microphone so you can talk to your fish. Believe me, I wouldn't be picking all these Dreamcast games if it wasn't for the fact they cost next to nothing. No really, like an average of 400¥ (about $3.35) each. Plus they are supper amusing.

Valentines day will soon be here, and Japan does it a bit differently. See on Valentines Day girls give guys gifts. Then next month the guys return the favor. The process may be different but the real reasons behind the holiday is still the same. Selling lots of gifts. One of the strangest seasonal Valentines Day things I've seen thus far has to be this candy called Honey Coming. Its really just a chocolate and strawberry candy, but the packaging is so much more. The writing, the colors, the James Bond opening credit type girls jumping around. Its really in a class all of its own, and well worth the 100¥ I paid for it. Plus it tastes rather good as well.

Wish me luck tomorrow. I have an open class at Utsumi Middle School where I am told that up to 50 teachers will be viewing. Which is odd because I don't think we can fit that many in a classroom at once and still put the students in there. Sigh.... But luckily I plan to work part of the lesson around my Domo-kun, which should take a lot of pressure off of me.

I forgot the most important thing in my last post. The YMCA. At one of my schools every class lesson starts out with a song. Usually it goes along with a grammar point. Most of the time the kids just kind of mouth along while my JTE plays the guitar. Tuesday was special. The kids did the YMCA. To be more exact, my JTE and I did the YMCA while the children looked really confused. There was one kid who actually got into it, but he is the weird one in class. No, it gets better. During the YMCA one of the boys said something that sounded like "This is gay," which is entirely possible. My response was "Kid, you have no idea."

It gets better still. The next class we did the song Dancing Queen. Yeah. Suck it ABBA.

A while ago I wrote up a detailed guide as to how to get iSync to work with my Japanese Nokia 6630 (Vodafone 702NK). In the past couple of weeks I've gotten quite a few e-mails and new ideas about it, questions on other phone things, and compliments. I'm glad someone is getting some use out of it. Turns out the guide also works with the Vodafone 702NKII, which isn't surprising seeing how it probably runs the exact same software. Anyways, here is a nice compliment I got today. It feels good. Deep down.

Hi Joshua

I'm just writing to say thanks heaps for the web page you prepared on iSync 2.1 and Nokia 6630. You did a great job of it. Your instructions were really easy to follow. Without it I would have been completely stuck.

By the way, I was a JET once too.

Regards

Paul

Japan is weird. There is a strange market for used women's clothing, uniforms, and undies. I am not making this up. There are vending machines where you can buy 'used' panties. I've been told there is one here in Fukuyama. Seems like Hokkaido wants to take this business down a peg by outlawing the purchase of used undies from teenage girls. Apparently there is a connection between sales of panties and sex crimes against under aged girls. Theres a no brainer.

I love you internet, for allowing me to download comics and read an entire series in one afternoon sitting. I have always loved comics. The problem is that they take forever to come out, cost a good chunk of cash to continually read, and you have a very tough time getting access to back issues. Apparently devoted fans with no lives and access to scanners have found ways around that. Ohhhh so much time to waste, so many comics to read, so little time to read them. I actually was able to read all of X-Men 2099 in one afternoon while I was sick. Now if only I could get my hands on Spider-Man 2099 so I can actually find out what happens after issue #8!

There was a little earthquake today about 8:30 in the morning. I completely zone these things out now. What does that say about me? The same quake got Tokyo up to 5.1 on the scary scale. Tokyo. Yeah, who needs it. Now I know how it feels to live in California. Except without the nice weather.