Mankai

Meaning "full bloom".

View from my balcony.

Ohanami, oh my!

It's springtime in Japan, and that means cherry blossoms! Yesterday, I went to my very first ohanami, or cherry blossom viewing party. It's a tradition in Japan to go with your family, friends, and coworkers to a park and set up a picnic spot under cherry blossoms... it's very popular, so much so that our spot occasioned a stakeout from about 7am; the actual event was scheduled for noon. It's a sort of potluck-picnic; everyone brings a snack to share, plus alcohol, and you get drunk and chat to people and consume delicious things all afternoon.

Today is beautiful and sunny, with gorgeous warm weather; I took a bike ride to my grocery store, since my 105-yen Lawson's mysteriously closed last week. I discovered, much to my delight, that my river is lined with sakura on the block near my grocery store, so of course I took some pictures.

Birthday!

Spring comes to Nagoya

I had the weirdest last day of being 23, let me tell you. It's counselling week at my school again, which means no regular classes, which means that the schedule gave the day a bit of a surreal quality already. I noticed one of my coworkers' new tie right off the bat, but didn't cotton on to my other coworker's haircut until late that evening. One of my students came and gave me gifts, though!

Hey all, my apologies for the silence over the airwaves these past few weeks; I'm going to try to resume regular blogging from now. To start with, I want to talk about what winter has been like so far: it's dry, drier than in Canada, and sunny most days. The air temperature is cold, probably about 2 or 3 degrees, and so if it's windy, it can be quite unpleasant, but the sun is strong enough that it warms one up so that it feels to be at least 7 or 8 degrees in the afternoon. Nights are cold, but rarely freezing.

Thus when it snowed last weekend, it came as a bit of a shock.

Sunny Monday

Monday was sunny and beautiful; I sat in the little park nearby my place and swung on the (admittedly too-low) swings. All the parks here, I've noticed, have clocks - ancient-looking, but solar-powered. Such an ingenious idea: the kids learn to tell time and can't make the excuse to their parents that they lost track of the time at the park. Also good for moms who need to keep track of time whilst minding the kiddies.

Remember bucket swings? Those things are ace. These ones are a little more low-tech than the metal-and-vinyl seats I grew up with, but nonetheless serve the same purpose.

I have so been falling behind on this.

There's not much new on the home front these past few weeks, but life continues. I can't quite believe it's the end of November, since there are flowers still blooming like crazy, and I don't think the temperature has yet dipped below ten degrees, although it feels colder at night, since the air remains wet. I don't think I'll quite be rid of humidity in the air until I go back to Canada, despite protestations from my acquaintances that in winter it can get quite dry here. Perhaps indoors, where the heating will mercilessly flay the moisture from your skin unless you are possessed of a humidifier or a very good moisturizer, but not outside.

Stuff and nonsense

Ok, I've been failing at posting, but in my defense I was in Tokyo, and then sick. You see, I purchased a toothbrush about two weeks ago and, not understanding Japanese writing, did not realise that it would be like until scrubbing one's oral cavity with a bundle of sticks... and that the bristles wouldn't relax. Long story short, I ripped up every inch of my gums and now have a raging case of coldsores everywhere, so bad that I had to take the day off work so I could just... not talk. I'm going back to work tomorrow but... I'm not sure how well that will go. Smiling huuuurts. I don't want to be genki.

That aside, life's been pretty normal. Tokyo was a blast, but I'm not putting up a pictures post since I got like, zero comments on the last one and I am not doing all that work for no reward, so you'll all just have to deal with it and look at my album on Facebook somehow ;)

This is my neighbour's garden. It smells divine when I pass by, by the way. Flowers in November! Crazy country I live in!

Culture day!

Or something. Today's a holiday at any rate, and it's an absolutely gorgeous day - sunny and blustery and cool. It feels like the middle of September here, not the beginning of November.

Fall colours around my place!

See full-size image here, because the silly thing won't click to enlarge for love or money.

It's perfect hiking weather, but alas I have no place to hike. Biking around my neighbourhood is pretty ace, though. People are playing baseball in the park and it's lovely. Today's one of those days where you feel wonderful about being alive. Of course, I've still got my Japanese homework to do, laundry to fold, the room to vacuum and my fall clothes to sort out from my summer clothes (not to mention trying to organize the mess that is my desk), but for now I think I'm just going to enjoy the afternoon.

Happy (belated) Hallowe'en!

I partied quite hard for the occasion on Saturday, and as a result I spent the last two days recuperating inside - which worked out fine because the typhoon that everyone said would hit on Saturday night actually swept through on Sunday morning. And by "typhoon" I mean "ceaseless, boring rain".

To be serious, though, everyone around here will warn me about fearsome typhoons hitting Nagoya, and then there is.... a rainy day. Not even a mega-ultra-fiercely rainy day. Just a rainy day. It is super-disappointing the way people cry wolf constantly about weather phenomena, and I am probably going to get killed the one day there IS a follow-through because I have ceased to pay any heed to so-called extreme weather warnings. Japan, you disappoint me so.

In other news, it's November, which means that I will be going to both Kyoto and Tokyo this month! Stay tuned for pictures!

Ketchup, egg, rice, bits of meat, and some basil. Mmmmm.

 Omuraisu. I SWEAR I will find out how to make this heavenly meal so that I can make it for all of youse back in Ontayreeoh when I get back. Soooo delicious. I had this after having my health check on Monday. Sadly I had not the presence of mind to take a picture of it as it was served to me in its full glory because I was ravenous and its siren song was too strong for me to delay by getting out my cell camera. So you get the mangled, half-eaten corpse of it ;) Mmmm, I wish I had some right now.

Osaka, oh my!

This weekend, I took an extra day off and, with my friend C, ventured into Osaka prefecture for the first time. We took the bullet train to Osaka city, which was amazing, because it hardly felt like the trip took any time at all, though it took an hour to get there. The scenery just raced by as C and I chatted, and I was just about to turn over and take a nap when we pulled into the Shin-Osaka station!

Autumn!

Yes, it has finally gotten cooler outside, and noticeably so! This morning the breeze was actually refreshing, and it's brought a noticeable change in my mood, as well. Living through this summer has been not unlike carrying a cross, I'm willing to admit, and the weight is falling away, now.

Today was my manager's birthday, so after work we sang happy birthday and presented her with a cake, took pictures of us with the card and the cake, and then proceeded to eat said cake. It was really good, and I could eat most of it, because it was a crust with cream filling and a fruit topping! Then, I went to Starbucks (which is located four floors beneath me on the ground level of the building I work in) and met with up with a former student and her friend who had lived in Toronto for a year. We passed an enjoyable hour drinking hot chocolate, talking about Japanese life, getting to know each other, and making tentative plans to go to a festival in mid-October.

For most of this summer, I've felt like a shut-in on weekdays, since I hardly know anyone who lives or works near me, and my work schedule makes it impossible to make dinner plans at a reasonable hour or to hang out for very long without having to catch the last subway train home. I'm hoping this fall I can start making a little map in my head, and getting myself out more often. My social calendar is slowly but surely filling up for the end of this month and the beginning of the next, and I think that might be the key to me enjoying my time here more. My life can't be all about work, but that's what it's mostly been for the summer, despite my attempts otherwise.

However, now that it's nicer out, I may just be venturing outside a lot more - using my bike, of course! There's still so much to explore in my neighbourhood, not to mention the rest of Japan.

Typhoon season has started! Yesterday, in fact, as Nagoya got the edge of a typhoon blowing up from Kyushu; I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to thunder and unbelievably heavy rain, and the day dawned wet and stayed wet in the form of humidity. However, evening was lovely - an actual cool breeze, I'd say the first I've felt since before the rainy season set in, was blowing, I had a wonderful walk home, and I was thinking "Wow, I actually really like living in Japan! Things are pretty great here!"

Pride goeth before a fall, as always. Not ten minutes later, I discovered, in my bathroom, a cockroach the size of my pointer finger. Black, glossy, moving fast enough to drive me into hysterics: I shut the bathroom door, turned on all the lights in the house, got a weapon (my bathroom slippers, which have a nice hard plastic bottom) and spent two minutes yelling at an empty bathroom to psych myself up to kill this thing. Of course, I couldn't find hide nor hair of it to kill it, and so spent a sleepless night in my loft. This morning, I invested in roach poison and roach spray; I'm sure the thing is long gone, back to whatever hole from whence it came, but the thing about roaches is that they get you psychologically. They're relatively small (although I'm used to dealing with bugs smaller than my thumbnail and this one was easily five times that size), completely harmless, but totally and uncompromisingly gross. And that is what gets you. The threat of Schroedinger's roach is enough to keep me awake, for most of the night, and so I need some weapons on my side to arm me both physically and psychologically.

Of course, this is the first instance of a bug in my house since coming here, so I should be quite thankful - I know teachers who quite literally have to live with them 24/7. The typhoon weather is most likely what drove it inside (having outlasted the rainy season, I find this unfair, but oh well), and I'm guessing it went back out the same way, since today is a wonderful dry, sunny day such as you might find in Canada in June. Here's hoping the next typhoon brings only good weather in its wake, and not any more terrifying insects.

Starting off September...

Quite suddenly, it's September. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. Not that there's really any noticeable difference in the weather - yesterday, temperatures hit 39 in Nagoya; summer giving us a vicious reminder that we are not free of it just yet. To be fair, though, it's been cooling down in the evenings somewhat, and today I was almost able to stand in the shade without sweating from merely breathing (there's a breeze) I've heard that this has been the hottest summer that Japan has experienced in the last 113 years... just my luck, eh? Apparently hot summers mean cold winters, so at least there's that to look forward to.

Caitlin and I went to the market this morning at the temple in her neighbourhood - it was lovely, a big open-air semi-farmer's market, semi-flea market. I got a bag of candied ginger, and a little old man selling mushrooms insisted that Caitlin and I each take a dried mushroom for free, as authentic Japanese souvenirs. So now I have a free dried mushroom the size of my palm. Ostensibly I should put it in soup or something. I'll have to do more research on it, since I'm not even sure what type of mushroom it is.

Last night, I had my first Japanese lesson with Miyaka - we went to Denny's and I learned how to ask "can I" questions, to say where my hometown is, how long I've lived there, how often I visit, how much it costs and how long it takes to get there. There's a lovely catch-all word for making all sorts of myriad questions about a certain noun or activity, and I just have to remember to conjugate the necessary verbs in my head. Japanese Denny's food is... interesting. Deliciously so. A good start to September, I feel.

Bikes and banks

The season's starting to change. People say that summer here lasts well into October, and I believe it, but the dog days of it are, I believe, starting to finally fade out. I may be saying this prematurely, but I noticed earlier this week that I haven't heard the cicadas... at all. Finally, quiet. And tonight? I don't have my a/c on. That must be the first time since the beginning of June that I've come home and not had to turn on my a/c right away (I probably will once I go to bed just to clear out the air and put on the dehumidifier, but my point stands).

On Monday, I'm going to go and pay a ridiculous amount of money for a bike, but I'm tired of waiting for a windfall or deal to come along, and I have the money required; I'm just going to go and buy a bike at full price, damn the torpedoes. It's really going to be quite indispensable for getting around my neighbourhood, being able to maximize my time when doing groceries, and also for exploring. I've lived here three months and I'm still not really sure about anything outside of my immediate neighbourhood and walk to the subway station. I will of course need to register it, which will be a process and a half, but I'm confident I can make it through.

Speaking of which, this Thursday I spent a total of two hours at the bank, attempting to make an international transfer. I had anticipated that it would take a while, since I have no useful Japanese for banking situations and one cannot expect employees of a national bank in the busiest (most international) section of one of the biggest cities in the country to speak a singel word of English. I waited for ten minutes until it was my turn to go into the little international transfer booth, then waited another 20 minutes for my turn to come up in the queue: when the computer screen came up with the attendant on it, she made me go through all the procedures before awkwardly telling me that I should have filled out a form with my information on it to scan to her... and that was that. The television screen disappeared, and I was back in the queue: I waited another 50 minutes (filling out the paperwork, which had been on my right and that not a single person I had interacted with had bothered to show me was there or even important), repressing the mad urge to attempt to strangle the cartoony avatar of a nice office lady (asking me to wait in the most extremely polite of manners, of course) on the screen.

The actual transaction took all of ten minutes, after which I rushed to work. However, my slaving was not in vain, because the money I transferred actually did end up in my Canadian bank account. What with the yen being quite strong now, I'm quite happy with the results. I'm a little poorer on this end, but as soon as I figure out how, I'll be a little less in debt on the other. It's taken me the whole summer to get to this point, but I'm quite proud of myself. Here's hoping I can say the same in another three months.

On holiday!

This week following, I'll be on holiday! One whole week of futzing around doing nothing in particular - it will be wonderful. For the past two nights I've been out drinking; Saturday night was a party arranged by my manager and the staff of another school, so we all went out for yakitori* and nomi hodai**, and Sunday I was going to go out with a friend of mine, but plans changed and I ended up at the bar by myself... until I was invited over to a table of other gaijin, and I passed a nice three hours talking with our assorted bunch and having drinks bought for me. Not bad. Tonight I'm going out with some other teachers to a bar I've never been to; it should be a good time.

Other than that, my plans for this week include going fishing (with my coworker), going to the Nagoya Aquarium (with friends from church), and going camping and all-night Bon dancing (with pretty much everyone I know - it's dashed popular).

It's nice to be able to sleep in and not do a whole heck of a lot, I must say. Oh, and before I forget, I've decided to trash the whole imperative of saving money: it's just not working, and I think I'll be a lot happier if I'm not worrying the entire time. Sure, I'll send money home when I can, but it's not going to be such a big thing anymore for me: I can already feel myself breathing easier.

Speaking of which, it's been cloudy and slightly rainy for the past two days, and it's wonderful. The temperature is actually bearable, and last night I got a full eight hours of sleep for the first time in about ten weeks. Ahhh. I hope it keeps up!

*It's where you grill your own beef and then stick it into a lettuce leaf with kimchi and various other condiments and then eat your lettuce sandwich. Delicious!

**All-you-can-drink.

"Wildlife" and other sundries

Yesterday was the end of rainy season! Officially! Apparently! I am not sure how one calculates such things, but the knowledge, at least, contributes to a lifting of spirits. Perhaps it's just the placebo effect, but I swear the air is clearer and less swampy than it was just a few days ago.

Yesterday was also the day that our school's staff and teachers went on what is apparently an annual outing - this year, we drove out of the city to a small day-park, where you can do an "athletic course" through the mountainous, subtropical terrain, have a barbecue with food provided, and pick blueberries. It was a blast, the weather was great, and I sweat buckets. I also had the opportunity to see more of the countryside up close and personal, which was a nice break from my city life.

However, getting up close and personal with the countryside also meant getting up close and personal with some of its denizens, which prompts me to write this post. Those of a squeamish nature or who don't like bugs shouldn't read any further; I'm not going to post pictures up here, but I'll be linking to them and giving descriptions, so if that's not your cup of tea, you've been warned.

Somehow, it all comes back to food and the weather.

Nagoya is, statistically, the hottest city in Japan. Hotter even than regions further south, such as Okinawa - I didn't quite grasp this until I started living here. Nagoya has the sea on one side, and mountains on the other three, making it a heat-trap, and the heat's both oppressive and exhausting due to the constant humidity.

I work during the hottest hours of the day in an over-air-conditioned office building, and I commute via subway with only a five-minute walk between my house and my station, so during the week I often don't get the full blast, and I can go almost the entire day without using my aircon. Not so on my days off, however; I ventured outside but once today, and that was to go grocery shopping. My bank account dips ever lower, and no thanks to yesterday!

Though hard on the wallet, yesterday was fun: after our Japanese lesson, C and I caught the train out to my coworker Shinobu's area, and she helped us navigate our first haircuts in Japan. C, having long hair, had not found it too pressing to go before this, but since I have short hair I find it necessary to cut it every two or three months. I'm now sporting a 'do from the pages of a "short and bob" magazine - not too different from my last look, but a little longer thanks to Japanese tastes. I quite like it, but it set me back 3200 yen - and that's at 20% off for a new customer.

After that, Shinobu drove us to an Aeon-Jusco: a giant shopping complex three stories high, including movie theatre, restaurant avenue, grocery store, and two Starbucks. That's right. We had the most delicious mall food I've had in my life, and then we all bought lovely jewelled things to stick in our new hairdos, I bought some face wash from the Body Shop*, and C bought a few work shirts. After having spent over four hours there, and not even having seen half, I'm sure, Shinobu drove us to the train station and we could go home. It was quite the experience.

Life in Japan is expensive, I've found, but not for the reasons I had expected. Fruit and vegetables are expensive, true, and a/c is a necessary fact of life, but most of my expenses so far have been due to two factors: 1) I have had to start my life again from scratch, which means buying things like a mixing bowl and tupperware to keep my flour in - things I would normally have accrued from friends, family, or cheapass garage sales, and 2) commodity culture: I don't need to buy some of the things I do, when I think about it, but it's expected that I do, and every ounce of energy by the industry is put into making sure that I buy their product. And that's not counting travel.

Sometimes, I am seized by momentary doubt: what am I going to do with all of this crap when I, inevitably, go home? And then I have to start again back home! At least I'll have family to mooch from, and my small cache of goods I'm storing back home, but it gives one something to ponder.

For now, however, I'm going to try to live as simply as I can while still being able to organize. And if that means venturing out into the heat to buy a container for my rice flour, then so be it.

*A necessary purchase, I've found. The humidity makes everyone at least three times as oily as usual.

On settling.

I know I haven't updated for about a week, but I have an excuse: this week is the first week that has gone by fast; I believe I have just about hit my stride, as far as routine and daily life is concerned. Each day is not a continual series of difficult and exhausting revelations: I might actually start to think of things as typical or usual, soon. That's pretty exciting for me.

The rainy season continues on - I was told by a student today that this rainy season has been unusually hot and not-rainy, but it's been precipitating on and off all day, and tonight when I walked home it was cool and damp to the point of being chilly. Damp cold is a terrible thing.

Trees along the river by my house have burst into unexpected bloom, as have the bushes on the median of the road. The happy coincidence of a clear day and my not working has yet to come along, but I fully intend to take pictures. I'm sure my neighbours think I'm horribly rude and strange by taking pictures of completely ordinary things, but I am continually surprised and delighted by my neighbourhood and thing things therein. For example, C tells me that their students unanimously agree that my area is prime real estate area: I was at first surprised to hear this, but after I thought about it, I realized that during my tromps through neighbourhood streets, there are some huge-ass houses around here, by Japanese standards. Ones with retaining walls and little courtyards inside, or vegetable gardens, or blooming trees peeking over the walls, nestled up under the eaves of roofs shingled with blue lacquered tile.

It's easy to imagine families, generations, as having lived in many of the houses around here. There are quite a few children in my neighbourhood, as well; parks and such are there for them, and I occasionally see them out and about, so it's a real family place. Or, thus I deduce, having had no real experience living in other neighbourhoods in Japan. Time will tell. Just over a month ago, homesick and longing for some sort of family equivalent, my neighbourhood's houses were definitely of comfort to me, just by the fact that they were there: inside each, families sat down to dinner, talked to each other, watched TV, and life went on comfortably and normally for them, even if not for me.

Now, I believe I've caught up with the Joneses, as it were: my life's gradually starting to fall into a denouement from the series of jagged spikes that it's been over the past two months. And that's very comforting.

Fans and flora

First off, happy birthday, Canada. If all that I've been hearing about the G20 summit is true, you deserve a bit of a break.

It's hot again here, although not as hot as it was when I last posted. Unfortunately, my apartment is less than well-ventilated, even with a fan going, and so the cool air outside is steadfastly remaining outside, and I am stuck in here wondering if I should just cave and turn on the air conditioning. I got my remote control for the air conditioner translated today by one of my Japanese coworkers; apparently there's a built-in dehumidifier as well! I'm quite pleased, but right now sucking the water out of the air is just going to leave a lot of hot, dry air. Cooling down is the thing.

Actually, the humidity here has its perks. The wind is soft, almost silky; I can't quite describe it, but there's no edge to it, like in Canada*. I have yet to have problems with dry skin or dandruff, which plagued me back in Ontario, especially in the winter. Also, it smells wonderful outside.

This may also be due in part to the fact that I live in a more suburban area of Nagoya, and a few houses have yards; the ones that don't are given to fervently compensating by cramming as many trees and potted plants as they can into the crevices between the outer wall and their house's wall, so the effect is similar. There are also quite a few communal gardens around here; small plots of lands with corn, potatoes, eggplant, fruit trees, onions, daikon or other assorted fruits or vegetables growing on them. I never see people working on them; regardless, they're quite abundant. Thusly, when walking down the street - especially at night - the air smells of damp greenery and flowers.

I should like to buy myself a plant one of these days; something to stick on my balcony and enjoy when I can. I'm not keeping it inside, though; I'm quite sure that the temperature in here rises well about 35 when I'm not around to turn on the fan.



*I rather enjoy that about the wind in Canada, though, so perhaps it's not such a plus.