no central heating

It is really becoming fall around here now, finally, the beginning of November and it starts to feel like fall. Yup, cool days and almost cold nights. That is all well and good, nothing I love more than putting on a nice warm hoodie and comfy jeans and being comfortably cool instead of sweating my ass off like I have been for the last two months.

The downside of this, as I have recently discovered, is that I have no central heating. My entire apartment is heated, and cooled for that matter, by this bad boy right here:



Yup, sitting on the wall in my bedroom. Now, this is all well and good, I spend most of my time in my apartment in my bedroom/living room/dining room/everything except my bathroom, so if I am chilly, turn on the heater and warm myself up.

EXCEPT when I either have to use the bathroom, or take a shower. There is a door between my front room and back room in the apartment. And at night when I sleep I shut the door. I have always shut the door to my bedroom. I think it is the feeling of security. I also always shut the door when I use the bathroom. I think I like closed doors. Closed doors are safe. No one can sneak up on you when you have a closed door. Well, except that one time my landlord came into my bedroom with four building inspectors while I was sleeping and didn't hear them until after they opened the door and were talking. Point being, I close the door between my bedroom and the front of the apartment. And that front part is fucking FREEZING in the morning! I have never had colder potty time. My laundry doesn't dry. My towels stay cold and damp, and therefore smell something awful after two days. And it is only just the beginning of the winter. I wonder what it is going to be like in January. Something to look forward to I guess.

At least the water is boiling hot. I cannot express how much I love my shower and how hot the water is. I think I could boil an egg in my bathwater. I love love love it. And the pressure. Oh, the pressure. I am going to be spoiled. I can't go back to weak pressure and little hot water. I am a diva now! The only problem with the shower is that I know how cold it is once I get out of the shower so I spend more and more time just sitting under that wonderful hot water. It is my favorite part of the day. Well that and going to sleep. Of course going to sleep. I love naps.



I miss daily naps. I think that is why I don't do anything on the weekends. I just want to nap. True story, I layed down to take that shot and then didn't get up for like 15 minutes because it was just so nice. God, I am such an old man.

Halloween parties

Long long week. It is counseling time so I have to counsel each of my fifty students individually and therefore have to come up with fifty reasons for them to stay at Geos. To tell them they are doing great, but they still need to come and learn English. So, lots of extra work this week. And to top it off, not been sleeping good or feeling well lately. I think it is because it is so damp and chilly here. Now, I normally love the fall. I love that the summer is over and I am no longer constantly hot and uncomfortable. I love being able to wear a hoodie. Which, by the way, I miss my hoodies. Damn the expense of shipping to Japan! I love the crispness in the air in the fall. Maybe that is the difference, there really isn't the crispness here. Probably because it rains all the time. Instead of smelling crisp outside it smells damp and kind of moldy depending on what you are walking by. I imagine falls in the American Northwest are very similar.

Anyway, by Saturday this week I was exhausted and looking forward to my weekend. Unfortunately I had some (mandatory) volunteer work to do on Sunday. It was the GEOS Halloween party! One for kids at noon on Sunday and one for adults at 6. Which means my entire Sunday was shot! Yay! Oh, and Saturday night just before I left work I was informed by my manager that one of the other teachers was not going to make it to the party, and could I come up with a few more games and maybe some songs for the party. Oh, yeah, sure, let me just go come up with a culturally and age appropriate game after having 6 or 8 beers (cuz, let's face it, it was Saturday night, the end of my week, and I knew I needed a drink (or 6)).

Fast forward to Sunday at 11am. Ungodly hour to be up on a Sunday. Me, hungover. The weather, cold and raining. The mood, less than enthusiastic. I actually came up with a couple of games, a mummy wrap game and a wiggle worm game, that I thought would be pretty good. Plus I downloaded some songs (including the Pooh Halloween album which isn't as bad as you might think it would be (Hey! this is a little kids party and they don't speak English, and the LOVE Pooh (I mean, who wouldn't?) so I thought that would be a big hit)) so we would have appropriate Halloween-y type music, and maybe do some dancing. I, of course, proceeded to forget the cd with the music in my apartment that morning.

Get to the school. Set up two of the rooms for the party, one for food, one for games. Help the other teacher and the manager to cut out bones for a make a skeleton game. Cut. out. so. many. bones. Must have cut out 40 bones, took over an hour and my fingers had that nice scissors indentation from being pushed against for too long.

Kids started to arrive. Supposed to have around a dozen or so, thankfully only 8 showed up and three parents. So that was good. Party off to a slow start, ate some lunch, including my new food of choice, rice balls wrapped in seaweed with soy sauce in them. So damned good. Must seek out for future lunches. Oh, and one of the moms was super crafty apparently because she made witch costumes for her two daughters and also made pumpking muffins which tasted exactly like pumpkin pie. I would ask her for the recipe but i don't have an oven. anyway, food was good, but the kids were getting a little restless. Well, some of them. Well, one of them. Happily one of my extra special, gets into everything and can't sit still for a minute students came to the party. yay.

Oh, and here is my costume:



I went as a dapper ghost. Tie, hat, and glasses. Had to take the glasses off though since my breath was coming through the eye holes in the costume and fogging up my lenses. I could barely see as it was, didn't need to have the fog to add to my blindness.


Me with some of the kids, including a vampire!

My costume was a big hit with the kids. They liked pulling on it and lifting it up to see what was underneath. The also liked to run to my side real quick so I couldn't see them because of my shoddily made eyeholes.

By the way, that sheet was the nicest sheet in Tsuruga and I cut holes in it. What a moron I am. Maybe I can sew the holes shut and continue to use the sheet.

Anyway, back to the party. After a slow start it was actually a lot of fun. I had a good time and I think the kids had fun. We played some games including my mummy wrap game.






And then we alternated playing a bean bag toss game and a search for monsters game. Geos is really small. Like super small. Especially if you don't want the kids to be running around destroying the classrooms and offices. We set up a search game where we hid pictures of monsters around the school common areas and had the kids look for them. While half of the kids did this the other half played the bean bag toss game. They tried to throw balloons filled with rice into the mouth of a pumpkin. Or rather into a box with a pumpkin mouth cut out of the top of it.



Yes, I made this game. Yes, I am kind of proud of it. No, I don't know why there is a used tissue in the box.

The kids had a freaking BLAST playing these two games! I am definitely keeping the bean bag toss game in my repetoire for teaching. Just change the picture on top to match whatever the lesson is supposed to be.

As for the hidden monsters game. Well, the kids loved it. The school, not so much. They ripped down almost everything we had on the walls searching for those hidden monsters. They tipped over a magazine rack spilling the magazines all over the floor. They overturned the chairs in the lobby. They ransacked the bookcase. Basically they made a mess of the school. Good thing I don't have to clean...it....up, dammit! I am going to have to clean up tomorrow!

All in all the party was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I think the kids had a good time and the three hours flew by for me. Someone took a picture of all the kids and the teachers in a group. I will see if I can get a copy of that photo to post up.

Kid's party was finished at three, adult party started at six. I had three (well two by the time I got home, and since I had to leave for the adult party at 5:30 to get there at 6) glorious hours to myself. What did I do with my time? Why, take a nap of course! Ahh, nap time.






Nap time gets a long break.





The adult party was at a karaoke place. I had to do nothing to prepare. Simply walk out of my apartment and wait for my manager to pick me up. Nice! We then went to pick up Steven, the teacher from Sabae, and headed off to the party.

Now, I like Steven for many reasons, he is a cool guy. But even if he was a complete dick, it would still be nice to hang out with him simply because he is an American guy and therefore makes perverted jokes and curses all the time. That is the thing that I miss most about being away from America (other than the food of course) I can't make stupid pervert jokes here. I mean, I guess I could, but I couldn't explain why they were funny to my students without worrying about offending someone.

The adult party was pretty much the 7-up crew, the manager, Steven, and myself. Not a huge turn out. I think in part it was because it was a Sunday night. If we could have done it on a Saturday I bet more people would have come out. Also, and this is what one of my students said, people think they have to dress up in a costume cuz it is a Halloween party, and Japanese adults don't want to dress in Halloween costumes. Just uniforms apparently.

Anyway, karaoke was a drunken good time. Albeit an expensive one, it cost me $60 that night, and multiply that by 8 people, ouch! Speaking of drinking, here is something odd that I dislike about Japan. You aren't supposed to pour your own drink. It is considered rude. And at some places they give you a liter bottle of beer and a tiny glass, about twice the size of a shot glass, or maybe the size of a rocks glass to compare, and when you empty your glass you have to just let it sit there until someone notices that you are empty, or you have to "subtley" hint that your glass is empty by saying something like, "Boy am I thirsty." or "Wow, it is really warm in here, it is making my throat dry." or "HEY! Empty over here!" And when some people are fat Americans who need to drink about six of those tiny glasses of beer to even begin feeling a buzz, it makes for a somewhat frustrating drinking evening.

Karaoke was first a seven course meal followed by the actual karaoke. The meal didn't have any weird food. In fact it was so unweird it felt odd. Weirdest thing was a deep fried rice ball, and that wasn't even weird to me, just delicious, but something different for the Japanese.

After dinner was karaoke, which was different from the (rather limited) karaoke I have experienced in the US. This place had individual, soundproof rooms, each equipped with a karaoke machine, 36" high def flat screen tv, and sound system. You were basically just singing to your friends. Where is the intimidation in that? I sang some Sublime with Steven, Paranoid by Black Sabbath (yeah, my voice, it sounds nothing like Ozzy's), Understand your man by Johnny Cash (also, my voice sounds not at all like the venerable Mr. Cash's, but at least I got that twang down), acted as hype man to an Eminem song, and finished out the night with Party Hard by Andrew W.K., which is not my favorite song of his, but the only one they had. They had some of the oddest choices in American songs and bands. They had Christmas songs, and Happy birthday to sing karaoke to. They had several songs from obscure bands, and then didn't have songs I thought they would. Of course, now I can't remember a single thing that I thought was so funny that night. That is what a gallon of beer will do to you I guess. All that beer however did lead me to take this amazing set of photos in the bathroom.




Floor length urinals. No need for the short guy urinal in Japan. Makes sense, all the short people in this country. Oh, and you think I have seen a single public toilet that didn't have an automatic flush on it, well you just don't know Japan.

Speaking of automatic, here is their weird automatic hand dryer.




You put your hand down into the space between the fans and air blows from both sides drying your hands. Now, maybe i am just a big idiot but I keep touching the sides while trying to dry my hands, and you can't rub your hands to get them dry, so basically you just stand there for a minute to get the soaking wetness off, then wipe your hands on your pants to get them dry for real. What's up with that?


And finally, here is a traditional Japanese toilet aka a hole in the floor.



Sanitary!



And I will leave you with this image and say nothing more.

Another freaking food post!

You can tell I am a fat man because most of my posts involve eating at some level.

So, to continue that trend. Here is the weird shit I have eaten this week:

Raw hamburger meat




Eaten last Saturday night. Mixed with a raw egg and seasonings. Not that bad. It was like an appetizer. Just enough to split amongst the four people at dinner and everyone have a mouthful.

I liken it to eating raw meatloaf. As if someone were going to make dinner, then was just too lazy to put it in the oven to cook. And, can't you die from eating raw burger meat?

Of course, now that I have eaten raw meat, I have the hunger.






Also that night, chicken bones. No meat, just the bones. Chew on em and eat the marrow out. I feel like a maniac doing that stuff. And you know what, not that tasty. No taste really. Just kind of crunchy and chewy. Eh.

Last night, went to a Korean restaurant. Had tail soup.



Yup, tail soup. Beef tail to be exact. The lady who owns the restaurant said she can't cook pig tail soup, smells too bad. Plus, pig tails, curly, gotta be hard to cook evenly.

Tail soup. The meat tasted pretty close to pot roast. And the soup part was really tasty. I just wish that I didn't know what I was eating here. Japanese (and Korean since that is what we were eating) is damned delicious, but it is made out of some revolting ingredients.

The part of the tail in the picture was pretty big, that must have been the part closest to the cow butt, hence no one eating it.

Here is part of an appetizer for the table. By the time I remembered my phone had a camera it had been pretty well picked over.


On this plate, going counter clockwise starting in the upper left is kimchi, which I thought a co-worker brought to Wells Fargo at one point, but this stuff didn't smell like her food did, so I am not sure what she had. Kimchi, delicious. Spiciest thing I have had in Japan yet, and I was loving it. Man do I miss spices.
Next is the ever yummy potato salad. Unfortunately this potato salad was a bit warm so I didn't partake too much.
Then there is the fish chunk nuggets. These were compacted fish meat, like pureed and mixed back together and pressed down into nugget form. Which means it was leftovers reconstituted to be edible. And they were pretty good too. I ate a bunch of these. I don't know if it was the nuggets or the sauce, or the fact that the alternative was tail soup, but I was going to town on those nuggets.
Top right is fish and beans combination.

Yup, more whole fish that I am eating. And me, a non-fish eater. Crunchy, fishy, beany, and tasty. (I need a thesaurus to find alternative ways to say something tasted good)

Our main course of the night was Pig spine.



There was a burner in the middle of the table and the spine dish was placed on there to keep it warm. That is a big thing in Japan too, big pots of food that is kept warm at the table and just pick from it for the next hour or so. So, pig spine. Or backbone I guess would be more appropriate, but I was told it was called spine. Broken up into two or three vertebrate sections and in a sauce with onions and greens. Yeah, giant pain in the ass. There was basically no meat on the backbone, just what was left on the backbone after the rest of the meat for other dishes was cut away. Thus you had to pick up the bone in one hand and use your chopsticks with the other to scrape the bits of meat off, or just pick it up and chew on the bone as best you can. Either way, giant pain in the ass. It was like eating pork crabs, too much work for too little meat. And I am not the biggest fan of pork either, so definitely not worth the effort for me.

The night was still fun though, especially when the owner kept serving me like I was either a king or a little kid, can't decide which she thought I was. Hey, whatever. Good for me.

Midweek weirdness

Who woulda thunk there was weird shit in Japan?




At the 100 yen store. Body stickers. Swastika body stickers. For little girls to decorate themselves with. Little neo-nazi Japanese children.

And yes, I am aware that the swastika, when facing this way is an appropriate religious symbol in Japan and the shinto religion, as are the yin and yang symbols that also appear in the pack, but dammit it is weird to see a swastika in a store. they are also all over maps here, symbolizing shrines. Can't wait to go to Kyoto, map of that place should look like the American History X seating chart.



And then we have my absolute favorite thing about Japan so far. This is a flashcard for the letter "R" for one of my kids' classes. I call him the sexy rabbit. He will seduce you with his R-ness. Look at his eyes, his devil may care attitude, his come hither look. The way his legs are spread to display his little bunny. The fact that he is wearing a collar without a shirt. Rraaaarrr. Oh yeah, he is ready for you to learn all about the letter R. ALL about it.



God, I can't stop looking at it. He is just so. damned. sexy!

I'm not a drunkard

But you wouldn't know it from the food I eat here.
I am constantly trying to find salty snacks for work. I don't like sweet snacks, and a salty snack is enough to keep me satiated for most of the afternoon before I have classes. This way I am not spending $20 a day on food.

However, it doesn't seem like the Japanese really like salty snacks, except when they have been drinking, because all of the salty snacks I have found have wrappers something like this:



Yeah, that is a panda seal with a beer. Let me repeat that. A panda seal. With a beer. What the hell? Also, my favorite part, the giant lips. It is also kind of racist. Great wrapper! This was a pretty good snack though, peanuts and a salty flavorful crunchy string looking cracker snack.




I also ate some noodles topped with an egg thing that tasted kind of like a pizza. If that isn't drunkard food I don't know what is.

And then there are these



Pea flavored chips. And they taste exactly like peas mixed with chips. Not bad.



Full disclosure, I bought the pea chips when I was drunk.

Under the weather

Been feeling a bit sick lately. Weather turning cooler, raining all the time, and me walking around in it all day last Sunday is not a good combination.

But, I am feeling a bit better now, so let me tell you about what I did last weekend. I went up to Sabae, another small city near Tsuruga, about a 45 minute train ride away. A fellow Geos teacher invited me to see "a Japanese opera" a couple of weeks prior, then that week said, correction, it is a Japanese version of "West Side Story." Ok, cool. Sounds good to me. I have seen West Side Story and enjoyed it. I think I might have worked sound production on it in high school, but maybe not. I can't remember what plays I worked sound for, but I definitely remember seeing West Side Story at some point in my life on stage.

So, last Sunday I head up to Sabae a little after 3 pm. It had been raining steady all day long and was chilly. Good day. The play wasn't until about 6, so we walked around Sabae a little bit, they were having a small festival, perhaps a children's festival when we were going through there, maybe a bit more adult at night, hard to tell. Anyway, we went into the Japanese Language center where this teacher takes Japanese lessons because I had to use the bathroom. The bathroom was scary, no lights, just the ambiant light from outside, and since it was all gray and rainy that day, very dark bathroom. Luckily it was Eastern style which means hole in the floor, so no missing really. When I got back the other teacher was looking at pictures of stuff that had gone on at the school recently, including a cooking night. And we saw a black guy in the pictures! Exciting stuff! That is the first black person I have seen in Japan. Steven, the other teacher, was lamenting that he didn't get know there was a cooking night and decided that he was definitely going to the next one.

We then bought some Sake, Black Dragon brand Sake (cuz it is manly sounding!), and went back to his apartment to have a few drinks before the play. He also lives in a Leopalace apt, because, well, he works at Geos and that is how we live. His apartment was the exact same as mine except it was about two feet narrower. Man, I have never been so happy for two feet in my life. (And that's what she said) It makes such a big difference in the feel of the apartment. Plus, in his bathroom, his shower and bathtub are seperate, like the hose from his shower goes over the floor instead of into the bathtub.


My bathroom, notice the shower head and hose in the bathtub, his would be going to the right, away from the tub.


I guess this is more traditional for the Japanese, because they don't really shower, they shower and wash off outside of the tub on the floor of the bathroom, hence the entire room being a wet room, and then get into the bathtub to take a bath. Well, that isn't how I roll, so I am glad my bathroom isn't set up like that.

Anyway, so we drink half the bottle of sake and then head to the play. And outside of the theatre, who do we see, the black guy from the pictures! We got to talking to him and his friends, and the four of them were teachers at another English Language School in Sabae. And turns out, their seats were the row in front of ours. We must have been in the gaigin section of the theater.

West Side Story in Japanese. First off, it was a community theater production, obvious because there was a massive amount of people on stage at one time, including tiny little toddlers for some portions. However, the entire thing was in Japanese so I couldn't tell you if the acting was bad or not.

Yes, the entire three hour musical was in Japanese. But they used the same music for the songs, just sang the lyrics in Japanese. So, I recognized the story, recognized the music, and couldn't understand a damn thing anybody said. I felt like I had a stroke and was just remembering bits of stuff I used to know. Actually, that is kind of how I feel in Japan all of the time.

Also, if you don't know, West Side Story is about gangs. Okay, who doesn't know the story of West Side Story? Even if you have never seen it, it is so pop culture pervasive everyone must know. Romeo and Juliet set in 50's street gang NYC. Anyway, so gangs, gangs of young men fighting one another. Except, it seems like the performing arts aren't really that high on the list of priorities for the Japanese, especially men, so half of the male gang members were women dressed up in drag. And the gangs had people that looked like middle aged adults all the way down to pre-teens. Yeah, it was as strange as it sounds. However, entertaining as all hell to watch and wonder about.

And during big song and dance scenes, little toddlers would parade to the front of the stage in their little sailor outfits and either clap or ring bells, or, in the case of the taunting scene, shout Jets! and then parade off the stage again. It was adorable. And one little boy was walking out and lost his shoe, and he wanted to stop to pick up his shoe so bad, but the little girls behind him were shuffling him forward, the entire time he kept trying to go back and get his little shoe. He was so worried about it. The next time they came out, he was in sock feet.

All in all, it was a hell of an experience. I suggest getting drunk and going to see a comunity theater play in a foreign language, good times.

Afterwards we went out with the quartet of other teachers to Ashiyoshi (I think that is what it was called). It is a grill place where all the food comes on skewers. It was great. Six English speakers packed into a booth order massive amounts of food and drinking heavily. The way food is served in Japan is much different from America. First off, they bring stuff out as soon as it is ready. So if you order five things, you basically get five courses. And this place has oders of 6 skewers of meat, or two rice balls (grilled rice balls, so delicious), or four cucumbers, etc. So you get little orders and order two or three of each thing and they just keep bringing you food. And when you are done you put your skewer in a little cup in front of you, and when you fill that cup that means you are a man! We sat there for two or three hours gorging ourselves on delicious grilled meats, and some not so delicious (Tongue, really, what is the point, not as tasty as regular beef and too chewy. Fortunately, it didn't look like tongue, looked like a little meat flag instead. I think I would have needed much more booze to eat a tonge looking tongue). I have no idea how the Japanese are so thin, there was a ton of food consumed that night. or maybe we are just gluttonous Americans and the Japanese only order two or three courses instead of 15 or 20 like we did.

And then I came home.

Oh, and I peed on the street. It is legal here, and I had to go between the train station and my apt, that is about a mile walk, in the rain, and I had quit a bit to drink that night, so I just let it fly on the street. It was awesome.



Mom, I am so sorry.

Slow posting

Just hanging out in Tsuruga in my awesome box in a dumpster.