Tokyo! Tokyo! Tokyo!

I didn't get much sleep, but I did have a fantastic time.

My first time really exploring the world's biggest metropolitan area started and ended with a nightbus trip.  It takes around 8 hours on the highway to get to Tokyo from Kanazawa, and the cheapest way by far is the nightbus.  Travel in Japan is incredibly expensive relative to everywhere else I've been.  The four-hour train ride costs 12,000 yen each way ($130), and even the daytime highway bus costs about $80 each way.

I had been advised to get some sleeping pills for the night, which have only been legal in Japan since 2003.  I got a box of the unlikely-named Drewell pills (seriously--they named their sleeping pills Drool) and they did a reasonable job of getting me through the night.  Our group of 10 arrived blurry-eyed and excited at 6 AM in the heart of Tokyo at the Shinjuku station.  Shinjuku, incidentally, is the most heavily-trafficked train station on earth; according to Wikipedia, it serviced 3.64 million people a day in 2007.

One of many Shinjuku platforms.  At 7:00 AM on a Saturday.

We spent Saturday seeing some sights, like the temple area near Harajuku, and then going down to Yokohama for a special art exhibit we'd heard about.  We got lucky with some amazing weather the whole weekend, and the Yokohama skyline was pretty glorious and bizzarely futuristic in clear sunlight.

This billboard really got to the heart of feelings I have every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inside one of the art exhibit areas.

 

Saturday night, after a quick nap at our hostel, we had a good dinner at a Mexican restaurant (where I accidentally ordered a $20 glass of mezcal...) and then went out in the area of Roppongi.  I think one time in Roppongi is enough for me--it was chock full of foreigners and felt pretty fake and forced.  We managed to have a pretty good time, though. 

In the category of Frustratingly Illogical Stuff In Japan, all the trains in Tokyo stop soon after midnight.  I was shocked at this--I can understand that in Denver, or even on some lines in Chicago, but in Tokyo?  That meant that we had to wait around until 5:00 for the next trains to start running or take an expensive cab all the way back.  Blergh...

Sunday we spent a long time in the Harajuku neighborhood, eating and shopping and moving through the crush of people.

 

I didn't get any pictures of them, but there are a bunch of heavily-costumed people in Harajuku, often referenced shorthand as "Harajuku girls", even though it's not just girls.  The detail and complexity of the costumes was kind of stunning.  I'll be poor at attempting to talk about who does the dressing-up and why, so you should dive into this Wiki article if you're interested.

Monday was the "Labor Thanksgiving Day" national holiday, so Sunday night we all went out to a club called Ageha on the outskirts of the city.  For those who care/know, Armin Van Buuren, Glen Morrison, and DJ Yoda were playing.  It was one of the best clubs I've ever seen, and convinced me that Tokyo really does know how to party.

 Mr. Jones adorns what seems like half of the vending machines in Japan, so this isn't a new discovery.  Just seemed funnier at the time and I finally decided to take a picture.

 

The cartoonish love hotel near our hostel.  Japan is full of love hotels, essentially dedicated to serving the romantic needs of long-term couples or one-night stands (a lot of them have privacy safeguards for people having affairs).  A little odd to be sure, but better than America's solution of seedy roadside motels, yes?

On Monday, after sleeping far too short a time, we all headed out of the hostel.  We spent some time recuperating in a park, then me and a friend went down to Akihabara to hang out for a little while.  Akihabara is the big electronics district of Tokyo, and my pictures don't do any kind of justice to how enormous these stores were.

 

 

 Papa, how much does this remind you of Riven?

 

 Love love love the image this gives me.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Some people were heading back early on the train or a day bus, but I wanted to see as much of city as I could while I was there, so I headed out to Asakusa, the biggest temple area of Tokyo.  It was another beautiful day, and I picked out my fortune from a temple.  You shake a box of sticks for a while, then pull out one that corresponds to a drawer in front of you.

This is the full English translation of my fortune:

No. 67 BAD FORTUNE

Weak-ned tree has lost leaves, branches, they have to wait long until go get recovered. Having excessive desire to clumb up the ladder to clouds, your mind get confused. At last you may be out of peace and safety, you should be more careful at your way. Stay alone, being uknown to the other people you have to hold problem inside.

Your request will not be granted. The patient keeps bed long. The lost article will not be found. The person you wait for will not come over. You had better to stop build a new house and the removal. You should stop to start a trip. Marriage of any kind and new employment are both bad.

So...grim.  Of course, that fortune was offset by how stupidly happy and lucky I felt at the time to be reading my fortune at a Tokyo temple at all.

 

 

 The Asakusa temples show a heavy Chinese influence in their red color.  Contrast that with the black or dark wood of Kanazawa temples I've shown.

 

 

 

 

 

I met up with a friend and had a great Thai-style dinner in the Ueno Park neighborhood.  While a lot of Tokyo is crazy and huge and full of people, there are some really nice neighborhoods that aren't crowded or tightly-packed at all.

Then it was time to get back to Shinjuku, catch the nightbus, toss back some Drewell, and prepare to go to class Tuesday morning.  Not bad for a first trip, but I'm excited to go back sometime soon.

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Delinquent Gaijin

I know I've missed my regular(ish) weekend update for two weeks running--the insane insane weekend in Tokyo and an upcoming two-day JET conference have taken up all my time.  I should, however, have lots of time to update this weekend, so expect one or two hearty posts to take that winter chill away.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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Fall Comes To Kanazawa

Just a bit of blabbing to start it off today, then a lot of pictures.  This past Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous, and I spent most of it riding around, eating and then taking a nap by the river, meeting up with friends, and playing with some random kids at a park (the part where me and my friend Martine would have been arrested if we had been doing the same thing in the States...).

I've also started leading/tutoring an "eikaiwa", or English club.  I'm taking over for another JET, and in fact the founding members started the club more than a decade ago.  It's two times a month on Saturday mornings, and don't tell anyone, because I'm getting paid a bit for it which is another technically fireable offense.

I am incredibly impressed with the group and had a really enlightening morning.  It's mostly middle-aged women who are homemakers and looking to branch out and one older retired man who learned English so he could read news from other viewpoints and to prevent senility.  They are extremely open and culturally interested, which means I don't have to do much work to get them talking and learning.  This is a refreshing change from my often recalcitrant students.  It also helps me believe I am perhaps planting seeds at school that I will never see sprout but may do so nonetheless.

Before I left America, I often made the point that I wasn't going to get my students to any particularly proficient level of English in my limited time with them, but that more importantly I could maybe get them excited about learning the language and exploring other cultures.  None of these kids are ever going to really learn English if they aren't excited about it, no matter how many textbooks are shoved in front of them.  In the daily grind of school, however, it can be easy to forget that and get bogged down with frustrations over students constantly forgetting to pluralize or conjugate properly.  Again, it was nice to see another side of the teaching gig.

Enough blabbing!  On to the pretty pictures!

 Spent some time in the samurai district to start with.

 

 

 

 

 

Right after a brilliant nap in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

All of the best trees in the city are bound up like this now to guard against the heavy, wet winter snows.

  

 

 

Bonus for those who made it to the bottom: today in class we were trying to get the third years to debate various topics, one being snacks in school.  In arguing against them, one group wrote "If students eat snacks there will be many rappers in the school."  Full marks.

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When Pigs Fly

***Important: I don't know that you would do this anyway, but it's very important to keep any pictures of my kids from being disseminated online.  I could, theoretically, lose my job for that.  Anything else is fine, but photos of kids publicly online in any way are a breach of contract and dealt with pretty harshly.  In case you want to send one of my pictures to someone you know, please check carefully to make sure there aren't kids in the photo.  And definitely no Facebook.  Thanks!***

The past couple weeks have seen special events at both of my schools taking place against the backdrop of that rending, slavering, beady-eyed monster, the swine flu.

A few weeks ago the announcements about protecting against H1N1 started, then some of my classes were canceled because of low numbers of students.  This has been happening all over the prefecture, and all over Japan.  I know it's happening to a degree in the US, but I don't really know how it's affecting schools there.  Frankly, actual infection rates haven't seemed that bad, and I know the kids are being sent home/held out of class for almost nothing.  Several times whole homerooms were kept away from school because one student was sick.

I think the reaction to swine flu is absolutely ridiculous and horrendously overblown by media hysteria, and I thought that before I came.  However, the Japanese hair-trigger sensitivity to it and alarmism have taken my disdain for pig flu madness to a new level.  Exhibit A is The Mask.

Ever since flu season started, some of my teachers have been wearing masks all day, and some students come to school with them as well.  The big problem here is that most of the people wearing masks aren't sick.  If you have the flu, great, wear a mask to keep all your phlegm in, but then you should also be at home anyway.

For healthy people, the little flusies have many more orifices to choose from than just the two (poorly) covered by the mask.  Also, if you wear a cheap surgical mask for a day, it gets hot and sweaty and disgusting--a resort for infectious germs.  Still, despite scientific evidence everywhere that masks aren't effective when used in this way, the Japanese swear by them.  I think soap in all the bathrooms is far more important than the dumb masks, but I don't make the rules.  I really, really, really don't make the rules.  This is another example of Japanese people deciding on one course of action and totally sticking to it without question, which is fantastic when that course of action works and isn't insane.  (Another great instance is the lack of insulation in the houses, but that's a rant for another time.)

I was supposed to go on a 15km walk with some of the 3rd years (9th graders) for a school excursion a couple Fridays ago, but they canceled the trip for the whole grade because one student came down with flu.  As consolation, I got to walk around Kanazawa with the 2nd years and go to the art museum, which was a really good time.

Awesome scooter thing in the Art Museum.

 

Back at my base school, the cultural festival took place October 31st.  I worked for a week and a half with the 2nd years on their play (Crime and Punishment, which seems impossibly long and emotional for kids that age) and rehearsed to play violin in the scene breaks of the 3rd years play.  This meant staying till 6 every day, but it was worth it even though I couldn't understand the vast majority of the dialogue in the play.  I feel like 8th graders in America would never be allowed to perform a play with two murders, two deaths, a suicide, and constant drinking--I love that they can do that here.

Dinner scene from C&P

 

Final scene.  The music was epic, the grasp of perspective on the backdrop not as much.

The day of the cultural festival was the first day that everyone was required to wear a mask.  I'm not sure when my life turned into an apocalyptic disease movie, but there you go:

The kids knocked Crime and Punishment out of the park, and the whole thing was really fun.  It was, of course, almost canceled because a few of the kids were out with flu.  There were music performances, three plays, and artwork lined the walls.  And I defy you to find an audience of American middle schoolers who would sit through an hour-long drama without a peep like these kids did.

Maybe it was the masks.

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