Japanese Red Tape, lol

So, today Kasuga and I went to get my Insurance taken care of. I didn't think it would actually work out, because I hadn't really taken care of lots of the other stuff I assumed was needed in order to get my insurance, but Kasuga said we should just go and have the insurance agent tell us what else we would need to do.

So we went to the store, and began talking to the insurance lady. She rattled off the laundry list of things that we'd need to take care of, and left Kasuga reeling from it all.

Things included:
transfer of ownership
travelling 60km up to Matsumoto to get new plates
going to Komagane to get a police officer in Iijima to verify I have a parking space
The actual insurance
verifying the cars condition for transfer of shaken
and 1 or two things i'm forgetting.

of course, she offered to take care of everything except the transfer of ownership for a fee; I said yes due to the amount of travel, time, and lack of japanese I posess. :-P it actually isn't too much more expensive than it would be trying to do it on my own.

So next we made our way over to city hall to get the transfer of ownership taken care of. We filed out the form there and were then promptly informed that they wouldn't accept it because my inkan (name stamp) had kanji. *

* OK, so time for a tangent on that: In some asian countries, Japan, Korea, and China, as well as others maybe, it's common for people to accompany signatures with a stamp of their name. This stems from a couple of centuries BC in China as a way to verify orders and such.

So anyway, when I first arrived in Iijima, Kasuga and Matsuzaki-san, my Board of Education rep who works at city hall, were asking me what I wanted for my name stamp; DG, 'du-wa-i-to' in katakana, or kanji. I said I would love kanji becuase it would look cool and the kanji they would have to use is never used in conjunction for Japanese names, so it would be obvious i'm a foreigner. They said yes, and I'd been using it ever since late August.

So here I am, 5 months later, being told that they won't accept my stamp becuase it has kanji instead of english letters, because then my name would be listed as 'kanji-for-dwight' donald glinsmann, and apparently japanese people's heads would explode upon seeing a name with kanji and english letters.

Kasuga tried to explain that it would be obvious it was me, i'd have my english signature there, and I'd already been able to open a bank account using it with no issues.

By the end of dealing with this red tape, kasuga was face-palming at the whole stupid situation, and we had to leave with it unresolved while we tried to get a new inkan.

so we got back to school and luckily one of the old teachers has a friend who makes them in Iijima or something, and was able to give him a call for us. Given that it must be the slow season for inkan making 'is there ever a fast one?', it was actually done early in the afternoon.

It was unfortunate that I had to spend 15$ on the new one, but we were then able to go get the transfer of ownership, go back to the insurance place and take care of the inurance stuff, which included the husband (it was actually a local mechanic / moped store where I had borrowed my first bike from, and I believe the wife did the insurance work) came by my place to sketch out a little map to help the police officer find the place here in the next few days.

So in the end I was able to get it all taken care of and should have insurance in a couple of days.

random thoughts and digesting free willy

Random things i've been meaning to post about:

uniforms: all students wear a t-shirt and shorts as undergarments. they then don't have locker rooms and instead change in the halls / rooms for PE class. in the colder months students also can throw on track-suits.
over that they have tennis shoes that are exactly the same except with a blue stripe for boys and red for girls. the girls wear a navy skirt or pants, white / soft-light blue shirt with red tie, sweater, and jacket (in the cold). boys wear black pants, button shirt and a black jacket that buttons up to the collar. seems like an awful lot of stuff to wear.

i'd say on average once a week a 5th period is substituted for something besides a regular class, examples include: 'new morals' study period where they reflect on how to be a moral person / maintain values or even playing traditional japanese card games.

students get up ridiculously early, some as early as 5 but i'd say most are awake at 6-6:30, have breakfast, and are out the door by 7 for school. Many live one stop away on the train and ride to here. While they aren't here terribly late, it's not uncommon for those that have club activities to have to wait for the 5:07 train to go home since the Iida line through Iijima doesn't come very often. Long days for the kids. Although not as long as the ones in Korea from what I hear.

Driving around Iijima this weekend I got to see just how dramatic the change in elevation can be, it makes for some great views. It's also just plain beautiful here.

Finally, we played a 'typhoon' game today, students draw a card from 3 different decks that correspond to pictures on the board and match up (i.e. ace from the blue deck goes with the picture w/ a 1 in the blue group, etc etc) to form sentences. The variety of pictures I have can make for some great sentences. Today we tried playing with 4 groups. there are points cards as well, with the Queen and King being 'typhoon' cards that allow you to wipe out another teams points if you get it right. playing with 4 teams, this made it awesome. Kasuga's team kept getting typhooned, even when they weren't in the lead. AWESOME. we had a good couple of laughs.

students are already preparing for their high school acceptance test for March 10th. (the 3rd years are i mean) It's a pretty big deal, comparative to the SAT / ACT but you only get to take it once :P

Finally, for lunch today, we had whale.

phone tag

So, today we were doing a lesson practicing phone calls. I go to the English Staff room and wait for the students to call me and do the dialogue. Well, the students have to be careful that they get the number right, otherwise they'll call the wrong room. Well, a student did just that, and ended up calling the Language Lab next door with kasuga in it. Kasuga picked up the phone and greeted by a

'hello, this is mika!'
kasuga: uh, hi mika?
mika: are you free monday? we're planning a soccer game!
kasuga: uh, im' sorry? I have work monday.
mika: ok bye!

in the span of like 10 seconds. I'm not really sure why mika never realized that the voice didn't sound like me, or that the japanese she heard was no doubt natural sounding, or what. Kawaii sensei and I had good laughs over that.

Also, it's really popular for girls here to wear Playboy bunny emblazoned everythings. Socks and sweaters are the most popular. Its just completely stripped (HAH!) of it's sexuality here and the girls like it becuase of the cute rabbit. It's so tempting to bring the illusion crashing down around everyone. or just tell my students to go to google and seach 'playboy' bwahah. Im a terrible teacher.

i've also been working with one of my teachers on getting meanings for japanese names. it's great fun because she gets to practice her english and trying to describe the meanings of names is tons of fun. whee!

Random note now that Obama is President

It has been really interesting for me to see just how engaged people are overseas with Obama. My students absolutley love him. This week the first years were learning 'can, can't, cannot' and every time we'd do 'Yes we can' invariably 'OBAMA!' would pop up. It was also on the cover of the paper this morning and many of my students were talking about it around school. I find it awesome that just by getting elected many people (certainly not all) feel a renewed sense of hope for America.

Finally, the rest of China: Shanghai and the Trip home

So, I know I've been slow as hell getting this out, my apologies. :-p things have been pretty hectic since returning home, but I finally have some time to get crackin on this.

Shanghai: Days 2 and 3

Our second day in Shanghai we decided we wanted to take a boat trip that would take us up to the Yangtze. We left in the late morning, as our boat didn't leave until 1. Along the way, we met up with the two swedish guys again and they asked if they could come with. We said sure, and the group of us made our way back to the Bund again so we could catch the boat. We got there with no problems, bethany and I stopping for some delicious candied fruit (of course). The boat ride we took was the three hour one. It was great to see just how active Shanghai is, particularly in terms of industry. Bethany said that 1/3 of the worlds largest cranes are located in Shanghai, and we certainly saw a good many of them. The riverside was just crammed with them, working on boats in drydock or moving cargo. At one point on the ride we even spotted cargo boxes (the large colored ones you see on trains) stacked to such a large degree it dwarfed the huge apartment complex next to it. It was just insane! We talked with the guys about various things, eventually bethany and I deciding that them being 20 and yet to start college (common in Europe to take some time after high school to travel) that the maturity gap was a bit annoying. (and no, it's not like we're haughty or anything. :P)
We finally got out to the Yangtze, so big that at first we thought it had to be the ocean. The trip back was pretty unremarkable, but we were glad we had made the trip. :) We bid farewell to the guys after the boat ride and stopped for some dinner. The food was good although I we didn't get one of our dishes, I finally got up and through hand gestures let them know we hadn't received it, although I'm not sure if they genuinely forgot or just skipped on making it and waited to see if we'd broach the issue. I think it was the latter given that we'd been denied food before. LAME.

Our last day in Shanghai we checked out in the morning, again waking up late, and spent some time going to a bazaar area that was nice and bustling with the New Year's holiday approaching. We were able to pick up some decent souveniers (spelling, i know) as well as stopped at a nice place for lunch. The view was very good; the food was decent, although not particularly awesome. We wanted to be able to find a nice sit down place, but unfortunately the great looking ones were packed/only had gyoza. We were pining for some sweet and sour pork.

After lunch we made our way to the Shanghai museum, a busy but great place. They had a ton of exhibits that did a good job of showcasing multiple eras in Chinese history. The last bits on the development on currency in China supplemented by contributers. We then made our way back to the hostel, picked up our things, and then left for the hotel out at the airport.

Lol's ensued when we got to the high-speed 'Maglev' line and got our tickets. We settled in for the 80 minute ride there (as told by our hostel) and then began to take off. The Maglev is an elevated magnetic high speed train, it was cruising at over 300 kms, or over 200mph. As we were zipping along, I then noticed what I thought said 'Terminal A' and it looked like we were near an airport. Turns out they said 8, not 80 minutes. Which I kinda wondered about as we were going along at 200mph; "So wait, this airport is like, 600 miles from Shanghai? That doesn't seem to make sense...." Hah. Bethany and I got a good laugh out of that.

The hotel was very very nice, and located in the airport complex very close to one of the terminals. The next morning we caught our flight to Inchon with no problems and spent a couple of hours together before my flight. We got to have burger king (AWESOME) and then I took off. It was tough (of course) saying goodbye. I got into Nagoya, took the express train to the bus terminal and caught my bus home with no problems. I ended up sitting next to a man who was also going to Iijima and spoke good english. He was actually returning from Singapore (where his wife and 2 kids are) to take a shot at finding a job back in Japan. Very cool to get to talk with someone on the way home.

All in all, the two weeks in China were magnificent, with some amazing sights (Great Wall being behind only the Haghia Sophia in terms of sheer awe it inspired) and great food. There's always something great about being able to travel to a new place.

Cliff-notes

I've yet to finish up the last few days in China, but in the meantime;

Bethany has a nice condensed version of our trip on her blog at bethanyinkorea.blogspot.com along with some of the best pictures.

more in-depth selections of pictures can be found at these links:

China 1: Shenyang

China 2: Beijing: Summer Palace

China 3: Beijing: Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

China 4: Beijing: Mutianyu and the Sacred Way

China 5: Xian: The Tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang


China 6: Shanghai: The Bund, Boat Trip, Acrobatic Show

Shanghai: Day 1

The train ride went very well; both of us got lots of sleep with no problems. We woke up around 10, with over an hour left on our trip. Our train arrived in Shanghai roughly 45 minutes late. This time we were prepared and weren’t the last ones off the train either. :-P Shanghai’s railway station was as busy as any of them. We made our way out to the main entrance and started looking around for the subway entrance. After wandering around for a short while, we found a large map with all the subway information on it. A minute of trying to decide the best POA (thanks Mr. Peterson) to get to our subway stop. A Chinese guy was kind enough to try and help us (Bethany disputes this, as she still thinks the map was a bunch of bunk; I disagree) and we entered the entrance for a different subway line and were able to make our way through the transfer to our line. Turns out that they have built another line that goes parallel with the one we needed anyway; which was helpful throughout our time in Shanghai as there were then trains coming roughly every five minutes. We took the subway to our stop, which was only a few away. Shanghai’s subway system doesn’t charge a flat fee like Beijing, but instead it’s based off of where you are going; this meant that our trip to our stop was only 1 Yuan for the both of us (a whole $.15) From our stop, we only had a five minute walk to our hostel. The hostel we were staying at was an exceptionally nice hostel that was almost a mix between hostel and hotel. It was several times larger than our hostel in Turkey. The room was also very nice and large. The lobby and bar atmosphere it had (yes, it had a little pub in it) was very cool. We dumped off our stuff and spent the next several hours just relaxing and recouperating in the room. We watched a movie (well, I did, Bethany was asleep again within twenty minutes) and then went out for the evening. We made our way down to the Bund; the old colonial holdings from the mid-late 19th century. Our stop put us out in a very commercialized heavy shopping district. As we were walking we had tons of people trying to sell us watches; something that really only happened in Shanghai. The walk took about 15 minutes or so before we made it down to the riverfront. It became increasingly obvious we were getting closer because the architecture continued to change and gained a much stronger western style to it. Furthermore, the view from the river was just beautiful at night. The sci-fi looking TV tower was lit up like a Disco, the huge Shanghai building that was the tallest in the world for a couple of years (it looks like a giant bottle opener) had blue lights outlining it, and the Bund behind us was soft yellow lights making the old buildings look fantastic. We spent about an hour walking along the riverfront and also checking out times for the boat trip on the river. We then made our way back to our hotel and watched another movie to round out the evening.