Two months, already?

Man, I'm really slippin' here with this blog huh? Well, a lot has happened in two months, so I'll just do little bits of things as they pop into my head.

The newbies are here, and I like them. Yay for having great replacements.

School festival was last weekend, it was a blast. The band concert in particular was great.

drinking party after the festival was also fantastic. talked with lots of people, had lots of fun. the after-party was also epic. Great times.

typhoon came through a couple of days ago at night. woke me up from the wind, but wasn't any worse than a storm. mainly because of the mountains breaking it up i think.

i'm almost done with battlestar galactica. probably my favorite show in terms of enjoyment ever.

i'm reading the wheel of time series, so far, awesome.

i'll be waking up early on saturday to watch the hawks play their night game. :D

i went to kanazawa a couple of weekends ago for the 'silver week' holidays with chad. it was a blast and we saw some great things; ninja-temple, 21st centurty contemporary art museum, and the famous japanese garden there.

i'm bummed harold, the american staying in iijima, is gone. we hit it off really well and liked a lot of the same things. it's a shame i only knew him for two weeks :P

made burgers a couple of nights ago, it was fantabulous. minus the part where i fell in the gutter walking to molly's car becuase it was pitch black outside of her apt.

all day meeting for english teacher's yesterday. it was horrible and i wish i could have snuck out, like some other teachers (american and japanese both) did.

kasuga seems really bummed at his new school. it makes me appreciate what i have in iijima.

i might try hiking a trail outside of iijima in the mountains this weekend. but we'll see. haha.

i randomly decided (after reading the last book), that splitting the harry potter book seven into 2 movies is actually great for everyone, in terms of making money and covering more of the epic story.

the brazilian restaurant in ina will be shutting down sometime in the next couple of months. I'm going to miss it dearly.

the chinese restaurant in iijima has a pretty good sweet and sour set. i may go there tonight.

i did a presentation about graduate school applications and how to find what's right for you. it was fun, but i felt weird talking about it like i was an authority. far from it i feel.

i feel that the yamagomi (the nagano magazine about anything) is always awesome, but the last one was particularly epic. great pieces.

having elementary on friday afternoon is far and away the best way to start a weekend.

3 day weekend this weekend, i'm unsure what i'll do....probably just be a bum.

i really, really need to get my passenger-side door on my car fixed. it's like prying open an oyster every time.

i feel like i'm eating out more with the newbies here, but my food spending isn't really higher since i'm spending less on meals at home. yay.

i keep meaning to go to pachinko...why don't I? oh right, i see the guys camping outside of them at 8:45 in the morning before they open.

i made janis' spinach salad for the first time last week, my how i missed it.

i think i'm hungry, judging by how many of these lines are about food.

i'll be going to kyoto in november to see old friends, kansai gaidai, the leaves changing, and to show stephen kyoto. should be great. :)

booked my ticket home for the winter. 19th of dec through jan 11th. going to be great to be home.

after halloween last year, i tossed the two pumpkins we had...and they took root and grew this year. we have two pumpkins, both around 40kg, sitting in the school right now. AWESOME.

i'm going to go to a halloween party this year, should be fun. i'll get pictures of my costume. :)

i keep using glue on to keep my school sandals in good condition because i didn't wanna spend another 8$ on a new pair and i had this glue sitting at my apt not being used.

it's starting to get cold, and i see leaves falling here and there even though the trees are still green.

swine flu is still around and plenty of people are sick, but it's not the terror it was a couple of months ago.

is it really almost 2010? i remember 1999 wasn't so far away. how did this happen? where is my decade? am i old now or what, musing on lost years?

spying cats sunbathing outside my apt is like, the best thing ever.

there's a spider just outside my apt door that i've taken to feeding. i had high hopes she would have been able to handle the grasshopper i tossed in her web, but alas, it got away.

i still stare at the mountains in wonder, every day, without fail. i'm going ot miss them.

i feel a lot more laid back in the class now, and i think the students like that.

pen pal letters came a couple of weeks ago. the students LOVED THEM. i introduced them by asking the class "whats the date today?" "september 25!" "boo! december 25th!" "whaa? huh? christmas?" "yes, it's christmas, because....i brought you PRESENTS" *holding out the letters* "WAHHH (as the students lose their minds)."

one of my co-teachers ahd to have surgery on her intestines, but was back early to keep teaching. she's a trooper.

there's probably more, and maybe i'll be more on the ball from now on out. ;)

SUMMER!

Well, bethany has rolled on home after you trip in Hokkaido. She's been home and had her welcome home party.

As for me, I'm enjoying my summer vacation. I came back to school on wednesday to find out that after all that discussion about it being IMPERATIVE that i'm at school during break to find out that it's just like spring break. In the sense that there's absolutely nothing for me to do at school, and most of my teachers are gone. Nice. :P

Well, that of course means that I'm bored outta my mind at school. Some JET's get to stay home over break, but as per our contract, it technically states taht we have to be at school all break unless our principal allows us to go home. The thing is, I think mine would let me go home, but he doesn't know. He came by on thursday and was like, 'you haven't gone home? you have business?' So...yeah. That of course means that i'm pulling a spring break, and taking long lunch breaks and leaving early. Blarg. It's just a bummer that I can't do a proper trip. Not that I could afford it anyway. :P

I talked to my buddy Chad, a friend from Kansai who's back in Japan on JET right now, we're hopefully going to get together over 'silver week', a one in 7 years lucky line-up of holidays in September.

the new JET's have arrived too, but I haven't had any luck meeting up with them just yet. I'll be able to see them on Wednesday though, at the orientation meeting up in Nagano-city. The parties after orientation should also be a fun time too. Yay! :-)

sapporo

bethany's here, we're up in sapporo, things are going well. :) we'll be off to asahikawa tomorrow, and hopefully be getting a nice look at daisetsuzan in the next couple of days. should be a great time!

sapporo seems nice enough and we might poke around here tomorrow before we take off to asahikawa. we'll see!

yea yea

It's been forever, I know :P dad visited, we had a great time, i'll get pictures up here eventually, bethany's visiting now, we're going to hokkaido on thursday morning. the summer break is about to start, i've been having some issues with school but it seems to be about cleared up. things are great, albeit warm, and I'm looking forward to starting year two here on JET. Holy cow, are we really moving that far ahead already? ay yi yi!

I promise I'll try and stay in touch! although I have a feeling most of you have moved on from this already since i'm so darn infrequent, my bad-desu.

say what?

yesterday in class with the 1st years I had a couple minutes where I was having them ask me different questions using "do you play / do you like?"

so one of the students proceedes to ask me "do you like pornography?" i start trying to stifle laughter and ask him to repeat it which he does. he was saying it a little weird and I knew he was trying to say "porno-graffiti", a popular japanese rock band.

my co-teacher looked like she was going to have a heart-attack for a couple seconds there. bwahah.

lol

mom and pete are home now, i think. I hope all is well, they were a bit behind schedule due to missing the connection in Chicago.

back to school, weather is nice today.

you can read up and catch pix on mom's blog she did. Besides, i think it'll be nice to have a fresh view of japan talking about it. ;)

i'm really only updating becuase of this diary entry from a student today:

I like English.
But I can't English.
I am hard!
Do you like English very much?

that is all.

bwahah

I know I know. still been a couple of weeks.

Mom and pete come tomorrow! Wah! I'm so excited!

I'm checking diaries at school, check out this entry:

How are you today? I was tired. Today I was weed. At playground. Do you like weed? I don't like weed...

obviously the kid was talking about weeding. but still. lulz.

this last weekend i went out for nepalese food and bowling and saturday with friends. it was a great time, and i got to meet new people.

sunday I went up to meet friends again and cooked mexican food. nom nom nom.

Today is day 9 of my 'lemonade detox'. I'm not following it to the letter (as you're only supposed to drink the lemonade the entire time, but i can't get outta school lunch.)

it's been going quite well! i feel lots healthier and have even lost some weight! it's great! :)

friday i went out for yakiniku (japanese bbq) with one of my students dad. he insisted to pay, and we got all you can eat / drink which was fantastic. it was sooo good. we went to karaoke afterwards too, and i had made sure to do plenty of drinking to get through the karaoke as this guy just assumes that i know every english song. :P

'do you know the carpenters?'
'no'
'do you know this song by the carpenters?'
'i don't know the carpenters.'
'lets sing this song by the carpenters.....why aren't you singing?'

i also went to school on saturday as i had volunteered to use it as leverage to let mom and pete come to elem on the 19th. unfortunately i had to miss the party up in nagano then. boo. oh well.

久しぶり

Hey everyone-
I know it's been a really long time since I've done a blog update. Yeah yeah, i know.
Anyway, maybe I'll try and be a little better about it. OK, so, i'll just bullet-point the rundown of everything that's been going on.

- mom and pete are coming in just under two weeks!

-i got them rail passes so we'll get to bullet train around quite a bit.

-dad's coming in july! crazy!

-the new school year is going well, but I'm still feeling like I'm not particularly fond of this new 'make my own schedule thing'

- i went to Korea a couple weeks ago, May 9-17. It was fantastic to see bethany. We had a spectacular time and saw tons of great places. here's a little bit i typed up about korea:

oh, and the last things i wanted to mention were some of the lasting impressions i had of korea; these are just the impressions i had from being there a week, they aren't supposed to be a definitive 'this is the way things are' by any means:

korea comes across as a mix between japan and china in many ways. from the literal (the language sounds like both to my ears) to the more abstract. on one hand, technologically korea is just as/more advanced than japan at the proliferation of technology. everyone has cell phones (more seniors in korea than in japan it seems), the whole country is wired, and it's cheaper than japan.

korea is also much dirtier. not as bad as china (especially in pollution) but it's still pretty bad. i often smelled raw sewage which has never happened here in japan. lots of the public transit / works are nearly identical to japan (the yellow blind paths etc) but just dirtier.

to my western notions of what is 'proper' public ettiquete, koreans come off as more rude than japanese but not as rude as chinese. but this is of course a cultural thing.

koreans also seem much more fiercely nationalistic, and come off as having a 'short-man' of asia syndrome. which is unfortunate, korea is, i think, the 3rd largest economy in asia and 13th in the world, which is remarkable, but many koreans always seem to be trying to prove the value of the country.

people trying to interject things like 'miso soup comes from korea. japanese is just another korean dialect, etc.' stuff came up several times. and while korea has every right to be pissed at japan, it just came off as kinda odd

also, i'm so jealous how cheap public transit in korea is.

that's really all i have time to ramble about; but it was a great time

pix are up on bethany's FB, you've probalby all seen them by now. :P





-i've been picking up manga's to read in japanese as a way to work on my japnese / catch up on ones i was reading in the states. it's tough but fun. it's also pretty funny how much faster the action / fighting manga goes when compared to the comedy one (due to much more writing.)

-last week we had 'Undou no hi' or sport's festival day. It was a ton of fun; i snapped quite a few cool pics of students giving it there all, and I also competed with the teachers against the students in a big relay. AWESOME.

-i've practically been burning cash since I came back from korea on bills, but I'm doing a great job of finally nailing down my excell expenses sheet so I can figure out where my $$ is going. YAY.

-i'm making MOONSHINE! Well, technically i'm making a summer fruit sochu. When i was at the liquor store last week, I noticed that they had a bag of liquor that looked really similar to the white peak i normally buy.

TANGENT: in japan, it's really common to offer refills of liquids in bags that are much cheaper than buying the real deal. this goes for shampoo to household cleaners to salt to apparently liquor.

So! i picked up the regular stuff i drink to bring to the party i was going too (MORE ON THAT LATER) and asked the shop owner about the other stuff. she explained that yeah, you just make it at home and you can make all different kinds of stuff using the mix and different fruits. then she gave me an instruction manual / recipie guide for it.

so i asked her, where can i buy glass bins to make it? she pointed to the store across the street, but then was like...'wait a minute!' and came back with a bin and let me have it for free! woo! so anyway, i'm in the process of making a strawberry flavored one right now.

-the first year students are awesome here. 1/2 of them know me from last year at elem where i could be a lot wilder, and so they act really goofy with me. my teachers get confused when it happens.

-i didn't used my heater / ac at all last month since the weather's been perfect, my electricity bill dropped by over half.

-somehow there is still snow on the peaks of the mountains. i hope it lasts until mom and pete visit.

-back to cutting my lawn. using a weedwacker on a whole lawn is a bit rough on the back.

-i got to stand on North Korean soil at the DMZ. Also, the ROK soldiers are freaking awesome.

-Last weekend i went and visited some friends from orientation last summer. I drove about 4 hours or so, but it was a fantastic time. Hopefully we'll be meeting up again in Tokyo when Dad is visiting. :-)

-after i came back from korea i gave my neighbor Yuka some souvenier's, i had a huge bag of korean candies and gave her a lot becuase i knew i couldn't finish them all. she was like, 'wah! this bag is soo full!' like twice. i don't care if she finishes them or not. :P

-we implemented a new network at school, my computer now can't print and the internet sucks too. i'm still hoping to get it fixed, ugh.

-i finally filed my govt. stimulus package yesterday. $120 coming my way! Yee-haw!

-as part of mandatory english study for elem. students (5th and 6th graders) we're actually using a lesson plan at them now. although i found out on monday that i'm in charge of leading the lessons on my own from now on again, but at least i have an idea of what i'm supposed to be doing. i'm just curious if they'll be changing the jr. high books too, because a lot of the stuff i'm teaching is stuff they learn in their first year at jr. high too. hrm...

-for the first lesson at the small elem, there was a mixup and i didn't have the printed story to read to them i was supposed to have, and the teacher asked me if i could just do one on the fly in english. i ended up doing 3-little-pigs and with pictures and gestures they actually got it! it was awesome. the best part was the dramatic knocking on the door for the first two houses, and then for the 3rd house, i wound up to do this huge knock and instead did a doorbell and everyone (including the principal) lost it. that was awesome. :)

-tomorrow night i'm making mexican food with some friends from up north and having one of the english teachers come by. i hope she can handle our gaijin-ness

-friday i'm meeting up with a group of people form the PTA / teachers to have curry after we promised that we would at the spring enkai. who boy it'll be interesting.

-i learned a sweet new work today: huurinkazan or 風林火山 the kanji are wind,forest,fire,mountain and it was some battle cry by an old nagano samurai. AWESOME! i wanna do a calligraphy of it and hang it up in my apt. :D

- i was asked to write two different stories for 2nd and 3rd years. i had to do some tweaking to the 3rd year's one, where i wrote about going to istanbul. i also loved that i followed what i was told and only used what they had studied, but still had one of the teacher's dumb it down because it was too hard. she then also wrote a new one following the model that the book had, nearly identical to the books one, and then had me check the students papers. of course all the studnets ones were nearly identical to hers, and i'd like to see her's because there were so many common mistakes that i'm sure her example sheet had problems on it too. whoops :P

here's my 2nd year one that no one has said anything to me about yet. we'll see if that lasts.

I got up at four in the morning. I went to the bus stop. I rode the bus to Tokyo. I bought breakfast at a conbini in Roppongi. Inside the conbini, I saw President Obama. Obama said, “Dwight, can we go to America together?’’ I said, “YES WE CAN!’’ So, we went to Narita airport. We got on the plane. We flew over Tokyo and saw Godzilla! Godzilla was at Tokyo tower! Poor, poor, Tokyo tower. The plane was very fast. We got to Washington, D.C. at twelve. We ate lunch in the White House. It was very delicious. After lunch, Obama said, “Let’s find Naruto and Sasuke. They can fight Godzilla and save Tokyo!” I said, “This is boring. I live in Iijima and Godzilla is in Tokyo.” I watched TV on Air Force One for five hours. I got to Japan at seven in the evening. I went to bed at ten. Everyone in Tokyo died. The End

Fight: 戦う
Rode: 乗った
Poor: かわいいそう
Air Force One: アメリカ大統領の飛行機

ok, well, i think that pretty much does it for me. i'll try try try to keep up on this. i promise. :P

Sakura

So, the last couple of weeks have seen spring arrive in full, which has been nice.

The heater has been turned off, the windows opened, and the weather enjoyed. :)

The snow pack on the mountains is melting now too, so there's a constant stream of water going through the gutters that line all the streets, even though we haven't had rain in a couple weeks.

The rice paddies are being worked on in earnest now as well.

The sakura (cherry blossoms) have already come and gone. about a week ago they were coming out here at school, and today i noticed that several trees have lost all the blossoms. it has been really great to be outside when they are blooming to either see them or watch them fall. or even sweep them up. like light pink snowflakes.

i also went up to takato last weekend to see the sakura there. takato is suppoed to be one of the top 3 places in japan to see the sakura, and i hav eto admit it was darn good.
you can view takato photos by clicking here

and you can see iijima junior high schools by clicking here

the low point from the last week was hurting my back. last thursday i was doing something, no clue what set it off, by by the time i was leaving school it was getting bad, and all evening it got terrible. I was pretty much bed-ridden all night and had trouble moving. The next day i went in feeling decently better but still pretty bad. I was able to ask Kubota-sensei for some help in finding a chiro, and lucky me there was one right across street from school. I went there last thursday and it wasn't exactly as we'd think of a chiro in america, a lot less of the intense back-focusing exercises and stuff, but it helped. I have gone back again on monday, wednesday, and will go again tomorrow. I'm pretty close to 100%, and always feel better after i go.

also a bonus is that w/ my health insurance, it's pretty darn cheap to make the trips as well. Yesterday, i paid a total of $4.50 for my 45 minutes at the chiropractor. :D

also of note is that I'm stil having a terrible time remembering japanese names,a nd it just bugs me to NO FREAKIN' END that It's so hard :( I had the young english teacher promise to help me study them, and to recipricate I'm helping her study for her english teacher's exam this next summer. Which I did yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying affair as I was having a terrible time helping her. For example, she took the practice test and checked her answers, but it just told her what was wrong, and not why it was wrong grammatically, so there were a couple that just left me boggled, and while I could theorize what was wrong, it was not only hard to explain, but seemed correct in the first place to me. that was a bad sign ahha.

I'm going to cook some mexican food tonight with friends, which I'm really really looking forward to. We had meant to do it last sunday but it had been pushed off due to bad scheduling on my part. (whoops!)

I found out i won't be heading to Iijima elem until nearly the end of May now because of, well, i really don't know why. No changes with Nanakubo though.

We're implementing some new curriculum for the elem's, as part of the new national endevor to drum up english study for the elem students, but I'm a little unsure about how it will work (read: completely unsure) and I'm a bit nervous.

i've booked my trip to korea to visit bethany (more like she booked it) and we're working on getting the hokkaido summer trip figured out as well. I booked dad's ticket to Japan last weekend too, which will be fun!

this last little tidbit is just for me, but after 9 seasons, I was finally able to take the perrenially terrible Idaho Vandals football team and turn them into National champtions. I started the dynasty with them last summer and it was pretty satisfying to make it to the top with them :')

Oops, my bad desu.

Yeah, So i've totally biffed and not been putting up lots of posts lately (it's been what, 3 weeks?) so i'll go ahead and drop a 'my bad' right here.

My last post mentioned the high schoolers taking their entrance exams. Since then, not too much has happened.

After the test, the school year was pretty much done, and the following week saw me with nothing to do at school and therefore i spent lots of time studying japanese and reading humor websites under the pretext of studying really hard.

We had closing ceremonies on the 18th of March, a long, serious event that I had a hard time getting much out of because I don't understand japanese. I caught bits n' pieces, but still.

We bid farewell to 5 teachers and the principal at the end of the year as well. Tradition in Asia sees teachers switching schools every 4-6 years (the principal was retiring). Kasuga was one of the teachers who was taking off (the head eng. teacher).

We had an enkai (drinking party) to celebrate the end of the year, which was lots of fun for me because i had 2 eng teachers at my table so I could actually carry on some decent conversation, as well as having fun speaking with one of the young history teachers who really likes english. Gotta love how the japanese use alcohol to grease the wheels of the social construct.

The party culminated with some pretty whacky things: including singing the iijima school song, then making a tunnel for the teachers who are leaving and singing a song to the tune of aud lane syne but with japanese lyrics. I sang with english lyrics.

Then, spontaneously, we decided to toss the kasuga into the air as a congragulations kinda thing. After tossing him, the teachers decided they wanted to throw the principal, who's cries of 'i have a bad back!' were met with laughter. The teachers opted to ignore the warnign and toss him anyway. That was sweet. Then they picked up the teeny secretary who's leaving and she got some serious hangtime.

I was laughing so hard and turned to the young english teacher and said 'man, i HAVE to tell people back home about this, because we never do this type of awesome stuff in america!' to which she replied 'yes, but you have to be careful! someone died from this just a couple days ago!' which made me laugh even harder and elicited an angry slap from my english teacher. 'that's not funny!', 'yes, it is!'

anyway, after some additional talking we figured out that i thought she meant they died mid-toss but she meant the drunk fools dropped the poor schmuck.

My initial plan was to be in Korea from March 27-April 5th (with classes startign the 6th) but i made the mistake of asking if I needed to fill out any forms or anything. Kasuga brought me back this mock sheet that the ALT before Jon made.

So i fill it out, say i'll be at school half the days, and in Korea the other half. the principal says that won't work (mind you, i'd run this by kasuga who said it wouldn't be a problem) because i needed to be there april 1st because of the new teachers rollin' in. so i was told that i was outta luck. particularly becuase the JET contract states that we have to be there on spring break like everyone else, and stare at a wall for the two week break. Awesome.

I was getting pretty exasperated while takling with kasuga about it. the convo went like this:

Me: Kasuga, the calendar I have here says that there's no school from the 18th until April 5th!

Kasuga: Well, that's a calendar for the PTA and Students...

Me: Oh, so is there a special calendar for teachers that I'm supposed to have instead?

K: well since we're civil servants we know that we'll have to be here on break...

Me: I DON'T KNOW THAT! >:(

so long story short, I'm spending my break at school, trying to look like I give a shit.

I had Daniel, a private eng teacher from Auz, stay with me for a few days after his contract was up and he had to move out but didn't have anywhere to go for a couple of days.

Two new english teachers, both women. 5 women teachers and me.

Awesome Day

So yesterday was the test day for high school entrance exams for the 3rd years. They're all back today and seem to be good. I'm happy for them. Two of my students came into my room on Monday and thanked me for all the fun they've had the last year. It was pretty awesome of them. :-)

So today, I find out for my 2nd class of the day we're watching Sister Act 2 (well, they'd started it). So at the beginning of class I say i'm happy we're watching the movie today (but the teacher was like, ah, not yet). So i wasn't sure if they knew or not, but anyway!

The teacher goes, 'I went to Tsutaya last night (the movie rental place) and got a movie!" students get excited, she starts to pull it out, I see the '2' on it and think, 'oh, Sister act 2' I think. The teacher then goes, 'I got TERMINATOR 2' and my face just LIGHTS UP. Since there were more boys than girls in the class, the votes for T2 won and we got to watch the first 50mins of it. AWESOME

Then it got better:
I go down to the break room and my teacher from the last class is in there
and she's talking with some other teachers about how she doesn't think she wants to watch T2 next class because it's so violent.
Then Ushiyama-sensei says outta the blue
'you should do the theme song at the beginning of class now!'
'diwght-sensei should start it, 'dun dun dah dun dun, dun dun dah dun dun' while Kubota-sensei, you can be crouched down and slowly rise up like the terminator!
At this point I just lost it. This was such a brilliant idea.
Then we ended up talking about movies for a bit, and Ushiyama-sensei said, 'you should watch robocop instead' LOL
Finally, as I'm leaving, that same teacher said something about how she's a vegetarian, and another teacher goes 'muri (impossible)' first teacher goes 'why? veggies are delicious!' 2nd teacher, 'i know, but so is meat!' as i was leaving the first teacher was saying something about BBQ sauce for veggies and i lost it again

Hinamatsuri

Today is Hinamatsuri, literally 'doll festival' but also called 'girl's day'. I had one of my teachers ask me at lunch with his class if we have 'girls day' in america. I told him every day was girls day in america. He thought that was hysterical.

Jigokudani Yaenkoen (Snow Monkey Park)

Bethany and I spent wednesday at this awesome part at the north end of my prefecture. It was a very cool place and we had a fantastic time up there. :-) Adorable little buggers.




>

Elementary school

On monday and tuesday after coming back to Iijima, bethany came to school with me. Monday afternoon we were at the elementary school and bethany was awesome enough to take some pictures for me. the day was lots of fun and the kids had a great time too; something that was really pleasing for me. :-)

Bethany's visit to Kyoto

So I woke up early last Friday, ready to catch my bus to Osaka and then transfer to the train on out to the airport. I kept getting woken up every few minutes because it kept sounding like someone was walking outside of my window / house and then it would stop, leaving me a bit confused. I kept sleeping through it, and finally when it was time for me to wake up I realized that it sounded like it was raining outside. I looked out and sure enough, it was, but the reason I kept hearing the walking was because it had snowed several inches before it warmed and switched to rain, so the snow was sliding off my roof and landing outside my window in the puddles making plopping sounds like someone walking. I made my way to the bus stop, and waited for my bus. my pick-up time came and went, and then an additonal 20 minutes, then 30. I was getting worried because the day before, I had told Kasuga I would see him on Monday (since I was taking friday off) and he gave me a weird look and was like (but tomorrow is friday) and I said, 'yes, but I'mgoing to kyoto tomorrow.' since kasuga had purchased my ticket for me, I was worried that he may have gotten the dates mixed up and made my reservation for saturday. I tried calling him but to no avail.

I finally decided I didn't wanna wait any longer (40 minutes past pick-up) and started walking back to my car. I was crossing the bridge back to the parking lot over the highway and saw a bus. I slowed my pace to see if it was potentially my bus, and lo and behold, it started slowing down. the only problem was that I now had to run back to the bus stop, and the road was covered in a goopy soupy mix of snow and rain. By the time I got to the bus I was soaked. LAME.

Several hours later I got into umeda, a stop along the Keihan line I rode when I was at Kansai. I just walked around for a bit and finally found a ticket counter; after looking at it for a couple of minutes i found that there was indeed a train that went out to the airport from there, as well as even having a rapid train, which was the next one that was coming. ( I asked an attendant to find out. :p) I got out to the airport with no problems (minus being 40 minutes late) I found bethany after just a few minutes, but she wasn't too happy about me being late. I can't blame her. I had accidently given her the wrong number to my cell phone so she couldn't get ahold of me either. bwah. :(



We then took the train on back to Kyoto station, and from there walked to our hostel we were staying at, which won an award for best hostel in Asia in 2004. the place was quite nice :-) We dropped our stuff off and went out to go to Kiyomizu-dera temple, so we could see kyoto at nighttime. We ended up hopping on the bus and riding it for a while, but unfortunately it ended up going back to Kyoto station, which left us a bit confused. I asked the driver if it went to kiyomizu, and it turned out we had hopped on 206 instead of 208. GAH. We got on 208 at kyoto station finally and rode it out to kiyomizu, and walked up the hill. Everything was dark though so it was kinda creepy. We got tot he top and found out it had been closed since 6 (it was about 7:15). DOUBLE BAH. So we went back. We stopped at a restaurant not too far from the hostel but they had an hour wait, so then we proceeded to a beef bowl place across the street and got some food to take home. the food was very delish and we just had a nice evening inside.



the next day we went to Fushimi-inari to meet up with my friend Alberto who lived in my seminar house when I was at Kansai Gaidai. Neither of us had been to Fushimi inari before. Inari's are these orange gates that are guarded by fox deities.


The place at Fushimi is famous because it allows local businesses to purchase Inari's so you end up having thousands of these things along numerous paths that go through the entire park. It leads to some gorgeous views:



After spending several hours there, the three of us tried to go to Kinkakuji temple, but again, it was closed early (stupid winter in Japan), so then we proceeded to find a Kappa-zushi place to eat at (converyer belt sushi, yum!)

Dinner pretty much rounded out our day, and from there we bid alberto goodbye and went back to the hostel.

EARTHQUAKE

I totally forgot to mention this! We had a very minor earthquake this morning, but it was strong enough for me to actually feel it! I was just drifting back off to sleep this morning when i felt a rumble, i kinda got bucked up in my bed (like i was in a bumpy car) and i hear several of my doors slam like they do when they move sideways against the ruts they're in. it then continued lightly and barely perceptible for another 10-20 seconds, and then was gone. sweet!

meeting time = japanese practice

So there's another meeting right now, and while my japanese is pretty bad, i'm pretty sure that they're talking about the performance of individual students to everyone. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a 'headsup, this student will need support in the future' or if its about the 3rd years who are getting ready to take their entrance exam to high school or what. Ay yi yi.

on the bright side, i've gotten to work on my japanese pretty much all day. good, i needed it.

I was reading sentences to help students study for their test tomorrow, and one of the sentences came from one of the book's dialogues about E.T. and the sentence was "they flew as high as birds" or something like that and I ended up saying "as high as a kite"....Freudian slip?

also I've been noticing some stuff after watching several different anime shows. If you are willing to say that anime can give you a look into japanese cultural views because it's not as constricted as other shows because it's animated and often off the wall, well then...yikes.

Since WWII most Japanese have become pacifists, which makes sense having had two nukes dropped on you have millions of young men dead in china and asia. On top of that, nukes often play into the...subconscious of japanese popular culture, often randomly making appearances in anime for some sort of disaster. But furthermore, oftentimes the USA is portrayed as some belligerent bully. One show I finished up had the USA's military working in conjunction with a large corporation spreading a virus around the world that the USA had the antidote to so it make money / gain influence. Another show just skipped the pretensions and just chose to be xenophobic by having Britain and America join together with other english nations, for the 'New Empire of Brittanica' and conquer the world, subjugating japan and renaming it Sector 8. WTF? For a nation that's so international, it seems pretty weird to have such negative images. I guess the anime creators just got lazy and fell back on easy prey: big scary pondering America.

yesterday one of the first year classes studied how to write in cursive; and exercise I found superfluous. It was really difficult for the students, and the teacher even mentioned that they'd really only do it for signing their name. hell, I haven't used cursive in over a decade, once the teacher's told us it wasn't mandatory anymore. Oh computers, what a lifesaver you are.

Tomorrow is a test day, so basically I have to come to school and I have no classes all day. I wish I could take a holiday for it since I don't have ANYTHING to do, but I don't wanna burn one of my 20. Even worse is that had it been ok, I could have just gone to kyoto a day early. Sigh.

On the bright side I've been getting lots of work done in regards to studying japanese. :-)

woke up this morning: 39F in the rooms that aren't my living room. Yowza.

weirdest dessert ever at lunch today: almond chips and dried fish. i'll snag a picture tomorrow. just left me a bit dazed.

I was pretty tired today at work, and I'm not really sure why.

I played a trivia game today with some of the students, it went well and was lots of fun.

additional random thoughts

japanese don't make hamburgers for themselves, or at least now how I make them. My poor spatula can't squeeze the grease outta the meat, it just bends. weak spatula or AWESOME BURGER??

i wore blue jeans to school for the first time today. i did not receive any bad looks. i think i'll do it only on the days i'm going to the elementary schools

i got into a bit of a row with kasuga at the end of last week becuase i wanted to stay at a ryokan (japanese style hotel) but the ones i had looked at were already booked. The one additional one i had i had the option of going to was also booked, so kasuga went ahead and called another one for me. he had mentioned that they are expensive (more than a hotel, which i knew) and the new one he ended up calling did have room. I asked him the price, and he said 12400 yen (~130$)...per person.....per night. I was like, kasuga, i can't afford that, i'm sorry. and he got a bit exasperated saying 'i told you they were expensive!' I just apologized but I wanted to say "if someone said they wanted to buy a new car would you automatically suggest a ferrari?" bleh. lol.

I got caught buying a PSP game at the electronics store on saturday. i also picked up an inverter so i can listen to music in my car now. yay!

season 2 of the wire is awesome. I'm really enjoying it. I also saw the pilot of battlestar galatica, also a great show. good to have lots of TV to watch.

Celebrating 2669 years of uninterrupted lineage!

Today was National Founders Day, the day that the mythical first emperor of Japan was crowned in 660 b.c. I celebrated it by waking up late, having Indian food for lunch and bowling. Awesome.

I also found out I was accepted to the University of Maryland's Master of Public Policy program. Now I have to decide if I want to defer or not. Wah!

Found this today, Calvin & Hobbes comic that nailed the current bailout issues on the head, 15 years ago.

also, this is my car :-D

whee skype!

oh, I also had meant to mention these things:

1, with the advanced english 3rd years on friday, one of the students was talking about how one of the students in her class 'has the body of a boy but the heart of a girl. his nickname is pink-chan, and he's-' at which point kasuga jumps in and goes 'a gay!' then I had to field another couple of questions about homosexuality in america, which of course I can't really speak about. It's happened one other time with kasuga and I always try and make it known that I don't think it's a big deal and do what I can't to show that I have no problems with homosexuality in the hopes that at least some of the students can see it. it still kinda boggles my mind that on one hand japan can have a very negative view of it in general while a whole genre of manga targeting 14 year old girls is about young boys who become lovers (or at least are over-emotional about each other to the point of it appearing to be romantic)

the other thing is that I finally set my skype options to 'skype me' so random people could talk to me. Just late this last week a chinese man who teaches chinese to english speakers (and vice versa i believe) added me. On friday after work I did a vid chat with him and some of his students and showed them part of my apartment and talked with them. That was really fun and cool. the guy seems nice enough but the deficencies in his english (his english is good, just not flawless) makes me go 'huh?' sometimes at trying to figure out exactly what he's trying to communicate. But it's fun!

PICTURE UNRELATED

Whew! What a hectic week it's been!

Friday was a good day though, and this weekend was really nice, if uneventful.

So Friday, I had been working on coming up with an idea for another activity / game to do with the most advanced 3rd years. I incidently had read an article in the Daily Yomiyuri the day before where readers had written in and said how they used the paper to help teach english. I had read how one of the readers had his students get into teams and would call out a word or describe a picture and have the students search the papers for it. That worked really well and the students had a great time doing it. :-)

In the afternoon at nanakubo elementary I played a card game with the students where they could practice their numbers. The students loved it and had a great time. Going back to the teacher's room they teachers said that they could hear the students laughing all the way over there.

The weekend was uneventful then, but I did have some fun driving around the area here and finding some beautiful views. Good stuff. :-)

additional snippets

I saw the new 007 movie last night. It was subtitled in Japanese so I got to get the real experience of it. It was enjoyable, for sure. I also dug the throwback to goldfinger's eye candy lady covered in gold only souped up for the 21st century - the chick coated in crude. sexy. almost made the 20$ ticket worth it. :P

unfortunately, the economic downturn has been hitting japan as well. As in most countries, the ethnic minorities are hit first, resulting in all three brazilian students having to leave becuase their families are returning to Brazil. The last one had her going away party on Monday. :(

In addition, the brazilian school we had visited a couple of weeks ago is going to be hitting really hard times, having already lost 50% of it's students, and its expectin got shrink further.

I found out yesterday that JET's are eligable to recieve a stipend check as part of the economic stimulus plan here in Japan. yay.

I've been playing several games lately with the students for classes, and while it's been a bit of a whirlwind trying to come up with them, things have gone well and it's been lots of fun.

I got to have kappa-zushi for the first time last night - sushi on the conveyer belts, with the awesome additional bonus of having the option of ordering it and having it delivered on miniature bullet-trains to our seat. pretty much the coolest thing ever.

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.

Xi’An – Day 2

We slept in for a bit and then went to get our free breakfast at the hotel. It was actually pretty nice: scrambled eggs, steamed buns, weird Chinese sausages, fried cabbage, etc. It was pretty good for the price we paid for our room. The Xi’An City Center Hotel was really worth the bang for the buck! After breakfast we relaxed a bit longer in our room before checking out at noon. Today was just as hazy and polluted as the day before (yuck!). We mailed off some postcards and got to hear “P.I.M.P.” blaring from the post office main square – nice, China! We also peeked at the Bell Tower which is right next to our hotel, but there really wasn’t anything to see, especially with all the pollution. So we then caught bus 609, as recommended by our hotel, to the Xi’An History Museum. Well, our hotel didn’t tell us that the bus actually didn’t pass right by the museum. Lucky for us, we used our heads (and our guidebook map) and picked up from the few English signs in the city that we wouldn’t be going directly past the museum. So, instead we got off at the Great Goose Pagoda area. This was inside a Buddhist Temple complex. We paid the entrance fee and moseyed around for a bit. We saw the large pagoda, which I think was 15 stories tall?, but didn’t pay the extra fee to go up it. After walking around for a bit we navigated our way over towards the history museum. We stopped for lunch along the way, getting a pork and mushroom dish and, our new signature dish, sweet and sour chicken. We also got to see some dude working on a helluva mess of power lines. His buddy held a ladder while he climbed up onto the power lines, which were all tangled and knotted and looped. We couldn’t believe the mess they were! And here was this guy scooting along, climbing over and through these wires. He must have had some balls! Anyway, we crossed the street and headed into museum. There was a special line for foreigners at the ticket booth, so we grudgingly commented to each other that we would probably have to pay double the entrance fee. Lo and behold though, it ended up being free for us after we showed them our passports. The museum itself was better than we had expected, although had only a small fraction of their 370,000 piece collection on display. Nevertheless, there was a substantial amount of items, particularly some great collections from early Chinese dynasties, since Xi’an was the capital for nearly a millennium. The early jade works, pottery, and bronze works were all fantastic. Some of it extended all the way back to the Shang Dyanasty (16-11 cent. B.C.) We finished up not long before closing time and returned to our hotel where we picked up our luggage and took the Bus to the station. The place was absolutely swamped. This was still several weeks out of the Chinese New Year, but already there are tons of people trying so hard to obtain tickets home (the nearly 250 million migrant workers in the large cities). We ended up in line for our train and struck up a conversation with a couple from Australia who were in the midst of a two month trip from the UK back home to Australia. They had taken some time on the Trans-Siberian railroad and highly recommended it to us. We ended up boarding late due to the fact that our train was just stopping in Xi’an on its way from Lhasa to Shanghai, a trip of three days. Yuck. The car we were staying in also had two guys who, we believe, had been riding since Lhasa. They seemed to have been struck with some cabin fever, and I can’t say I blame them. Our train took off and we made our way to Shanghai.

Xi’an – Terra-cotta Army

We arrived bright and early at 7 am this morning in Xi’an. It was still pre-dawn here; China uses one time zone, and it’s as wide as the continental US. Oops. Guess those silly ignorant peasants can’t handle it. If you ask me, it’s just further insult to injury for poor Tibet, because that means it won’t get light until about 10am in winter and dark until after midnight in the summer out there in Lhasa. Yuck. We looked around for a taxi again this morning, yet AGAIN having issues getting a taxi. We finally got an offer for 40 yuan, which is only 7 bucks. Considering that our trip out to the summer palace was about 30 for 4km or so, this seemed reasonable for a 6km trip. We also had a bit of a problem spotting our hotel, as the entrance to the lobby was along the side in a small alley despite having a big sign out front along the main road.
We checked in, then went out to get our tickets to Shanghai. We had some initial problems finding the ticket place, but after asking a guard he showed us to the line that was really long. Awesome, while waiting in line, Bethany pulled some more cash out and then we got our tickets. Next up we took the bus for the first time; returning to the station and then taking a bus out to the Terra-cotta army- 15km outside of town. The trip took a while out there, but it was no problem.
The place was pretty devoid of people, being a regular Monday during the off season. Gauging by all the gates and stuff we saw, this place must just be swarming with people during the summer. There is also a ton of tourist shops set up as well as food stalls. We were both pretty hungry by this point, our last meal being about 20 hours prior and a quick one at that. We ended up getting three dishes that were piping hot (as we were the only people there) and fairly reasonably priced considering this place was obviously geared towards tourists.
Afterwards we made our way in, having paid the killer entrance fee of just over $10 each. (only some sarcasm here :P) We entered the main pit first; it’s the largest and makes the most dramatic impression. Having done a project on this back in May, its worth mentioning that this gigantic pit is a tiny blip on the whole complex that was built by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in ~230 B.C. (it was an ongoing process that took over 30 years) Still, the silent army that greets you upon entering is still breathtaking. We walked around the perimeter, noting that further back you can see the state they were found in: toppled, broken, fused with the packed earth surrounding them. It’s a meticulous and painstaking job to restore these to their original state. We also visited two other excavated pits, some with archers, cavalry and the like. There was also an exhibition hall where we could see them up closer; as well as the two ½ size bronze chariots that were built (at least its thought) to shepherd the emperor around his complex and to the afterlife to converse with the gods. We then made our way out and caught a bus back to the rail station. This bus took a longer and different path back – giving us a much clearer view of what Xi’an is really like. A marvelous blend of old and new. Dusty and green. There are huge stretches of brick buildings being torn down, rubble strewn everywhere; something out of a post-apocalyptic book. The older people wear thick dusty army jackets; the young wear nike apparel. I saw a man walking through rubble kicking a brick – while talking on a cell phone. We passed a corner that had brown rubble in every direction for over 100 yards – a bright blue sign on the corner said “Northwest Nuclear Research Facility”; I couldn’t help but think ‘would it look any different if something went terribly wrong? Or did it already?’ We got back to the station finally, took a bus to our hotel, and have been relaxing since then. I’ve had the pleasure of spending the last several hours catching up on the last three days of adventures finally being blogged about. :-P

Lama temple and Dong Miao

Our last day in Beijing, we woke up late, but again were woken up around 6:15 by people yelling in the main area of the hotel. There is absolutely no sense of common courtesy here (although I did have one guy let me go ahead of him this very night at the train station, so let’s just say it’s really rare.) We got off at the Lama Temple station, walked out, and looked around for several minutes trying to find it to no avail. Then we started going back towards the subway and realized that the map we had been standing at looking for it was in the shadow of one of the towers for the temple. Hah. We proceeded to walk along the outside for several hundred meters as the main entrance is actually along the west side and we had come out along the north. The Lama temple is the largest temple complex remaining in China, and is devoted to Tibetan Buddhism (after the Qing emperors brought back Buddhism, they often invited Buddhist scholars to Beijing, this temple was converted to a Lamasary in 1744 after one such visit. There were lots of smaller temples within the complex, and it was really interesting to see people praying, considering the official stance of China is that everyone is atheist. It was also nice to smell lots of the incense they were burning at the altars, although some places inside didn’t allow them to burn it, so several times we caught the priests working there carrying out armfuls of incense and setting it into the lighting pits to let it burn. There was also an exhibition set near the back that had tons of very interesting gold/copper/silver/bronze statues that were all very intricate. Unfortunately, it left us with a lot of questions about Buddhist art. The best part though was the 55 ft. tall Buddha carving made from a single block of sandalwood. The entry way into the temple it’s in has a low entrance and ceiling and you can just see the feet as your eyes adjust; by the time you realize how big the base of this thing is, you’re walking in and the room opens up and lets you look all the way to the ceiling. It’s simply magnificent.
Afterwards we spent some time attempting to find Kong Miao, or Confucius temple- the largest for him outside of his hometown (so important it’s the special religious building for Confucianism in Civilization 4!) The place was located very close to the Lama temple and off a neat little shopping street, and was pleasantly calm inside. It also had nearly 200 large stone stelae that had the names of those who passed the (ridiculously difficult) imperial service examination that was held every three years. There weren’t too many names on them. :-P The area was neat to see although wasn’t particularly outstanding in any way. If anything, the best part was the exhibit on Confucius inside. Now, I will preface this by saying that Confucius was pretty much one of the most influential philosophers of all time and instrumental to creating Chinese and therefore Asian culture as we know it. In fact, he even coined the golden rule; 500 years before the birth of Christ. Nevertheless, this exhibit was over and above in its regard for Confucius and the claims about him. To name a few:
• Confucius was a democrat
• The modern educational pedagogy is based on Confucius’ teachings
• Japan and Korea’s culture stems solely from Confucianism
• Confucius was responsible for the industrial revolution, French revolution, and the enlightenment period
• Confucius founded the first public school ever. (this may be true)
• Confucius was the first human to harness fire, driving away the darkness so mankind could finally step into the light. (Ok, I made this one up)
Basically, Confucius was responsible for pretty much any major invention and important advance in human history; ever. The exhibit ended with pretty much any little thing that was related to Confucius in any way being mentioned in the news in the last 30 years, as if the exhibit designer had realized he didn’t have enough to fill the rest of the exhibit and spent the last night before the project was due frantically searching for information on the internet. There were whole 10ft long, 6ft high displays devoted to such trivial things as ‘Former Reagan aide mentions Confucius in speech’ or something to that effect. Or Nobel scientists say that we must look back to Confucius for the 21st century; in fact, I think that article was mentioned twice. Also, Confucius was ranked as the 5th most influential person in history in some book written in what appeared to be 1955 judging by the cover of the book they had scanned for the exhibit. Pretty bleary stuff.
After Kong Miao, we made our way back to our hotel for the last time. We got our suitcases which we had left there, thanked Jessie, the English speaking lady who had helped us out with everything and left. We stopped one last time for the absolutely delicious sweet and sour pork and then made our way to the military museum stop. We noticed that there were several other people with their suitcases, so we had a good feeling that we were on the right track. We then walked to Beijing West station to catch our train to Xi’an. It was a decent walk and was a bit chilly out, but nothing terrible. Once at the station, we had to only wait about 20 minutes before we boarded the train. We noticed that the original train we had wanted to take to Xi’an, but didn’t because we were told it didn’t have sleeping cars, was scheduled to leave later that night and we seriously doubted that a train leaving that late didn’t have them, but oh well. We had wanted it because the ‘Z’ class overnight trains are of better quality. The room we had had four bunks in it and was pretty small. We had opted for the upper bunks because it was cheaper. We kinda regretted the decision (and will be on the lower bunks to Shanghai) but it wasn’t terrible. It’s just that there was a small foothold and that was it to get up. We shared our cabin with an old husband and wife couple who were pretty cute (according to Bethany, who thinks anyone over the age of 60 is just adorable). The train ride wasn’t particularly bad, our beds had nice comforters, but it had a really loud speaker that we were able to block pretty well with our luggage. I slept pretty well, but Bethany had some problems because of the train being really loud and squeaky.

Temple of Heaven and Shopping street.

We slept in nice and late today, enjoying the rest minus the loud people who were waking us up early. Our hotel’s walls are paper thin or something, because we heard them plain as day and it was pretty aggravating, although when the heater was on it helped drown them out a bit. We left and got out near Tiananmen station although on an alternate line. Our first stop was a shopping street that starts by heading straight south of Tiananmen. The street was pretty recently renovated, and had two trolleys moving at a snails pace back and forth. We walked along it for a bit, then cut down the shopping street, snagging some meat on a stick for lunch (three sticks for 10 yuan, aka 1.50$, not a bad deal huh? :P) We walked along this for a while, looking into several little shops, but not finding anything particularly interesting. We looked through several tea shop’s selection of tea sets, but they were pretty far overpriced for the quality. We did end up settling on getting a Chinese style lantern that wasn’t particularly exceptional but was pretty cheap, so that was fine for us. We also got some neat cut-out paper art as well. These were really quite neat, despite the person selling it to us trying to say they were the four seasons, even though the characters were quite obviously not for the seasons. But we still liked them very much and ended up getting them. That rounded out our time on the shopping street, and we snagged some candied apples and strawberries on our way out as we looked for our next stop; the underground city. The city was ordered to be built by Mao during the Sino-Soviet rift during the 60’s. While there are several entrences, we were trying to find the most visible, unfortunately, it was well hidden, the streets weren’t marked well either, and it looked like we had to make our way through some rather rougher areas of town to get to it.
We decided that we weren’t particularly in the mood for dealing with that, so we just kept going down the street we were on and then doubled back to get to the main street that we follow south to get to the Tian Tan (aka Temple of Heaven, a bit of a misnomer). The walk there was fairly long, as the street directly south had actually been at an angle so we ended up having to go back east to get to the north gate. That added quite a bit of time to the walk, but we were pretty happy by the time we got there. We entered at the North end, with the complex being situated along a North-South axis as its major theme. So we actually ended up starting at the place that the Emperor ended his trip, but that was fine. The north end had the hall of heavenly prayers for good harvests, the building most commonly associated as the ‘Temple of Heaven’. This main building is 125 ft tall, toped with a golden finial, and was built without using a single nail. Pretty darn impressive. We then moved south along the Red Step Bridge, a bridge that sits about 10 feet above the ground and is the central walkway along the entire complex. In the very center of this brick road is a smooth marble path that the Emperor used; a direct line from Qinian Dian at the northern end and the Marble Platform at the southern end. After we reached the southern end’s marble platform, we began to walk around the outer areas of the complex, which had long walkways and many cypress trees, some over 400 years old. While walking along the outer section, we noticed that some people up ahead were stopped and looking back into the woods. Once we got up there, we saw why, there was a white cat nestled down in the long grass stalking some birds. Just after we got there it made it’s move, sprinting for them and jumping up, flaying it’s legs as it attempted to snag all four birds instead of one; ending up with none. It was pretty awesome, particularly as it looked around after it’s attempt and noticed that there were a dozen people looking at it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat blush before, but that’s about the closest I’ll ever see. We finished up and made our way out of the complex and back towards home, stopping at the restaurant near our station with the really delicious sweet and sour pork (and the dumplings we had were also really good.)