On the Way Out...

Wow, crap, it's been awhile since I posted! Errh, in my own defense however, I have been busy with other matters. Look, I finally finished another video! It's called Episode 3, but really, it's more of a mini-episode. Catch it here.



It's footage I shot of a hike that a bunch of us did back in August. Yeah, August. My current editing speed is about a minute a month, which is beyond pitiful, and into the realm of not even trying. But I have been filming quite a bit, and I promise that, come January, and the students being on break, I WILL get a little more done.

Well, with the self guilt out of the way, why don't I update everyone on what's been going on? Basically, since my last post, and with the exception of last week, I've been doing a ton of traveling.

The first weekend in December, I headed to Sapporo on Saturday, the 1st, for the Sapporo Mid-Year Conference. This once-a-year business trip is paid for by the Board of Education, and while the seminars range from moronic to useful, it's simply a great way to catch up with friends who don't live close to me. The parties were off the wall, (including the trippy karaoke bar pictured) and by the time I returned on Tuesday, I was exhausted. The best part of the trip however, was that both my Junior High Japanese Teachers of English, and the Elementary teachers came as well. 8 in all came with me, which was very unusual, as there were only about 40 Japanese teachers from all of Hokkaido invited, the vast majority from Sapporo. I was really proud to see my teachers really going at it, trying their hardest to understand all the English around them! And of course, it was a lot of fun going out in the big city with them.

The weekend after was another Musical rehearsal weekend, this time in the Southwestern town of Toyako. Toyako is quite famous for it's hot springs, as well as it's volcanoes. One mountain near the town is called "Showshinzan" because it erupted out of a farmer's field fifty years ago. We went to it, and smoke was boiling from the top. (Video coming soon.) Progress on the musical has been slow, and our lack of a pianist to play the parts is really REALLY frustrating, but I think we are still making progress. Actually, one of my Junior High School teachers has said he may be able to play the parts for a recording, and may even be able to come to the rehearsals, which has really lifted my spirits a lot.

School has been normal and routine, if occasionally frustrating, which is pretty much par for the course. Most of my classes are working on long term projects right now, and are not learning new grammar etc. so I have very little to do inside or outside of classes. This has been perfect, because I've spent most of the time preparing for my trip to Thailand, and getting Christmas stuff in order. I left a bunch of stuff, (like my transportation in Thailand) to the very last minute, so I was relieved today when it all finally came together. From Bangkok, I take an all-night bus, then a high speed ferry for 6 hours, then a jeep through the jungle for an hour, or a Thai long-boat around the coast of the island for 1 hr, so it should be quite the adventure. I'm really looking forward to it, and have already kind of checked out from my work responsibilities, but that's also partly because I just have so much other stuff going on right now! I'm really trying to prep a lot of the musical stuff for when I get back in January, I'm thinking about running for the Hokkaido JET President's Council, I've still got Squash going on, Gregory wants me to take up Kyuudo, or Japanese Archery, I really REALLY need to buy a snowboard and hit the slopes, and my Adult Conversation classes start at the end of next month! Busy times in Japan...but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Anyways, last weekend was supposed to offer a bit of rest and relaxation, as I wasn't travelling, but it ended being just as busy as any other. On Friday I was finally able to convince the elementary school JTE's to go out for a night. (Several of them are pictured in the top picture, which was taken at our party in Sapporo.) We were supposed to go to Torisei, the local fried chicken, sushi, beer etc. izakaya in town, but it was packed with companies having their "Bonenkai" or "Year-Forgetting-Party." The schools are having them too, but unfortunately I will miss them while I am in Thailand. On Saturday I went for one of my very rare shopping trips to Obihiro, in order to pick up Christmas presents for my family. I failed my saving throw vs. shiny! however and was literally FORCED to pick up a new digital camera. It's a Canon IXY 10, and is quite purty, quite good, and very very small (It's about the size of a pack of playing cards.) It's 7.1Megapixels, and I bought two 2gig SD cards for it, ($15 each, each one hold 700 pictures) and the whole package cost me less than $280....It's at a very nearly commodity price point, and it's a really awesome and small camera, far, far better than my measly 2 megapixel cell phone camera. So all the pictures after this point were taken on it.

Saturday night was especially busy, as I had two different parties in different towns to attend. First up was my Squash Bonenkai, at the Western (All-you-can-eat-barbeque-with-candy-and-sushi-and-ice-cream-and-all-you-can-drink-beer) in Otofuke. Don't believe for a second that Japan is a land of rice, and fish and healthy diets all the time. :D It was quite delicious, but wrapped up around 9 pm, when Chris picked me up to drive back to Shikaoi, for another "Pure-Malt" party.

These, put on the by the Pure Malt center in town, are designed to bring the 20-something girls who stay at the center together with the farmers of Shikaoi. It sounds weird I know, but what ends up coming out of all this is a great, nowhere-else-in-japan party, with live DJ's and Bands, an incredibly cheap all-night all-you-can-drink/eat (less than $10), and more young people then I knew even existed in Shikaoi. I rolled out of there around 2AM, and stumbled home early, because I had to wake up at 8AM the next morning.

Sunday, I had a special squash day. I originally thought it was a tournament, but it turned out to be an open-house for the club, so we had a lot of first-timers there. (Video Soon!) I didn't get to play as much as I had hoped too, but overall it was still a fun time. I got to play the club-founder (an ex-army officer with great English) in a match twice, beating him twice, and so winning the bet of "two beer."

And of course, Sunday night, I went to the Onsen with Chris which has become a bit of a weekly thing. Sunday is actually perfect, because nothing is going on, and I can sit in the hot water, rest, and get ready for the next week. I made great plans to clean my house, etc, none of which I've followed through on. Meh, that's what January is for!

Have a Good New Years!

Strange Times

This week, time has seemed...out-of-sync. That's really the best way to describe it. Perhaps a change is coming, I'm not really sure.

This weekend I had Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, which was a holiday here in Japan. It's kind of a made up holiday, but nonetheless, it was nice to have it off. Saturday I focused on my squash game, playing quite hard for 4.5 hours, before going out with a friend from town on Saturday night. Sunday, as usual, was a day for recovery. I got up late, had a delicious bowl of Ramen in Shimizu with Chris, and then we headed to the nearest onsen, (it's actually quite a nice one.) Afterwards, we watched the new Battlestar Galactica and headed home.

As I was leaving his house, I mentioned that I felt...weird. It's hard to explain, but my best explanation is that the temporality of the moment was displaced, or compressed. What I mean by that is, I felt placed out of time, or as I said on Sunday, "The past is occuring in the present." It may sound crazy, but that's what it felt like!

This weird feeling has persisted throughout the week, and seems to have had other effects. My routine, which had become pretty stable, has been completely shot this week. I stayed up far too late reading on Monday night, and also did a lot of messaging and Japanese studying, which for me, is unusual. Tuesday I was exhausted, and completely unmotivated, which isn't terribly surprising, but I also had this very weird feeling throughout the evening, much like my feeling on Sunday night, a sense of things, occurring out of order.

On Wednesday, this feeling only increased. I was still tired, and so I went home early, around 4:15. (Technically I should have gone to the Board of Education after school, but they never check.) I decided to have a nap before playing squash, but I was tired enough that I slept till 9pm. I had strange dreams, which took part not in the past, or the future, or in some strange dreamtime, but completely in the present. Sometimes, when you wake up, your disorientated for a second, perhaps you're unsure of where you are, but this time it took me literally minutes to figure out where I was and what was going on. I could have sworn I'd gotten on a plane a week ago and travelled back to Canada. It was a disconcerting feeling, and I was upset that I'd missed squash, but I decided to take it easy, and ended up going back to sleep a couple hours later.

Basically, the whole week has felt weird, I haven't been able to get anything done, (and the BoE has been extremely aggravating) and I've felt as if I'm waiting for some sort of change to happen, as if something big is going to happen soon. Who knows, but it's been....


weird.

Good vibes in the strangest places

So I've been kind of down the last couple days, but tonight everything is looking up. It's amazing what a good supper, (spaghetti with garlic bread and salad, all homemade) and (strangely) bad reality TV (the amazing race) will do to lift one's spirits.

And someone in Shikaoi finally messaged me back. :D

Retrospective Part 2

We'll return you to your regularly scheduled programming (or lack thereof, what with the writer's strike in Hollywood and my own video-editing negligence) in a moment, but first, a quick rundown of the last couple weeks for me here in Shikaoi.

Life is dull. November has for many years now been my least favourite month, and this one, despite being located on the wind-swept plains of a frozen and foreign island, proved no less tiresome. The best word to describe the 11th month is neutral, or if you prefer, gray. The sky is gray. The ground is gray. The temperature is grey. My mood is grey. November lacks the crispness of autumn and the purity of winter. It's cold, but without the benefits of the cold, like snow and snowboarding. It's a month of transition, which means it's dirty and off-putting, but it's even worse than March because it lacks the promise of new warmth that wafts through the spring air. I hate November with a special passion.

At the same time, I've also stumbled onto my JET-scheduled culture shock. Back in the handbooks they gave us in August, it claimed that between 6-12 weeks we'd get our real culture shock. Not the "wow Japan is so crazy and wonderful" culture shock, but the "why the fuck can't I find whole wheat bread?" kind of culture shock. Of course, I thought to myself that it wouldn't be a problem for me, but right on schedule I've been going through it the last couple weeks. The biggest trigger for it has been my feeling of isolation these past couple weeks. For whatever reason, the people in my town that I used to hang out with just haven't been around. I'd be paranoid if I thought they were avoiding me, but it certainly seems odd. I had a bad experience with a teacher not telling me about an event I was supposed to go to, and myself consequently looking like a complete fool at a bar in town, before getting sworn at by one of my English teachers, so I guess it's just a feeling of getting a little burned with cultural miscommunication. What seems to happen with a lot of JET's is that they either integrate into their community, or they don't quite make it, and retreat into the understanding circle of foreigners in their area. I'm not at all bashing hanging out with foreigners, god knows, without them I wouldn't still be sane, but I feel as if I've lost the balance I used to have. I definitely feel like I've been sliding towards Option #2, and I think it's about time I did something about it. Perhaps that's too harsh an assesment, but I've just grown tired of messaging people in Japanese and never getting a response!

So my game plan for the next few weeks is to have fun in my area with some of my old friends, enjoy the 30cm of snow we just got, and figure out a way to pay for all the things I want to do in the next few months.

At this point I don't actually feel like writing up a couple retrospective points, so look for those in the future!

3 Month Retrospective Part 1 of ?

Your shitting me right? I've been here a Quarter of a Year?! I realized this yesterday as I was eating the lunch made for me by my 8th Graders in Home-Ecc class, and it just blew my mind. I could swear that I've been here, perhaps a month, at most.

I guess this isn't really all that different than the timewarped university period. (4 years=2 years) but the ratio seems to be skewing evermore in my disfavour. At this rate by the time I'm 25 years will be passing by in daily chunks, which is a scary thought. And I can't claim that "being busy makes the time fly" as I've been less busy than I was in University, although I can already feel a certain restlessness growing itchily inside of me, telling to hurry and get things done. Maybe next week...

So I thought I'd go back over some the big dreams, assumptions etc. that I had before coming here and compare them with the way things really are. Of course, lots of bubbles get popped when coming to a new and exciting place, that's inevitable. But I still think it 's interesting to see just how things are different.

1. Schools
I was a little better informed than most people on this regard. I knew that the old myth about the impressiveness of Japanese schools was a complete load. I knew that the level of English was likely to be extremely low, and most students wouldn't have a lot of motivation to learn it. As with most things, the reality is somewhere in the middle. In every class I seem to have a few students who desperately want to learn English, (one girl moved from Sapporo to Shikaoi, and has been living by herself for 3 years so that she could take part in the Gr. 10 trip to Canada!) a majority of apathetic students with generally dismal English skills, and a few troublemakers. Pretty standard I guess. I haven't had any of the horror stories that I've heard from friends, but none of the huge successes either. The High School is perhaps the most surprising for me. The level of delinquency is certainly low, although that probably has a much to do with its rural location as the students themselves. As well, since High School is not mandatory, perhaps the worst students drop out. The level of English that the students possess is fascinating. While a very few continue to improve, most seem to get noticeably worse in High School. My Gr.7's have the highest level of English overall, my Gr.12's the lowest.

2. My House

Sorry to disappoint, but its not particularly "Japanese," apart from a few quirks. It's actually quit similar to my place in Montreal, with hardwood floors, (no tatami) and good insulation. The kitchen sometimes feels lacking in counter space, but that's not exactly the end of the world. I do have a Japanese style bath tub, which is quite deep, but I don't use it much as it is also very small in width and length. Heating is also typically Japanese, as it uses a kerosene heater supplied from an outdoor tank. All in all, it's decent, but small. But I guess that saves on heating!

More to come soon!...

Slowdown

It's interesting how the faster the time flies, the slower my blog posts get. Either some sort of arcane inverse temporality is at play here, or maybe it's simply all to easy to let the blog slide when other things demand your attention. I could have sworn it was just a week ago that I last posted, but my calendar informs me that it was two weeks.

If I was pressed to summarize those last two weeks, I would be in great danger, as they have blended together more than any others. Mostly, this is because I taught almost no classes. The second week of October was Fall break for my Junior High Students, and my 10th Graders were on their trip to Canada. (Their first day back at school was today and they were definitely more excited and genki then normal!) I spent the majority of my time during the week literally passing the time, both at work and at home. I listened to good new music, read, basically did anything but something productive. I spent the weekends partying, first in Obihiro, and last weekend in Tomakomai for the HAJET Fall meeting.

But forget all that, that's not what I want to talk about today. Twice in the past week I have been awestruck, (and I mean that word in it's original, literal connotation,) by the astonishing beauty of the land in which I live. It's not that it looks "oriental" or "japanese" or any one thing in particular.

Somehow, nature just comes together to consistently create jawdropping vistas; infinitely fractal clouds suffused with inner light, cascading verdant greenery which spills over ravines and gullies into crystalline mountain lakes, mountains which march off into the foggy distance-not terrifying in their soaring heights like the rockies-but inviting, with the promise of a thousand different intricacies. With the coming of autumn, the cold air has set in motion many changes. The skies, which were before hazy with summer humidity, are now clear, and for the first time last Thursday, as I was driving to judge an English Contest along a ridgeline farm road, I clearly caught sight of the Daisetzuan's for the first time, their peaks capped with the season's first snow. I had to stop and just stare for a minute, wishing I had had the foresight to bring my camera with me. (It now has a new home in my trunk, rather than in my house.) Now that the tree's have exploded in riotous colour, now that the harvest is being reaped in, now that the countryside is literally changing before my eyes, it is clear to see. Fall in Hokkaido is indescribably beautiful.

View Larger Map

As I drove home from Tomakomai yesterday I was once again struck by the beauty of the nature around me. The wind was blowing hard, and most of the trees where at their absolute peak of colour. I was driving Trina home as well, but she was sleeping, so I couldn't resist pulling out my cellphone and snapping off a few shots. They by no means do the landscape justice, but after looking at them, I almost like their hazy, grainy quality. It's not too far from a Lomo in fact, which I guess is high praise. The luminous and indistinct nature of the cellphone camera gives the shots an almost dreamlike quality, which is certainly how I felt yesterday.

These first 4 shots were taken as I drove through the Hidaka mountain range, which forms the Southeastern spine of Hokkaido. (The first "Pictures" placemark on the map.) This is the same road I take to Sapporo, and is a gorgeous drive, with bridge after bridge soaring over giant, forested ravines. As we made our over the mountain range and into the Tokachi farm plain the views were simply spectacular. The wind had already ripped all the leaves of the trees here, but that just gave a different perspective on things.

I had to drive Trina to Ikeda, ("Pictures" placemark #2) which was out of the way on the other side of Obihiro. To pay myself back, and as a bit of a treatment for all the weekend partying I went to Tokachigawa Onsen, a town full of spas and hot springs. (Onsen is Japanese for Hot Spring.) I stayed for two hours at the Daiichi Hotel, supposedly the nicest Onsen in the town, and lounged in all the various pools. http://www.daiichihotel.com/bath/en_page.html#

After stripping down (all onsens are naked) and washing up (which you must do before entering) I sat first in the indoor pools, then the rotemburo, then the sauna, and finally the pool pictured in the middle image at the link above. It was gorgeous, as the sun was just setting to my right, lighting the wispy clouds up with pink light as the river flowed in front of me and traffic trundled over the bridge. Of course, it would have been a little obvious if I took a cameraphone in. ;)

As I drove back, ("Pictures" Placemark #3) quite warm and soft, (apparently, Tokachigawa is a rare "peat spring" which is good for the skin,) but also quite sleepy, I took a few more pics. A storm had been rolling in for the last few hours, leading to some great sky shots.

Today I have finally started teaching again and it feels great. I saw my 10th Graders for the first time in two weeks, and on Wednesday I get to see my 7th graders for the first time in 2 weeks as well. I don't have much planned for this week, but this weekend is absolutely jam-packed. Apparently, only one weekend is worth planning events on, as literally everyone has planned activities. I have a High School enkai on Friday, which I may not be able to attend, a Musical Rehearsal in Atsuma (4 hrs away) all day Saturday, the Pure Malt Party back home in Shikaoi on Saturday night, and pumpkin carving on Sunday, so I am trying to rest up now. Happy Driving!

P.S. I haven't done any video in too long, but I've got a number of mini-episodes in the pipeline that I hope to be premiering soon! If you want to see party pics from the weekend, just take a look on Facebook! (I didn't smile in that last pic because I was trying to concentrate on taking a picture of myself with a cellphone while driving on the wrong side of the road, and I missed my face at least 4 or 5 times!)

I've been Bad!

about updating my blog. ;) What did you think I was going to reveal some ultra-juicy details? Those will have to wait for another post. Instead, I thought I would summarize the last few weeks of my life, but as an extra treat, give you a little bit of my own thoughts on Japan as I recently passed the two month mark of being here. Careful, this shit gets bloggy.

So after looking at my own blog it looks like it has been a week and a half since I posted! I don't really remember anything of that week, so I assume it was fairly ordinary. The weekend was the second long weekend of September, so I went down to Sapporo on Saturday. It was my first time driving to the main city of Hokkaido, and the drive was simply gorgeous. Initially, I was a little worried about how expensive it would be, but it ended up being much, much cheaper than taking the train, and it only took about 3 and a half hours. Most of the time the road passes through steep mountain gorges, and the number of tunnels I passed through can't even be counted! I'm definitely far more comfortable with driving in Japan now, as I was speeding along with the very best Japanese drivers. Of course, I can't really go all that fast, as at 110 km/h my steering wheel starts to violently shake and the whole car starts vibrating like the wheels are going to pop off. After 2 months in Japan though, 110 km/h (40 km/h over the limit) feels blindingly fast, way faster than 150 km/h does back home. I definitely don't want to be caught by the police though, as I've been told I'd have to apologize to the mayor! So I just find someone who is going faster than me, (which isn't very hard) and stick a couple hundred metres behind him. Mmm, police bait.

In any case, I came down out of the mountains, and made my way into downtown Sapporo to meet up with Parker and Laura, my Canadian friends in Sapporo. Getting into the city was quite a trial however, as the excellent directions and English-friendly signs of the countryside gave way to spaghetti interchanges and Kanji only roadsigns. (I went through this one repeatedly for 20 minutes or so before finally getting my bearings and the proper road!) I did see a great city sign of a suburb that was a picture of Lenin with the name of the city at the top and the slogan, "Be Ambitious Boys!" across the middle. Wish I got a picture, but I was busy driving. My adventures continued as I made my way slowly into town. I passed by the site of the Costco that is going up. (Opening in January, woohoo!) before hitting the exiting crowd of a Hokkaido Fighters (MLB) game. Once past that, it only took me another half-hour to get downtown and find a parking spot. I parked my car in the parking elevator and it was quickly whisked away to some unknown realm. (I'm quite serious about that! You drive your car onto the platform and get out, then the platform spins your car around and pulls it up into the building!)

I met up with Jenna, Parker, and Laura near the train station and we went out to a nearby Gaijin (foreigners) bar called The Jersey Cafe. We ended up staying there for most of the night, gorging ourselves on English beer and fish and chips, pizza etc. After two months of Japanese food, it was amazing, simply to die for! Perhaps most interesting however, were the group of friends we met at the bar, a group of soldiers from the nearby jetai (Japanese Self Defense Force) base in Chitose. Needless to say, they were quite a wild bunch, but because the officers are required to learn English, (in order to talk to the US army) their English was amazing for Japanese. (More on them later.) After this, we headed over to a nearby hole-in-the-wall that Parker had been to the week before. After getting there however, we were kicked out for not being Japanese! Actually the bartender asked us in Japanese if we could speak Japanese, and after myself and Jenna said we could, he kicked us out anyways. It was a real downer, and was a very strange feeling. I'd never experienced that kind of racism before, so it was a real shock. We ended up going to a Blues bar that we had been to before, but didn't stay out much longer.

All in all though, it was like a breath of fresh air just being in Sapporo. Shikaoi is a great little town, but after 4 years in Montreal, it's a big change. It can often feel devoid of young people, (mostly because it is) and consequently the nightlife is a little sporadic at best. There are a town of bars and karaoke joints, but I only want to go out drinking with 45 year old farmers with no english so many times. In Montreal I often felt like I never went out enough, that I was always staying home, while all these interesting things were happening, where as here I feel that I never go out enough, but that I am doing more than almost everyone else! Or maybe it's more a feeling that I haven't really found a "group" to hang out with in Shikaoi yet. In any case, it is a very strange mixture of the old and the new that I sometimes feel. It is amazing how much can change...and how little.

Nevertheless, It was wonderful just to see people dressed up and going out, to make friends in a random bar, and to basically have a "city" experience.

On Saturday, the fun continued, as I did a little shopping with Blair (the other ALT from my town) and Jenna. We went to a number of department stores in the downtown area, and I got a few essentials. (Most of which were cooking-related!) After shopping ourselves out around 4:00, we settled down at a bar called the Ginza Lion to indulge in some 800 mL glasses of my favourite beer in Japan, Yebisu. Then we made our way to Susukino, the red-light district of Sapporo, for tabe/nome-hodai (all you can eat/drink) Okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki, which is originally from Osaka is basically egg mixed up with various vegetables and meat. Every table has a big flattop grill and you order which ever kind of okonomiyaki you like and they bring it to you raw. You dump it on in a pancake shape and then grill it up. Last, you drizzle mayonaise all over it, along with bonito (dried fish flakes) and wolf it down. It might sound gross but it's absolutely delicious, and by the time we left 2 hours later I was just about to keel over and die from all the okomiyaki and beer we had consumed!

I think it is hilarious that in almost every type of expensive Japanese dining, the food is either raw (sushi) or you are expected to cook it yourself. (Yakiniku or Okonomiyaki) This may sound like a raw deal, (oh I am SO funny) but in actuality, its great fun to cook food up with your friends, and the vast majority of restaurants are all-you-can-eat. Eating and drinking in Japan often seems to end up going to far, because you can order and order and order without paying extra, but it definitely makes you feel like a rich guy at a feast! Coincidentally, this is what you say after you eat at a restaurant. "ごうちそさま　でした。Gochisosama Deshita” or, "It was a feast!"

Well, after that the debauchery continued. Next, we went to "Peace of Dreams" which was a very upscale bar owned by a family that Blair knew well in Sapporo. I ordered a Bloody Mary, as it is the closest thing you can get to a Caesar here, and it was amazing. The bartender hand-crushed cherry tomatoes and celery leaves, and used just the right amount of Tabasco. Each glass was about $9 but I didn't care, I had two! Well after that, (!) Blair went home to bed, and Parker and Laura had to catch the last train to the suburbs at 12AM, but Jenna and I were still up for more. We wandered over to TK6, another Gaijin bar in Tanooki Dori, the same covered street that houses the Jersey Cafe. We met up with Ryota, a friend of Jenna's, but I didn't stay with the two of them that long as I had other plans and the place was full of Kiwi's and Brits watching Rugby. I said goodnight to them, and met up with the army guys from the night before.

(This Section has been redacted. Children might be reading!)

Before leaving Sapporo on Monday, I took a trip down to the local mega mall, the Sapporo Factory. They have an amazing selection of foreign stores there, especially a preponderance of outdoor stores for some reason. Not only an Eddie Bauer, but a North Face, Columbia, and a bunch of others, as well as many other kinds of stores. I can definitely see myself going there way too often. I was really happy to head home though as I was completely exhausted from the excessive (well not too excessive) partying, and the general lack of decent sleep.

The following week went ordinarily enough. I'm now firmly ensconced in the routine of school life, and am occasionally given some lesson planning or materials to prepare. For the most part however, my simply being there is the great majority of my work responsibilities. The teachers would rather see me wandering the halls and bugging students, (in and out of class) than sitting in the staff room crafting lesson plans that don't fit with their curricula or the student's level anyways. Because I teach the unofficial English, there isn't really a curriculum anyways, the teachers have lesson plans, but the overall course of the ....course, is generally a little random, although it usually focuses on English and Canada in at least SOME way. For instance on Wednesday I gave a 15 minute lecture/listening test on Canadian indie music. I talked about Arcade Fire, The Meligrove Band, and Broken Social Scene. Did the kids learn any English? I suppose anything's possible, but I highly doubt it. Really, I was just trying to show them some new things, and that seems to be a huge part of my role here. Last week though was mostly taken up by end-of-term tests.

Last weekend was pretty ordinary, all things considered. I met up with the ALT's in Obihiro who I hadn't seen in awhile on Friday night, and we went to a bunch of different places, but for the most part I took it pretty easy. It was my Junior High School's cultural festival (Bunkusai) however, so I went to see them on Saturday. They were really cute doing all the different cultural things, such as dramatic readings, plays, Taiko (Japanese drums) and so on. By far the best part though was the Gr.8's class video, where they mocked all their teachers. It was absolutely hilarious even though I couldn't understand all of it, and didn't get parodied myself. It's sad to think that all that energy and creativity they have now will get beaten out of them by the time they get to High School. (The saying in Japan when it comes to education goes, "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.") The smart ones will be off to the cram/academic high schools in the major cities spending all their time preparing for the University entrance exams, and I'll be teaching the not-so-smart ones in a year or two at Shikaoi Senior High. A fact made worse because I only teach the non-academic students at the Senior High. I do what I can, but sometimes getting them to be interested in English is a struggle to say the least. I actually have come to love my Junior High, as not only are the students great, but there are some teachers who are really genuinely interested in fostering the education of the students, which happens to be a pretty rare thing.

Perhaps the most positive development of the past week though is that I have found a Squash Club!! I went on Wednesday, as it is not very far away from me, (less than an hour) and I was simply blown away. There are about 5 people that meet twice a week and they are good. The guys are all great of course, but the one who surprised me the most was the 14-yr old All Japan Squash Champion. She kicks the ass of everyone else in the club; I don't stand a chance. I've already committed to joining, because not only is playing Squash for 2 hours twice a week amazing practice and exercise, but it was a ton of fun, and felt just great. I really am the charity case of the club though, they take turns playing me as they have to tone their game down a lot. I splurged yesterday and bought a new racquet and squash shoes, although I may have one coming from Canada...hmm we'll see.

Finally, FINALLY, we come to this weekend. Just like in Canada, it is a long weekend here too, (Not Thanksgiving of course, but Health and Sports Day) but unfortunately, most of my friends are headed to Aomori, across the ocean on the main island of Honshu, to see the Autumn Hell Festival. This takes place at the top of a mountain, which is said to be the entrance to the Buddhist Hell. (Jigoku) So it might be a bit of a quiet weekend, but I guess that's alright! I am going to play squash again tomorrow, and then indoor soccer on Sunday, which I guess is fitting considering why it's a long weekend. I guess it is a good idea to burn off some energy now, as I have no classes next week.

Oh and I almost forgot, I've been accepted to be the Vocal Director for the Hokkaido JET Musical! Rehearsals start next weekend in Tomokomai at the HAJET fall meeting, and we are doing Oklahoma, so it should be a lot of fun! I'm also hoping to start doing Taiko drumming on Friday so I am going to be busy, busy, busy.

Oh, it's 5:30, so I've got to clear out of the office! Sorry for the length, but I had to at least attempt to get up to date. (And trust me, I've left far too much out.)

P.S. No HD video yet, my laptop has been diagnosed with terminal, metastatic cancer and is ever so slowly dying. It just refuses to encode the video, which is due to some sort of Quicktime/Windows/HDTV apocalypse inside my computer....or something. I will probably have to send it in for repair within the next month or two!

Till next time,