Winding Down

With my decision not to extend my teaching contract another year already a month past, I have recently been considering what my goals should be for my last 5 months in Japan.

I received word that I passed the third level of the JLPT a week or two ago, so that's one thing that I wanted to accomplish out of the way. I won't be around for the next testing time though, and the second level is pretty advanced. Level three's description is "the examinee has mastered grammar to a limited level, knows around 300 kanji and 1,500 words, has the ability to take part in everyday conversation and read and write simple sentences." It doesn't look very impressive now that I'm looking at it, but it did take a bit of work. The second level involves "1,000 kanji and 6,000 words" which is pretty beastly. There's an article here that discusses the possibility of the Japanese government using the JLPT as a factor in the granting of work visas. Not too shabby. Maybe I should turn my attention back to the US and start looking over the GMAT?

Many ALTs on their last stretch travel the country a bit, but I think I have that taken care of at the moment. I've dealt my to-see in japan list a fatal blow.

I'm still reading whenever I have time. At the moment I am reading Norwegian Wood, a novel by Haruki Murakami. I guess its a love story, but its one that I can really get into. I am also reading The Turn of the Screw, a spooky novel first published in 1898. Its age means that it has returned to the public domain, and I can read it for free online. Hurray old stuff! Both books are on the shelf at my Google Book Library, if you are interested. I suppose reading is more of a hobby than a goal, but it has the added benefit of keeping my reading level from getting rusty. Surely that will come in handy professionally.

I just don't want to waste the remainder of my time in Japan. Any suggestions?

Some Ashikaga Gossip

We had an assistant English teacher's meeting Wednesday as we have many times in the past, consisting of the three-man Springfield Sister Cities crew and Zishan and Ben, who work under the same contract only through the JET program, and our boss at the Ashikaga Board of Education. We talked about everyone's spring break plans and other pretty usual stuff. Then one of the guys let out a little secret. Joe and I, the guys going home in July, won't be replaced by Springfield people. Wow! Were are going to be replaced with the ones we call "company" employees, people that the city hires through third party businesses. These guys get paid less and have worse working conditions that we do. Our boss conceded that this was true, and continued that it is due to Ashikaga's budget constraints.

Not all is lost for Springfield, though. When the JET guys leave, they will be replaced by Springfield people, bringing us back up to three. Just a little English teacher drama for you.

This time of year sunset hits right before I finish work.

I snuck a photo of a student's backpack. Sure this is a good example of the atrocious English that is unfortunately stylish, but its also a bit of the Obama effect that persists here. I can't count how many times I've heard my kids say "yes we can". Like, who exactly do they think we is? It was especially bad when we covered "can" sentences with the first year kids. "Can you ski?" "Yes we can!!". "Ok.... Can you make tempura?" "Yes WE can!!!" "Can you be a little more annoying?"

The seven-eleven by my place had its grand opening yesterday. They really put it up fast.


A short little animation by Fujio Tanabe entitled "Fridge".

News in Japan: Buzzed Finance Minister

The front page of yesterday's local newspaper featured the story of former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who showed up to a recent G7 meeting in Rome looking and sounding rather intoxicated. Nakagawa blamed his condition on a large dose of cold medicine, but under increasing pressure he resigned his post on Tuesday.

(Wow, third time's a charm? The youtube videos of this are dropping fast.)

The Mainichi Daily News covered the story here, along with a long list of Nakagawa's past drunken blunders. My favorite quote is "When he painted in the eye of a daruma doll -- a ritual often performed by election winners -- he put too much ink on the brush and ended up giving the doll black tears, flustering those around him." That sounds like something I might do sober.

Thailand Part 6: Hua Hin

The last new city I went to is called Hua Hin.


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As you can see from the map, I was very close to Burma. I briefly considered a little day trip across the border. After a bit of reading, though, Burma didn't seem like the happiest place to visit, and I decided against it.

My travel buddies and I went to Hua Hin on a crowded bus. I really enjoyed the experience: the ticket buying conversations at the bus station, worriedly parting with my luggage so that it could be stowed below and hoping that nothing got stolen, gazing out the window at nothing while cruising through the countryside. It was a bit rustic and nothing bad happened. What more can you ask for? There were three employees working on the bus: one guy was like the crier who would simply announce what stop was next and in how many minutes in a loud annoying voice, a rough looking lady collected tickets and money and stuffed them into a large metal cylinder, and the driver, who might've also been the guy who stuffed our bags under the bus. It was quite an operation.

The second we hopped off the bus, Mike and I were giggling about the police. Several that we saw had large golden arches on their vests.


No, it's not the drive-thru window. Its a police box, brought to you by McDonald's. Thailand has mini police stations everywhere just like Japan does. Their strategy is a bit different, however. In Japan, the police are meant to be seen to act as a deterrent and to give directions, etc. In Thailand the windows of the boxes were often tinted as in this picture. I assume it's meant to make people unsure if an officer is inside or not, and keep people in line even when vacant. An interesting approach.

I spotted one of those bag sodas I mentioned in an earlier post.

Hua Hin is touristy beach resort town. However it is popular with Thai vacationers as well which I think helps it avoid completely turning into a foreigner theme park. We spent a few days here, but it was time mostly spent chilling out without any strenuous exploring.

Clarence and I took care of the Bangkok hotel arrangements and Mike and Allison did Hua Hin. Those two were a bit more budget minded so I wondered about what kind of hotel they would choose. I imagined some sort of beach shack with hammocks inside but the place they picked had even nicer rooms than the Best Western in Bangkok. There was a little kitchen and the shower was so big it must've been designed for someone in a wheelchair.

A plate of brightly colored sweets had been placed on a dresser. The woman who showed us to our room explained that they were a gift from the hotel to celebrate New Years.

At one point I noticed that we had a visitor. The little guy seemed to be pretending he was invisible, as it didn't move an inch while I was in the room. It didn't crawl in my mouth while I was asleep, so I'd say we are pretty good friends.

We spent some time chilling on the beach. There was a long line of little restaurants, one of which we stopped and had a relaxing dinner. The four of us started the new year on the sand, with fireworks being set off near and far.

You wanna know whats way better than a market? A night market. They were selling pretty much the same stuff as everywhere, minus the possible heat exhaustion. My shoes didn't really fit my beach bum lifestyle, so I bought a pair of super cheap flip flops. I think that was my only purchase in Hua Hin.

I took advantage of our large amount of unstructured time and went on a fruit eating rampage. I got some advise from my local grocer about what to buy, bought a large knife, and then I did some chopping back at the hotel room.

I'd say the star of the night was the mango. They were so sweet. I think this is my new favorite fruit.




These little guys are longans. They are pretty much small lychees.


Wikipedia says they are also known as dragon eyes, which makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. These are super good. My only complaint is that they are so small that it takes a whole lot of peeling to get a decent amount of fruit.

Those two were the big successes. But I took a risk buying a bunch of stuff I didn't understand, and the experiment wasn't without its setbacks.

I think this is a pomelo. It was pretty much a giant grapefruit with a really thick skin. It tasted awful. Wikipedia thinks that the US is the top producer of pomelo, yet I've never seen one for sale. I think I know why.


I think this is a green apple guava. I don't know if it just wasn't ripe or what, but it also tasted really bad. The Thai word for guava, farang, also means "foreigner". I don't know what that's about.

When it was time to return to Bangkok, we had some issues obtaining transportation.

This picture is the Hua Hin train station. It's old and a pretty big deal. I don't recall exactly why we decided to not take the train. I think it was just too long of a wait until the next train to Bangkok. We ended up just taking a taxi. Yes it wasn't very exciting, but it was direct and not incredibly expensive when divided four ways.

Eastern Medicine: Gargling Normal Water

When I first considered writing about this practice, I was just going to point out that it exists and then talk about how stupid I think it is. I did a bit of research on it though, and the situation is a bit more complex than it at first seemed.

So, many of the teachers at my school regularly gargle water and then spit it out. Not mouthwash, not water with salt in it, just straight water out of the tap. I have a good idea of the frequency because I can hear it happening from across the room. So I asked one of the repeat offenders why he does it, and he replied that it was for his health. He continued that it can help people avoid catching colds or the dreaded influenza by cleansing the mouth.

My first mental reaction was "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard". The microbes that cause colds must be able to live in a watery environment because they are hanging out in your mouth in the first place, and there are probably about a million trillion of them chillin' out in there at any one time. Spitting out those germs would be like spitting out bad breath, or spitting out the little creatures that cause tooth decay. In other words, it ain't gonna happen.

But now that I was aware of the practice, I realized that it wasn't just a couple crazy old teachers, but that this was an official position from people that should know better.

This little sign is posted above one of the sinks in the teacher's room. It reads "Prevent infectious disease with hand washing and gargling!". It is issued by the Tochigi Prefectural Government.

The headline of this one is something like "Influenza is prevented by everyone!" The trifecta of good health is apparently gargling, hand washing, and wearing a mask when ill. This is also a message from our friends at Tochigi Prefecture. A worthwhile little addendum to this is that the kids have no access to hot water at school as far as I know. Not only does this seem to lessen the effectiveness of hand washing, but it probably discourages the practice altogether because the water is painfully cold in the winter.

I searched a bit to see if I could find any references to this and I found an article from the Health Behavior News Service (here). Headlines don't get much better than this: "Gargling May Prevent Colds, Study Says; Expert Finds Results Hard to Swallow". To summarize, Japanese researchers found that "the common cold could be prevented over 30 percent of the time by daily gargling with water." An American smart person, on the other hand, suggested the study was flawed because "while the researchers found a “borderline statistically significant effect” for water gargling, there was no true placebo group — that is, there was no control group in which people could gargle with “fake” water".

Not only does it seem to be impossible to due a proper experiment with gargling, I think that the practice has some religious significance that might be influencing people's views. Upon entering temples it its a common practice to ritually cleanse your mouth. Surely there's a connection.