1/12/08 Working on Christmas

I know I am super behind on my chronicles, I really need to catch up on everything. It is nice having so much to write about, but having it all at once is really hard to deal with. Here goes!

Christmas day in Japan. As I mentioned in earlier posts, Christmas in Japan is not especially important. Christianity has not been very successful around these parts. As a result, the last day of the school year was on Christmas day.

Although everything in my soul tells me that working on Christmas is just unthinkably wrong, I wanted Angelica to be able to see my daily routine and meet all the students and my coworkers. Also, I took some comfort in the fact that the real Santa lives at the White Oaks Mall in Springfield, IL, so due to the time difference it wasn't even really Christmas yet.

So I leave DisneySea early, lug all the heavy luggage to catch the train so that I can get back up for school early the next day, all so that Angelica can see one of my classes. And what happens? Of my three classes, one is cancelled because of an upcoming highschool entrance exam, and the teacher for the other two decided that she would take the day off. I had a bit of a panicky, angry moment upon learning the situation, but everything ended up ok. Angelica and I taught two classes by ourselves. We talked about life in Colombia and other related things, then had a little quiz game at the end. I think that the students enjoyed it. Plus English is Angelica's second language, so I tried to make that clear in order to motivate everyone. "You too can learn English! Hurray!" Sort of a cheesy "study hard and eat a balanced breakfast" sort of message, but whatever.

We left school early and I gave a guided tour of all of the interesting things on my daily bike commute. Angelica had to quickly remember how to ride a bike, lest she get hit by a car, child, or some other sort of inconvenience.

We rode past this senbei store, not far from school.

We did a bit of touring on the north side of the river. It was fun taking her places even that I had already been to a million times, because she often had a different perspective or found something I hadn't seen before. While wandering we stumbled across a really excellent little spot. It must not be very well known, as many of the Ashikaga natives I've asked have had no clue what I was talking about.

Here are a few highlight shots of the place. Seems to be a temple compound of some sort.

A pretty good sized bell housed under a very large and ornate roof.

Angelica also insisted that we go down some other little path that I hadn't found so interesting before. There was a smallish templely kind of structure with residential buildings towering over it on all sides. Aside from all the usual temple stuff, there was a statue of a big, red daemon looking character inside. There was an older Japanese couple there at one point as well, and the gentlemen took the liberty of trying to explain the creature to me. My Japanese is awful, but he said something like this daemon will rip out your tongue if you do bad things. The message was clear even if the details were not.

Inside the little hut was too dark to get a good picture, put there was a little card featuring my new friend on the outside wall. Scary.

Here's Angelica ringing the little daemon temple's bell. She thought I was stepping back to get a good shot, but really I was putting distance between myself and the red monster.

A must-see part of the tour was the local video arcade where everyone occasionally likes to play. She was super impressed with my claw game skills. She was so impressed that she STOLE my mario doll!! Deep breath, deep breath.


Here's the view opposite my apartment. The statue with the red shower cap is still keeping it real, while all the leaves have fallen from the lane of Ginko trees.

1/9/08 DisneySea 2: Revenge of Mickey

Maybe I'm a slow learner, perhaps just a glutton for punishment, but on the 24th of December I found myself in the Tokyo Disney complex once again. This time I was with Angelica, which was awesome, but since we came straight from the airport to Tokyo and we were returning home at the end of the day, we had a large amount of heavy luggage in tow. Some of the bigger metro stations don't even have an escalator, which led to manual labor to the extent that I had to take a short-breathed break now and then mid-staircase.

With the "sorry, disneyland is full" debacle I experienced with my parents not even two months ago, I made quite sure that I purchased the tickets in advance back at the local travel agency office in Ashikaga maybe a month ahead of time.

Same as last time, I figured that Angelica would better enjoy DisneySea due to the fact that Japan is the only country where it is available. Never mind its December... we're going to the sea, ok!?

Riding the Disney train.

So you might think that on Christmas Eve a place like Disneyland would be deserted.. You would be the wrongest person ever if you did that. It was even more super-dee-duper crowded than last time.

You see in Japan, Christmas and New Years are almost reversed in importance, according to my observations. New Years is the important family-oriented holiday and Christmas is party time. Its a pretty foreign notion, celebrating the birth of a person who founded a religion that no one really cares about here. While writing trivia questions for a class game, I recall writing something like "who's birthday is on christmas?" and my teacher scrapped it as too hard. I guess you don't really need the religious part of Christmas to give presents... if you only learned about Christmas from tv and movies how much of its religious connotations would you even notice?

As a result, going to disneyland on Christmas Eve is not only not strange here, but it seems to be an overwhelmingly popular idea, evident by the masses present. Everyone finished licking their fingers at KFC and head over to Disneyland.

A sign of things to come. This was the line just to check our luggage before we even entered the park.

We were already pretty hungry from our travels, so the first thing we did was scope out a place to eat. We passed a couple of places that looked good but had discouraging lines. I was curious about the restaurant aboard a large, fake(but pretty realistic) cruise liner looking ship called the "S. S. Columbia". The outside of the ship was pretty cool, and the inside was big and nice enough to remind me a bit of the Titanic. The restaurant was set up like you would expect from a cruise liner of the period. First, second, and third class were available, each on their own level. It worked just like it was supposed to, as well. Third class had a long line, so we walked up the luxurious flight of stairs. Second class had a bearably long line, but there was a stair case to one side, narrower and much less grand than the first one, but its low key nature made it even more enticing. I had to see what was up there. We went up and the line was the shortest of the three. We sat on some fancy velvety couches for just a moment before we were called to our table.

The nice thing about Tokyo Disneyland is that it still plays by American rules. Someone came around with a basket full of dinner rolls. There were different shades of bread, some had some sort of crunched grain on top. I realized I that I haven't been offered or even eaten a dinner roll in what seems like quite some time. The nice lady then asked me how many I want. How many? A lot. Let me tell you. How about 5 months worth? I probably ate 6 dinner rolls.

Another nice little detail: I had a Samuel Adams beer with my meal. That was maybe the most delicious beverage I have yet imbibed. Sam Adams is maybe my favorite brand of beer and this particular bottle really struck me. I haven't seen it in Japan even once before this day. It was dark amber, and it smelled hoppy like beer is supposed to. At this moment I decided that I don't really care for Japanese beer all that much. And this leads me to a bit of a rant...

There are a few companies in this country with numerous different labels, but they all taste the same to me. I'm no expert on brewing, but Japanese beer is really bright yellow and thin. I prefer darker beer, and it is just not to be had domestically. Countable on one hand are the imported dark beers that I have found in town, the most available being Guiness. The local Mexican restaurant has Negra Modelo, but both are super expensive. Sigh. I would buy a crate of Sam Adams if given the chance.

Whew, sorry about that. So, back to Disneysea. Good times. The lines were so, so long. The Tower of Terror, the newest ride at the park, had a line of terror to match. Three hours of terrifying standing. So terrible.

I took this shot during some of my ample free time, waiting to ride 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Its lucky for me that I think the ride's line scenery is really cool, because I had plenty of time to examine it while waiting. I probably could have painted a watercolor or two without being disturbed.


More scenery from 20,000 leagues. It helps to establish a quick story line for the ride, plus it was all in delicious English.


There was some sort of special Christmas show at the Broadway-themed theater. Maybe one of the longest lines yet assembled, it ended here only to begin again on another street in a separate section. Amazing.


Look who's super excited.


Here we are in from of the big volcano, Mt. Prometheus.


At one point we took a break from the big kid rides and indulged. Scuttle's Scooters I believed it was called. Scooting was had by all, hurray!


This was another interesting aspect of sociology at the park. As soon as we walked into the park, we saw small groups of people sitting by the water, clutching blankets and looking despondent. Dubbed by me as "Disneyland's Homeless", these huddled masses grew in size throughout the day. It later became apparent that they were staking their claims to a good view for watching a firework show on the water that was to occur later in the night. Hardcore, but in a scary way.

Well, we managed to have a lot of fun despite the long waits. Check back for more Japan with Angelica. I need to write down all of the stories before I forget the details!


In related news, yesterday at Tokyo Disneyland a large piece of steel detached from a parade float and landed not far from the crowds watching the festivities, causing quite a stir but not injuring anyone. Due to safety checks, parades have been stopped for the first time since the park's opening in 1983. Interesting. Full article here.

Kabuki in Tokyo

Maybe the one thing that I most wanted to do in Tokyo during this trip was see a Kabuki play. We walked to a large kabuki theater called kabuki-za that I had first seen some weeks earlier with my parents. Located in the Ginza district of Tokyo, the building itself is very large and very traditional looking.

My understanding is that the usual kabuki ticket gets you into a series of back-to-back shows that last some number of hours. I didn't want to commit the time or the money to such a ticket, nor do I have any idea how to get one.

Luckily the theater offers "one show" tickets for those short on cash or deficient on attention. We had to wait in line for about an hour and pay maybe $15, and we were in business. For another 4 bucks, we each rented earphones that gave a loose English translation of the show itself, along with other little historical tidbits or facts about the actors.

We walked up several staircases to the fourth floor of the theater, and once on the other side of the door... "standing room only" said a theater worker without emotion. In their defense, there were seats available but they were all currently occupied, but its strange that I don't recall that being mentioned when I handed them my cash. So in addition to the one official intermission we took some little breaks of our own during the multiple hour long show, to keep our legs from snapping in half.

The "one show" ticket ended up covering two smaller shows. I really wish that they would have let me take some video of everything, or at least sold a DVD somewhere. Both of the shows were really cool and I can't possibly describe them fully in my own words... shame.

The first show was a dance performance supposedly from the Edo period. Two men in bright blue outfits danced in the street while they made something called awamochi, a cake of rice that is pounded with a hammer until it becomes one thick and sticky mass. Their faces were painted in a typical kabuki-looking way, super white with bright red around the eyes... maybe some additional red around the mouth area. The dance itself was awesome, and I realized what a good purchase the earphones were... sometimes these guys were acting out things that I never would have guessed in a million. They were accompanied by a maybe ten person band on the far left of the stage. Vocals, shamisen, maybe a drum or two.

The next show was a bit of a disappointment to me. Rather than the flamboyant costumes and the crazy expressions of a huge kabuki show that I was expecting, we were presented with what seemed to me to be a usual play, set around the time when the US forced Japan to open its doors to the outside world. The setting was a geisha house in a city whose name I don't recall. A geisha killed herself out of loneliness, unknowingly right before she was about to be purchased by an American. Although the two events were unconnected, her friend geisha invented a whole story about how the girl had killed herself rather than be touched by a foreigner, in order to make money from the nationalist samurai still roaming the city.

As an American I wasn't really bothered by the subject matter, I found it a very interesting look into a period in Japanese history that I have read about several times. The part that hurt me the worst was the Japanese guy who played the American. I felt like he was an awkward ass in an over-the-top fashion, perhaps to make it obvious why he didn't belong in polite Japanese society. And his English.... it was so awful. His accent was grating. At one point he and a Japanese store owner were attempting to communicate, and it just made me cringe. The store owner's purposefully bad language skills weren't that much worse than the guy who was supposed to be native. I don't know. Maybe I was still mad that I was standing for hours to see something that wasn't even kabuki, but it bothered me a bit.

Once that awful English speaker was gone the play was quite interesting, and ended with the lying geisha finally getting caught in her lie years later. This was my first time seeing a real kabuki act, and this place is one of the premier kabuki stages in the country. Very cool.

The main entrance to the theater. Even the building was dramatic.

Angelica standing in front of a wall of traditional sake barrels. This might be a New Year's season thing, not sure.

The theater right after the show. A massive crowd all left this place at once. There was a subway station named after the theater, I assume to accommodate these crowds.

We had pretty good success in dealing with the Tokyo subway. I often cheat and just ask someone for directions, and sometimes the maps are in English. Sometimes.

12/30/07 Japan with Angelica

It has already been a week since I picked up Angelica from the airport, and we have been doing a ton. Where better to start that at the beginning?

We were already in the Tokyo area due to her flight, so I figured we could save time and money if we simply spent a few days sightseeing before returning to Ashikaga. We bought some tickets for a hostel in the Asakusa(wikitravel) area of Tokyo, so we took the subway to the station that was indicated in the hostel's literature. At this point we realized that although we were at the correct station, we still had only an address with no map to guide us. I was just about to give up and signal a taxi when a little boy and his dad walked up. I had earlier noticed them half glancing at us and discussing amongst themselves, so when then finally stepped up I figured we were about to be either assisted or mugged.

Luckily the two had decided on the former, and quickly snatched up the printout we had from our hostel. Via the contact information listed, they called the establishment and proceeded to walk with us several blocks all the way to the exact spot we were staying. Part of the way to our destination, an employee from the hostel was waiting for us on the corner. Rather than wave off our current guides, he simply joined our merry band and continued on towards the hostel.

I gathered that the motivation of the first group was that the father had worked in France at some point. He apparently wanted to practice his French despite my repeated protests in English and Japanese. He was unable to speak any English and he was similarly unamused that Angelica can speak Spanish. The son is a junior high school student so in order to be a gracious guest I spoke with him in my super slow English, something that I usually refuse to do outside of class.

Anyway, I thought that all of this random kindness from strangers was the best first impression to Angelica that Japan could possibly hope for. Good work, Japan.

The hostel ended up being pretty quality. A pair of clean bunk beds behind a door with a lock on it is all I really needed. They were even some PCs with internet access setup for our free enjoyment. Very convenient for the confused traveler.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around Asakusa. By that time many of the touristy places were already closed, but I think that we still had a good time.

Here we are at Kaminarimon in Asakusa. There is a cool statue on either side of the large gate, one depicting Raijin the god of thunder, the other Fujin, the god of wind. The giant lantern behind us is pretty famous and thoroughly photographed.


Opposite the gate are a seemingly endless amount of shop stalls. We arrived a bit late to make any purchases, unfortuantely.

Realizing that pretty much everything would be closed in Tokyo after 9pm, even on a Saturday, I took her to the only place that I was certain would still have some life to it. Roppongi (wikitravel). It is known as one of the party districts of Tokyo, and a favorite spot for foreigners. The streets were lined with non-Japanese men trying to drum up business for their respective clubs. Sure its a bit grimy, but there were plenty of interesting things to see. We were both too tired to do any partying, but just the atmosphere of this place makes it worth a look.

During our wanderings we caught a good view of Tokyo Tower, the tallest man-made structure in Japan.

The saga continues.

12/22/07 Christmas Bingo

Recently one of my teachers just pulled the classic "wait until 4:30 to give you a bunch of work I want done the next day" song and dance on me, so I was scrambling around a bit to figure out what I should do. She wanted me to come up with a full 45 minute lesson, which isn't really a big deal, I just needed to be sure that I had enough material to keep everyone occupied. The little lesson that I devised isn't especially ingenious or complicated, but I am pretty happy with how it is working.

First, I passed out some blank bingo boards for everyone to play with. Then I gave a talk about Christmas trees: how we go to a tree farm to pick one, the cool little netting machine that wraps the tree up for transport, decorating, and my favorite part: the throwing of the dead trees next to the street for removal by the city. It makes me feel fuzzy and American inside when I can just throw things away and let industry take care of the consequences.

If I had a tree in Japan that I wanted to throw away, I would probably have to take all the needles off first and put them neatly in a bag, then maybe cut off the branches and stack them according to circumference, then set it outside on an odd-day, before 8 in the morning but not after 5 in the afternoon, on account of the stray animals that come out after night. Shudder.

So I have all the words in hiding, and every time I mention one of the "bingo words" I write it on the board. This way, if they want to play bingo and win the fabulous prizes, they have to at least halfway look in my direction. Genius.

About those fabulous prizes... I have a confession... I didn't buy even a single one of them. They were all free because they have traffic safety and other such government messages on them. The kids were more than happy to get the fun little key-chains, pencils, and rulers, plus now a large group of Japanese children know some important things about life: the legal alcohol limit in Illinois is .08, and only they can prevent forest fires. Luckily most of them are too indifferent to open a dictionary and thus uncover my operation.

*******

Here are a couple little interesting things.

We already drank a bit out of the glass, but a restaurant-ordered glass of Japanese sake is often poured in this manner. A cup inside a cup on a plate is brought empty to the table, then the inner glass is filled until it overflows and fills the square cup. Its worth ordering just for the entertainment value.

The only American flag flying in town that I know of: gracefully fluttering on the side of a gun shop. Real guns being illegal in Japan, this shop is filled mostly with toy pellet guns. I feel really proud and teary-eyed when I see my culture taking root over here, ya know?

I'm leaving in a couple of hours to go pick up Angelica from the airport... exciting!