Lest you think that all I care about is stuff like plastic knick knacks, novelty cars and different coloured trees, I thought it was about time I introduce some more people to you! Here we have...
The Sanda school team. They are a really great bunch! But... I've never worked somewhere with such a high turnover. I guess that doesn't usually bode well! Oh well... 3 of the people in the picture will be gone as of the end of this year and 2 have started since I have! From left to right, Yukiko, Miki, Naoko, Sue-Yen (new teacher from Australia), Mayo and Anna (from NZ). Mayo, my manager, is leaving this week and my manager at the Kobe school has also given notice! I'm rather sad about that, they have been really great. Anna's already gone home to NZ and Naoko-san is the other one leaving, which I'm equally sad about - she's one of the nicest people I've ever met. They're ALL really nice!

I love these guys. The 2 women in the centre are sisters and their kids are in the same class. They are great fun - the little boy on the right is the naughty but cute Taiyo (being held by trainee manager Maki) and his cousin Cocoro (kokoro means heart, but they like being kool and spell it with a "C"!) is at bottom left. The other 3 girls are Misato, Aika and Kotoko.

This is a photo of a photo from Halloween (my first week teaching) from the start of October. Karen is the Canadian girl I replaced - she's a cool cat! Yes, that's a pumpkin on my head. Japanese people seem to love stuff like Halloween, just for the sake of dressing up I think. It's pretty dark stuff when you read into its origins! There's an Osaka loop-line party that happens every year when young people party on the train in their outfits.
Say "How" to the Howe's! Brad and Mizuho met me for a top day out in Osaka this week (it was a national holiday). This shrine was tucked away in the city streets.
We went to this place called Sammy Ebisu plaza where inside they have a fantastic trip back into the Osaka of the 1930s or thereabouts. The attention to detail is awesome. Brad and Mizuho well and truly surprised me with this gem of a place. There are little alleyways with stalls and restaurants and a cheesy but impressive show every couple of hours in the "square".
These 2 lovely ladies served us some dango or rice dumplings in sweet sauce on skewers. They perform in a band that plays Japanese-style New Orleans jazz - fitting nicely into the whole 30s nostalgia of the place. I bought their CD which was only just released, so they were stoked. I was stoked too!
Itadakimasu! i.e. Dig in! Oishii!
And so we move onto friends at Crossroad Bible Fellowship, Nishinomiya...
This is Mika - the girl I saw baptised during my first visit.
This is Taketo. He is a kak. He is a huge fan of the group GLAY - I'm not certain what they sound like, but I'm sure they all use Gatsby hair wax. They are very earnest looking... unlike Taketo!
Meet the Yahatas... the coolest family in Japan. Well, one of them! Keiji, Azumi, Mana-chu and Sugu-chan. Very cute kids! Despite language difficulties, Keiji-san and I have quickly become friends. Oh btw, if you are looking at my top thinking "That's not his top, it's my top!", then you're right... you left it in my car about 2 years ago... I tried to track you down, honest! But yeah, it's a nice fit, thanks! Send your complaints to the Spamurai...

So, as you can see, I'm blessed to be nearish to lots of great people. I hope you can meet them in person one day. I will get my act together and put up some photos of my farewell gatherings... sorry all. That's all for now...

Byee

My shortest post to date...

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3558.html

It's a link to a page about Arima Onsen, the natural hot spring near me. It might give you an idea of what the area's like (that is, assuming you want to know! If you don't, see if I care... whimper).

I haven't been to Arima this time around, but Brad took me 2 and a half years ago during my first visit to Japan. It's a beautiful place! Anyway,

night

Believe it or not, that filing cabinet in a rice paddy is my home. I've chosen a view to exaggerate it - there's a supermarket and a busyish road to the left, but it is pretty country! Off screen to the right is where the train goes into a tunnel to punch through the hill. My place is top left in the big box in front of the place with a sloped roof, which you can see in this next photo...
This is the view out my back window (my only window!) That's a little restaurant. The traffic going up the hill can be a real pain at night. I like the cars with turbos and loud sports exhausts - just not at 2am. This is from the little bridge next to the station. I just worked out the name of that mountain Kisurasiyama - Mount Kisurasi.
One of the older trains that run along this track (it's a single track at Gosha). I am slowly becoming a train nerd... I gravitate towards the train sets in toy stores now. denwa ga daisuki desu!
Gosha station. Yes, it's as simple as it looks here. The stops around it are a lot more major. I love the little xylophone tune that announces each train - I know I'll miss it when it's time to go home.

I think it's hard to beat a Japanese maple for Autumn scenery. Of course, I don't know the first things about trees, but these are just awesome to look at. The colours are amazing. This one is along the path near the scary dog. I've seen the beast once - it looks like a wolf! It just stared me down that time, but when I walk past at night it goes off barking from behind an old metal fence. I am not brave when it comes to sudden barking at night!

I should have known... I saw that Subaru ad with Bruce Willis again... "I feel liberty" makes too much sense. It's "I feel legacy". I never knew Bruce spoke such bad English. Whilst just about everywhere else in the world Coke had a slogan of "Always Coca-cola", apparently Coke had a very successful campaign a few years ago in Japan that stated "I feel Coke". It appeals to people here as they are emotive words and fit nicely into the forms that are learnt in the compulsory English program that everyone did at high school... "I like... I am... I feel..." etc. (Sound familiar, Sasha!? I like toilet!). I wish I could claim to be clever but I read the above observation in a book. Just thought I should 'fess up in case the plagiarism police are on patrol (not that they'd bother with Last Spamurai!)... anyway, it's in the Japan edition of the Traveller's Tales series. I highly recommend it! (Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson is my favourite - it's fantastic! Hilarious! Read it!)

Where was I? Oh yes, there are some very funny slogans to be read here, as we all know... or sometimes it's not so much the wording, but the placement. One of my favourites was a very sombre grey print on black - Keep your spirits! DESTINY. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ...on a black baby suit! A bag holding a purchase I made had this to say: Selection. Let's Enjoy Your Life. I find this a little off-putting. Our Lives would be so much more comforting... although it is refreshingly honest... not too far from Let's Have Your Money.

Anyway, I'll post some sights from around my local area... the colours are changing as the air grows ever-colder. I'm freezing my little toosh off already and I know that the mercury is going to keep shrinking and shrinking for the next month or two. Anyway, enjoy the Australian summer back home, won't you... (you stinkers)?

Oh... my sincere apologies to all who've written and posted comments - I have a huge backlog of emails to reply to. I'm not making myself out to be popular, but I do have some awfully nice friends... sorry I'm not so good a friend to you. I've been spending too much time on the blog - it's a little addictive.

Oh! And a very happy wedding day to my friends Lisa and Kev if any of the clan are reading this. Kekkonshiki Omedetto!!!

That frog sure gets around. This was a huge mural on canvas oustide the warehouse shop where I found my robot.
Inside was a cavern filled with plastic. I know I've given plastic a bad wrap (oh the humour!) but some is strangely alluring. I am a compromised human being.
This red and white little guy was begging to jump into my bag, but I was strong (and I'd even just received my first pay!)
I also resisted buying a large scary gun. Atleast these guys have them in cabinets! There must be a few weekend warriors in Japan - I dunno, posing in front of their bedroom mirrors?

This guy didn't beg, he commanded me. My hand reached into my wallet and produced the yen. But don't worry - he was cheap. I'll just pay double taking him home! Does anyone know who he is? He's actually over 30cm tall... now do you understand!? I had no choice!

A found a frog in my apartment tonight. At first I was frightened I'd stepped on him as he seemed to have stuff hanging out of him, or a limp limb or something. Then I realised he had collected a whole lot of fluff from the front entrance and it was hanging off him (I limit my vacuuming to the office!). Anyway, it was nice to have a visitor. I let him go next to the vege patch out the front of my place. Incidentally, it's a very interesting vege patch. Not to me, but it is enough to someone to warrant a school excursion to it. One morning I was leaving for work when 2 or 3 classes of elementary school kids in matching coloured caps (they look very cute)were amassing outside my place. I thought they were getting ready to cross the railway crossing together, but then they were all directed to the vegetables. Wow, I thought - all this time I've taken for granted those veges. It is an impressive patch, but I haven't felt compelled to study it yet.

Sorry for the negative post last time. This blog must provide an amusing picture of someone becoming very jaded very quickly! So, on a lighter note... this week I was taking an older class; the lesson was on referring to people by description - "the woman in the yellow coat" etc... the woman whose picture I was holding up was the Queen. Her face drew a blank - they didn't know her ("wakarahen"). Fair enough, she's not the queen of Japan. I then noticed this girl's sneakers (a 14 year old girl) and complimented her - they were white shell-toe sneakers with different coloured stripes and "Arnold Palmer" written across the tongue. I asked her "Do you know Arnold Palmer?" She nodded. I swung my arms like I was playing golf and then acted like an old man. She nodded (with a look of "well, of course I know Arnold Palmer!"). Weird, huh? A Japanese 14 year old girl knows an American golfer from the 70s and 80s, but not the Queen of England. I dunno, it made me laugh. The celebrities that become popular here can seem a little random (no, I'm not trying to be trendy in that annoying "oh, you're so random!" use of the word random. I mean random!). The ads that use Western stars can be hilarious. The actor will look serious and smouldering as a very serious Japanese male voice-over speaks (picture Bruce Willis driving a Subaru) and then a slogan will appear on the screen like "I feel liberty" or something like that. They remind me of the merman ad in Zoolander.

I made my first impractical and stupid purchase today. It's an Egyptian Samurai robot figure, about 25cm tall. I found this amazing warehouse shop packed with second hand toys, figures, clothes, CDs - all the things I have a weakness for. Anyway, I thought it was about time I bought something that will be a huge pain to bring home. But once you see the photo, you'll understand.

I pigged out tonight on udon noodles with mushrooms, different meats and a side of rice and tempura. All for about AU$14. It was delicious. Sorry, I don't mean to gloat... but haha

I've been trying to budget my food bill to around 1000 yen a day with the occasional splurge. I think I'm achieving about 1200 (this is about AU$15) including drinks, but some days I break well under 1000 (if I've cooked). So, Japan doesn't have to be so pricey overall. Except... I realised the $50 bags of rice aren't even 10kg, they're 5 kg. Anyway, I'll leave you to ponder the cost of rice in Japan - I'm sure it's been keeping you all awake at night.

I have to sleep. Oyasumi nasai!

It's funny (in hindsight)... I literally went nuts at my local supermarket when I saw that pistaccios are ridiculously cheap. Wow, I thought - a perk of one of those inscrutable workings of Japanese commerce - pistaccios are cheap! I bought 4 packets - one night I basically had them for dinner. I went to buy more when I took the time to compare the katakana and realised I'd been reading the price of peanuts. The pistaccios are expensive. "It's a tragedy for me to see the dream is over... and I never will forget the day we met {nuts} I'm gonna miss you..." (apologies for misquoting Milli Vanilli). Serves me right for not looking at my dockets more closely!
There are 3 Japanese scripts - kanji (Chinese characters), hiragana (phonetic alphabet) and katakana (same phonics as hiragana, but used for foreign words... like pistaccio). I've learned hiragana, a smattering of katakana and handful of kanji... hence my not knowing what I'm buying, or how much I'm paying for it... the definition of a sucker.

To answer your question Mike, (Why is rice so expensive?) I don't know! I guess because the rice they eat here is different to the jasmine rice in Southeast Asian food (I'm told Japanese people tend not to like it). It's shorter grain - the type you find in sushi. I'm guessing that most of it is grown here and so the cost is much higher than Chinese rice. But you'd think that they'd grow Japanese rice in China and export it. Rice is traditionally the "sheep's back" of Japan (i.e. what wool was to Australia, rice was to Japan), and people here are very nationalistic (some extremely so) so I guess they would buy Japanese rice, even though it's expensive (we're talking a 10 kg bag for AU$50). I've learned that things here are often deliberately inefficient (I'm sure many wouldn't like that description) and that there are layers of bureaucracy and middle-men between middle-men that all add to the cost of things. But with all that over-staffing, it means (nearly) everyone has a job, usually things are done to a tee and things are expensive. I've read that fish can go through 7 different layers of distribution before you get it in your gob. It's amazing to see how thoroughly some things are done here. I've seen road works where there was a little glowing orange cone about every foot to warn of the danger... and yet kids go unbelted in the back seat of a lot of cars! In Australia you might get a striped barrier thing every few metres or so. There is often a light saber fellow waving traffic in and out of the supermarket across the tracks from me. It's not a blind corner and he doesn't actually change the traffic at all. But he has a job. I dunno, I shouldn't make him sound so redundant (I mean no disrespect) ...I doubt there'd be any accidents with him there (unless he was to be hit by one of the cars).

There's a very different work ethic to that found back home. People work earnestly and silently whether the boss is there or not. My trainer at headquarters said that the Japanese staff often think that we aren't working when we sit around discussing classes or different materials - we are chatting, so we can't be working. Hence a lot of learning here is by wrote - someone speaks and you listen. Hence it can be hard to get an older kid who's used to the system to converse in your conversation school.

I'm intrigued by the concept of space here. Space is defined so much - everything seems to be like a bento box - divided, ordered, categorised and labelled. Things are kosher or unkosher (sorry, I'm not Jewish, don't know the correct term!), sacred or ...profane? I dunno, those terms are probably a bit too strong for everyday situations. Sorry I realise I'm putting myself up here as a backyard anthropologist - I once did an introductory course in it which proves my interest... and that's about it! Anyway, yeah it can be a bit confusing (to my Western mind, anyway)...

The ground is dirty. Well that's obvious, but the association with uncleanliness seems to extend beyond the issue of hygiene. Obviously there's the respect given/maintained when you observe the custom of removing your shoes before entering someone's home/sitting on someone's tatami mats. But I find it bizarre how we remove our shoes at my school and yet my immaculately presented manager doesn't seem to see all the bits of fluff, staples, bits of rubber, hair and other preschool/school debris on the floor. I'm sure I'm the only one that vacuums!

I was buying groceries and I noticed that the cashier put my toothpaste in a little bag of its own. Nothing else was bagged - you normally do that yourself. Is it some psychological thing? The toothpaste is to clean my mouth, therefore it should be kept separate from all the things that I will be dirtying my mouth with? Surely it's not a contamination issue - the paste is in a sealed plastic tube inside a sealed cardboard box. The proper way to eat is for the food not to touch your lips - at least I believe that's how my geisha friends eat. I guess the oustide must be kept clean. Kirei na - describes both beautiful and clean.

The plastic thing is slowly driving me insane. I've been here 6 weeks and I'm drowning in plastic. If you buy a drink which you are obviously about to down, the conbini guy will reach straight for the plastic bags. I try to catch him - "dai jo bu! dai jo bu!" It's ok, it's ok! There's a patisserie I go to where the bags sit on this stand with a little jet of air constantly blowing the top bag open, ready for an item to be shoved in with one hand. Ingenious, but depressing to see how many bags they can rapid-fire out the door. I noticed that when I offered a class cake, they all baulked when I produced a single cake cut into pieces. I'm sure now that if I'd offered them single-portion, individually wrapped cakes as I did for a later class then they would have snapped them up as the later class did. I thought, "for Pete's sake... you're kids! You're supposed to enjoy sticking your mittens in something grubby!".

I found it very amusing to be handed a purchase in a bag that stated "We keep the earth clean", accompanied by little pictures of creatures like whales. Japan is clean - the Philippines where some of this plastic ends up is not so clean. Anyway, I'm writing way too much and starting to preach about a country that nobody invited me to, so I should stop! I do love Japan and it's conveniences... just not the plastic!

All aboard the sushi train... the first one I've seen over here.

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time. That's 4 litres worth of relaxation! Will set you back about AU$35.

This guy convinced me I should buy Gatsby hair wax. Really.

The more you eat the less distance you have to move your arm from plate to mouth. Art.

Oh all right, I'll take your blinking photo.

Did you know that they used to use pigeon poo to paint their faces white? I hope I wasn't having my leg pulled when I learned that. It's useful information when parties reach a lull.

Oh, I found a shop today where they sell those guns - they were just in a regular toy department. They are actually BB guns - must be like the one in Lost in Translation (that one fired tracer bullets that light up). They all look like the genuine article. They had everything from pistols through to assault rifles with grenade launchers - for you gun-toting sociopath Koo brothers - Hechler & Koch Mp5s, Steyr semi automatics, Colt M4s and many others (I think I got those right)! And just one rack away from the Duplo blocks. Wacky... oh well, at least they're not real, although if the police saw you with one they'd probably shoot you!

Well Wednesday night my first serious bout of the blues hit - Thursday was worse and thankfully today it blew past. I took it to heart when I learned some of my students are finding my classes boring. I think in my head I snowballed it into "I can't cope here, I'm sick of everything, I just want to be able to ask anyone anything I need to know, I'll never be able to teach..." etc etc... But I'm feeling better about things now. I was warned about how the homesickness/culture stress will just suddenly jump up and bite you. Another decription is that it's like a cold - it recurs every now and then. Anyway, hopefully for the next while or so I can take on the challenge of making my classes more interesting. Having discussed things with the manager a bit it's actually somewhat of a relief to know I can lighten up a bit. It probably doesn't help that I look like a Japanese sarariman (salary man) in my suit. Yes, laugh it up - I have to wear a suit ...for the first time in my life. Anyway, I hope that the kids aren't the only ones who will have more fun.

Well, it's late. I was just going to stick up some photos tonight, so I'll spam you later.