Test

this is a test post. will explain later.

So to explain. I posted this message on Christmas Day to test whether my new present worked - an iBook G4. For those of you not in the know it is a lovely Mac laptop. And it's wonderful: a present to me, from me, with much love and appreciation.

All Pine

Toyama is surrounded by, what what they call here, the Japanese Alps. Most of the time you can't see them because it's raining, or more recently, snowing. Some days however the air is so clear that I am taken aback (aback I tell you) by the stupendousness of the sight. This photo (kindly stolen from my friend Bunny dayoldwasabi.blogspot.com) is from her apartment. I've tried to get good shots from mine but they never come out well. My view is FAR better than this one. And this is one rocks.

For best results click on the photo. Serve with peas.

Brrrrrrr

05-12-18_12-21.jpg
Originally uploaded by pedroalhambra.

It's snow fun in Japan

Being grown up responsible types here in Toyama a bunch of JETs and some japanese friends decided that it would be a spectacular idea to go play in the snow on saturday. After a thorough soaking from snowball fights Robin and I built this chap, we call him Calvin.

The amorphous consciousness of inanimate matter

Too much yuki. Which means snow. Which is what we have. The first of this plentitude was signalled the night before when "god", or somebody very much like him, dropped an infinite number of "god"-sized saucepans and l on his our apartment building. That one crack of thunder lasted for about five minutes. Then it started snowing and hasn't stopped since. It is now up to one and a half feet. I asked my JTE yesterday when it would ease off or stop and she just looked at me, baffled. I rephrased the question: will it stop? No. Before it started snowing there were fifteen consecutive days of rain. Now it is so cold it has turned into snow. And here's me with no winter boots. Oh well.

One of the many many facets of working in Japan is what Robin has termed "The Eyes of God." As we were stumbling through the snow out of the train station this morning I noticed that my ticket had disappeared from my double-gloved hand. I stopped and looked around me, in that stiff way you do when you are wearing eight inches of solid clothing, and almost instantly one of my school students skipped up to me with it in her hand (in a light school blazer and skirt with no tights - the girls here are fearsome impervious to the cold. They are protected by 'fashion' see...). I am almost constantly surrounded by these kids every morning and afternoon.
And this is the thing with being a foreigner in Japan - at least, in a small city like Toyama - everybody knows what you're doing. From the teacher who saw you holding hands with your girlfiend in the street, to the student who sees you shopping for groceries in the evening, to the other students who see you staggering about town on the weekend with your drunken friends.
Whilst doing interview tests yesterday with the first grade one student said he lived in Kamiichi, a town just outside of Toyama. Do you know the ALT there I asked - "oh yes, Maxu! He is curl!" because they all know him, or about him, in that tiny town.

I see the same foreigners all the time in Toyama, I can't help it - and if I see them then the Japanese must see them. If I were to live here any longer than a year I think I would have to radically readjust my mindset and my perceptions of personal space or time.

Taxnorage...?

The following is probably why I wont be staying that extra year:

Scene: Cloakroom, removing coats etc. Mostly wet.

JTE: Ah, good morning
Geoff: Good morning! (overly-enthusiastic)
J: Do you have a heater in your apartment?
G: ......yes, yes we have two
J: Ah, an air conditioner?
G: Oh yes, but it is very expensive to run, and not good for the environment
J: The air conditioner can heat as well
G: Yes, but it is expensive. Our space heaters are good though. Also last night I went around the apartment 'battening down the hatches'
J: Batting down hatches? This is an expression?
G: Yes, it means to get ready for the storm. But I was getting ready for winter - covering up vents, draughts, hanging extra curtains...
J: Oh, are the electrics out?
G: Sorry?
J: You have no batteries?
G: Are the what what?
J: The electricity, is it out?
G: Oh, ah, no. We have elctricity.
J: Oh good, I am relief
G: Ha ha. Um, yes. Thanks.

"I like the cover - Don't Panic. It's the first useful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day...."

Today is Saturday. I only know this because the calendar tells me it is. Everything else is screaming otherwise. You see, I'm at school. On Thursday we had a half day for the kids to revise for their exams. On the free afternoon all the teachers went for an enkai, that is, went out and got plastered. Not me though, I still had to go to my special school, but, I did have most of the afternoon off at home - which is just as nice. Weekends don't mean anything here (just ask the kids who never seem to be out of their uniform). Oh, didn't we mention that when you signed up? You had a weekday off because of some curriculum thing? Oh, then you must make it up on the weekend. Waht? Overtime? Noooo.

Tell you what - why don't you keep your little day off and let me have my weekend, hmm?

Ah well. I prepared myself for this hell in the only way I know how - last night I went bowling. And drinking. Of course now I feel like a big bucket of warm vom, but at least I'm incapable of doing any work - that'll show them.

I got a little confused on the train this morning. I was trying not to look up, as in above knee level - I just couldn't handle that kind of stimulus so early. This combined with the reeling fact that it was Saturday at 8.30am and I was going to work. This and the pounding headache. And the shaky hands. Oh, and the cold. Anyway - I got on the wrong train. Not in the "oh dear I've ended up in Newport" kind of wrong train but the wrong train; the train that's going to the railroad yard. This is what happened: I humphed down the stairs to the platform and humphed on the train and humphed down in my seat and buried my face into my collar. Being a weekend the train was empty. Ah well, I thought, at least I can sit by myself for five minutes until the train leaves.

Then all the doors closed.

Then they turned the lights off.

Hang on, I thought. I tried the door to find it totally and firmly closed. I looked up and down the train: nobody. Ah. I half-jogged, in that I-don't-want-to-look-like-I'm-panicking kind of way, up and down the bloody thing trying every door hoping to god that I don't end up spending the day in the yard in a locked train. Finally I saw a man in uniform at the end of the train. He started to wave me away, saying something in Japanese. I thought he meant to go to the other end of the train where there must be an open door. But no, too late I remembered that in Japan what we do to shoo somebody away they do to say come here. After ten minutes of me vacilating between carriages he finally walked down to me, ushered me to his end of the train and pushed me out of the tiny tiny door that the drivers use. Ah bugger, I thought, now I actually have to go to work.


Marking exams. Listen to the dialogue and fill in the blanks.

"Sometimes I'm the only westerner for miles around. I really am a _________ here"

One student's answer: taxnorage