Morioka Scandal!

On the news last night it said that a Morioka high school teacher has been sacked for also being the owner of a seedy porn shop in his spare time. The 54 year old teacher, after a long day's slog in the classroom, headed to his shop "dreams" to supervise the after hours activities. It didn't go into detail about what exactly his shop did, just that it was dirty and lewd, and not the sort of place a public servant should be owning, irrelevant to the fact that government employees can't have a second job of any sort.

The part I liked though, was that because they couldn't show the student's faces, they instead interviewed them by pointing the camera at their chests, so there they were discussing how shocked and outraged they were about sex shops, whilst filming several 15 year old girls' breasts in their little tight school shirts. I'm sure their teacher would have been very proud.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060427b2.html

Japanese blog

I started a Japanese blog. For now it is at this address.
http://mixi.jp/view_diary.pl?id=124013218&owner_id=4156093
But I might change it as the website needs you to be a member to even look at the blogs, so I might move it to blogger.

==**update**==
I moved it to
http://easy-peasy-japanesey.blogspot.com/
so you can see it anytime!

Today I tried making dango（団子）. This is a dodgy Japanese confectionery made from rice powder. It tastes good, but I admit even the professionals can't make it look good.

A professional dango.

However, I think I managed to go a step further in the art of making something that looks like inedible mush.

my appetizing dango.

Honestly, it tasted ok, it just looks weird. And it is really fun to make. When it is in the bowl it is quite hard, but then you put it in your hands to make balls and it goes all soft and sloppy. It is really strange.

The first batch I made were not so good. I didn't realise when you put it in the boiling water that it would expand, so when I took the lid of there was just one huge dango balloon. The second batch I made smaller balls and they were actually ok.

If anyone wants to try making them, the powder is very light and you just add water, so I am happy to post some to England.

Maybe I am still 8?

Does anyone else find the name of this product mildly amusing?

What?! It is good to be young at heart

Scenery appreciation time

I thought it was a long time since I put any photos up on here, so on the way back from work on Saturday I stopped to admire the great Iwate landmark that is Iwate-san, and took the time to record it in its sunset glory for you.


(click on the pictures for added beauty)

Mad for a cuppa

It seems the news is full with tea news at the moment.

I had fully intended to vent my outrage at the price of Claridge's afternoon tea yesterday, but then it SNOWED (yes, it is April here too) and I totally lost my concentration.

So, Claridge's has been named best place in London to have afternoon tea, but it costs a crazy £28.50 per person!! I was truely shocked! I can pay for two weeks rent, half my car tax, a weeks food shopping, a meal for two including all-you-can-drink, or two month's mobile phone bill with £30. To spend that much on tea is just totally beyond my comprehension.

Especially when...

Ian and Dorothy Stubley, who have owned The Hazelmere Cafe for 22 years, will serve you the best brew in England with a homemade cake for a meger £5 a head.

See, a good cuppa tea truely lifts the spirits

Lost and Found

You may have all read about the Japanese soldier who has returned to Japan after 60 years in Ukraine. I gave this a passing glance as a mildly interesting piece, until I found out the soldier in question actually comes from Morioka, and arrived on a shink at our station a few days before. More interestingly, he gave an interview on the local news, but he had an interpreter. Now I can understand if a young child is taken away from their home country that they would forget their mother tongue easily, but this guy was 25 when he got separated from his troops. JTB and I came to the conclusion that it was probably more that he didn't want to speak Japanese, but couldn't come up with a reason why not.

I also thought it was interesting that the Japanese government immediately started banging on about repatriating him. He has lived in the Ukraine for 50 years, has a wife and children over there and citizenship. I wonder if he actually wants to come back so permanently. It is the same with the Korean abductees. Now I know North Korea is not a good place to live, but I think if I had grown up living as a Korean and probably not being able to speak Japanese anymore, or understanding their culture, I would much rather take my Korean family and go and live in the south. I don't see why the Government always assume people will want to come back to Japan.

For the full story about the soldier see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4921396.stm

Love is in the air

It must be the sunny weather, but something has happened to people today. Walking to school H fell head over heels for a little two year old girl, tottering along holding her farther`s hand. And last night I spend two and a half hours watching a six year old child on TV because she was just too cute to turn off!

There is a very old cartoon called Chibi-maruko-chan which is one of Japan`s longest running TV cartoons. It is about a little girl called Maruko and it is everyday stories about her life told through her eyes. Recently Fuji TV made a version using real life actors and the lead is just the most adorable little thing. It is high tension drama, but on a six year old level, so it covers life-or-death events like her big sister getting a new coat for the school picnic, but she had to wear her sister`s cast offs, or getting a chain letter, or her father not having time to help her fix her bike. For anyone that is in Japan, I recommend it as a good Tuesday night in.

Pig Olympics

Yes, it is just what it says it is.

The third annual Pig Olympics were held in Russia last week, with pigs from seven countries took part in football, swimming and other sports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4914320.stm

There also seems to be a rival event in China.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4440000/newsid_4445800/4445869.stm

For Hazel

Just while you are waiting for the real thing...

Watery Wonderland

This weekend H, J and I had a weekend so good it was hard to believe. It has been a while since we have been out and about, so we thought with the weather as nice as it was, we should do something special.

In the morning, I was teaching. I painted Eater eggs and made little Easter baskets with all the little kids. Then we had an Easter egg hunt. It was fun, but takes so much energy.

As soon as I was finished, H picked me up in the car and we headed out towards the coast. We had no particular plan in mind, so when we saw a sign for a waterfall we veered off the main road and went in search of it. We had to drive through an area quite thick with trees. It wasn't quite a forest, but it was enough to make it dark as the branches met overhead. After a while we suddenly broke out into the open and to one side of us was a huge mountain and at the bottom of a cliff to the side of the road was a roaring river. As we drove we opened the windows and we could smell the freshness of the spring foliage mixed with the spray off the river. Soon the sound of the river got louder and we saw in front of us one of the largest waterfalls I have ever seen. We parked the car and stood leaning over the fence and we couldn't see where it met the river because of all the spray. Probably because of the snow melting up in the mountains, there was just so much water!

Next to the waterfall was a small, but quite deep cave. At the bottom of the scarily slippy walkway was a set of pools that were the most amazing translucent blue. They almost sparkled and even though they were amazingly clear, it was impossible to see the bottom. It was then that maybe the most amazing part of the day happened. While H and I were

looking for fish in the pool, J wandered off to one side. Suddenly we heard a little, excited scream. We went to see what she had found and saw she had discovered a 5000yen note wedged behind a rock. At first we thought that it might be some sort of candid camera, but then we thought how much fried cheese you could buy with 25 quid and swallowed all morals, snatched it and headed for the surface.

For dinner we headed back to Morioka. When we arrived we had a bit of time to kill before we could eat, so we decided a trip to a coffee shop was in order. When we were walking towards the piano cafe, we bumped into Office Boy from H`s work. It turned out he had come to Morioka to meet his friend, but he had been stood up cause his friend had to work late, so we invited him to come eat with us. We ended up in the little basement restaurant where the Okinawan place used to be. After a good start at the nomihodai, J and I headed off to the toilets and left OB and H alone. We were heading back, but when we saw how deep in conversation they were we scuttled back to the loos and left them to it for a bit longer. And good thing we did too. It turns out H has snagged herself a date for Friday night, so we will be waiting for news on that one!!

Name change

So some of you may be wondering why I decided to change my blog address. We have a mailing list for all the ALTs (assistant language teachers) in Iwate. Most Some of the time, this has useful information about teaching and events, but there are a few people on there who are bored in their offices and so spend their time just bitching about Japan, their job and other ALTs. Recently their has been one bloke who totally ripped apart Mike`s blog, even though he has probably never even met him. I have my suspicions that he is the guy who left the boring comment a while back.

At first I considered just leaving it and taking my chances, but I know I wont be able to resist reading the drivel that is their messages and if they write about mine I will be quite sad. I`m sure i should be making some sort of stand, but I am really not that attached to my address and I will be starting a new blog in August anyway - now job, new blog - just makes sense.

It is sad that out of the 200 odd people in Iwate, just because a hand full don't enjoy their job they have to write rubbish on the mailing list and ruin what was a useful tool. I just hope next year`s newbies will be a nicer bunch.

Simply average

Last night I watched a fascinating program. They had done a survey of 10,000 people and made a model of an "average Japanese person". They then got celebrities, put them in chairs that moved up and down with an alarming jerky motion, asked them the same questions and then moved them up and down depending on their answers. That part was kind of irrelevant and took a lot of time, but it was worth it to see them clinging onto the side of their chairs for dear life every time they moved.

I learnt that an average Japanese person...

• kisses their partner 3 times a week
• wakes up at 6.30
• talks to their partner for 1 hour 6 minutes a day
• e-mails their partner 7 times week (and checks their partner`s phone while they are in the bath twice a year)
• has about 125 pounds in their wallet (unless you are a MD, in which case it is several thousand!!)
• rents one adult video a month
• puts on 5kg after getting married
• has one extra-martial affair
• has a salary of 1500 pounds a month (plus a yearly bonus of the same amount)
• works 9 hours a day
• sleeps 6 hours a night
• drinks 71 litres of beer a year
• commutes 1 hour 18 minutes a day

Are you average?

An average Japanese man

An interesting article on Tokyo Times today...

http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=811

Greatest discovery of mankind

Have you noticed you can feed my hedgehog?! I only just discovered this. If you click the "more" button, you can feed him a strawberry, and if you click on him, he jumps about. Amazing.

Green fingers

Today I had such good plans of being all cultural and arty and going to see the new Jean Cocteau exhibit. Somehow it became 3pm and I hadn't gone anywhere, so faced with a now free afternoon, I did what any normal person would do. I bought seeds. JTB had a sudden brainwave that we should try growing vegetables, so I am now the proud owner of seeds for peppers, green beans, asparagus, aubergine and basil. It is still a bit cold to plant anything, but this could be an interesting experiment; put together one person with a history of farming and one who is able to kill a cactus and will the plants survive??

First impressions count

Today was my first official day at ZRK. I think I made a good first impression.

Even though it is April, it was snowing heavily, so on the walk from the car park, my trousers slowly became wet from the bottom up, leaving me with an interesting two-tone effect. Then, to combat the 6.30 start, I stopped in Starbucks for a Chai Tea Latte boost. I made my final dash from the coffee shop to work carrying three bags, an umbrella and a frothy coffee. I arrived and plonked everything in the corner like a small bomb blast. I then set about lessons and a bit of chit-chat. Later I stopped for a quick break. I went to the toilets and when I looked in the mirror I discovered a big blob of creamy foam stuck to my cheek. I had begun my new job with wet trousers and milk-cheek. Not good

Welcome Friday

Today is the second official day for the new teachers. Yesterday we sat in the cold gym for an hour while they introduced themselves to the students and did general opening ceremony stuff. Today is the more enticing prospect of a welcome party. But standing between me and lots of food and beer is the new students entrance ceremony.

So, good news, the gym is warm. It is not the scene from Narnia I was expecting. The bad news; I am sitting next to an industrial heater and feel I may pass out from the fumes...and yet it is not THAT warm. I also made the mistake of wearing my black suit skirt, which is very cute, but only good for standing events, as when I sit down it tends to disappear, revealing rather too much flesh for a hall full of parents. Thus I have spent the last 90 minutes squirming in my chair wrestling to keep the hem line below my mid-thigh. I must have looked like a bored child.

Well, the ceremony was long and the speeches were longer, but generally not a bad ceremony. This year there is a mere 69 students, compared to the 130 odd we had when I first arrived in 2003, which is sad for the school, but means there are only half the amount of names to read, so the ceremonies get shorter and shorter, and when living in the land of ceremony, this can only be a good thing. I like the fact that the speeches are read from a little piece of folded paper, so you can see it coming to an end, but there is one man, who always makes a speech at our school who always, always, always finishes his piece of paper and then goes off at a random tangent telling us all his thoughts of the day. I have wondered many times if he asks if this is ok, if the headmaster is happy that he does it, or if anyone else finds it as arrogant as I do. Everyone else sticks to their little prepared speech, why can't he??

After the ceremony was over, I found myself stuck in the PTA meeting. I have no idea how I got there. We were told to stay in our seats, so I did. But one by one, all the other teachers slowly disappeared. Then all of a sudden I was trapped, listening to advice on how to make my child study. Every time someone got to the end of a speech, I tried to leave, but then the next person was on their feet and talking. There was no way I was getting out, so I had inadvertently subjected myself to another hour of speeches. Sad thing is I have a sneaking suspicion I may have done exactly the same thing last year.

After a quick dash home to change into an outfit suitable for sitting on the floor, I made my way to Naria for the welcome party. As expected it was good food of voluminous quantity and constantly running beer. Even the speeches were quite entertaining as one girl managed to say to the new teachers, "please only stay a short time", instead of "welcome to our school". That's what you get for speaking fancy Japanese. Ms S was on top form of silliness and we giggled in the corner with the new office girl and somehow never got round to speaking to the new teachers.

What does it mean?

I had a very strange dream last night. I wonder if it has any meaning...

I was driving in my old car, the big beast that was the Legacy. JTB was in the front seat next to me and J was in the back seat. We stopped at a crossroads and an old Japanese lady knocked on the boot window (it was an estate car). J leaned over and opened the boot and the lady climbed into the boot, crawled over so her head was leaning over the back seat and was promptly sick all over J. Then we were suddenly in a castle on top of a hill where my headmaster came along with a sick child and told J she had to take him to my high school before 8.20.

That must have some meaning.

Mr S update

Having studied the English language swearing man more carefully I have noticed a striking resemblance to Nomura Mansai. Not so much the looks, although his eyes and hair cut are similar, but more the voice. Now considering Nomura studied kyogen which is a squeaky unintelligible form of performance art, this is a little worrying. There is definitely a kyogen-lilt going on there.

A snippet of my day

I am cutting up stuff in the copy room in a vague attempt to look like I do have a job to do when a new teachers, Mr S comes in.

Conversation is as follows (in Japanese):
S: sorry (as squeezes past me to get to the photocopier)
N: soooo, you're new here, aren't you? How is it? (Hope that sounds less flirty in Japanese)
S: oh, you know, only been a few days, but seems like a nice school.
N: yehr...where were you before? (inspiration! This conversation will last more than 3 lines)
S: I taught at (insert long name of school I have never heard of)
N: I see. Did you have an ALT?
S: Yup, her name was (insert name of ALT I have never heard of - which could be anyone on JET as I only know J and H)
N: Oh. Don`t know her.

I turn back to cutting up pieces of paper and he starts copying.

Several minutes later, from the vicinity of the back of a rather angry copy machine
S: (in ENGLISH) Oh, S*%T!!!

Why? Is this a mistake on my part and he really said something else? Is it a secret code to tell me he can speak English without actually having to say so to my face? Is it just that he is a rather strange man? Only time will tell.

Another food related post

Have started to notice the lack of content matter on my blog that doesn't involve food or weather, but hey, here comes another culinary based entry.

On Saturday both H and I had to go to Morioka for annoying little small things, so we agreed to make it seem less wasteful we would go out for dinner. We had both had parties the night before, but in our slightly hung over state we still managed to make it to the city and park.

After we got the necessities out the way we had a brief wander round the red light district looking for a nice restaurant, got side tracked by a shoe shop and Starbucks, and eventually made our way to a new restaurant just off the main street.

Slightly reminiscent of Friday night, it was a bit gloomy which had the effect of making us instantaneously sleepy, but it was a nice atmosphere and the food was lush. I was particularly excited about the toilet door signs which were made of paper and had nice little cute ladies in kimonos and samurai clad boys. We almost had a disaster when Hazel began drinking a vodka ramune when she should have been driving home. They are very strict about drink driving, so even one would have been really bad if she had been stopped. Also these ramune were very lively. This is a drink that is capped with a marble and then you use a little piece of plastic to bang the marble into the drink. It is very fun, but in this case very messy!!