Jellyfish, Whales and Rays...Oh My!

After reading through my past blogs, I have noticed quite a bit of social commentary thrown in. Not that that's a bad thing, seeing as being in a different country is socially....different? Ninjas and samurai constantly trying to kill us, and don't get me started on Godzilla. You thought cleaning up after horses was bad. This time however, I just want to write about some of the cool stuff that we have seen since my last entry. If you have read any of the past entries, you may have noticed that we have been on quite a few Ferris Wheels. Not by chance really, either. I have discovered that my wife really likes Ferris Wheels, and last week when we were at the harbor, we hit the mothership. Mothership? Motherload? Mother Hubbard? I can never remember. Anyhow. Dubbing itself as the one of the biggest Ferris Wheels in the World it looms over the entire harbor. One of? Say what you want, this thing was monstrous. Have a look here, here and here and tell me what you think. We also got some shots from the wheel, and as you can see in the next eight pics, it goes quite high.

One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

We also found the Harbor Mall, which claims to be Japan's first culinary mall. While it was a very cool mall, I can say with some authority that it was just a two story mall. First floor: Food Court. Second Floor: Shopping. Some great shops but the food was nothing special, and they had without a doubt, hands down, all contenders must surrender, the worst children's play area ever! We took a few pics outside the mall as well. A 1/3 replica of the Santa Maria, a cool view of the horizon and a shot of the Suntory museum. See if you can find Colleen in the pic.

The best part of the day though, was definitely the Kaiyukan Aquarium. We got some great pics while we were there, though I will admit it is way hard to take photos through 32cm thick glass. It would have been easier if I had just jumped into the water, but I suddenly started having Star Trek IV flashbacks, and I had no intention of telling them that Gracie was pregnant. (Mea culpa to the non geeks reading this) There was tons of stuff to see there, like frog enclosures (where these two wouldn't stop frolicking), jellyfish tanks (tons of pics of those) and giant spider crabs (quite easily the creepiest things I have ever seen)(besides French clown dolls), but the main attraction at the aquarium was the whale shark (many pics) and the giant ray who just couldn't stop doing loops through the bubbles ("The Bubbles!"). To see all the pics, click on the Aquarium link in the bar at the right. What the f.....sorry, just saw Bruce Willis doing a car commercial. Ahh Japan, where commercials aren't seen as a step down, but a status symbol of continuing celebrity. Back to the Aquarium. We also added a few pics from the gift shop into the food and drink folder, as they had some strange snacks amongst the overpriced souvenirs. Here, here and here. All in all, a pretty eventful day.

I hope everyone is doing well, please don't hesitate to send E-mails, as we get a little lonely from time to time. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, there was a toy shop in the mall and I found a few more Nintendo toys. (I know, I know, boys will be boys). Hope to talk to you all soon.

Love and Laugh, Carl.

Where do they get those wonderful toys?!?

As a man who has always loved toys, Japan is definitely the place to be. There is no end to the amount of knick-knacks and trinkets available everywhere. On many bottles of Coke and Pepsi there are small bags attached to the neck, filled with collectible toys. Something you simply couldn't do back home as people would just take the toys off the bottle and steal them. So far I have about half of the collection of Super Mario toys from Pepsi. They are these little bottle tops that look like 3-D replicas of the 2-D pixel characters from the video game. Coca-cola has little anime figures attached to their bottles, and we are only missing 5 of those. Which says two things. I am a habitual collector and I drink too much cola.

We have also discovered Yodobashi Camera. It is a stadium sized technology store, near where I work, with enough stuff in it to make a grown man cry. I had no idea so many cool things could legally be stored in one place, without risking peoples heads exploding. Huge high definition TV's, plasma screens, giant wide-screen computer monitors, home printing stations (that copy, scan, and can print photos), water proof cases for transforming any camera into an underwater camera, toilet seats with temperature controls and bidet function, Winnie the Pooh waffle irons, portable DVD players....ahhh! Too much stuff to mention and I haven't gotten to my favorite floor. The sixth floor. This is where you find the toys and video games. It is quite simply awe inspiring. Even Colleen was initially stunned just trying to take it all in.

The range of toys really was quite huge. Star Wars, Power Man, Godzilla, Studio Ghibli (figures from Miyazaki films), McFarlane Toys, Steam Boy, Anpan Man, Hello Kitty and thousands of other Japanese anime toys based on series I have never heard of. They had an entire aisle full of figurines of cute Japanese cartoon females wearing bikinis, lingerie or just skin tight outfits. They had a huge display of Ipets. A robot dog that works like an Ipod but it dances to the music it plays and demands your attention. You feed it with songs. Weird. They also had large screens set up where you could play all of the latest video games on the newest game machines. Oh, and did I mention guns? Along with the incredible collection of models of everything you can imagine, they had a huge locked display case of realistic looking guns, that feel just like the real thing. Same weight, same look, they just don't fire anything, or if they do it's just BBs. They just don't have gun crime here, so no one cares about how real they look. The Police don't even carry guns here. Colleen finally managed to drag me out but not without a few toys. I picked up some Twisted Land of Oz figurines. They are Wizard of Oz figures but with a much more gruesome twist on the story. Click to see the Wizard, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

Last week Colleen posted some pictures of where she works and some people asked where my pics were, so here they are. I have also added some photos that we have taken while out and about. Some of them from the Namba district, which is where Colleen works. We went on another Ferris Wheel. There are also a few new pictures in the signs section. This is my favorite so far. Bad grammar, bad photo editing. Also check out the Garbage trucks here. They are so tiny. If you haven't read Colleen's blog about the garbage men yet, I recommend it.

I have only one more old journal entry to add. It's from April 11th, and here it is.

April 11

Mostly uneventful day except for getting my hair cut today. I tried to get "real short on the sides and in the back, just a trim on top, I usually kind of mess it up, a little spiky", but what I got was an exact replica of a hair cut I found in one of their books that was as close as I could get to what I wanted. Okay I guess, but it is a little humbling when the best you do is point and grunt, and hope that the hairdresser doesn't plan on dying your hair the same color as the sharp looking Japanese man in the picture you pointed to. Expensive haircut but they massaged my head, cleaned my ears and the hairdresser held the door for me when I left.

Work was nothing special but I have started to notice that in Japan there are duplicates of people I know back home. I mentioned this in the staff room and suddenly all of the other teachers chimed with similar sentiments. They had all met the Japanese version of someone they knew back home. For example twice now I have had this one student who is a Japanese ringer for my friend J.D. He has the same face, the same mannerisms and he is always wearing a baseball cap whenever I teach him. I also had Erin Maddill's clone today, flighty young highschool girl who loves to talk, play music and can't live without her cell phone because she "gets lonely a lot and needs attention from her friends" as she put it. Same smile, same gestures. Scary!

End transmition.

All Work and No Play Makes Carl.....something....something.

After reading Colleen's blog about work and whatnot I decided to follow suit with my own version of working in Japan. As opposed to the regular grind I had back in Calgary, (which consisted of 40 or so hours a week working and sleeping so rarely that when my head hit the pillow I would instantly pass out) things are rather different now. I work Monday to Thursday 5:00pm-9:00pm. That's right, a whopping four hours in which I teach five 40 minute classes. Then, get this, on Saturday I have to work eight whole hours in a row from 1:20pm to 9:00pm. For the first time in ten years I am getting eight or more hours of sleep a day, and...wait for it... I have been reading books too! In fact, if you look in that little bar on the right hand side of the page, I have even included a list of books that I have read while in Japan, as well as a list of the movies I have seen here, after all I am still Carl.

(Sidenote: Watching movies is somewhat challenging here. Going to the theatre costs about $20 Canadian per ticket and even then they are about 2-3 months behind North America. That's right, while the whole world is watching Star Wars on May 19th, Japan is the last country to get it in the theatres. Sometime in July I think! So our options are; renting movies, which also have the 2-3 month delay or watching them on tv on Friday and Sunday nights. These are the nights that English movies can regularly be found at 9pm. There is no guarantee that they will be good movies though, as I have mentiones in my previous post.)

Back to work. I have settled in quite nicely after an initially rough start (I was two hours late for my very first training shift. Schedule mix up. But, beleive it or not, I have not been late once since then). At Colleen's school all student files and text books are on the computers. At my school all files and text books are on shelves and there are constantly missing files, misfiled files or other teachers have the files that you need. At Colleen's school they have a break room on every floor. At my school we have one floor, and the break room is the same room as the file room, so while you are running helter-skelter between classes you are diving over people trying to heat up their leftovers. What I mean by "helter-skelter" is that we have ten minutes between each class to grade and write constructive comments on 1-4 students, then find the files for your next 1-4 students, review their past lessons, comments and personal files (age, interests), and then choose a lesson for them. Ten minutes can be a very short time. The students have a varying degree of skill ranging from level 7C to level 2 (it is assumed that if you reach level one you don't need lessons anymore, so we have no level one). Here is an actual conversation with a level 7C student.

Carl: (very slowly) Hello, my name is Carl. What's your name?

7C student: What your name.

Carl: No, no. (gesturing) I'm Carl. Who are you?

7C: Who are you.

Carl: (now writing my name on paper and pointing) Carl...me. You...?

7C: (now nodding) I Carl.

Carl: (pointing again at my name) CARL...(gesturing) This is me. (pointing at their file) You are Emiko.

7C: (now smiling in recognition) You are Emiko.

At which point I dive through the window and plummet 24 stories to my death. No, not really. I grit my teeth and continue. But to show the difference, here is an actuall conversation with a level 2 student.

Carl: Hello, how are you doing today?

2: Very well thank you. And you?

Carl: Pretty good. My name is Carl...

2: Nice to meet you Carl where are you from?

Carl: I'm from Canada...

2: Oh really, which part?

Carl: uh, Calgary...

2: Very nice, you hosted the Winter Olympics in 1988. Look before we get started I have a question. I was watching television and a McDonald's commercial, which I have seen many times now, appeared using the phrase "I'm Loving It". Have you seen this commercial?

Carl: Yes actually, we have almost the same commercials in Canada.

2: And they say "I'm loving it"?

Carl: Yes...

2: Really! I just assumed that they were Japanese made commercials because the english grammar was so bad. I thought that "love" couldn't be used as a progressive verb.

Carl: Well...it...uh (damn it where's Colleen the English major when I need her)

So you can see I teach a myriad of different students. Anyhow this blog has gone on far too long and I am still wanting to attach an old entry. This one is from April 10th when we went to see Sumo wrestling.

April 10

I've been meaning for some time to do a journally type thing of my daily event, but I was hoping to get internet first so I could download a better program than wordpad. No such luck yet, and I have done too many things already to not write them down.

Today we went to our very first live Sumo wrestling event. It just so happens that one of the big tournaments that they do every year is at Osaka Park, which is just fifteen minutes by foot from where we live. We got up early (9am for us) and dressed and walked down to see if there were Fukyu (cheap seats) tickets left, and as luck would have it there was. So for about 1000 yen (ten bucks) each we saw Sumo. There were two tournaments but we missed most of the first one because we were busy standing in line so we could get our picture taken with Sumo wrestlers. They are very big. and no not all of them are Japanese. In fact in the main tournament, when there was just four guys left, it was down to Asashoryu, who is the only current Yokozuna (highest rank for Sumo) and is from Mongolia. Ama, who at 113 kg was the smallest wrestler in the tourney (he beat four guys to get to the semi-finals, including Miyabiyama who outweighed him by over 150 lbs.) and is also Mongolian. Kyokushuzan, also Mongolian. And Kokkai, who won the tournament and 3,000,000 yen, is from Georgia (not USA, the formerly Russian kind of Georgia). Very cool.

After we came home and managed to catch The Mummy 2 on tv. We find about 2 or 3 American movies on tv a week, which is nice because anything that you can understand is better than nothing. They don't do a lot of dubbing here, mostly subtitles. even some of the Japanese programming has subtitles. Probably for the hearing impaired, or just those who like to read their movies I guess.

Cool, Carl out. Of my mind. For now. Bye.