Snowboarding at Yeti

So I finally went snowboarding last weekend. After a rocky start to the day (read – slept in til 11am when was supposed to be on the bus at 7, again) I met up with my new friend and convinced her to come with me. She has a car!

Note to Yeti Snowpark – your directions are rubbish! No directions should include the phrase “Find route 24”. It nearly killed us. Much simpler would be “if approaching from south, turn left onto route 24 when leaving expressway”, or “if approaching from north, turn right onto route 24 when leaving expressway” – we could work it out ourselves. Sheesh. 

An extra hour of driving around and stopping into five (5!) convenience stores for directions, we found route 24. Jubilation all around. 

Yeti park itself is a small snowpark by Mount Fuji. On the way there I took about 40 photos of Fuji, even though Friend said that once we got to Yeti we’d have the most amazing view. Good thing I ignored her, by the time we got there it was dark. 

Because it’s so early in the season there were only two slopes open. Or rather, one slope with two start points – they converge in the middle. There was only fake snow too, which usually would irritate the hell out of me, but because we arrived so late they had just spread a new layer for the night session so it was fine. 

Quick stop at the rental shop as Friend had to rent gear (2500 yen for clothes) and then on to the slope! It took a few goes to get the snow legs back and lose the Fear (the last time I snowboarded I fractured my nose) but soon I was careening down the mountain like the best of them (the beginners that is). 

It was my first time boarding at night, but I liked it. According to Friend, the park is packed during the day at the weekend. Buses come from the nearby cities and unload hundreds of people all at the same time so there are queues for everything. Tickets, rental, lifts, food, drinks, toilets. At night there was no queueing for anything. Even the lift queue moved as fast as I could skate on the snowboard, so it was perfect really. The slopes weren’t even that packed. 

The only downside of Yeti is the cost. You have to pay to go on the private road up to the park (500 yen). Then it’s 1000 yen to park. Plus the cost of the ticket. Plus rental. 

I didn’t have to pay for rental because I had already bought all my gear. (Post forthcoming on how to kit yourself out on the cheeeeeap.)

In conclusion – it was fun. I took a few spills, and there were a couple of crashes, but nothing a hot bath wouldn’t sort out. 

There was a minor freakout on the way home though when three rest stops in a row didn’t sell gas and we had to leave the expressway to get it. The poor car was running on vapours by the time we found it. 

Lesson – fill up whenever you can. You never know when your car’s next meal is coming from. 

Reasons To Clean

As said before, I live alone. I find it hard to motivate myself to clean when no one else will see it. Also, the apartment is tiny and I haven’t gotten around to acquiring storage furniture (plastic boxes). 

It’s not actually dirty, just very very untidy. Piles of books, clothes, blankets, bits of paper, cosmetics, you know. 

Today though, I think I’m going to have to clean. 

1. I seem to have lost all my clothes. Particularly socks. I just wear the same few pairs over and over again (I do wash them). 

2. Right now there is a bug so big I can hear it moving around and I can’t find it in the mess. 

Arg. I’m fairly sure I have a bag of cleaning products around here somewhere…

Not Snowboarding, Again

Ugh. 

I don’t know what it is about winter that ruins my sleep pattern so. 

I couldn’t sleep last night til after the time I was supposed to be getting up to go snowboarding. I told myself that I would just delay a couple of hours. Again, I got up mid-afternoon. 

Now, it’s 4am. 

Next weekend, I promise…

Not Snowboarding

Image from snowjapan.com

Well, the plan for today was to go snowboarding. There’s a small resort a few hours away from me and I thought I’d pop up for the day to test my boarding legs. After all, they’ve been out of action for two seasons, and they weren’t that great to begin with.

I dutifully set the alarm clock for 5am, intending to get the first train out of my town, then another train to local Big City, then a bus. I woke up at 9am. Then again at 2pm. Good god. I minced around the house for a bit, then dried some clothes and bought some food for dinner, but was so hungry I ate a bun outside the laundromat. That curbed my desire for dinner so when I got home I lay down to read a book for a bit and BAM! Asleep again.

It’s now 11pm. DAMN!!! All week I invent exciting plans for the weekend, and then when the weekend comes I spend it all bloody asleep. No idea where this mystery exhaustion is coming from.

I’m going to try to go tomorrow but in the meantime, here’s a photo of some Japanese snowboarders, all fashiony and such. Check out the cow suit! Enjoy!

Image by glemak

Mikan!

I got my first gift in work today!

My area is famous in Japan for producing mikan – they’re really sweet mandarin oranges. They’re particularly easy to peel and have very little pith. The whole town and surrounding area is filled with mikan trees, which have slowly been turning orange since I arrived.

Above is a picture of my very first mikan. I was given a whole bag of them (maybe 20, you can see half of them in the background of the photo) by one of the mothers in the school. I’m happy to report that even though I generally don’t like oranges, this one was delicious. I’ve eaten half the bag already and now my keyboard is all sticky. Yum.

It was a nice gift, they sell here for 4 dollars for a bag of 6, I’m sure they’re more expensive elsewhere in Japan.

It’s the very start of the season so hopefully I’ll get a few more bags for free. When they’re on all the trees around my apartment I just can’t justify spending so much on them.

Oh, and for those that celebrate it – Happy Thanksgiving! (I had beef on rice… no oven here.)

Funny Things That Happened At School Today

1. I went into the bathrooms, found both stalls occupied, so waited my turn. I heard maniacal giggling coming from one of the stalls. A minute or so later, two little boys (6 or so) came out. I asked what they were doing. They looked at each other confusedly, then hugged by way of explanation.

2. The owner of the school’s dog somehow got into my classroom and refused to leave. I had 8 13 year old boys chasing a hysterical poodle for ten whole minutes. I sat on the floor with my face in my hands and yowled with laughter.

I made a friend!

So I finally hooked up with the girl who lives in the town nearby. Not romantically hooked up, just met up. I invited her over last night to have dinner and watch a movie. (Though that does sound like a date).

We decided to try a restaurant I’d never been to before. It was tiny, only four tables and a bar, and ONE guy working there. Somehow this didn’t seem like it would be a problem…

We ordered drinks and some appetizers to start, meaning to order the actual food when he came back with the appetizers. That took well over an hour. Service in Japanese restaurants is often slow, but come on. 90 minutes? For some fried cheese in batter? It wasn’t like the place was full, only two of the three other tables were occupied, and one group had finished eating when we arrived and were well into the drinking. The other table was a couple. I was struggling to hide my anger from my new friend (best to wait til they know you better to unleash the crazy right?) but she was annoyed too. We ended up leaving after the three minutes it took to eat the cheese and getting konbini food on the way home.

It was such a treat to have someone to speak English with who isn’t my boss! We somehow ended up staying up til 7am talking about living in Japan (she’s been here over 2 years), home (she’s from the US) and all sorts of other random things.

It’s not often I get a girl-crush, but this could be great – a friendship borne of a shared love of food, books and lame movies. With a little cynical rage thrown in.

(I’ve just realised how weird it would be if she read this. Do I sound like a stalker?)

The JLPT Dilemma

I got my JLPT test voucher in the post the other day.

I applied for it way back in August before I jumped on the Heisig/All Japanese All The Time bandwagon, when I thought it might be a good thing to do. Now, I’ve paid my monies and am scheduled to do it in the nearby Big City. It’s on the 7th of December this year.

There’s been a lot of debate on the interwebs about whether or not the JLPT is any good, or whether having a JLPT qualification actually means anything. I can see that really, the Japanese is probably not all that useful in daily life. When I started out, I was using the Japanese for Busy People textbook. Once I actually started working though, I realised that the kids only use informal Japanese, so all the verb forms I had learned were inappropriate – some of the littlest ones just look at me blankly when I use the polite forms.

I can see that having the Level 1 certification could be very useful for getting a job and many universities here require it for foreigners wanting to take courses. Even though having level 1 doesn’t necessarily mean you are fluent, it will get your CV past the first round of consideration by employers.

The lower levels on the other hand seem kind of pointless. I’m a long way from level one (the highest level), I’m way down at level four (the lowest). I’m not even likely to pass level four. I’ve been plugging away at Remembering the Kanji, but I haven’t yet covered the 100 odd kanji needed for level four, never mind all the readings. I know words like riot, icicle and nitrate, but not week or station.

The other consideration is that that weekend is the only weekend I’ll have free to go snowboarding before I go home for Christmas. The weather had been pretty warm up til about a week ago (now it’s flipping freezing) so there was little snow anywhere close by, but now it’s really dumping down.

So – should I just ditch the JLPT and go snowboarding?
Any advice??

Teaching English In Japan

I work at a private English school in the countryside in Japan. I teach kids from 2 years old up to 18 or so.

Most of the kids come for 2 hours. Half an hour of either tracing the alphabet, filling in the blanks on worksheets or hardcore grammar work depending on their age, then an hour of “conversation” (that’s me), then another half an hour of tracing/grammar.

The school runs from 2 or so until 10.30pm. I usually have either four or five classes a day, split into a 3 or 4 class run, then a 30 minute break, then one class, or sometimes two. Obviously I arrive later than the Japanese lady who does the tracing/grammar, and leave earlier.

For anyone considering coming to Japan to do similar work, here are my tips…

1. Give Up Smoking.

As mentioned, sometimes I have to work 4 hours straight. Maybe I’m just a lazy spoiled Westerner, but I’ve never had to do that before. I’ve had a few of the normal 9-5 or 5.30 jobs, where you work 9-11.15, have a coffee break for ten mins or so, then lunch is 1-2, then another break around 4 for ten mins. Unless things were really mental, I never worked more than about 2 hours straight. I’ve also worked 12-hour shifts in a hospital. There I never worked more than 2.5 hours straight.

I should point out, that I’m a smoker. Even when things were really busy in work and I was eating lunch at my desk, I was always able to nip out for 2 minutes for a smoke. Not in this job. Apart from the obvious not wanting to stink of smoke around the kids and parents, it’s just not feasible. The classes are an hour long. I can’t let the kids out early because the tracing/grammar lady won’t be finished with the previous class. I can’t come in late because the kids will be tearing around the room and generally raising hell. So, no smoking. I’ve invested in nicotine patches. Seriously. 4 hours straight with 14 five year olds? Some days I feel like Krusty the clown wondering if there’s some space on my butt to stick an extra patch. (Not really, I only ever have one patch on… just in case you were worrying).

This brings me neatly to point 2…

2. Develop Excellent Bladder Control.

This is way more of a problem than the smoking thing. Realising you kind of have to pee, then looking up at the clock and knowing you won’t be able to for three more hours is torture. Obviously, sometimes I do have to leave the hellions to their own devices for a few minutes, but I try not to. I limit how much liquid I consume before class and try not to think about waterfalls.

3. You Don’t Have To Like Kids, But It Helps.

Before I took this job I had never worked with children. I had worked rather extensively with babies, particularly very very small ones (see hospital job above) but never with kids who could walk and talk. I presumed I liked kids. I mean, who doesn’t? Not many people would ever openly admit to not liking children. It’s like not liking peace, or flowers or something.

Since coming here, I’ve realised that actually, I don’t love children. I don’t hate them either, I’m just not your typical super-awesome-wow-fun camp counsellor you usually get teaching 3 year olds.

The first week was a real eye-opener. I thought that knowing a lot about babies and having a teenage brother would be useful. Wrong wrong wrong. Children are dirty and loud and rude and violent. When they get together they can be vicious. I spend plenty of time breaking up fights and handing out tissues and generally being a zookeeper. I seriously considered packing it in, going home and breaking out the power suit and high heels and going back to the office.

4. Japanese Kids Are People Too

After a few weeks, something happened. I started consistently remembering their names, and sometimes I even matched the name to the right kid. I started to get to know a few of them. I started to find them funny and cute. It stopped being a blur of snot and noise, and I found myself looking forward to going in to see a particular class of exceptionally cute four year olds or bright 13 year olds.

No matter where you work, there’ll always be people you don’t like. In my last job, I had to buy an ipod just to drown out the voice of this excruciatingly annoying guy who spent most of the day making personal calls and yattering on about his latest night out. (Given, the stories were funny the first time, but there are only two weekend nights and five 8 hour working days. They wore out quickly). I used to time my breaks to avoid running into a really nice overly friendly guy who always wanted to sit with me, because he chewed with his mouth wiiiiide open.

You just have to suck it up. You can’t avoid the infuriating people in the world, particularly when you’re getting paid to teach them English. You just have to overlook their poor personal hygiene and appalling social graces, and get on with your day.

Sometimes, you even have to accept the occasional slapped bum. Somehow, I don’t think the director of the school would entertain a sexual harassment charge against a 3 year old.

I Am White Trash

This was the first post I wrote, way back when I first arrived. I didn’t actually post it anywhere though. It’s a little out of date, but hey, I’m not perfect.

1. I live in a tiny apartment surrounded by farmland.
2. My tiny garden is full of trash – bags of rubbish, piles of cardboard, assorted broken electronics (including a tv).
3. I mostly wear a vest and knickers.
4. I have given up religion, save the worship of the aircon unit.
5. I am illiterate.

How did this happen? I used to live in the capital city of a European country! I used to frequent wine bars! I used to work in finance! I used to commute goddamnit!

I moved to Japan. To a small rural town.

Why? Well, for the laugh. Teaching English seemed like a fun thing to do while I’m still young and child/mortgage-free, so I ditched the hated job in finance, packed some stuff, and here I am.

One piece of advice – if you are not from a hot country, do not move to Japan in summer. It’s hot. Like 35C. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so damp. It’s the humidity that’s giving me this headache, not the heat. So, that’s why I only wear clothes to go outside (oh irony – it’s hotter outside than in the apartment). Incidentally, the humidity also means that even though the temperature is in the 30s (celsius), most of my clothes have been hanging on the line for three days. And they’re still wet. As for point 4, I wasn’t religious before I came here, but now, that aircon unit is the object of all my praise.

Every single morning I wake up and thank the god of electrical appliances for the happy invention of air conditioning. I would happily work anywhere, ANYWHERE, so long as it has aircon. I know that when winter comes I’ll have abandoned my new found love in favour of some sort of heating, but for now, it’s my baby. I am so grateful to the god of electrical appliances that I can easily forget about the pile of broken items littering the garden. Anyway, it’s not his fault. It’s the Japanese.

I used to be a recycling evangelist. I used to take the plastic off my cigarette packets and put the cardboard bit in the recycling bin, and the plastic in with the trash. I dutifully rinsed out the milk cartons. I pontificated to my mother who refused to bother, about saving the planet, or money, depending on my mood. Now, I want to abandon it all. Refuse is collected every weekday, and it’s a different kind every day. There is no regular trash here. There’s burnables, non-burnables, plastic recyclables, cans, glass and PET bottles (drink bottles).

There’s no way to tell what goes in what bin. Obviously, bottles go in the bottle bin, but what about the caps? And the labels? Recyclable plastic? Burnable? There’s nothing like standing over your five bins with a bottle cap in your hand, fretting over which bin to put it in to make you feel like an outsider. Note to the Japanese – Everything is burnable! Just turn up the heat!

And it’s not like you can just chuck it and forget about it. Noooo. Trash isn’t collected from your house. You have to put it in a clear plastic bag (throwing out something embarrassing? Everyone knows….), label it, and then bring it to your trash centre. Which could be a 15 minute cycle from your house. Imagine cycling through your Japanese town with a stinking bag of rubbish clutched in one hand, sweating in the heat and humidity. You used to work in finance? Now your hair is a scrubby bush, you’re drenched in sweat, and there’s bin juice on your flip-flop clad foot. Welcome to humility.

Sometimes, your bag won’t be collected, it’ll be deposited back on your doorstep. Clearly, you’ve put something in the bag that shouldn’t be there, but there’s no explanation. You just have to figure it out. Which means going through the rubbish, because they won’t collect it until it’s fixed. Or, you can just put it in your back garden and forget about it. See point 2.

All this could probably be easily solved, if only you could speak Japanese. Or, failing that, read. In most countries, with the help of a dictionary (or the internet) you can figure out most things. But getting a leaflet about the trash and it being filled with little picture things like this 余帯? You’re sort of screwed. It’s not like you can just type it into google translate. And living in the inaka means there’s noone to ask. So, you just stumble on, hoping that some day you’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, your garden fills up with bags and all the locals know you as the white person with all the trash.

I am white trash.