Its Still November, and I am Still in Japan, so What do I Call this Post?

Me at Nanzenji!

I have to take back everything I said about the weather here in my last post.  Real fall weather just touched down like a ton of bricks.  My apartment is so chilly right now that I don't know if I will be able to finish this post without finding a pair of gloves.  I truly don't understand how the people of Tsu City build all of these places without proper insulation and central heat.  Its all fine and dandy in the summer, but this isn't exactly the tropics here!  Sorry about the weather rant, but I was definitely not prepared for this kind of assault on my internal temperature gauge.  


Apart from the weather, its been a great ten days or so since my last post.  My classes are great, except for my last class of the day on Fridays.  The man in that class is about 30 years old, and he was signed up for classes by his mother.  He wants to learn English to start helping his company (owned by his mom) do international business, but he seriously spends half our class buried in his dictionary.  We have a long way to go.  The one plus side to the class is that the guy makes me laugh, both intentionally and not.  The first time I saw him, he definitely looked familiar, but I could remember where or why.  Then, about halfway through that first class, it struck me.  He looked just like Po, the Kung Fu Panda!  If you take Po, and imagine him as a real person instead of a panda, my student is exactly what you would get.  I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it is hilarious.

Aqueduct.  And here I thought these
were only in Rome!

But I digress, yet again.  Sorry.  Today (November 23) was a national holiday here, so I had the day off.  Last night, I went over to my friend Marshall's place, and we started talking about his weekend trip to Kyoto.  I was jealous for a moment, but no less then 20 minutes later, John Stanton walked in and asked if I wanted to go to Kyoto with him and our friend Etsuko tomorrow.  Perfect timing.  Fitting with my status as a 'yes'-man here in Japan, I of course agreed.  We woke up bright and early and hoped in Etsuko's car and drove to Kyoto.  Also fitting with tradition, something went wrong with John the night before we had early morning plans.  Unlike certain other weekends, which shall remain unmentioned, this one was out of his control.  The poor guy spent the night praying to the porcelain goddess, wracked with some sort of food poisoning.   


The drive to Kyoto was relatively uneventful, except I eventually realized that Etsuko's car didn't really go over 120 kph.  That is only about 7o miles per hour or so.  Maybe 75.  Even at that speed, it only took an hour to get to the edge of Kyoto.  Parking is hard to come by, and very expensive in the city itself, so we parked a ways away from anything interesting and took the subway to Nanzenji Temple.  Our walk to the subway was great.  We followed these adorable little soccer boys who kept looking up at me and John, waving and saying "Hello!" in the most timid little voices.  It was great!  After an uneventful subway ride, we made it to the temple.  Nanzenji is a Zen Buddhist Temple, and it is apparently a very, very popular tourist destination.  The place was packed.  Packed, but extremely beautiful.  Nanzenji is comprised of several gardens, the main temple, and several smaller support buildings.  There is also an aqueduct that was built in the late Edo Period to carry water from Biwa Lake to Kyoto.  My favorite parts of Nanzenji were the two main gardens.  One was a traditional garden and was a rock garden.  Both were exceptionally beautiful with their fall colors.  This blog really isn't big enough to post enough pictures to do this place justice, so I highly recommend jumping over to Facebook to check out my album titled "Fall Colors in Kyoto."


After Nanzenji, we took a wonderful walk through Kyoto to Kyomizu Temple.  The walk took us down one of the most densely packed streets I've ever been on.  The street had everything.  Shops selling pretty much anything you could want, both souvenir shops and restaurants, more people per square foot than should be allowed, and to top it all of, it meandered up and down some pretty steep hills.  John's favorite part was the rickshaw drivers.  A bunch of Japanese boys pulling people along in some pretty elaborate carts.  John wants to start moonlighting as a rickshaw driver in his spare time.  The temple was worth the hour long walk through an unending sea of people.  It is situated on a hill over looking the entire city of Kyoto.  The only word I can use to describe it is epic.  Again, I don't have room enough here for all the pictures I want to show you!  So here is a link to the proper album:  Fall Colors in Kyoto.  (the link should open in a new window)  Long story short, everyone should go to Kyoto at some point in their life.  I don't want this post to get too long, so I will end this post with a question.  I bought a ton of post cards.  Who wants one?  If you want one, leave a comment with your address, or email me at ajforkesgud@gmail.com.  Thanks!!

November in Japan

I seem to ask this a lot, but please excuse me while I ramble on a bit.  I need to go Minnesotan for a while and talk about the weather.  This is the warmest I have ever been in November ever.  It is crazy.  I took out my garbage at 9:30 p.m. on November 13th barefoot.  Barefoot, in shorts and  t-shirt.  This is crazy!  Maybe its a good thing that I'll be staying in Japan for Christmas, I might not survive the winter in Minnesota!  At this rate, next year is going to be rough!  

I went Hiking today with a bunch of folks, and we climbed the glorious and beautiful Mt. Gozaisho.  To keep with the weather topic for a moment, I started the day wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and a zip-up sweatshirt over that, and after about 10 steps up the mountain, I was really, really wishing I had brought a pair of shorts.  I've never had that thought half way through November before!  


The start of my day today was interesting to say the least.  Our day was supposed to start around 7:00 a.m., which is about 3 hours earlier than I would ideally like to wake up on a sunday, but our train schedule was tight, to say the least.  I woke up to an odd smell in my apartment though.  And for those of you who might be questioning my hygiene at this point, I take offense to that!  The smell was coming from my kitchen.  Apparently, my roommate John had started cooking some udon last night when he came home from the bar, but forgot about halfway through and accidently left the burner on with the udon broth to boil over night!  When I finally figured out what was going on, the broth had turned into a lovely little charcoal briquette in the bottom of out pot!  That was the high point for the day until we actually got to Yokkaichi.  After that, we had about 7 minutes to get all of out things prepared for the day and head out the door.  I live about 9 minutes from Tsushimmachi train station, and the train we needed to catch to make it to our connection left at 7:50.  We left our apartment at 7:46 and missed the train by a minute!  Talk about disappointment.  Here we went through all of this effort, and we weren't even going to make it to the mountain!  Fortunately, we have very smart and well prepared friends with internet phones.  We managed to catch up to the express train by taking the limited express from the next station and we eventually found our friends and started our trip to the mountain.  


As far as the mountain itself goes, it was pretty excellent.  It might have been the perfect hiking experience.  I went with wonderful people, the weather was as close to ideal as you could hope, the climb was great, and the descent was made infinitely more enjoyable by the fact that we rode a gondola down instead of climbing.  The hike was great.  There was the perfect combination of wooded trails, steps and bouldering.  Most of the bouldering was done in what I think was an old river bed that wound its way down the mountain.  All that was left of the river was a small, spring-fed stream that tumbled its way through the rocks.  It might have been small, but the stream was beautiful and refreshing!  Sorry to keeping hammering on the weather thing, but it was warm enough today for a quick dip in a mountain stream to be refreshing rather than freezing, and it seemed to carry only a slight risk of pneumonia.  Don't worry Mom, I feel fine!  


Mt. Gozaisho is a pretty popular mountain, and the summit is accessible by a gondola as well as the many hiking paths.  The gondola's wheelhouse also housed a cafe and a souvenir shop.  There are few things more welcome after a great hike then hot food and cold beer, both of which were served in plenty at the cafe!  We decided that since we had worked so hard to get to the top, we would take our well earned break in style.  There were plenty of things to do at the top besides drink and eat.  There were ample opportunities for silly pictures, and we did our best to make use of them all!  Check Facebook for the other good ones, these are just two that I am in!  


Usually, my least favorite part of a hike is the trip down the mountain, but Gozaisho even had an answer for that.  For about 1.000 Yen, we were able to take a gondola back down the mountain to survey the trail we had taken,  The view was spectacular.  I love Colorado, and no doubt the Rockies are a more spectacular mountain range then the one I was hiking in today, but there is one thing they can't offer.  That is a view of the ocean from their summit.  I don't know if I will ever become accustomed to my proximity to the sea, and honestly I hope I don't, because the view from the gondola on the way down the mountain was unbelievable today.  Mountains and the sea. That is pretty much Japan in a nutshell.

Sorry for the extended post tonight, but I have one more thing I need to talk about.  Old Japanese people are crazy!  They put the vast majority of elderly Americans to shame.  I can't tell you how many people that could have been my grandparents passed our group on the trails today.  It was crazy!  In Japanese old man is ojiichan, and old lady is obaachan.  "Don't let the Ojiichans beat you up the mountain!" was pretty much our battle cry for the day.  And last but not least, I thought I would include one hilarious picture.  This was another common sight on the trails.  One poor father carrying his completely passed out child on his back up a mountain.  Talk about dedicated parenting!  

Post-Halloween Thoughts

So, Halloween has been over for 10 days now, and the horrific flashbacks have finally started to fade.  My dreams are no longer haunted by the sound of paper crinkling and scotch tape being peeled off the roll.  Life has settled nicely into the post halloween, downward slope into the Christmas holidays.  Speaking of downward slopes, I finally have some plans for my holiday!  I recently decided to stay in Japan, instead of coming home (sorry Mom, but I can't pass up the chance to travel around Japan) but I didn't have any definite ideas about how to occupy my time.  My fellow OBC teachers are both leaving the country, so I will be the only one here, and that had me feeling a bit nervous.  However, thanks to my wonderful friends here, I have a tentative plan to hit the slopes and do a little snowboarding in Nagano Prefecture.  I have to say, the idea of tearing up the same slopes as the '98 Winter Olympians is pretty exciting.  So, no need to worry Madre, I will not be spending Christmas all alone!

My Room, complete with the
Rocky Mountains and the Grand
Canyon

But, I digress.  Back to Halloween.  My responsibility for OBC's Halloween party was to create a game involving English and some aspect of American culture, that 5 or 6 six kids could do at one time and took roughly five minutes to complete.  The party would have about 50 students in attendance, only half of which would be actual OBC students, the other half would be friends and family members.  With the help of the wonderful Sydney Rajchel and my loving mother, I decided to turn my classroom into a road map of 'America.'  I chose 4 destinations:  Disney World, Target Field, the Statue of Liberty, and the Grand Canyon, and my students had to navigate a road map and overcome a few obstacles to find their destination.  When they arrived, they got a postcard that I had made and some candy.  Turning a classroom into something interesting enough to hold the attention of a bunch of 4 to 14 year old students was just as difficult as it sounds.  I spent more time taping sheets of paper together than I would I ever like to repeat.  Thus the aforementioned flashbacks and sound induced nightmares.  I also made a road out of paper for the kids to follow, and in order to prevent it from being destroyed by the sugar-crazed stompings of little children's feet, I taped it to the floor with industrial strength scotch tape.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, but after two hours of scrubbing the floor with paint thinner to remove the tape residue, I can tell you that it definitely wasn't.  To make up for the unpleasantness, I think our guests actually enjoyed themselves, so I suppose in the end, it really was worth it.  


Enough of Halloween, I don't want to stir up those memories any more than necessary.  As I said earlier, I'm on the downhill side.  Life is looking good from where I stand.  I feel confident when I walk into the classroom, I think most of my students like me, or at least think I am somewhat interesting, and best of all, I get to see Sydney in less than two months.  I'm doing alright.