Time Enough
 
February marks the one year anniversary of this blog.  To celebrate, I have decided to post photos capturing the happiest moments of this eventful year. 
 
I recently realized I hit that phase in culture shock where you hate everything, and think everything is awful.  I realized this on Tuesday, the day I did the photo documentary of my life - not the best timing. But it's good I recognized what I was feeling and why, first of all because it makes me feel less crazy, and second of all because it motivates me to do nice things for myself.  And that's why today I have decided to upload a special album, dedicated to the great and wonderful things in Japan.  I'm not doing this because I prefer Japan to Morocco by any means.  Rather, I realized I have a ton of awesome pictures of Japan that never made it on my blog, pictures that I love to look at and that make me very happy.  And since I'm feeling a little down, I think some happy pictures will be the antidote to my melancholy.  I hope you enjoy!
 
Happy belated birthday to me.  I'm now 25, and have been so for a month and a day.  You could argue that  its rather pretentious to title a blog "A Quarter of a Century of Excellence" for your own 25th birthday.  And to those people I would say, yes, I suppose it is.  But it was my birthday a month and a day ago.  And on your birthday you can be pretentious.  Alternatively you can also have traveler's diarreah on your birthday.  And that's exactly what happened to me one month and one day ago today.

I was in the Philippines with Koichi, completely exhausted, first from an acute case of culture shock and then from an acute case of... well, you know by now.  We had planned to take a ferry on my birthday to a beach about five hours away from where we were staying in Manila.  The day before, two typhoons swept into the area... one off the coast of Manila, the other inside my large intestine.  Needless to say, the hour and a half "ferry" ride (really it was a dingy) the next day was a true delight.  I think the only reason I didn't puke was because I hadn't eaten anything on account of already being sick.  But we made it to dry land, and once we regained our sea legs (and stomachs), we had a rather pleasant day and night at the beach.  It was truely a nice break from the craziness of Manila.  Only one thing loomed in our minds as my birthday came to an end that night (and it sure came early... I feel asleep at 9 p.m.!) ... we still had to survive another boat ride back to Manila in the morning.

The next morning, Koichi and I woke up to stare in horror at the sea.  Giant waves crashed violently onto the shore and collided with the break walls, water gushing onto the street... the only tiny, crumbling street that connected our hotel to the marina.  We watched in horror as the locals timed their crossing with the thrashing waves, running frantically to safety before the next wave came crashing down.  Koichi made it across.  I was not so lucky.  In hindsite, I was fortunate I only got soaked.  The wave could have knocked me down, or worse yet, dragged me into the sea.  But at the time, I was sick and about to be tortured for an hour and a half, so my dripping pants and soggy sneakers made me feel anything but fortunate. 

But something fortunate was about to happen... fortunately. Althought the waves continued to rattle the boats and our nerves, our trip would prove to be a bit smoother than the last.  Our boat arrived and this time it much closer to deserving it's title of "ferry".  In fact, for the sake of this blog I will call it a ferry, without quotation marks.  So the boat was bigger, Koichi and I got better seats, the crew was nicer, and quite honestly, after the experience we had the day before, this boat felt like a cruise ship.  A cruise ship where everyone had drunk too much the night before.  At one point, a Korean tourist who had had his head between his knees since before the boat even left the bay got soaked by a wave that splashed into the boat.  He had held it in for nearly an hour, but that was it.  From that point on, if you needed him, he was hanging over the edge of the boat.  I thought they were going to have to carry the poor guy off once we arrived at the marina! 

When we finally did make it to the marina, I was actually feeling much better, and even a little triumphant.  I never want to get into any vessel that calls itself a ferry every again (and that's a good thing to remember since I am going to be in northern Morocco), but I made it, and with a stomach bug to boot.  I should add, however, that while neither Koichi nor I are in a huge hurry to go back, the nice coulpe who sat next to us on the ferry back to Manila did say that in all their year living in the area, they had never ever had such a terrible boat ride.  So please, don't let my experience prevent you from hopping into a "ferry" in the Philippines during a typhoon... should the opportunity ever arise. 

So, that's typhoon number one.  Typhoon number two took place in Japan while leaving to return to the US.  While much less eventful than the first typhoon ( I think everyone says their first typhoon is the most memorable, and they just stop taking pictures after that), there is one oddity I would like to point out.  So while my flight was not canceled, my train was.   To be honest, I don't know what was more surprising - that a little rain could cause a train to be canceled, or that a train was canceled -for any reason- in Japan.  Luckily I had the help of some friends who did know such things were possible, and so I made it to the airport on time and in one slighlty frazzled piece.   

And that leaves me with a natural disaster (earthquake) and an unnatural disaster (customs), which I will save for another day.  I'm in Pittsburgh now, getting ready to go to Morocco, and I have a ton of things to do.   After all, I am 25 years, one month and one day old today, and I'm not getting any younger.


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Koichi at Puerto Galera.  I don't think the boat in background was our boat, but it was very similar.  Note that the weather was actually nice most of the time, despite the typhoon.  Tropical weather is a mystery to me.

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Our hotel, The Oriental (MOM!!).  It was really beautiful.

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Me "eating" my birthday dinner.  I got asparagus soup, but Koichi ate most of it since I still wasn't feeling great.   The people at the restaurant were really nice.  When they found out it was my birthday, they put on the "Birthday CD", which played the birthday song in a couple different genres.  Koichi and I also spilt some yummy fried bananas for desert!

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A picture taken from our boat as we headed back to Manila.  Note the giant wave crashing onto the shore.

 

Since this question is going to be harder and harder to answer in the coming months, I have decided to post a basic timeline of where in the world I will be, and when.  These dates are subject to change, especially the ones from August on.

My Life: A Timeline
July 21- July 29: Nara, Kansai, Japan
July 29-Aug 5: Manila, Philippines
Aug 5-Aug 10: Tokyo, Japan

Aug 10- Aug 23: Pittsburgh, Pa and Atlanta, Ga (exact dates TBA)
Aug 24- about Sept 15: Pittsburgh, Pa
Sept 15- Aug 2010: Tetouan, Morocco


 

Since today is my last chance to travel around Kanagawa before packing up and leaving, I decided to spend the day wandering around Kamakura and the surrounding area.  Kamakura is second only to Kyoto in the quantity and fame of its temples and shrines.  Its a cute town located right next to the Pacific Ocean.  It's touristy, but surprisingly peaceful, and though just an hour outside of Japan's two largest cities, Kamakura is lush and green, and according to my guidebook, is flowering year-round.  Right now is the tail-end of hydrangea season, but I still did manage to see some beautiful blue and purple flowers. 

Perhaps the most iconic picture of Kamakura is the Daibutsu, or the Giant Buddha.  It's actually located in Hase, a small town outside the city.  You can see my pictures of this statue as well as others in my Snapfish account.  Check them out by following the web address below:

   http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=992768017/a=140311026_140311026/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Enjoy!

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*I taught my last class in Japan and am officially on vacation!!!!  Yahoo!!!!

Today is hot.  The rain has let up recently, allowing an intense heat to settle over the area.  And it's not just hot- it's humid.  I realized the other day, while trudging up a flight of overcrowded stairs at the Sagami-Ono station, that I was breathing half oxygen, half moisture.  The air is so thick that you can feel it in your throat and lungs.  And as for my hair, well that's just a complete lost cause.  Today I finally went to the hair salon because I could not stand it any longer.  The guy chopped off a lot more than I had expected (and more than I think I asked for... but I did ask in Japanese so maybe instead of "just the ends" I said "hack of a few inches", I can't be sure.)   but the good news is that my shorter hair-do is much cooler and more managable in this humidity.  And hopefully my hair cut will also keep me from shedding lke crazy during my homestay in Nara.  My apartment gets so disgusting after just a few days, with hair tumble weeds rolling from the kitchen to the bathroom and sticking to my clothes and feet.  I really don't want to gross out my host family like that.  I would be seriously embarrassed. 

And so maybe it is because of this intense heat that I almost accidentally cooked myself to death inside my apartment.  The temperature has been rising lately, and so I have been using the airconditioner more and more.   At first it worked fine, but recently it seemed like it wasn't getting cold in my apartment.  Today was the climax.  It was so hot in my apartment.  I figured it was too hot outside and that my air conditioner just couldn't keep up with the heat and humidity.  I got out of my apartment and walked around for a while, enjoying the air conditioned stores around my house (it did not, however, occur to me that the stores' air conditioning was working fine.  Idiot.)  But I started to feel a little tired from walking around in the heat, so I headed home.  Inside the 'oven', I decided I needed to lay down for a bit.  An hour later, my doorbell rings and wakes me up.  I hadn't intended to go to sleep, but I am pretty sure that if my neighbour hadn't come over to my room to ask me a question, I would have remained in my heat-induced sleep coma all night.  By then, unfortunately, my brain was cooked.  I was so drowsy and disoriented that I think I first spoke to my neighbor in Spanish, and was really confused when she answered in English.  Finally, Koichi calls me on Skype, and after talking for a bit, asks me what's wrong.  I tell him about my sweltering apartment, and he asks me to hold the AC remote (which is all in Japanese) up to the web cam.  After a few minutes of fidgeting, sweet, cold air starts to pour out of the air conditioner.  I immediately feel 100 times better.  So what was the problem with my air conditioner?  I had turned on THE HEAT!  Yes, so in 90 degree weather, I had my heater blasting away night and day.   I almost gave myself heatstroke inside my own apartment. 

There is a happy ending to this story, though.  The AC is softly blowing 23 degree C air into my apartment, and I am starting to shiver a little as I write this.  I am kind of afraid to turn the AC down though after my near-death experience, so I think I will just put on extra-warm socks tonight, and maybe use an extra blanket to sleep.  I just hope I don't wake up with frostbite...

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My new hair cut.  Notice how crazy I look.  This photo was taken just a few hours before the heat-induced sleep coma. 

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In this photo I look a little irritated on account of the heat.  It was too hot even to take a picture.

 

I'm feeling a little nostalgic right now.  You might say it's homesickness, but that's not quite it.

I have been studying Japanese every day for a few hours after work.  Usually, I watch these educational videos made by the NHK that I found on Youtube.  They are perfect for me.  I come home from work too tired to do any actual studying, so I just sit in front of the computer and watch these funny, entertaining videos that teach me Japanese.  I have never, ever had such a passive learning experience, and I really liked it.  It was relaxing, enjoyable, and yet I was still learning Japanese.  But tonight, I watched my last video.  I have officially graduated to Let's Learn Japanese 2, but unfortunately, due to copy write laws, that one is not available on the Internet.  I guess I should back up and say that these videos were made a year after I was born, so the chances of me finding the second videos in the series seem pretty slim.  Plus, I heard the second series was not as good as the first (but this is from Doomsday Wikipedia.  Does anyone else think Wikipedia takes the most negative approach to things?), and also the actors are different.  And I really like the actors, especially Sugihara-san.  She was funny.  I'm gonna miss her.... sigh... Hence, my nostalgia.  I am feeling nostalgic for yesterday, heck for 10 minutes ago, when I still had videos left to watch.  Hmmm, so depressing... so dorky.

I wish they made videos like this for Arabic.  This was no Khaled and Maha love story.  In the NHK videos, the people talked to each other instead of giving awkward, somewhat lulling monologues to the camera.  Looking back on those DVDs from Arabic 1, that was so wierd.  Who's idea was that?  Thinking about that story line, it still makes me feel uncomfortable.  What was going on with Khaled?  What was going on with Khaled and Maha?  What was going on with Maha and the video's director, because s/he seemed obsessed with her hazel eyes.  I hope someone from Arabic Club is reading this, because I am sure I am boring everyone else to tears.   

Ok, enough tangents for today.  I need to look for some new studying tools!  :-)

 

And another blog bites the dust... Yes, another blog got deleted.  At least this one was short!

I wanted to upload a photo from way back when I went to Kyoto.  It is of me and a Maiko, a novice geisha. Enjoy! 

I also wanted to thank everyone for their comments on this blog.  It really encourages me to keep writing knowing that someone is reading it!


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I need to do more writing, and the truth is that I do write often.  But my evil computer often eats what I have written, censoring my words forever from the public eye...  I can be so dramatic (at times?).

So I am looking at just a week and a half left of work.  That means just one more Monday, one more Thursday and one more Friday.  I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  But the fact that one is seeing a light implies that one is currently in a dark space.  And so that's where I am now.  In a dark space, staring impatiently at that little glimmer, praying for it to grow... faster!

It's not that I am having a horrible time.  I still love Japan and everything about it.  It's just that my work is such a grind, and any break, be it a long weekend or, as in this case, the end of a contract, is like an oasis in the desert.  And I am so, so thirsty.

But the end is coming soon enough, so I suppose I should tell you where I will be headed for my last few remaining weeks in Japan.  I have to move out of my apartment on July 20th, and then will head to Nara to do a home stay.  Nara is in the Kansai region, near Osaka and Kyoto.  I am excited to learn some more Japanese.  I especially want to improve my listening skills.  I can figure things out pretty well on my own, given time and a dictionary, but even basic sentences in Japanese, when spoken, seem jumbled and impossible to decipher.  I also think there are a number of cultural factors at work here.  First of all, when I speak to people in stores, restaurants or on the street, they (surprise!) don't speak like a textbook.  That's true of all languages... or at least the one's I have studied.  One thing I think I am having a hard time with is that store clerks or phone operators or anyone in the service industry cannot speak to me, as a customer, in any short or simple languages as it would be rude.  So, for example, instead of just saying, "5", the person will say an entire monologue, very politely (based on the verb endings that I do catch) but completely unintelligible to my novice ears.  Seeing that I don't understand, some people will then give me a nice, clear, simple answer in English.  I know that I know the word for "5" in Japanese.  If they just would have said 5, I would have understood! 

It makes me think a lot about my students though, and the difficulty they have with circumlocution (being able to say one thing in different ways. Taboo, for instance, is a kind of circumlocution game).  I realized this the other day while riding the train home.  This woman was playing some English TOEFL Prep game on her Nintendo DS, and looking at the questions and how ridiculously hard they were, and how ridiculously pointless it was, it reminded me of my students.  The woman was agonizing over A,B,C,D- one was right, three were wrong.  Where was the ambiguity?  Where was the creative nature of language?  There was only one right answer, and if she didn't get it, she was wrong.  I suddenly saw my students, agonizing for what seemed like an eternity over a simple sentence, while in my head I impatiently churned over about 30 possible answers they could give.  But that was the problem.  My students weren't thinking about the possibilities, they were looking for that one right answer.  It didn't matter that the question was completely subjective ("What's your favorite color?" "Uhhh...").  Actually subjective questions usually were worse.  Why?  Because they were looking for the "right" answer to a subjective question.  And there is no right answer, so their was no answer.  I am glad I realized this, because it helps me understand my students a lot more now.  I also outlawed dictionaries because I was tired of students stopping the class to find words like "snow grouse" and "tone deaf" ('a bird' and 'a bad singer' would have been more than adequate in both contexts, despite not being the 'rightest' answer).    Dictionaries are counterproductive.  So, in my last week and a half in office, I will make sure that all of my students can circumlocute with their eyes closed (but I won't tie their hands behind their backs-they will need them for gesturing!)

I digress.  So, to recap my plans after my contract ends, I will head to Nara for a week, then fly to the Philippines for 6 days to meet up with Koichi.  He is working on research for his dissertation, which is in part on the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal.  I will be relaxing, and hopefully meeting up with a friend who I haven't seen since Spain!  After that, I will come back to Tokyo to rest for 4 days before flying to Pittsburgh.   

But for now, my plan is bed and a full day of work tomorrow.  Good night world!  おやすみなさい! また今度!

 

They say that you can't appreciate the sun without the rain.  I'd like to add that you can't appreciate the weekend until you have worked every possible second of the weekday. 

Japan changes on the weekends.  From Monday to Friday it's suit and tie 'til ya die, but Saturday morning is always so peaceful and fresh.  Even the sun seems to shine brighter.  It's like springtime, once a week.  One of my favorite things about Saturday is that I meet with a friend who is tutoring me in Japanese.  Around 5 p.m. I catch the train from Hon-Atsugi Station, actually find a seat on the usually sardine-can packed Shinjuku express, and head a few stops away to Machida.  I usually try to arrive early to take in the sights before meeting with my friend.  I sit outside the station, in this open square, and it feels like I am back in Spain in the Plaza Mayor.  The sun is beginning to set, and everything looks softer.  The tall buildings surrounding me, glowing orange in the setting sun, start to cast their long shadows on the streets below.  The guy working at the pharmacy shouts to the crowd about his superior, and lower-priced goods, while women in dark, skinny jeans and impossible heels clip by, in rhythm with the tinkling of a million cellphone charms dangling from back pockets.  A group of older women in kimonos shuffle past and hurry into the station, while the policeman looks on from the doorway of his security booth.  A guy in his twenties smokes a cigarette while texting a friend and chatting with another.  He adjusts his Louis Vuitton fanny pack, which he is wearing backwards so as not to obscure the enormous "D&G" logo on his belt.  His patchwork jeans are tucked into lace-up red leather boots.  Finished with his cigarette and his texting, he and his friend gallop away to begin their night on the town.  A train appears a block away and pulls into the station.  Some people quicken their pace to make a connecting train, while others try to duck out of the way.  Shortly after my friend arrives, breathlessly apologizing for making me wait.  I smile.  Trust me, I say,  It was my pleasure.