Osaka

Yes, it has been a month & I have not yet told you about my trip to Osaka. Yesterday I got a CD from the friends I was with & so now I will write about it!

I left early on Saturday morning taking the train to Fukuoka. There, I used the subway to get to the Japan Railroad (JR) station at Hakata. Let me explain: My local train, the one that is not even a five minute walk from my house, is a privately owned train company, Nishitetsu. They own a lot of trains, buses and hotels, but mostly only in my prefecture, Fukuoka. To really travel, you need to get on the JR--they are the ones with the Shinkansen!

The Shinkansen is the bullet train. The train leaves Fukuoka city and travels north making only 5 or 6 stops before Osaka. It is a 2 1/2 trip but Shinkansen, but 6 hours by car! I had a window seat & fell asleep easily because the train was so smooth, even travelling at 300kph (186mph).

The train seats 2 people on one side and three on the other. Both sets of seats, left and right, will swing around so that you are facing the direction the train is going (this is common on the trains here--makes me sad for those taking New York commuter trains everyday and facing the wrong way).

In Osaka I met up with my friend Kathrina and her coworker, Tom. They had flown in the day before (Friday). They were there on business so their company had put them up at the Ritz Carlton (nice!). I met Kathrina while travelling in Africa 5 years ago. We travelled through Eastern Africa together and had a great time.

After arriving, we headed to Osaka castle. It was my job to be tour guide. While I don`t know that much Japanese, I know enough to navigate a city. This was especially helpful because it seemed to me that Osaka had less English written on signs compared to Fukuoka. We took the train to the castle & then slowly made our way through the park to the castle.

The park is huge and the castle is gorgeous. The walls are high and made of stone. There are moats with water and without water. The castle is so high that it can be seen from different areas around the city (if your view isn`t blocked by one of Osaka`s many skyscrapers!).

We visited a shrine on the way up and Kathrina dropped Y5 in the box in front for good luck. Five is considered good luck and as I didn`t have a five or 50 yen coin, I didn`t drop anything in. There was also no bell to ring after you dropped the coin, but we pretended there was.

Before we entered the castle, we had coffee & marvelled at the zillion vending machines that exist in Japan. Both Tom & Kathrina were amazed that they had not been vandalized. The machines are immeculately clean. Kathrina laughed really hard when started meowing at her as it dispensed her water. Later, it made seagull noises.

Tom took a picture of Kathrina & I posing in in wood cut-outs. You can see the castle in background.

The castle has a lot of gold on the outside. Very nice. It has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times; the most recent time was during WWII when the US was bombing Japan.

Then we took a boat ride on the Osaka canals. Not very interesting though, too many modern buildings. I took a nap. After the ride, we had takoyaki. It is a doughy treat that has pieces of octopus (tako) cooked in it. It was really amazing to watch the balls be cooked: the people doing the cooking have to quickly turn and return the balls so they do not burn. The dough is poured into a pan with lots of round molds that are very close together (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takoyaki). I do not think Takoyaki is not all that good, but it is fun to eat with friends.

We met up with more people that Kathrina & Tom were working with that night. There was the photographer and his assistant (both Germans) and the producer, a Aussie who came down from Tokyo and speaks really good Japanese. That made things easier for me--no on the spot thinking for me unless I wanted to!

For dinner we had Okonomiyaki, a dish Osaka is known for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki). It is a weird omelet-pizza kind of thing. Flour and eggs are mixed together and the thrown on a grill. Then toppings are added and a little more of the egg and flour mix is thrown on top. Both sides are cooked for a bit of time (more than 10 mins!). It is cut in pieces and served with a couple of different things on top. It is good and filling.

The next day, everyone else had to work, so I slept. I figure, all told, I slept about 12 hours. But you would have too in that bed! And those wonderful pajamas, too!

I eventually got up and wandered around the area and met the others when they finished work. We had shabu shabu for dinner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabu_shabu). This meal entails a big pot of boiling water that people put food (meat, vegetables, tofu, mushrooms) to cook and then eat. This was followed by a visit to an Aussie bar where we sat outside and drunkenly watched the drunken Japanese stumble by (and sometimes fall!). The next day was a holiday so many people were taking advantage of it!

Hungover boy, made it early to the station the next morning. I always wake up early when I have to travel. I bought okonomiyaki snacks as gifts for people back home (called omiyagi). I boarded the Shinkansen and fell asleep again!

15th Annual Kurume Jr. High Speech Recitation Contest

October 10th was a big day for me and two of my students.

We have been preparing since the first week of school, back at the beginning of September.

I was asked by one of the English teachers to help judge some students give speeches. I had been told this would probably happen while I was here. I was also warned to expect no notice--I got three hours!

There were three, two boys and a girl. One girl was better than the other and both girls were better than the boy. The two English teachers who were there with me (not the one who told me I would be helping) then asked (told) me I would be working with the two girls to prepare them for a speech contest in October. I marked my calendar and told the girls to make sure they memorized their speeches over the weekend.

The girl who was best, Hidemi, read `I Have a Dream.` The speech talked about Martin Luthor King, Jr., and quoted him a couple of times. The other girl, Yuki, read a funny story called `Rabbit and Fox.` This story is about how Fox tricked Rabbit one day and Rabbit lost his long tail and got long ears instead.

We practiced a little in the afternoon but mostly in the mornings before school. I never was sure when the girls would have something going on in the afternoon (one day was helping clean up the town and quite a few days were choir practice) so we started meeting an hour before school started. We met at 7:30 in the faculty room. We sat on the comfy chairs by the kitchen and practiced.

I should have realized Yuki was improving faster than Hidemi when she understood that the end of the `Rabbit and Fox` story was a punchline. When I told her and explained how she should say it, she immediately got it. If you think about it, you can tell a punchline by changing your pitch, and she did it perfectly. Shortly there after she started to blend words together like we do in English and sounded more like me than she did at the beginning. Instead of accentuating and separating every word, she started to find the rhythm. `I sat on the edge of the pond and put my tail in the water,` sounded like `I sa ton the yed gof the pon dand put my tai lin the water.` (If you don`t believe me, listen to yourself reading the first line, out loud, naturally.) Yuki really got into. Besides finding the natural rythms, she also smiled a lot.

Hidemi had a little more trouble. To be fair, her speech was harder, but she still did not have the natural spark that Yuki did. The title, `I Have a Dream,` was repeated twice in the speech. That means she had to say it three times and as it was difficult for her, I made her work on it one weekend. There are no V`s in Japanese. Worse, D`s are not aspirated (that is, the D is said without a big push of air--try it!). While normally this would not be a problem, in the word `Dream` the D is followed by an R; if you don`t aspirate the D it disappears with the R. And don`t get me started on R`s in Japanese! As it was the title, and one of the most important speeches of the 20th Century, I demanded she get it right. Of course, she not only had to pronounce it correctly, but she had to blend it right (I ha va dream), with the right accents. It took some practice, but she got it.

I also showed them how they can use their hands. I tried to get them to find their own gestures that would work, so they would seem more natural. Yuki was great, but Hidemi`s seemed unnatural at times (especially when she tried to imitate me) and theatrical at other times.

The first week of October, the week before the contest, we started visiting classrooms at lunch (the students eat lunch in their classrooms) to give the speeches. It was great practice for the girls to stand up in front of people and give their speech. On Friday, we went to the Community Center, where I worked in August as you might remember. This was good because it was an unfamiliar audience. They were friendly though, so that was good. The girls did well there and everyone was impressed.

However, Hidemi still was not as natural as Yuki and almost always forgot a line somewhere when she recited her speech. In addition, it was hard to get her to stop fidgeting. I showed both her and Yuki how to stand with their feet wide apart to stop them from moving too much, but Hidemi can somehow bend her her leg out on the outside edge of her foot--something I cannot do!

(Hidemi is on the left, Yuki is right holding the program.) On October 10th, which was a Wednesday, I did not make the girls come in early for practice. One of the English teachers drove us to an official building in Kurume. My girls were nervous but I was confident they would be fine. There were 23 contestants from other junior high schools in Kurume. Some schools, like mine, sent two; some only sent one. Hidemi`s mom came. Some of my compatriots were there (ALTs--Assistant Language Teachers)--other gaijin! It was good for us to talk at a school function.

Yuki was fourth and Hidemi was 14th in line. Four is an unlucky number here (my understanding is that the kanji looks very similar to the kanji for death) but I did not care.

There were four speeches to be given; besides the two speeches that my students had chosen, there were two others. `Rabbit and Fox` was the most popular; almost half of the contestants chose this one. `I have a Dream` was the next most popular, and only one girl did it better than Hidemi (in my opinion anyway). There was also a shortened version of `Gift of the Magi` by O`Henry and `The Boy and the Red Sky.` Only one person chose this last one. None of us liked it as a story. (The boy who competed at the beginning of September in my school read it, but, as was not very well prepared, we did not choose him.)

Yuki gave her speech wonderfully. At the break halfway through, one of my friends told me he thought she did a great job. After the break, Hidemi was the second person to go. She did very well: she did not fidget and she did not forget a single line. I was very proud of her. I tried to tell her that at the end, but because she was not chosen as an Outstanding Speaker, she did not listen.

Yuki was chosen as Outstanding Speaker (the picture at the top is her receiving her award). There five students chosen. They did not give places, but if they did, I am sure Yuki would have been in the top three. Maybe not number one, but definitely number 2 or 3. There were three judges, two ALTs from some local high schools, and a Japanese Teacher of English (JTE), also from a high school. The JTE said she enjoyed Yuki`s presentation. Yuki was the only speaker the JTE said that too. When she was giving her speech, she was really enthusiastic, but not over the top, and smiled most of the time. She did seem to be enjoying herself.

I have to comment on what one of the ALT judges said. He said that he thought that the `I Have a Dream` speakers should have more closely imitated Dr. King as he gave his speech. I wanted to throttle him. I had played the speech for Hidemi but I knew there was no way that she could imitate Dr. King. Nor did I think she should try. I sound funny when I try to imitate him. I taught both Yuki and Hidemi to change their speech at appropriate times, like when quoting dialogue or speech. They did a really good job at it too. But this judge did not know what he was talking about. Suggesting that the Japanese kids try to imitate Dr. King was just ignorant.

I have pictures of Hidemi at the contest, but I cannot put them up until I have permission from the her parents. I will let you know when that happens (if it happens). The two pictures are of Yuki.

Oops!

As I was wandering through a dungeon in a video game last night, the TV was on. I watched a show and realized I had left a huge category of shows off my list.

The infotainment show.

This is a show where you can actually learn things. On Saturday nights there is a girl who travels the world. She has been in Africa recently. They send her footage back to Japan and then the professional studio audience watches it. You can learn many things from these shows, even when you don`t speak Japanese.

Last night, I watched two guys go up in one of those planes that goes really high and then comes down creating a near-zero gravity environment. The first time they did it, it was for the experience. Pretty damn funny watching two professional idiots (comedians of a sort) floating above their chairs in near panic. The second time they did it, they dropped dry ice in a tank of water. What happened was really cool. As you may recall, when you drop dry ice in water, it starts to bubble. Now imagine what happens if there is no gravity, you get a kind of explosion in the water. The bubbles no longer feel like they just have to rise being less dense than air, instead the expanding air forced the water up into the plane in a huge blob. That was really cool. Third time was a working fan. The fan propelled itself, and spun a little too, through the plane. They had a physics professor explain why it did what it did. They did a couple more experiments that did not work so well.

Also on the show last night was the grafting of different fruits and vegetables to each other. It was cool. One watermelon graft did not work at all. Another graft created a star shaped water melon. The tomato-cucumber was extremely phallic looking.

They also dispelled the notion that ninja`s used to swim deep under water with air tubes to the surface. They can do a little, about 3 or so feet, but any deeper and the pressure will make the tubes unusable. Fascinating. And a little scary; one guy was down at least 3m (almost 10 feet) and the breathing tube became a vacuum and he had trouble pulling it out of his mouth.

And yes, before each of these segments, they showed a hand-drawn picture on a large card whereas in the states we would have used a computer. The artists and card makers must have a union. Recently, I saw, during a news show, a woman use a hand drawn card to explain some incidents that have happened with kids and treadmills. She even used a small, red, wooden arrow as a pointer. I`m really curious as to why they don`t use computers for these things...

TV party tonight!

Culture time:


Japanese TV, what is it?


It is not like American TV, that is for sure! The majority of the shows seem to be either like a game show or like an advertisement show (what are they called, on at two am in the states...oh, yeah, an infomercial; geez, how could I forget that?) with a liberal dose of the news sprinkled in, often every hour for a short bit. There are also a few dramas (translated soaps from Korea are supposed to be popular, but I really have no idea--I am still working on describing locations and asking where things are in Japanese). There is anime too, at 3am I am told; so if you want to stay up that late...


Let`s talk about the game show and advertisement show first. Here is a link to YouTube. Watch and return, please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u171-byIUV4

Finished?

OK, what did you notice?


Yeah, it was like an infomercial. This was some super-high tech thing, but it could just have easily been for something common (a new rice cooker or coffee pot) or for a restaurant. However, unlike a regular infomercial, it is only a few minutes long. Some of the day talk shows have 2o minutes segments.

Did you notice there were two hosts at the egg dropping site outside the building? Very common. Back at the studio, there were probably a lot more. This is a morning show (did you notice the time and weather?), so there could be almost ten hosts. In addition to the lead or two leads there would be the headline news people, the sports, the weather and the gossip. In addition, there is the watching audience in the studio. Different from an audience in the states, these are a small select group of people who sit on the stage and are shown in a small box on the screen watching the same thing that you are. They tend to laugh when you laugh and cry when you cry. We western gaijin joke about how this is part of the Japanese way to never be alone.

How many people are on Today or Good Morning America?

One thing they do here that really strikes me is the use of boards with headlines and pictures. They do not do this during the evening news, but on another shows, especially the morning shows, they use physical boards to show things for which we would use computers for in the states. Sometimes they will have stickers covering an area and then pull off the sticker to show some special information. Sometimes you can tell the information is merely the blown up photocopy of a newspaper. In sports, they often add stickers to add information, like denoting an MVP.

For a sample of a game show, check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc3zOSge9sY

Pretty hilarious, eh? They usually are pretty funny, even if you have no clue what is being said. A very important thing to know though is that these are not regular people off the street doing the contest. There is a whole profession of people who go from show to show as guests. They also are often on commercials. There is even a stable of foreigners who know Japanese and do these shows! These shows often have a regular studio audience watching, but not always.


One last sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YwoP0thR1k&mode=related&search=

I didn`t watch this one all the way through. I chose it because it has the all-important subtitles. So many shows have subtitles, even in the original Japanese. If a person is being interviewed, you can read his/her words on the screen 99% of the time. Well, you would if you could read Japanese! I have been frustrated a few times during the news when they are interviewing an English speaker and they not only dub what he/she is saying but also subtitle it in Japanese.

Just so you know, they do have regular infomercials too. I was up at 5:30am to go to Osaka Saturday and their was an infomercial about some weird vacuum thing. They had Japanese testimonials interspersed with footage from the states or Europe; those were probably from an infomercial! Yes, infomercials are terrible no matter where you live!

A Monday and a Sunday

Monday was a really busy day for me.

The first thing I did was take the hour-long train ride to Fukuoka (the big city north of my little town that is the local center of commerce and partying). I rode the subway to the airport, which is closer to the center of town than Salt Lake`s airport is (there are no really tall buildings in Fukuoka due to the closeness of the airport; that closeness is one of the town`s selling points). There I got my multiple re-entry visa. The visa allows me to leave and enter Japan as many times as I like in the next three years. Before I had the visa, I did not have permission to leave and re-enter Japan!

One great thing is how nice people are. In getting my visa, I did not fill out the form right and I did not go buy the stamp (I`ll explain in a minute) before turning in my document. Add to those that my Japanese is so bad it is not even atrocious yet, and you could imagine a nightmare situation--if I were in the States. I actually cringed a little when the gentleman behind the counter started to point out that I did something wrong. In the states, we all have had experiences with the person behind the counter who is exasperated with our ineptness. Here, he just smiled and I said, `Sumimasen,` (excuse me) and bowed my head a lot. It worked, he was nice and I got what I needed.

The stamp is a common way to pay for things officially around the world. It looks like a postage stamp. Sometimes here in Japan they have machines that sells the stamps, but at the airport Office of Justice for Immigration I had to go out to the combini (convenience store) in the main hall and buy one. It works easily enough; the people behind the counter do not have to worry about money in addition to looking at all the weird passports!

After that I got my visa, I rode the subway back to the big Japan Railroad (JR) station in Fukuoka. Here I purchased a discount ticket for the Shinkansen--the bullet train. I`ll be riding it this Saturday to go to Osaka.

Then I hopped back on my local train (not JR, an independent transit company in my area: Nishitetsu) and rode back to my little town. There, I bugged my supervisor to help me with the paperwork for my car. Even he had a little trouble with it and he is Japanese; I am glad I did not try to do any of it! We took a short ride to the DMV (that is not what they call it, but that is OK) to turn in the paperwork. The car is now officially mine. (An amusing anecdote: In most places my name is written as Bramble Chad William because, as you might now, family names go first here. Twice at the DMV, different people called William-san to get my attention. And both times my supervisor and I sat there unknowingly waiting for the papers. When they said it the second time, it clicked that they were talking about me...)

Following this was a short nap...very important!

Then, Morgan and Maggie (my two locals) headed north to Costco. We missed our exit on the expressway (a big deal here!) but that just gave my my appetite more time to grow for the churos and pizza when we go there.

Yes, the Costco looks like a Costco anywhere (that is Maggie on the left; please call her Margaret when you meet her though). Sure some of the products are different, but it is still a giant, cavernous warehouse of a store. Meat and produce in the back, electronics near the front. And pizza, hot dogs (my mom will be happy to hear that!) and churos all can be enjoyed with unlimited drink refills.

Here is my list of what I bought:

Giant jar of pickles

Giant jar of salsa

4 giant bags of tortilla chips (one lime flavored)

2 giant jars of peanut butter (Skippy, one crunchy, one creamy)

2 giant jars of strawberry jelly (not as necessary as the peanut butter, but still...)

1 brick of Colby/jack cheese

1 box of 10 cans of refried beans

20 tortillas

asparagus (YUM!)

celery (which I amusingly shared with my teachers at school--with peanut butter!)

1 box of 28 packages of microwave popcorn.

Maggie gave me half a dozen bagels.

I feel like I am forgetting something...

Don`t you just love Costco?

Yeah, it was a busy Monday.

Why did I have Monday off? Because Sunday was the sports day at the elementary school that I go to on Mondays. Everybody works really hard for a sports day and then they get the next Monday off. Sound fair?

The sports days are long, elaborately planned events where the teachers have charts of how the field is supposed to look for every event and they, with the help of a few of the older students, run out in between events and quickly (in less than five minutes) set up everything for the next event. They did, 5 hours of events, what would have taken the average American school two days to do. There was little sitting around being bored for the students--all 400 of them. If the students were not participating in a particular event, they were cheering for the current participants and/or lining up for the next event.

The school was evenly divided into four teams: Red, Blue, Yellow and Green. They all wore their regular sports uniforms, with their cute hats that have a chin strap and the foldy bit in back to protect their necks (like a Legionaires cap). Attached to the front of their hats, above the brim, was a colored piece of cloth that said their number (for competitions) and their grade. This cute toothless wonder is on the blue team. (You can click on the picture to see it bigger.)

To start all the teams congregated on the center of the field which was surrounded by tents. The tents were good because we had a little rain in the morning (which in turn was good because it kept the dust down).

After listening to some speeches (including a cute one by the first graders), the day began. Most of the activities were races--regular relay races, silly relay races (one involved costumes and pulling people from the audience, one involved running while holding a ball between two bodies (or two balls between three bodies, or four balls between five bodies!) without using hands, and the funnies one involved a pole that the kids had to use to circle a cone with--the inside person was desperately trying to swing the pole around while the outside person was running as fast as they could in a huge circle trying to hang on to the pole!)

There was also a cheer competition where 12 boys and girls, led by a drummer, led the rest of the team in cheers. I slept through the dancing section that was after lunch though!

I wore my red Bronx Arts T-shirt. I don`t have many Salt Lake shirts (the SL,UT one only actually) while I have a few NYC. But not to worry! I found someone who was happy to represent for me!

The elementary teachers had an inkai (remember what that is?) but I was not invited. That is OK, though, I could not have imagined going drinking the night before my big day (Visa, Shinkansen tickets, car paperwork, and Costco). I`m sure they will invite me next year.

Finally, fruit news: I had my first green tangerine (yes, Beatles buffs, it does exist!) and a persimmon (a date-plum, known to the Greeks as the fruit of the gods).