Nomihodai

Today is gorgeous, it`s hot and sunny but with a nice breeze. I bought some CD`s today and made the perfect banana smoothie. I love the simple pleasures in life. It`s been nice to chill out this afternoon by myself since I`ve had a hectic weekend. Tuesday after work I went to Mango for a post-work beer with Pip, Donna, Ben and Shannon (the two guys who live down the road from us). After the Mango man closed the bar (he likes to go to bed early) I didn`t want to go to bed so we all went back to our flat and made pasta then sat around drinking tequila and playing poker until 1.30. Shannon had work at 10. Good effort, that man.
So because of the beer and the tequila, I didn`t go to my Japanese class. Naughty. Instead I met Yukie for lunch (who I haven`t seen for ages) and produced some dreadful Japanese. I can`t do Japanese with a hangover. Later in the afternoon I cycled into town and met Jo. We went to the cinema and were pleased to find that it`s only 1000 yen for women on a Wednesday. An odd discount, but who am I to argue. Pirates of the Carribean is a weird film. It seems that instead of coming up with a plot they went "here, have some implausible special effects and quite bizzare fight sequences and lots of shots of Johnny Depp looking sexy and rakish. Did we mention the Johnny Depp thing?"
We headed to Sakae and Red Rock for their infamous Nomihodai night - 1700 yen for all you can drink. Naturally the place was packed. It was great; cheap booze and I felt like I knew everyone in the bar. Finally it feels like I`ve got something like a community here. I got introduced to lots of other people too, and after talking for two minutes we`d find some other connection through other people we knew. After they chucked us out there we got kebabs then weaved home unsteadily on our bikes. Great night.

Last Orders

Gah, I want to go home and make curry. I`m so tired, curry is the only thing that will help. I fell asleep in a class for a couple of seconds today because the student was taking so long to give me an answer.
Last night was the last night of Kei`s bar in Inuyama, and Lisa`s birthday. We started off a huge group in the Hakkenden around the corner eating grotesque amounts of gyoza to soak up all the alcohol we were about to consume. Kei`s was busy, and we made a fair go of helping him get rid of his alcohol. Such a bummer he decided to have his closing night on a Saturday when every teacher has to work early the next morning. I finally drank some of the snake whisky (3, I think) and found it very pleasant despite containing a pickled poisonous snake. It was very mellow and tasted like maple syrup. We played bingo and I won a bottle of gin. Hurrah.
I`m sad to see that place close, I had a lot of fun times there. I`ll miss it.

Only slightly weird

Hey y`all. It`s pouring with rain here and has been for the past 3 days. Yuk.
On Monday I went with a big bunch of people to watch fireworks at Nagoya Port. They were cool, but it was raining.
I went out for a drink with Iain on Tuesday night and it was fun and only slightly weird. I was glad to see him, I`d missed hanging out and talking rubbish. It was a relief to find we could be in each other`s company with only a few Tourette`s-like evil comments from me. I`ve been assured this is a normal response and will pass soon.
Tonight I`m going out to Club ID with a big bunch of girls. We will mostly be dancing badly and letching at fit Brazillians.

Busy

I don`t know what to write about how I feel right now, but I will tell you what I`ve been doing. Last night I went to Dan`s final leaving party (he did manage to string out leaving a fair bit - he finished work a couple of weeks ago). I liked getting to chat to my students outside class and getting to use a bit of Japanese - but I noticed I`m slipping because I hadn`t practiced much for a couple of weeks. I met Dan`s language exchange partner Tomomi and her friend Yoko and swapped numbers with them. Yoko plays the guitar and is into the Nagoya music scene - I made her promise to take me out sometime. After that we went to karaoke and committed criminal acts against music. I went home at 1.30 and taught 7 kid`s classes today so I`m bloody knackered. Tonight is Claudio`s leaving party which isn`t even starting until 10, so obviously he has plans to make us all miss work tomorrow.
That`s all for now.

So, what now?

Today was a bit weird, naturally. I slept in late because I`d been so exhausted from the day before. After much coffee and pondering, me and Donna went to Bic Camera to see if we could get internet for our flat. I`d been told we couldn`t get anything better than dial-up (and I`d rather use internet cafes than go back to that), but Donna is more persistent than me and found out we could sign up for wireless. We got to Bic Camera, found a helpful sales assistant, and went about setting up an account. In Japanese. It was pretty tricky, I have to say. Donna had her Lonely Planet phrasebook (about as useful as an extremely uselss thing) and looked up things for me to say, and the sales assistant had a translator in his computer which gave helpful phrases like, "Please admit to the businessman when he is commence operational," which we decided loosely meant, "please be at home when the delivery guy comes." Now I understand where all those meaningless t-shirt slogans come from. So with the two dictionaries, my bad questions (taske no eigo no denwa bango imas ka? something along the lines of, do you have a english help phone number? with hideous grammatical errors) we managed to get sorted. Normal service should begin next week.
After that we went to Don Quixote, the weirdest shop in the world, which is right behind my house and I never knew was there. I bought The Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Maltese Falcon and To Kill a Mockingbird on DVD for 950 yen, or about 4.50 in real money. Then we spent a fascinating hour upstairs amongst the furniture, home appliances, games, toys, clothes, makeup, fancydress costumes, rice-crispie coated crabs, and sex toys. The crabs and the sex toys weren`t together, I hasten to add. Some photos from the shop will go up tomorrow if I can figure out how to get them off my phone. Night night.

An e-hangover

Thank you to everyone for being so supportive. I especially liked the 3 bottles of wine and the bottle of whisky you sent along with all that chocolate. Just as well it was virtual alcohol or I`d be in a bit of a state now. Thanks for all the hugs and kindness. I`m very lucky to have such great friends.

MySpace

And here are some photos of where I live. It occurred to me I ought to show you. I`d been meaning to put these up for a while.

So, about these flatmates

In all the drama, I forgot to mention I have 2 new flatmates, Donna and Pip. They are both Auzzies and playing hell with my accent. They are both very chilled and lovely, and right now they are doing an excellent job of taking care of me. Here are some photos from the night we went Salsa dancing last Saturday with a bunch of Donna`s friends.

Entropy gets us all in the end

On Sunday I had a fun evening with Iain in Inuyama, listening to music, messing around, drinking beer and eating food at the Hakkenden across the road.
On Tuesday night Iain texted `I want to talk`. Nothing good ever comes from Talking. I didn`t sleep all night. Sure enough, this morning he came to my house and broke up with me. This is not what I wanted. No opportunity to fix things, no chance to make it better. It was weird, miserable but we were still making each other laugh at stupid things.
Jo came over, helped me with a bottle of wine and some chocolate and then we went on a weird drunk sleep-deprived shopping binge. The results are pleasing. Maybe I should shop like this more often. Donna and Pip, my new flatmates (more on them later - this has wrecked my blogging priorities), have plans to keep me busy for the whole of this week. I`m glad I have people around to help me out, to stop me missing Iain and wondering where the spark went.

A hole in time

I`ve been terribly slack in posting recently, I do apologise. I don`t know where the time goes. I think this is one of those signs that you`re either getting old or are crap at time management.
So to sum up: Japan crashed out of the World Cup but it was fun watching them do so and even better chatting to strangers on the train home who loved us because we were covered in Japan stickers.
Japanese lessons continue much the same, slowly, but they give me the confidence to try out bad Japanese on my poor collegues and Japanese friends. Many conversations go like this.
"Watashi wa... chotto matte kudasai... wa, wa... nandake? yopparai des."
(Loosely translated: I am... hang on a minute... am, am... what`s the word? Drunk.")
But I`m getting better. I managed to say `last year I worked in Thailand, and my friend was very good at Thai because she spoke to people every day. I am not good at Thai because I am lazy,` and felt very proud, even though it took me about 5 minutes and three attempts to get there.

I went for dinner last Friday with my poor, long-suffering language exchange friend Yukie and two of her collegues. It was great to meet more Japanese people I have the chance to talk to in Japanese with. Of course I talk to Japanese people every day, it`s just a shame I`m only allowed to talk in English to them during lessons. We discovered that Yukie`s work is pretty close to my house, so I`m going to make them lunch sometime soon. Is it weird to be slightly nervous about that?

Boyfriend advice

So far I've avoided talking about my work and the students I teach. Mostly it's because to me, work isn't the most interesting part of my week. I'd much rather talk about the fun things I've been doing. It's also partly because I don't want to get sued. This, however, was too good to leave out. Our students have 40 minute-long lessons with up to 4 students per class. If they want to have a man to man lesson, they can book all of the other seats in that lesson. At my school they tend to be low level students working on the principle that if they've paid four times the price of a regular lesson, they'll learn four times as much. It doesn't often work out that way.
The other week I had my usual lesson with this particular student, a lady in her early forties though she dresses as though she's in her early twenties. We started chatting, and I mentioned I'd gone to Inuyama to see my boyfriend.
"Oh! You have a boyfriend! Eeeh!" and delighted, she firmly shoved her textbook to one side. "Where from?" She launched into a barrage of questions, how old is he, where did you meet, what does he do, which actor does he look like, and so on; she put her point across in a mixture of English and mime and asked the sort of personal questions that would make Jerry Springer squirm.
"You, no work. Get married. Have children. You are young, young is best for children." Oh right, no bother. I nodded and smiled politely, thinking she wouldn't like it if I told her to stop stickybeaking and open her book. "What is he buy birthday?" I told her I got flowers. "And?" And he was halfway around the world at the time, and we'd only just started going out, but she didn't understand. "Pah. Only flowers," she scowled. "Christmas?"
"Books and CDs."
"Books?" She looked horrified. I thought she was going to tell me to dump him.
"I like books." I said, getting irritated.
"Humph. Books. No ring?"
"Why would I get a ring?"
"Pair ring." What? "You - " she struggled for the words and eventually settled on a beautifully executed mime of dragging poor boyfriend to a shop, pointing out the ring and wanted and shoving him at the till. "Nice ring. Brand ring, maybe Tiffany."
"What about you?" I wanted to talk about something else. "Are you married?"
"Eeeh! Secret. No no no no no," and with that the bell rang and I scarpered before she could give me any more life advice.

Darius` birthday

On the 21st I went to Inuyama for Darius' birthday party. There were just a few of us there (the problem with working as a teacher is that everyone has different days off) and I got to meet Sian, the new teacher at Iain's school, and her flatmate Lisa. They both seemed really nice people, and Lisa speaks pretty good Japanese. I've been going to classes and that makes me more confident at trying to talk to other people like the Japanese staff at work and my language exchange friend, Yukie. I can make whole sentences now! I'm so proud.
We went out at Kei's bar, Kei was a bit twitchy and distracted the whole night because his wife was about to give birth to their first child. We had a few drinks there and then Darius decided he wanted to go to karaoke, so off we set in search of karaoke. Unfortunately the two karaoke places we knew were shut - one of them permanently, by the look of it. It wasn't such a bad thing, I'd sung karaoke in there once before and it looked like a creepy American motel where you'd get knifed on your way to the ice machine, but this meant we were short on entertainment. Iain decided it would be entertaining to get Darius to do silly things, like climbing the pyramid in the middle of the fountain in the town centre. Darius was keen on the idea, even after he'd tripped over taking off his jeans (because the correct fountain climbing attire is a pair of white boxers), and then fell over again, and fell off the side of the pyramid into the fountain. It was funny but probably a bit cruel. We decided to get some more drinks and go the river. We hung out there while Iain tried unsucessfully to persuade Darius to swim across the river (Darius was wise to Iain's tricks by then) and then convinced Darius it would be fun to have a sword fight with the long bamboo poles they borrowed from a nearby boat. Darius managed to crack Iain on the head. "I used to do fencing at school."
"Ow, you could've said."
And strangely enough, Iain ran out of silly things to get Darius to do at that point. We stayed by the river until 4.30 and the sun started to come up and the rain started to come down. I went to bed for a couple of hours before getting up to go back to Nagoya to do the overtime I'd very foolishly said I would do. It wasn't fun.

Tales From the Riverbank

I went to Japanese class on Wednesday morning for the first time in three weeks and felt quite guilty. There were two new people in the class trying to follow what was going on, but by this point the class was too far ahead for them to catch up after one lesson. Luckily the class had been studying things I already vaguely knew so I could follow what was going on. I'm not sure 10 A.M on Wednesday is the best time for me to go to class, but never mind. After the class I left my bike at Higashi Betsuin and took the train to Inuyama. A Western guy sat opposite me drawing passengers and we played a curious game where I pretended I wasn't trying to look at his pictures and he pretended he wasn't drawing people while simultaneously trying to angle his book away from me. He won.
Iain was sitting in bed writing his blog when I got to Inuyama. It was too nice to stay inside so we headed for the river armed with wine, bread, meat, salad and a guitar. Sitting by the river is pleasant, except for the fact that the river's edge is concrete. Sitting next to the bridge on hard steps smeared with pigeon crap, I felt like I was sitting in an underpass. Iain humoured me while we walked around looking for a patch of riverbank on the Gifu side that had some grass that wasn't four feet high, or rocks, or more concrete. We failed and returned to our concrete steps. Beauty spots are carefully planned and regulated here, and the Inuyama riverbank had not been singled out for beautification. Still, it didn't stop us from drinking lots of wine over the course of 10 hours and playing every song we could think of on the guitar. I love days like that, but I didn't love my sore head on Thursday. It took ramen and a donut to make everything ok, but I felt a bit gross after the ramen and donut. This prompted another vow of healthy eating. Hmm. Well. Let's see how it goes.
Lucy has had a guitar tucked away neglected in the corner of her room since I got here. I finally got my hands on it, tuned it as best as I could, and tried to remember how to play anything. Next site - guitar tabs...

Fondue and Big Cheese

On Tuesday I went with Lucy to Donita's house for fondue. She'd made gooey chocolate fondue and we all stuffed ourselves silly on chocolate, biscuits and pieces of fruit. She'd also made some salad and naturally that had to be sampled as fondue as well. I recommend broccoli (pleasantly nutty) but would suggest you steer well clear of cheese (unless you're pregnant or have lost all of your tastebuds in an unfortunate battery-eating accident). I met a Kiwi guy who's favourite comedy was Rab C. Nesbitt (the first time I've ever met anyone from outside the UK who's seen it, let alone understood it) and a Canadian girl who's taking the ferry to China this week. It sounds like a good idea (air travel is expensive from here) but it involves spending 50 hours on a boat and I'm not sure I could stand it. I also chatted to Kiyomi again, a Japanese girl who spent a year working in London. She's taking a holiday from work at the moment.
"I have to go back on Thursday, just for one day," she said.
"Then what?"
"Then I quit." Wow. This is serious. Japanese people don't quit their jobs, they work until they die. That is, they work until they die unless they've lived abroad and have seen how the other half live. I'd spoken to Dad the other day, Dad has a cushy job (except on days where pupils are feeling violent) working in Education support and getting naughty kids to come to school. The best way seems to be to not spend too much time in school, so Dad often takes groups of them fishing or rock climbing. In the phone call he'd spent the afternoon in Aden Park doing the crossword. I decided not to tell Kiyomi this.
A report published this week found that Japan is losing 30 billion off its economy every year because staff are falling asleep at work or are off work due to stress-related illnesses. If I was working 14 hour days six days a week I think I'd be stressed out too. Akemi, my manager at Takabata, looked like death warmed up the other day. She'd had to go to a meeting in Osaka with the "big chizu" as she put it. The big cheese does not seem like a particularly sweet cheese. They had their meeting and stayed up drinking. Drinking with the boss is obligatory. Anyone who left early would be fired. The big cheese stopped drinking at 4 A.M.
I like living in Japan but I'm very glad I'm not Japanese.

3:1 And Other National Disasters

On the 9th I met Lucy and Thy after work and headed to a sports bar to watch the Japan vs Australia match. Unfortunately every Japanese person in Nagoya had had the same idea and we couldn't get in, so we wandered down a side street off Fushimi Dori near the theatre and found a grungy basement bar stuffed with screaming fans that could hold another three. Most of the time I hate football. The game itself is alright I suppose, but I hate the rivalry, the bigotry and violence that goes with it in Scotland. I don't want to be part of any crowd yelling 'your wife's got cancer' or other similarly jolly tunes at an opposing team's player. When the World Cup comes round, I can usually muster enough enthusiasm to watch a couple of games before lapsing back into antipathy for another four years.
We got some drinks and settled down to watch the game. Lucy was wearing her Ono football shirt. Ono (number 18) is very cute. Come to think of it, we mused as the game progressed, most of the Japanese players weren't too bad looking. There were a couple of other teachers in the bar, including Aaron who sometimes works at Takabata. "Who are you supporting?" he asked.
"Japan."
"Why not Australia?"
"I'm not Australian."
"You're Anglo, it's practically the same."
"No, it isn't, and I live in Japan."
A Japanese player launched a spectacularly unfriendly tackle at an Australian player and everyone cheered. A man standing next to me said, "You support Japan?"
"Yes," I said.
"Ah, sugoi!" He said, delighted.
After twenty-five minutes Nakamura scored and the barflies went wild. I loved seeing the normally quite reserved Japanese jumping cheering yelling and screaming at the TV.
It was a great game to watch, lots of tackles and shots on goal. I'd watched the Netherlands vs Serbia game the night before and it'd felt like I was watching robots. Pass. Pass. Weave. Dribble. Pass. Score. Shirt on head. Yes, it was technically good football but it wasn't very interesting to the untrained viewer.
At eighty minutes, the Japanese fans were already celebrating. Australia scored. The fans dropped from elation to nervous dread, and sure enough, Australia scored two more goals in five minutes. It was awful. The guy next to me put his head on the bar and groaned. I was gutted.
Later I spoke to Iain on the phone. "Japan didn't deserve to win, the players were too selfish. They should've passed more," he said primly.
"That's not the point. I wanted them to win."
Next, Japan will be gubbed by Brazil and then they will be well and truly out. But I'll be at the front of the bar, yelling for Nakamura and chanting "Nippon! Nippon!" with everyone else.

Belle and Sebastian Photos

The fit guitarist is looking at me. Am I going to get thrown out for illegally taking photos?

Stuart Murdoch goes slightly camp.

Stuart and Stevie make a cute couple.

Kobe Photos

These are: waterfall seen from Kobe cablecar, a tiny view of the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, a giant fish, and a view of Kobe.

Lazy wench

I'm sitting in my flat having a lazy day. Lucy has a couple of friends visiting from Kyushu so we're going to go for dinner later. Until then, I'm making the most of my one day off by refusing to do any housework and loafing around. I'm painting my toenails and messing about listening to Razorlight. I was sunbathing and reading The Impressionist on the balcony but the sun got just a bit too low so I came inside. I'm doing overtime tomorrow so I have to make the most of my day off. This is the life.

Belle and Sebastian

On Thursday we slept in (making the most of the double bed, sprawling like starfish) and refuelled on coffee and warm chocolate croissants in the middle of Kobe before heading off to Osaka. I like Kobe, I'd love to spend more time there. We got to Osaka and carefully began planning our route back through the city for after the gig, then headed off for the Human Rights museum. I'd hoped this would give a bit more insight into why Japan is the way it is (with women occupying a very low position, and relations with China and South Korea still poor after failing to apologise for wartime misbehaviour) but this museum was designed for the hard of thinking. Maybe the extra material that hadn't been translated into English would've explained things. Maybe it was just the annoying audioguide. What I do know for certain is that if I hear the phrase "The [insert oppressed minority group here] have endured many hardships. Let's think about the [insert oppressed minority here]" one more time, I will scream just to break the tedium.
We went to check out where the gig was and how close it was to the station since we were a tad worried about making the last train back to Nagoya. We found an ace cafe and sat around drinking coffee and beer and arguing about books for a while, then wandered off to find a bank. UFJ, my bank (they have an English option on their ATMs), the biggest bank in Japan, has clearly had some kind of fight with the people of Osaka. It took forever to find one and we definitely needed a beer after the hike. We sat on the edge of the river and watched birds diving into the murky water. A woman went past with a daschund in a pink dress. I think that no matter how long I live here, I won't get used to dogs as surrogate children. Though given the shade of pink the dog was wearing and its humiliated expression, maybe it's for the best that it won't grow up to be an adult human with severe psychological issues.
At six we trotted up to the doors to get in first, but we hadn't accounted for Japanese beaurocracy. The tickets are numbered, therefore the audience will be admitted in order of ticket number. We were 622 and 623 and slunk off to a corner to mutter with an Australian couple who had also been caught out. It was so not rock and roll. Eventually wev got in. Namba Hatch is a great venue for bands (should you ever find yourself in Osaka) because it has a very wide stage and isn't too big. It's easy to maneuver youself into a spot where you can get a great view. Plus, Japanese crowds are short and incredibly well behaved. No crowd surfing, no-one throwing bottles, and very little heckling apart from a gaggle of Auzzies who yelled incoherently. They asked for requests for an encore and I jumped up and down like a mad thing thing until Stuart Murdoch took pity on me, but decided Wrapped Up In Books was too hard. It's weird how Belle and Sebastian have grown on me. Last year they were that band who Lisa, Iain and Bob are obsessed with, and they wrote that one from Teachers, but after getting a couple of their albums and seeing them live, I'm tempted to say they're my favourite band. I bought the t-shirt and everything.
After the gig, a mad rush back to Shin-Osaka station (three trains away) on the other side of town. We made it just in time for the last Shinkansen back to Nagoya. After a sleepy journey back we went to Sarah's leaving party and had a quick goodbye beer before heading home.

Kobe

My skin has cleared up brilliantly so now I just have to contend with a heatrash that crops up every time I do any exercise. A brilliant excuse to stop running and get fat I suppose, but I`d rather not.
Went to Kobe on Wednesday. This meant getting up early and spending 35 pounds on a one way ticket there. It hurt. I was knackered from staying up and drinking beer in the park (my new favourite hang out). I like the scenery in Kansai and I tried to stay awake on the Shinkansen but I dozed off. We got to Kobe and wandered around in the sweltering heat trying to find the bookshop. Japan doesn't do second hand bookshops as a rule so we hunted this one out and spent ages there picking through their stock. Took the cablecar up the hill and got a great view and brilliant lunch in a mock-German style restaurant full of old people. It was too early to check in so we wandered downtown to see if Kobe was really as bad as the Lonely Planet made it out to be. Kobe is actually a great wee place, full of ace pubs and restaurants. It has a totally different feel to Nagoya. There isn't that much to do if you're a tourist, but I thought it would be a great place to live. It's hard to believe that it was all but flattened ten years ago; there's very little to show of the earthquake now. We decided the Lonely Planet writer must have been dumped in Kobe to be so down on it.
We had a game of pool to pass the time until we could check in. I let Iain win. After we checked into our room (with the worst view ever - a building site scaffold three inches away from the window) we headed back out and went down to the earthquake memorial park. They've left a bit of the harbour wall as it was after the earthquake and it's a weird sight. Headed back into the centre and wandered around Chinatown for a couple of minutes (that's all it took) then stumbled across a jazz bar. Strange mix of cool jazz accessories (LP's signed by Miles Davis, a wall of LP's to be played in the bar) mixed with the decorative style of your Great-Auntie's house. China cups and saucers, doilies, you name it. Then we headed for a Mexican-style place we'd seen earlier but hadn't been open (we were misled by the open bar, music, and staff willing to serve us). We had a couple of extortionately priced beers and then ambled off to find a Thai place that had had rave reviews. Unfortunately the reviewer wanted to keep it a secret and gave a vague set of directions. Couldn't find it, so went to another Mexican place for dinner instead. Early bed due to to many beers and an early start.