Shaun's Jolly Anti-Christmas Entry!

Economic downturn aside, there's no doubting that capitalism is still the big kid on the block in terms of global influence; it's trounced pretty much every alternative social idea out there; and even manages to have some weight in all those hold out socialist, theocratic or autocratic regimes that constantly give us streams of headlines (which in turn lets the news-media sell advertising space). Some say that capitalism is the globes defacto unifying force. Maybe we don't all understand Shintoism, Islam, Mormonism, Pastafarianism or whatever; but even kids in the worlds muddiest hellholes who have never been to school get what a fistful of Dollars/Euros/Yen means.

Two events have got me thinking about the power that economic forces have over our lives; the first I read in a newspaper, where a crowd of shoppers broke down the doors to a Wal-Mart before opening time and stampeded inside to get to their 'Black Friday' sale a few minutes early, on the way in they trampled an employee to death. People then stepped over the corpse to keep shopping. I guess those people were really keen to get some cheap consumer electronics.

The second was something I perceived personally, the morning of November 1st I woke up in my old stomping grounds of Sasebo; walked with my girlfriend to her workplace and kissed her goodbye, on my way to the local coffee shop (a quadruple mega-espresso always helps with the post-party hangover) I passed one of those trendy 'lifestyle' stores, just in time to see the employees physically removing their Halloween stock and replacing it with Christmas merchandise. Somewhere deep down I suspected we were always living in a state of perpetual holiday-spending, but such a tangible transition made me pause for a moment; don't we even get a weekend off?

Halloween in Sasebo; Mutia/Pippy Longstocks = cute. Shaun/Schoolgirl = quite scary; admittedly, substituting whiteboard marker for eyeliner may have been a mistake.

When I got back to Nogata my local mall was the same; no more black and orange streamers and faux-cobwebs, now it's green and red balloons and faux-snow. Oh and those ultra-obnoxious tinny, piped Christmas songs; the ones that supposedly cause low-level psychosis if you listen to them more than a few hours a day.

It's possible to debate if Christmas is still a religious holiday in principal, but here in Japan it certainly isn't; there isn't a cross or a nativity in sight. You might see a few Angels, but it's pretty likely that they'll be rendered anime-style, which takes the edge off. What we get around here is 'Xmas' in it's purest form; with all the crazed marketing might that the worlds second largest economic power can muster. J-pop starlets in santa hats, special 'Noel' blends of beer, T-shirts with unintelligible seasonal slogans ("Ho Ho to your reindeer in sled-heart" I saw the other day). The first 'holiday themed' porn mag came out in the local convenience store a few days back too. *sigh*

I got an e-mail question asking 'Are Japanese teachers really tidy?' I present this image as exhibit A in the case for the negative.

Japan is renowned for being ahead of the curve in terms of business enterprise; I wonder if 'Christmas in Japan' is the future of the commercial world as a whole; saturation holiday marketing where cultural relevance and understanding take a back seat to incessant marketing and constructed spending compulsions around the entire calendar; I should probably be bracing for the Valentines day blitz early.

Anyway; happy holidays world, just remember not to crush anyone underfoot on your way into the giant mall we all live in.

Don Tak Who?

Hiiiii! I’m back! Did you miss me?

Phew, well at least I don’t feel like I’ve been slacking or failing to make the most of my precious vacation days, I can now cross ‘visit Chikushino’ and ‘attend Dontaku festival’ off my giant corporeally nonexistent list of ‘things to do in Japan’.

It’s really cool to feel like a tourist again, and I cannot overstate the newfound pleasure I derive from a protracted period without a tie knot in close proximity to my throat. It was cool to see Cristis apartment, since I’ve been pretty curious about how my place measures up; I must say I’m pretty jealous of her bed, not that my futon is uncomfortable, but I’m kinda sick of having to roll up my bedding during the day like some sort of nomad. Being in Chikushino made me appreciate Sasebo all the more, unlike my town English speakers and signage are not exactly prevalent, still that’s a great excuse to learn Japanese and jump straight into ‘immersion therapy’… plus Fukuoka is only a 15 minute train ride away, so that’s pretty nice. We stayed up and watched Garden State which was nice and homey, and far more comprehensible than the Crazy Restaurant Gang Show which was the televised alternative.

Speaking of Fukuoka, Dontaku was a pretty spectacular… uhh… spectacle. Think giant street festival with a giant crowd, giant floats and lots of other giant things. There were lots of people in their kimono, plus the Dontaku ‘extra’ of hats constructed out of flowers; very pretty, although I can’t imagine where they found that many fresh flowers around here. Maybe they grow them in giant underground vats or import them from China; that seems to be where most organic stuff comes from around here.

The most generic Dontaku photo ever. Ladies with flower hats. I could have posted pictures of 'Ms. Fukuoka' in her revealing outfit, schoolgirl cheerleaders or the 'Transvestite wedding' float, but this is what you get. Feel free to flood my inbox with complaints.

We milled around Fukuoka for a while afterwards, soaking up the atmosphere and occasionally pausing to munch on carnival food, some of which was familiar, much of which was unrecognizable due to it being deep fried in a fabulously artery-clogging fashion. So much for all that amazingly healthy Japanese food; heart disease and obesity epidemic here I come! Hopefully walking several kilometers around the city will help me shed all those extra kilos. Meh… who am I kidding? I couldn’t get fat if I tried.

Even fictional pirates love Dontaku! I put my Dontaku mask on this disturbing effigy of Mr. Depp for this photo. The masks were worn by comedians to hide their identity from the fascist Japanese rulers of ages past, so I think the connection is quite fitting.

We missed Lauren, due to a unfortunate mix up regarding her phone number, hope ya had a great time anyway Lauren! Next time huh? I crashed out at Cristi’s place again, we took a short tour of Chikushino in the morning and grabbed lunch at a local restaurant (woo! I got to work on my impromptu sign-language skills some more) then I hauled myself back to Fukuoka and jumped on a bus back to Sasebo. It’s nice to be back in my own space, even if I did come back to a pile of dishes waiting to be done and a lack of milk in the fridge. Oh well, such is the ugly underside of my bachelor lifestyle.

Hmmm… people are big on maids here, I wonder if I could find one actually capable of doing domestic duties and without all the usual fetish connotations? Nah… probably not.

All the best world,

Shaun.

Monkey (or is it Kyushu?) Island.

Ahhh… vacations, it doesn’t matter how old you get or what you do to procure sustenance in this crazy world, vacations still rock. Especially if they’re paid, and even moreso if you have some friends that are psyched to party.

You know what I was saying about having superpowers? Well it turns out that I do have amazing powers, at least of luck. I was out shopping when I walked past the train station and who should I bump into but Christi? She’d just come off the train and by some amazing stroke of serendipity I was walking past as she was standing outside the train station. Who needs the high tech wizardry of mobile phones (or indeed the low-tech wizardry of smoke signals) when you have impeccable timing and a ridiculous amount of luck?

Anyway, I took Cristi on the big tour of Sasebo (which wasn’t really that big since it involved two parks, a wharf, the shopping arcade and my apartment) we ate Mexican (Viva the nachos!) and then met up with Saori for a night of wanton indulgence in wine, food and TV; we watched three episodes of Queer Eye then switched to ‘High Fidelity’ (mostly because of my incessant heterosexual male whining). Great night though!

After emerging bleary-eyed from our futons the next morning we grabbed breakfast the window shopped for a goodly proportion of the day, I managed to convince Cristi to sample a Sasebo burger while the opportunity was evident, for a fairly petite girl she managed to wolf it down quite easily, props! We wandered around the market district for a while then went to a few 100 Yen stores (the same concept as ‘Cheap As Chips’) to prepare for Hannah’s pirate-themed birthday bash. Being somewhat cheap ‘preparation’ involved buying bandannas, although I splurged and bought a 100 Yen T-shirt and wrote ‘Arrrrr’ on it with a whiteboard marker.

We started off in Nimitz park with jelly-shots then moved up to Gela’s temporary domicile (which is a very nice house in the hilly suburbs of the city) for the majority of the night; again the craziness of the alcohol supply in this country astounds me, I walked into the lounge room and the first thing I laid eyes on was a 3 LITRE bottle of Smirnoff, the second was a 3 litre bottle of Jack Daniels, and after that a 5 litre box of sangria. I’m not even going to start on the ridiculous pile of beer and other assorted spirits scattered liberally around the place.

Anyway, enough about booze; let me tell you about the binge-drinking. We had about 18 people attend in all, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people; special mentions must go to Spencer from Canada for his fabulous piratanicalness and awesome wit (seriously, watch out Mr. Depp), Lauren from England who was kind enough to force many drinks upon me and drag me onto the tatami ‘dancefloor’ and Paco, a fine representative of the U.S. armed forces who gallantly stripped off his shirt and did the manly task of providing us all with substance from the barbeque. Kudos to you all!

Spencer, Hannah and Gela get piratanical; check out all that bootylicious booze! Just looking at it now makes my innards twitch uncomfortably.

We eventually wound up taking taxis back into Sasebo proper (mainly to avoid having the neighbors file charges of disturbing the peace against us) and continued on at another string of bars ending with the appropriately named ‘Treasure’ (which actually has a beach sand covered floor, how cool is that?) I made friends with an ancient Japanese man who taught me how to play crazy 8’s (or ‘baka hatchi’ as it’s known around here) even though he didn’t speak a word of English. It was 8AM by the time we staggered out into the sunlight and sensibly decided to call it quits; poor Lauren… she had to catch a bus back to Kuramoto at 12; still… such is life as an educator, and she’s a trooper.

This kindly old man taught me how to play cards, I gave him my 50 yen bandanna as a token of thanks; it suits him, don'tcha think?

Of course today was pretty much a write-off, consisting of obtaining food, minimum stamina expenditure and avoiding anything that makes loud noises. I feel pretty much fine by now though, it’s amazing what raman, water and sleep can do.

Tomorrow we’re going to go up and explore around Cristi’s place in Chikushino, then go back into central Fukuoka and meet Lauren (our Lauren) for the Dontaku festival, which I don’t have much idea about but am assured is quite a big deal around here. I’m just excited about being stared at by schoolgirls again.

Alright, time to go shove my gear into my newly-acquired Hello Kitty duffel bag. Back in a few days, stay happy alright?

Shaun.

A Week of Gold.

Golden week! Golden week! We love Golden week!

It’s the first day of Golden week vacation today, and as you can likely tell; I’m fairly excited because I don’t have to go into work ever again… or at least for a whole week.

My first week of being a ‘real’ teacher has just flown by…’busy’ would be an understatement; there’s always something to do at the office and the schedule can get fairly hectic at times. Lesson planning has become a five minute matter rather than a half hour project but teaching back to back lessons for five or six hours is pretty draining. The students are always fun though, and it’s great being able to actually feel like you’re helping someone with something they care about. The best part is probably answering questions (‘which is a worse insult, pig or dog?’) and being able to teach stuff that’s tangential to the curriculum (yesterday I explained about fraternities, sonorities and ‘keggers’ to a student who's planning a stay in an American university).

The biggest challenge is probably the kids classes; while adults are well-behaved, with kids it's often quite difficult to make them do the activities as planned. I have a newfound respect for early childhood educators everywhere. So far the teaching points have been making it across, but I still never quite feel in control in the classroom, it’s more like I’m a lion-tamer than a teacher or something. I’m hoping it’s just a matter or practice, otherwise I’m heading to aneurysm-land.

Last night me, Saori and Hiroki celebrated by going out to an isakaia for some food and drinks; lotsa fun! Chihiro's running off to a hot spring for a week (a plan which I am exceedingly jealous of) and everyone else has plans to visit their families (Golden week seems to be kind of a Thanksgiving equivalent over here) so I'm gonna take the opportunity to explore a bit.

I'm not really alone though; I got a knock on the door last week from Gela and Hannah, two foreign teachers who also work in the neighbourhood, although I answered the door in my boxers (I had some misguided idea about an 'early night' or somesuch) they still agreed to take me out and show me the sights ('sights' in this case means 'bars'). We went down to the local watering hole called 'Playmates’ and began a fairly epic night out that ended sometime around 3.30 in the morning and spanned another 3 bars and a karaoke parlour. Both of them are a great source of advice about teaching and life in Japan and it was nice to take a bit of a tour of the town. Hannah lives right above me in my building too, so it’s good to know there’s a friendly face nearby, and her English accent is very charming.

Want to try something different? Some Japanese bars have this stuff, which we affectionately call 'Snake Juice'.

And this is me, Hannah and Gela indulging in aforementioned snake-infused liquor. Why are we smiling? Even I don't know.

I’ve still got to get some plans together for the holiday, lest I fall into a deathly abyss of sitting in my flat watching MTV and eating dry pasta for a week and a half straight. I’m still slightly crippled in the organization department by my lack of internet or cellular phone access, but I’m gonna try and catch up with Cristi and Lauren anyway… after all, how hard can it be? I’m GTS (Great Teacher Shaun) after all!

Golden week means celebrations, and no town celebrates like Sasebo! Because Sasebo celebrates with a giant inflatable hamster.

Ummm ok, I’m gonna go, I need to fold up my futon and vaccum. Grand plans indeed.

(GT) Shaun.

Adelaide Cup: Public Holiday or Den of Inequity?

Long-live long weekends!

It's Adelaide cup day today. Seeing as by a serendipitous twist of fate I happen to be residing in Adelaide that means that everyone who's not involved in some sort of socially invaluable occupation (like doctors, firefighters, the police, bookies and liquor-store proprietors) gets a day off. Ostensibly this allows them to watch/gamble upon the horse race for which the day is named, in reality it's more commonly an opportunity for barbeque's, catching up on home-maintenance or just extending the usual weekend alcho-bender by an extra day.

For me of course the holiday is fairly meaningless; I'm not really much for horse-racing, and aside from the fact that retail stores all take a brief hiatus there's not really much to praise or denigrate. I stopped in on Pete, Matt and Nina to see how they were all goin' (answer: pretty good) which was cool, 'cause it kinda made the day feel more like a holiday.

Time continues to tick while I look towards Japan on the horizon; these days it doesn't seem like there's much to do besides prepare to go over there; My dad picked up a refurbished laptop from my old high school the other day, so I've been busy loading all the necessary software (read: games and music). With luck I'll get a web-cam up and running, so you might be able to continue to see my smiling face in all it's 2D glory! Yay! (?)

I got yet another 'reminder' e-mail from AEON today too, reiterating several of their more important policies- the main points are:
- FORMAL WEAR IS GOOD!
Yup; you can't wear jeans and a singlet to work. In fact you can't even wear a tie with a cartoon character on it. This may be a problem as years of a wearing a formal school uniform have left me with a near pathological aversion to formal wear. Hopefully my plan to watch many seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and zero in on Giles as an 'icon of style' will help my sense of self-esteem regarding the wardrobe.

- BRING MONEY!!
Japan is a very 'ordered' society; this means you don't get paid until you work for a whole month. Unfortunately Japanese landlords expect to get paid on 'rent-day' (none of this 'the cheque is the mail' crap). This means that lack of ready cash may result in becoming destitute, which in turn leads to deportation. Is there no problem that can't be solved with a large wad of yen?

- DON'T DO DRUGS!!!
Because frankly the country has more in common with Iran than Holland when it comes to narcotics control laws; seriously, the list of products classed as 'restricted stimulants' includes Vicks Inhalers and Sudafed (along with anything else that contains a sniff of Codeine) and getting caught with a joint carries the same 20-year prison term as hauling a key of cocaine. A bunch of NOVA teachers found this out the hard way last month.

Right: plain tie, bunch of cash, lack of (illicit) drug habit. Rising Sun here I come!