My ride, my whiskey, and my new bed...

Well, after an afternoon of fretting over the arrival of my new bed (and taking a 1/2 day vacation day to await its arrival), it's finally arrived.



Lets backtrack a bit.

Last Sunday, after an orgy of spending money on various household items, I went with one of the ALTs in my building to Canal City in Fukuoka. Not a city, but rather a shopping mall, it feels like some sort of underground city, even though it's all above-ground. Odd? Yes. Cool? Definitely.

I had originally intended to go get an Under Armour polo-shirt from Sports Authority, the resident American sporting goods chain in Canal City. But they had only size L (I take an XL usually, which is fine for UA, fine for the Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo, but for the most part no good elsewhere, where I need an XXL, or LLL), and I ended up getting a DriClime shirt from Marmot instead.

In Canal City, there's a store called Mujirushi, or "No-name". Basically, take Caban, give it Ikea prices, and you have Mujirushi. There I ended up my spending orgy by ordering a mattress for my bed frame.

Why spending orgy? The day before, I travelled to nearby Akama JR station to visit the SunLive (Sun live, as in "I live in Fukutsu", rather than "Mike Morikawa reporting live from Fukutsu"), where I picked up some housegoods, but more importantly a pair of pants and a shirt from the aforementioned Uniqlo, which set me back about $50, and a Northface jacket (with requisite woodland camo pattern) that set me back $180. The day before, I indulged my airsoft habit and purchased a Colt 1911 Government Gas BB gun. Bad Mike. BAD!

Well, back to the present, sitting on my desk is a bottle of Famous Grouse. I purchased this at the nearby discount liquor shop. Needless to say, I was immeasurably pleased to make this find. I have yet to actually drink it. I think I will save it for when it becomes colder...



And to complete this inversion of the order of topic presented in my title, my bike. I have been commuting around town for the most part on my bike, which I bought in my first week in Fukutsu. It's is a folding bike, so extremely useful when I make stupid and/or large purchases that I can't take home by bike. I call a cab, fold up the bike, and ride on home.

Of course, this convenience comes with a price. The wheels are smaller than even the mama-chari (bikes ridden primarily by housewives, though the reality is closer to like 90% of the bike-riding population of Japan), and so going fast require a lot more work. Though this bike has an astounding 6 speeds (for the record, that 2 to 6 times as many speeds that most bikes here have), even at it's highest gear speed I need to work something hard to get going.

Of course, if everything was downhill, or at least level, then things would be simple. But Japan, and it seems Fukutsu, is made out of small hills. So I have pretty much given up going to school on my bike for now. It's still too damned hot anyway. We'll see when it's cooler.



Well, that's it for today. Next time, a tour of Fukutsu...

Mike vs. the Insects

One of the more fairly disgusting things in my life are bugs. In Canada, the bugs are pretty small and harmless...well, at least that ones that most people in the city have to deal with.

Japan, is a climatologically temperate country, but the humidty makes it feel all that more tropical. Places as far south as Miyazaki Prefecture might actually fall under the sub-tropical zone, and I'm sure Okinawa is a pretty close candidate for tropical.

So unlike the small bugs we have to deal with in Toronto, Japan's chitinous fauna are a lot larger. Let me narrate one story, my first real encounter:

One night on my third or so week in Japan, I was returning from my bath to have a cold beer and watch some television. As I navigated my darkened kitchen and reached the sliding door to the living room, I stepped on something lightly. I leapt back in surprise, and saw in the dim light emanating from the partially opened door a dark shape scurry away and under the fridge.

I knew then that I had stepped on a cockroach, and I knew it was much larger than I was used to. You see, the cockroaches here, I know from experience, are upwards from an inch long, and more frequently 2-3 inches, and can also fly.

I shuddered and closed the door, realizing that I would one day have to face that roach again...

That day came almost a week later. As I slid open the door, the light from the living room fell across the kitchen floor. There, framed in the fluorescent light that peeked over my shoulders was the cockroach. Though I had no proof that it was the very one I had stepped on, I somehow knew it must be so.

I stood stock still for a moment, wondering what I should do. I grabbed a nearby slipper and threw it, but my aim was off and it scrambled away. Next I grabbed a collapsable laundry pole, and attempted to squash it. I clipped it and took out a leg, but still it was alive. It scuttled away to a dark corner. I had been on my way to bathe, but just the thought of it crawling around my kitchen made me shudder. I had to kill it, and to do that I needed some cockroach spray.

I donned my jacket to go out, but when I opened the door I saw that it was raining much harder than I had thought, and going to the nearby convenience store would be impossible. I returned to my kitchen and looked in the cupboards, and was lucky enough to stumble across roach killer spray that my predecessor had left. I grabbed it, and my flashlight, and went in search of my foe. I checked the crack between the wall and gas range unit that I had seen it disappear into, but it was no longer there. I sprayed that area for good measure, and proceeded to look elsewhere. However, it was gone and I was about to concede a draw.

I went into the adjoining room, to see if it had somehow escaped there, but found nothing. As I stepped back into the kitchen, I heard a scritching sound by my head. I turned my to face it slowly, and not 10 inches from my me was the cockroach, hugging the wall.

I yelled in panic and leapt away. Scrambling for my cockroach spray, I spun around, took aim, and let it have it. As the toxin made contact, the roach fell to the floor with an audible clack and started to writhe. It was time for the finishing blow. I took aim once more and let out a long spray of poison. It's movements soon slowed, then stopped. It was dead.

I sighed in relief. The cockroach I had killed was about 2.5 inches long and black as night. It was my first encounter with Japan's "mega-fauna". There have been other incidents. In my storage shed, where I keep my bike, I killed 2 large, 4 inch spiders. There's a smaller one there now, but it looks a lot more deadly (the 2 spiders I killed we spindly and tarantula-like, where as this one has an altogether more venomous look to it).

I am at peace with the small spiders that live in my apartment. But soon may come the time that I bug bomb my place...

Sports Day

What a crazy day it was.

September 9th marked the culmination of the students 2-week (or in some cases more) preparation of their annual taikusai, or sports day. In the dim recesses of my mind, I recall sports day from my elementary school time with some distaste. Never a good sports athlete, it was my time to try to hide and be inconspicuous.

While there was no doubt more than a few students who must have felt that way yesterday, I was nevertheless audience to an amazing spectacle.

Let me give you a little background first, on the Japanese education system. Unlike in Toronto, where I had attendence taken at Homeroom before hurrying off to my first class (when I went), here, the students remain in the same room (their homeroom) the whole day, and the teachers come to them.

I won't at this time get into the disadvantages this kind of system has on the overall growth and learning of children. However, there are some interesting advantages here that pertain to sports day.

The first is that the homeroom becomes the de facto social unit for many of the students. This is not to say that they don't fraternise with other classes--they do, and quite often. However, by remaining in a single classroom, surrounded by the same peers, taking the same classes, having the same teachers, all serves to reinforce the unity of the classroom. We, as social animals, tend I think to differentiate ourselves from others by examining our shared experiences. Points of commonality serve to unify a social group. This is what we are seeing here.

The end result is a greater feeling of class spirit, reinforced by the occasional rivalry between classes of the same grade.

There are other aspects at work here too. Attendance at school assemblies is mandatory and strictly enforced. Such events end with the singing of the school song. While there are no doubt students unaffected by such displays of group unity, it is nevertheless an almost overpowering force. I might venture that most of the students, regardless of their personal feelings, must feel the sense of being part of a larger whole when some 1100 voices are raised to sing the school song in unison. Even if I didn't understand what was happening, I think I might still feel it. Needless to say, I feel something stir in me at these times.

Add to this the format of the taikusai. A day long event, the kids are placed, by homeroom, into one of 4 colours, and the two weeks preceeding the actual event are filled with afternoons of sports practice. The combination of competition, group inclusion, and an already strongly bolstered school/homeroom spirit brings out the passion in many of the students, and most especially those in a leadership role.

Ok, enough of the essay. Lets get back to what's important. Sports day was truly a spectacle for me. There were 4 blocks: shiro, white; suou, orange; shinryoku, deep green; and noukon, navy blue. I was part of suou, and on the day I wore a bright, neon orange polo shirt that our the teachers of our block had bought (me included) for the occasion. We were highly conspicuous in our shirts, and during lunch some of the teachers commented that it looked like a suou convention in the staff room.

The day was filled with all sorts of events, from the mundane (yet exciting) foot races, to the more interesting games such as kibasen (4-man cavalry battles) and the senaka-watari (crossing the back). The most interesting by far was the block cheers, which featured both American-style cheerleading (girls), as well as Japanese-style cheerleading (boys), and panel show held by those in the block-stands. I managed to snap more than a few (crappy) pics with my phone camera, so I will only post the more interesting ones here.

I found myself getting well involved in the cheering, pounding the tables, crying out when my block won or lost an event, oohing and ahhing at the most excellent displays of tumbling or dancing.

The day ended without injury or major illness (though some kids did have to visit the infirmary), and though it had threatened to rain the entire day, with the exception of the unfortunate kids who didn't get to perform their school taiko-drums cheer, we had fair weather for all the events. Each performance and event was scored, and I am happy to say that suou came out on top with some 1200 or so points. There were some tears shed by the other teams, and some tears shed by suou. All in all, it was a really fun day.

There were some oddities, which as a person I wish I had captured on film, but as a teacher I refrained from doing. First was a guy wearing a horse head. He is a character of some internet notoriety, though for what I don't know. When I asked one of the younger teachers what it was, I was told that I should just ignore it. I got the feeling that he was a most unwelcome guest.

The other was two girls cosplaying Rei and Asuka from Evangelion. Rei was pretty cute, and Asuka...well she looked good from afar. I didn't snap a picture for fear of being branded one of those creepy fat anime-otakus you see at J-conventions and comikets. As well, I think it would have been inappropriate for me as a member of the school faculty to do so.

The day was capped by torrential rains, in which I got completely and thoroughly soaked helping the taiko team put away their drums (a real effort involving tarps, because taiko drums are forever ruined if they get wet). Afterwards, the teachers changed venues for our post-taikusai nomikai, or drinking party.

Nomikai is an all-you-can-drink party, which in this case lasted 2 hours. Held at a cool Chinese food joint, it rapidly degenerated into a loud drunk fest. I got to see many of my teachers drunk, and talked to a whole bunch whom I might never had otherwise. Alcohol is a fantastic social lubricant, and I was there drinking it up. I cannot say just how much I had to drink, as the glasses are small. However it is customary to fill other peoples glasses up when they are noticably not full, and there were many teachers who roamed the room with bottles of beer, randomly plunking down with people, filling their glasses, having a cheer, and then getting up and moving to the next group. I had great drunken chats with my principle, and many of my JTEs. Some of the older teachers were giving advice to the younger, and quite a few were laughing like mad at just about anything (me and my co-ALT included). In the end we gave a hearty banzai three times (my first banzai!!!). It was a truly memorable day.

And the rest...

Before you read this, I would suggest to head down five or so posts, and read them from older to newer. This is the last in a series of posts showcasing my apartment in Japan, and in hindsight, I probably should have published this post first. Still, done is done, and I have no desire to do this all again.

Ah, we're nearing the end of my tour. Pictured last is my bedroom, closet, guestroom, and balcony. My bedroom is spartan, with my clothes rack, drying rack, bed, and mini-dresser. Comic books litter the floor near my bed, and the fan strategically placed in the threshold between bedroom and living room serves to increase the airflow in both rooms.

The guestroom, probably as large as my living room, currently pulls duty as my storage room. My luggage, as well as some random boxes, lay stacked in one corner. Near the sliding doors to the balcony is a laundry station, with detergent, fabric softener, and a rug-beating stick. The sliding doors to the balcony are ancient and effectively broken. It's a trial to get them open everytime I need to go out on the balcony, where my washing machine is.

Lastly is my balcony. It was quite a mess when I got here, with leaves and mud clogging the drainpipe (I didn't know that until after my balcony flooded with washing machine water). Still, a few minutes work and it was working like new. The railing, and especially the large laundry bar rung that hangs from the ceiling, are rusted to hell. I think that I might like to try to improve their condition, first by sanding, then with rust paint. But for now, they will remain as it.

Well, that's it. Welcome to my pad, and I hope this gave you a glimpse into what my home life is like in Japan. I am enjoying it immensely, and while I miss many things about home, I am truly glad to be here.

Next post: Pimp my Ride...

Living room, entertainment complex, armoury...

From my kitchen, to the right, is my living room. It is where I spend most of my time, and was well furnished when I arrived. Table, couch (sorta), TV, shelves, computer desk, and (non-functional) phone.

In the time since I moved in, I've started adding my own touches. Most obvious is my M4A1 Carbine airsoft rifle. A gift to myself, a waste of money, both probably accurate descriptions of my latest frivolous expenditure, it's nevertheless something I think most people would have predicted I would buy. For those not in the know, airsoft guns like this are electrically power BB guns, which fire small white plastic BBs. Some stupid people have been in the news doing dumb things, so just like at home, I follow pretty strict protocols/handling rules with it.

The computer station is, sadly, very uncomfortable. The stool seems designed to cramp my back, and that combined with my lack of internet at home for the first few weeks has served to drastically decrease my time spent online. I doubt this will change much in the near future, and I can't really do much until I get a more comfortable computer chair.

I also have an iPod white PS2, which for the most part remains sadly dormant despite the money I paid for it, and a region-free DVD player, which gets occasional use.

Lastly, this is the room I have air conditioning in. It has kept me sane in the last days of a blistering hot and humid August.

Food, and other sundry items.

Next we visit my kitchen. This is one area I spent some time cleaning. It was, quite honestly, appallingly grimy. The microwave, which I thought had a teflon black interior, was actually standard grey. The gas range was covered in greasy residue, better now but far from perfect. The fridge was pretty good, and not too much work was involved in getting it ready for use, but I did have to give the floors a good wipe down.

I don't want to make it sound like it was some sort of disaster. There is a certain amount of my fastidiousness (at least when it comes to the kitchen) involved, and when it comes time for me to leave, I will no doubt vacant the apartment with the kitchen in similar state as I found it.

Pictured also were the contents of my fridge, as of about two hours ago. Visible are the various condiments (salad dressing, mayonnaise, mustard, tonkatsu sauce, ponzu sauce), Guiness and a can of W mix cocktail drink, an Asian pear, some kara-age chicken (dinner), some premade, uncooked hamburger (dinner tomorrow), water and tea.

I've been eating fairly well, I think. There is admittedly a high quantity of fried food, mostly because that is what is in the ready-made section of the grocery stores I go to. I try to balance that out with a lot of vegetables. My first few weeks was actual salad. Last week was mostly cabbage. Today was a failed beansprout...thing. Nasty, but I learned my lesson.

Welcome to my pad

This next set of pics is a tour of my home. The first pic shows my door, complete with CDN sticker added by me. While my door opens smoothly, and given that it's made of metal, fairly lightly, my co-ALT upstairs has a door that she needs to slam into to open.

The door opens into my genkan, or threshold/reception area. The cubby to the left contains a few of my shoes. Just visible is my bath room (notice the separation in this normally compound word), opposite of which is my toilet, in a small room the size of a broom closet. In the small space between these small rooms is my bathroom sink, obviously made for post-war undernourished Japanese people. I'm not a tall person, but even I find it just low enough to be a pain.

For those who are interested (and/or coming to visit me), a few notes on bathing protocol. Japanese baths are small but deep. Imagine taking your own bath, dividing it in half and stacking the halves. This is a Japanese bath. The traditional way is to sit on a little plastic stool and lather up using a small plastic washbowl. I am lucky enough to have a ineffectual showerhead, which expedites my washing. The water is cold from the water supply, but heated via a gas water heater. Both the shower and the bath are heated by this water heater, but the shower, even at its highest setting, is only just hot, and the bath, which is traditionally left filled, takes about 20 minutes to heat. The bath, however, can become scaldingly hot, and the combination of depth and heat make it welcome after a long day.

Currently, my apartment is living it pink and Kitty-chan (Hello Kitty to you North American folk). It will remain so until next payday.

Mr Morikawa's Daily Life

It's been a fun few weeks, and it's about high time I got off my rear and give you guys a taste of it. With internet a relatively new thing in my apartment, and my lesson plans done for the week (and most of next), I finally have a few moments to update and inform.

What follows would make more sense as a single post. However, Blogger isn't really that great at handling pictures. I wanted some commentary for the multiple pictures I have, and if you happened to view my page in the hour or so between when I posted my last update and now after dinner, you would have seem my very poorly formatted post. But I've learned from my mistakes (a common occurence, especially at school), and without further ado, lets begin.

The first set of pics is my apartment block, as well as a reverse angle. Fukuma Kyoushokuin Juutaku, or Fukuma Teacher's Housing, is a fifty year old or so apartment block that is in many ways showing its age. The doors are rusty, the walls and ceilings stained. Few things work well, and almost everything has a layer of grime on it.

Still, given the rent I'm paying for it, the ameneties I do have, I can't really complain. Over the course of the last few weeks, it has really started to feel like home. Just last Sunday, there was a neighbourhood clean up, where I met the neighbours and did a bit of weeding. Tedious but surprisingly fun.

Internet @ home...at last!

YAY!!!! Internet at home! I can check my email at my leisure! Sure naughty websites as I please! Update my blog more often...but not tonight.

Because I am so very tired from biking to and from work every day. Time to hit the hay for me. I have an Japanese lesson, a doctor's appointment, and a new airsoft gun to buy tomorrow.