some convenience stores just aren't convenient enough.

Sometimes when I'm running late in between classes I like to stop by a convenience store for a quick sammy or a croissant, or something to keep me rolling along(no pun intended) . I mean, hey, who doesn't?
"the convenience store" has been taken to a new octave here in Japan. They can be found in even the most corners and nooks of the countryside and cities. Just when you think you have evaded the vast populous and found yourself a quiet meadow from which to gaze at the calm country sky and ponder over the more delicate matters of the day...One should not be surprised that upon further inspection, you are actually just in the parking lot of another 7-11 (or Lawson, or Family Mart...they are all fully interchangable).

As if this omnipresence were not enough, I find that I have taken to only going to the most "convenient" of these convenience stores. I actually calculate the "convenience factor" before choosing to enter the parking lot. For example, there is a perfectly convenient 7-11 directly on my route between Imari (where I teach elementary school) and Karatsu (where I live). But I never go there, simply because I know that further up the road there is a Family mart which is EVEN MORE CONVENIENT!

"Yet, good sir, What is this "convenience" of which you prattle?" One might pose...well, the 7-11 is farther off the road. My guess is by a good 10 or 15 paces. That coupled with an entrance which does not face the road, has basically destroyed that particular market on my conveni-o-meter.

These are the sad but true facts of my interaction with the world of "convenience". But the question remains...how much more convenient could it get? Rest assured, the experts are working on it as we speak.

O Christmas Tree...

It would appear that I have (albeit, barely) escaped the dim droopy depths of "Bah humbug-ing" Christmas away this year. It would have been easy enough to do; being in Japan, far away from family, friends, and the (once) familliar. And it doesn't help that the Japanese have managed to adopt and embrace all of the Christmas consumerism and absolutely none of the meaning. Really.

After some extensive sessions with my elementary school kids, here is more or less what I have come to understand about Christmas in Japan...

They eat cake (often purchased from a Convenience store). They also eat KFC, and drink champagne. Santa lives in Finland (I'm ok with that), and Dad leaves presents in a sock; either on the bed or in the front hall-way. Snowmen are only made of two balls of snow (not three), and the trees are never real, and rarely taller than one or two feet. One Christmas in Japan is liable to make a scrooge out of Mother Theresa.

(was that bad taste?)

But really...there's no magic. And as it turns out, that's what Christmas is to me, magic. Thinking about it now, what really drove me nuts all those years about Christmas (aside from the presents...) was sitting in the living room at night, looking at the tree. The soft glow of strung lights reflecting off of the tinsel and ornaments is forever ingrained into my heart...not my memory, but my heart. I have no specific memories of looking at the tree. It's simply a comfortable and cozy calmness that is ingrained in my being.

So...this year, I have finally taken it upon myself to bring this experience back into my home...I bought a handsaw, drove deep into the hills and illegally harvested the top of of a dying cedar. In a country where Christmas tree stands are about as common as haley's commet, I was forced to create an elaborate and rushed stand-mechanism: involving a joist bracket, some screws and a spattering of rocks, both large and small. Sketchy indeed, but it worked, and I have spent the last couple days decorating my awkward little tree with whatever students happen to pass through my home.

Spindly and askew, my little green friend now inhabits a corner of my livingroom. Delicate and ill-decorated, it is a rather confusing sight to behold in the mid-day bustle. But when evening comes, I turn off the lights and there it is...the switch is hit somewhere in my heart, and the magic shoots through the universe that is my room. I'm not really sure what it is. Perhaps it is a sense of hope: Something that began as the idea that the Christmas Tree could provide me with the perfect gift, has quietly grown into the idea that somehow the warmth of its light will spread into every corner of the galaxy.

Whatever it is, I am completely at a loss as to how to describe the feeling this tiny tree imparts unto me...

...And I find it even harder to explain to my students that the older I get, the more I want to believe in Santa.

breath power?

So, it's about one in the morning...as good a time as any to go to sleep, but instead I'm here blogging away. I imagine I'll pay dearly for this in the morning, but for now I'd like to talk a little about something which I feel rather strongly about... Hemmorhoids. No that's not it, though I must admit that I harbor a secret and deeply seeded fear of them.
No...instead I'd like to say a few words about aikido. 合気道 ( aikido in the japanese script)...is something that I've been rather hesitant to address in a public forum. I find myself reluctant to confess my love for aikido openly over the world wide web mostly because my actual aikido technique is about as effective as spam on an open wound (not very, to my knowledge). This lack of aikido prowess can be attributed to several factors, one of which, is that I possess the agility of a beached whale.
Another factor is that aikido is largely an "internal martial art". Where someone taking karate or another such attacking art can relatively quickly develop an effective punch or kick, in aikido, one is dealing with such elusive concepts as harmonizing with your opponent's energy, or developing balance and strength in finding your center. That is not to say that aikido is more noble, deeper, or better than other martial arts (I believe that all paths eventually merge into one) ; but in aikido from the word "go" I have been told to stop using my "physical strength".

I mean seriously people. Physical strength is the first thing I'm going to use when exposed to bodily harm...right?
So, this is the mystery of aikido, the "magic", if you will. Something is going on here which completely eludes logical explaination, something which allows a five foot tall 70 year old to completely control any physical confrontation.

I am continously baffled by the mysteries of life...but I think I have finally come to understand what aikido is all about: its a vicious plot to help short octogenarians take over the world.

Count me in!

*picture: the late Gozo Shioda sensei, creator of the Yoshinkan Aikido system of training; from the Yoshinkan aikido homepage: www.yoshinkan.net check out the "english" link if Japanese characters aren't your style...

too much snow?

so...It turns out that perhaps I'm not quite the blogger I thought I was. I think that maybe everyone is a natural blogger for the first weekend. Then it becomes a test of will. man vs. machine. internal vs. external. light vs. dark. something along these lines I suspect.

anyway... I was all scheduled in for a quick snowboarding jaunt up to the Hiroshima region last night. I bailed halfway through an important drinking party(a japanese institution of the most serious category...more on that another time) to make the bus. The plan was basically meant to go like this:
1) Get on bus at 11:30pm.
2) Ride bus for 8 hours.
3) Arrive at very snowy mountain.
4) Snowboard like it's 1999 (for a few hours anyway).
5) Be prematurely removed from snowboarding environment and ride bus again.
6) Arrive home at 9pm next day, thoroughly exhausted but happy that the snowboarding season has begun at last.

The actual flow of events has gone more like this:
1) Get on bus at 11:30pm (lookin' good)
2) Ride bus for 15 minutes.
3) Wait on side of freeway in bus for 2 hours with rumors of "too much snow"
4) Drink heavily
5) Return to original bus stop (all of 15 minutes)
6) Go to sleep unsatisfied
7) Wake up unsatisfied
8) Blog.

that pretty much brings us up to speed. The irony of this whole episode makes me want to puke. I thought that maybe I could ease this trauma by going surfing, but I might be better off just skinny-dipping in my freezer. At least I wouldn't have to leave my house. Whatever the case...I can think of very little as frustrating as being stuck on the wrong side of "too much snow".











At right: Before riding the bus.











At Left: After psychologically traumatic board trip cancellation episode.

allow me to carry on...

So...its about 3:30 on a gloomy Monday afternoon. The wind is horking all over my trusty little home and my 3:00 student didn't show up. No call... No, "hey Mr. Nemo, it doesn't look like I can make it today." No courtesy, no respect. Where's the love??!!
It occurs to me that perhaps my student was too afraid to call me, and tell me that she couldn't make it. Maybe she was nervous. Worried that I'd say,
"If you don't come to your english lesson, I'm going to track you down, put you in a half-nelson and give you a noogie you're not soon to forget..."
It's just possible that my student has not called me for this reason...she is 29.

Things are much different now that I'm a private 1-on-1 teacher...not the way it was back in the days of being an Assistant Language Teacher at a junior high school...the way it was when my parents visited me two years ago...

...That should serve as segue into the continuation of my parents' visit to the land of the rising sun...
I believe that I left off in Nara, the ancient capital of Japan. Nara is a great place to visit because of the deer.

the what?!

Yes, it seems that hundreds and hundreds of years of history (including horyu-temple, the oldest surviving wooden building in the world) just wasn't enough. But fortunately someone was bright enough to introduce a fleet (much larger than a flock) of actual, living deer to roam and terrorize the innocent tourists of the city.
...yes, that tall white guy is me (at left)...bearing down on my unsuspecting nemesis deer. To this day I haven't been able to prove that it was the one that bit my ass, but there was no mistaking its I'm-more-holy-than-you-bacause-I-live-in-the-shadow-of-Todai-Temple attitude. That, and the white spots.

The omnipresence of the deer is astounding. I found this one napping outside my parents window at the hotel. Look at it laying around and generally being useless. Probably waiting for me to go out and buy it some 100 yen wafers from the deer-wafer stand. Nice try buddy.

GET A JOB!!

continued visiting...

without further ado...

For those who missed out on my previous entry, dated all of five minutes ago...Alien invaders had landed in Texas from the planet murktrex V and they were rapidly depleting the chili reservoir...er...thats not it.

um, right, My parents were visiting me in Japan.

Japan has a wealth of some really top notch temples and shrines, from the tiny local ones that you literally stumble upon while hiking up a random mountain, to the more than mildly impressive likes of Todaiji and Kiyomizu dera in the culturally rich (an understatement) areas of Nara and Kyoto...While my parents were here I had the honor to show them some of these architecual and cultural wonders such as...

vending machines.

This was a familliar sight...My mom took upon herself the grueling and dangerous task of finding the perfect vending machine coffee...many vending machines were perused, and many coffees were demolished in the quest....

I had a lot more to write...and I was planning on using pictures and words to weave our journey on this vast island through the mysterious, the wild, the poignant, the esoteric, and back through the mysterious again.

It was going to be beautiful. There were going to be tears. When everyone had finished reading it, we were going to embrace life with a newfound passion, living for the moment, bound to one another with the compassion of humanity. And, as a gaggle of peaceful boddhisatvas, set out into the vast void that is the cosmos...

but Ross just got here and I have to take him home...so that's all for tonight...

visited...

So...I've been been the righteous bearer of the title "blogger" for less than ten hours, but I find it difficult to supress the urge to publish anything and everything...does that make me a bad blogger? What is it that constitutes a "bad" or "good" blogger? What is the essence of blogging? Who am I and what shall I become? Is it natural for one to question their identity as a "blogger"?

Lets leave the metaphysical "I, as Blogger" out of it for now and concentrate on the purpose of this visit before the evening wears me into a pancake sized specimin of a man...

I was looking through photographs on my laptop...in hopes of finding material with which to further fortify my blog. I came across the pictures of when my parents came to visit me in japan about two years ago...being unaware of what kind of time continuum a "blogger" is meant to work within, I have elected to publish some of these aforementioned pictures. A little "back-blogging" ... if you will.

...the picture on the top is of my parents and I (upper left) and the notorious D-BONE (David Bonar) making a live appearance. D-BONE was my original homeboy in Japan, and a world class CD mixer made famous by releases such as "Bone thug", "Boner", and my personal favorite "Bone to pick". Dave currently resides on Victoria island where he partakes in various massochistic activities such as sitting the LSAT.

My mom (yes, the only woman in the picture) is most likely the sweetest thing since french toast. And my dad (bottom left) (A.K.A. "Dr. G", "The G-man", "Double G", "G-master flash", and "Ignatious"...well all but the last one anyway) is a history teacher who posseses a Beatles IQ somewhere near infinity. You might have noticed that he's sporting a fanny pack here roughly the size of a porpoise. I'm not sure that I can support this particular fashion statement, but the man can play a mean slide guitar.


I got to show my folks some of my moves in the classroom...
Yo! Check it pop!
"This is a pen!!!!"

Teaching English in Japan is often likened to repeatedly slamming your head into a brick wall. I couldn't disagree more.

Its like having all of your digits removed with a butter knife. (jeez! did I just say that?)

better find the next photo quick...which is a candid of Nagaishi Sensei and I...she was one of the english teachers at the junior high school...


to be continued...

Little Nemo in Slumberland...thanks to Winsor McCay

and here I am...little Nemo...just awoken from a fantastical adventure.

here's a link to what wikipedia has to say about my namesake... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_In_Slumberland

My parents enjoyed this little chap and his escapades enough to name their spawn after him. Maybe they were insightful. Maybe they were just hippies. Maybe they were insightful hippies.

so it goes.

I live in Japan...

kiyomizu temple folks.

blogging?

After several deep discussions with my shrink, we have come to the perilous revelation that starting a blog may be the only avenue left to me for enlightenment.
And so I proceed... wary of wrangling with the weary, wordy journey which lies ahead...

does that count? Am I now a "blogger"?