lunch chooses you,

It is always a bit of fun finding out which class to eat lunch with. Especially at elementary school. Each day that I am at elementary, from Wednesday to Friday, it is my job to announce and to check with our vice principal (head of school operations) as to which class I will be eating with.

Today was the fourth grade students. What a fun bunch. From sitting together and waiting for our meal to begin, to playing rock, paper, scissors together -what a blast.

Today’s menu was especially tasty. I was aspiring to out and eat katsu curry for dinner after work and before taiko, but school lunch today was just that, curry. Did I get enough of the sweet enough, but tasty, tingly curry? No.

You can bet that after I get home, unpack and oragnize myself after the day, after my taiko bag is packed and I out the door towards taiko practice, I wil be in-filling myself with katsu, katsu curry. There are just some days when a guy needs a good breaded and fried cutlet atop curry to satiate his grumbing belly. And for me that day is today. Maybe with a cola, maybe without.

Food has always been atop the menu for me here in Japan. I may be ridiculed -or most of it may be self-ridicule- for not outing and trying new dishes every time I dine out, but when you need katsu for the soul you just gotta get it. Or I have to, in fact.

This weekend will see me holed up and watching films, cleaning my house, and watching the snow melt. If I behave, and if I can order everything just right I will be out by bus to another town for an onsen experience on Saturday. But that experience will not come before Saturday morning’s breakfast of say, Hungarian fried toast, coffee dripped fresh from my new glass drip-filter, and fruit. And after I manage to peel myself from the comfortable confines of my home will I then onsen my way to soaked skin and purified pores, and bottled milk after the long soak.

There’s always more to look forward to. It’s just a matter of seeing what best fits, or has been fitted next for you.

Have a fine Friday -when yours, too does arrive.

Fridays mean coffee, and coffee means bright eyes -or addicted smiles and shakes.
Happy weekend,

Ciao

thumping,

Now before the power here at home flashes out and I am cursed to sit at table-side with candles glowing, let me tell you…

On the way home from dinner, a fine meal out I was running, dashing through the fluttering snow. The snow was falling as surely and blindly as when someone surely and slowly pulls a blanket sheet across your face when you are, say, lying in bed. You can see no further than the moving sheet before your eyes.

The snow was falling silently and secretly as such, and then as I crossed the roadway at some illegal point/make -okay, I jaywalked, there was a flash. Not the kind of flash that welcomes you to some heavenly home, but the kind of flash that you would find via an intersection patrol camera. When you would speed your way through a red light or something. And so I was doomed, caught by flash as I crossed the road from far-side to my-side where my house lay.

But this flash, all during the blowing snow was something else. This flash was not from a camera. There soon followed, just moments after light took air, the rumbling of… thunder?
Turns out that for the first time in my life I have experienced thunder and lightning during a blowing snow patch of weather.

And here I sit at computer punching away just minutes before bed. Minutes before I crawl between layers of cold sheets beside a humming heater block. I will pull a toque over my head making sure my patchy ears are covered and I will fight for sleep. Sleep between the thumping and rumble-patting of thunder outside. The thunder catches and calls, and it shakes my roof above me. I may as well be living through those good old summer rainstorms just some months ago.

And every so often the wind picks up speed and catches such a drift that it calls and carries through my heater-pipe from the outside wall of at the back of my house. The wind is here tonight. And so is the thunder. And I am in awe.

I pray you, if you have the comfort tomorrow, when I finally make it back to the office after my morning middle school teaching spree I will attempt to upkeep you with informations about the last week, the weather, the food. But I warn you, my travels were no further than the bounds of this northern island. But I will tell you about that later. About how I remained north, within the near-enough company of some Russian men-people. And I shopped for chopped natto beans and apples. It was nice.

But have you a good sleep tonight, and day.

And should the weather permit, and somehow the snow and thunder not combine into some unstoppable tomorrow-withholding force so that the sun doesn’t rise and I am forever stuck in the tonight of today…
Well, when tomorrow comes, let us carry on then.

Until such a time, good night and good day.
Let us pray that the weather keeps itself some safe distance away.

Goodnight, ciao. Goodnight.

workplace athletics,

Hello!

Post is on the way.

Today’s schedule forbade no time.

Because of the recent request for a new after-work, after-hours conversation class
my time was eaten up today!

Stay posted for the… telling of a day in the life…

And always, thanks for the reads. Post should be up today!

seen more,

I have never seen anything like this. Maybe, just maybe once in a film before.
Outside my workplace window the world looks like,

If hell was having a bad day, or if that fiery place ever had another side, an oppositte side, the oppositte of fire, hell would look like it does outside my window now.
Hard winds, screaming winds as the air screams past the open seals of the window panes, biting cold, snowy tumults, and raging storms of ice, and wind, and snow.

Never have I seen any kind of snow storm like this -and I am about to go and walk it to school -to school to go and eat lunch. And then I will hike back to my office. Does that make sense? I can’t tell if I should be laughing at the weather and at this lunch-going/coming fact, or if I should be troubled.

There is so much white outside my office window that the world has melted away, frozen into one white sheet. The blowing snow is so sufficient and purely white that the office window frame has been ‘whited out’ into a pure and perfect canvas of white. I cannot see anything beyond the window’s face.

So here I go, to go and get lunch.

See you if I ever make it back..

ciao,

a winter running land,


So right now, like right, right now I am sitting at my desk at work. It is a stellar nine o’five a.m. Outside the winds are blowing -blowing like mad. Stark, raving mad. I think that I have become so used to the banging, pulling, hauling, streaking winds so very much that when I wake up in the morning and the winds are howling snow outside that I don’t tend to notice the commotion anymore.

Today was just like that.
When my chime came to call me out the door and walk to work I did something a little different today, I grabbed my snowboarding goggles.
Now these goggles were sent to me at my behest from home. Aside from the fact that I would have to bus mere hours to get to a shopping mall to buy said goggles, I put my goggles from home to use today. As I outed the door this morning I adhered the goggles to my face and made my trek to work. All of this not to mention the two feet of fresh powder at my door this morning. As I set boot to white, I sunk into the deep powder and began trudging my way to work.

I felt silly with the board goggles kissing my face but as I looked ahead of me I could hear that howling wind and see long strips of powder being pulled off of snowbanks and rooftops and being whipped across the roadway. Today was a day for goggles.

I sit here now in the office -yes, back to reality- and I have just been told by my workplace supervisor that elementary school is cancelled due to snow. Well, not just cancelled due to snow but cancelled due to high winds and limited visibility.

Every now and again as I crane my neck to the right to look out the tall office windows at ground level I can barely see outside. Snow is stripped and blown, or just blowing in out of the clouds and off of the ocean and across our parking lot to building-side and into town. There is a lot of snow out there.

As an adult, and as a teacher I have been told that I can brave the snows out to elementary school today. Just before lunch I will have to trek, goggled, to school to eat my portion of school lunch for the day. This uncanny trip to school in lieu of a student-free building today will make for teachers meetings and prepping lessons for the rest of the week.

Am I excited about this? No. Worried? No. Luckily my last weekend of snowboarding in horrendous conditions, reaching the base of the chairlift with a frozen face mask and frozen goggles -both inside and out- leaves no room for surprises upon my return home to this frozen weather.

I suppose that yesterday’s bout of melting snow was a freak day. Or maybe Spring poked its beautiful head into town just to let us know that it is sitting stageside just waiting for its cue to make a full appearance here in Embetsu (yes, I have decided to start officially using my town’s name in my posts). Spring will come. Spring is coming. But not before winter has its last ugly breath of cold and white upon our northern town.

And I just know that you know what weather like this calls for,
coffee,
coffee,
and more coffee to keep the brain excited and sane in the midst of the tumult outside.

Hope you get yours,

Ciao.

we went, we saw, we won

As promised, I’m back.
There was a whole spatula-full of fun to be had on the HAJET 2012 Snow Tour. So let’s get right to it.
First, I was late. I’m always late. I’m never late. Winter has not been too kind, but continues to live up to its reputation of harsh, harsh snow. My bus to Sapporo last Thursday was piled in deep with the white stuff. Another bus ride, another hour late to our destination. I think I am slowly coming to see that riding the bus is nice, but it can be a real, delaying pain -and in the winter nonetheless!

But when I arrived at a most busy Sapporo Station there was bustle and hustle everywhere. Bustle not just because Valentine’s was being advertised and shopped for with wild ambition, but because it was the 2012 Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) in Sapporo. I quickly lockered my goods and snowboard and then broke out on foot to find the thirty other people that came from Honshu and even Okinawa to enjoy Sapporo and Niseko with the rest of our tour.

I found the group in Susukino -Ramen Alley. I sucked in a bowl of ramen myself only to find that the group was done and had made their way back to Odori Park where the Snow Festival was in full swing.
Let’s hit the fast-forward.

A few of the group visited the Sapporo Brewery and Museum, got lost and chatted along the way and then reconnected with the rest of the tour in an underground shopping district (literally one to two stories below ground) and made our way to our restaurant for dinner. Dinner was grilled lamb and golden mead. All in reasonable amounts, all very good for the soul. Lamb, grilled, served with cabbage and onion -grilled alongside the mutton. Lamb, lamb, lamb. We were full, we were fed.

Back to Sapporo Station for a bus ride all the way out to Niseko. The weekend was filled with a lot of riding. Riding the bus, riding a snowboard, riding the bus, and riding a train and then bus.

Highlights? Well, there was good food and good friends. Staying up late to chat in front of a fireplace, and dining on.. yup, lasagna provided for by our hotel chef.

It was a real treat to see places that I had not seen before. But somehow after the weekend was over and I came back to Sapporo -and watched a really strange movie which I’m not sure I can recommend to other people yet- I was tired. I was ready to get home back to my house-spot in Embetsu. But the trip home was not without winter delays and our bus having to pull over and wait highway-side for another bus to come and take us up the rest of the way home. That experience was a first. But home nonetheless and I took in a lot of sleep.

This week it is back to work. I have just been asked to start up a volunteer English conversation class after work on Tuesdays. Living in such a foreign setting I am not sure that ‘sudden’ changes and requests really come up as such a ‘surprise’ anymore. It has been a factual blessing to be learning Japanese and to see a little more of what goes on in the workplaces, shopping places around me. But I must say that at the end of the day, halfway through my appointment on JET my head begins to ache just a little.

Maybe it has been the knowing that my position abroad will come to an end. And so, maybe it is that any frusterations, wonders, worries finally have an outlet given that my position will terminate in August. All those things that I swept up under the rug of joyful experience and new sights have finally spilled out the other end. Maybe what I am trying to say is that reality has finally hit and with that hit comes a few changes and new shapes to my present experiences.

A time has come where I am glad that I have a foundation of the things that I like in Japan -food, music, people, culture. But on the other hand there has come a time where I can now, having experienced so many months (almost seven) living abroad here day in and day out, I can come to be honest with myself about tough little spots and calloused bits in my days. Just because I came to love Japan before I came here doesn’t mean that I have to call every last thing and experience (both good and sour) ‘great’ under the guise of foreign experience. I owe it to myself and to my understanding to be honest with myself. Honest about things that work, and honest about things that are so different. The saying or not saying of hello to other people in very friendly or very public settings being just one example of those differences. People can be closed off towards others -and I see/know that culture and sociability is a very different beast in Japan compared to Canada.

I am glad that I have come to see more sides and truths of a place that does very much interest me. It for for realizing and seeing these ‘differences’ that I will continue to grow and shape my understanding of Japan -and of myself.

So until such a time when I board a velvety plane seat and roll and ride my way back home I will have a mission to continue to make the most of what I am exposed to and lucky to do and see. And I will have to continue to be honest about what I am seeing and feeling.

Japan and home. Both places -anywhere we go, in fact, has both good and wild sides. I have come to see that now more and more. And as for today I am looking to going home in a few minutes, cooking up some curry and tidying up my house. I will do some laundry, watch a film, chat with friends and family back home and then prepare to do it all again tomorrow. Because after all that is what life is, a series of opportunities, actions, and experiences. Whether these things happen here or there (wherever) it is up to us and us alone to make the most of it. Gosh, I’m ready for some curry. And goodness does my coffee taste great with my new cup-top coffee filter-maker thing. The way coffee was made before the machine. And with Miyakoshiya coffee. A wonder to me coffee-loving soul.

I will make one last note, these thoughts are mine and I take full responsibility for them. Many people that know me know that I have quite a fascination with many things Japanese. It is in no way my intent to give misleading impressions about my work nor my observations otherwise. Please read this knowing that you are reading my opinion -not stated fact. And with that, enjoy!

I’ll catch you again soon. I revel thinking about how many morning cups of coffee I get to have before we chat again! And trust me, there will be more -photos, too!

Do take care and let’s share again soon, for these are just the ramblings of some wonder-filled, adventure and experience hungry youth working and travelling abroad.

And with that,

Ciao!

I want your board


The day is coming.

To such a date I have only heard about the mystical, faraway slopes that lie near the rump of Hokkaido. For years I heard about the powder, untouched hills in waylaid mountains. Dusted snow so deep and so fresh that it calls out, resonates across wavelengths calling people to come and get lost in the winter wonder of Hokkaido. Niseko. One of those places.

This week, at the lumpy end of this week, I will be dragging board in tow and slogging steps through the Sapporo Snow Festival. World famous the festival is, I might add. I will be downing seared choppits of lamb, gorging if just per sip on golden Sapporo brews and snowboarding with careful safety (to appease the snow-bearing gods) across the slopes of and surrounding Niseko.

I remember catching view in one travel-ocumentary about soaking in onsen after boarding. That I will do. Sleep in this weekend? I think not. Even now I am throwing bits of clothes at my mini suitcase just dying to board bus and get to the mountain. This year’s Snow Tour (brought to you by a local JET Programme coalition for teachers, &c. &c.) will be a doozie. We have more snow in Hokkaido this year and colder winds. Should make for a draft of a time.

Sorry. I don’t want to parch my own throat with wearisome words but I am building a case to satisfy my absence come Monday. I will be away from desk and chair if just for a few days. So any read-able post set here will be coming to you live and wild on Tuesday -at least!

Keep your chins covered and your nasal drip apart and I’ll catch you next week. Again, don’t worry, I tend to have really full workdays. Its just that when it comes to snow and being in a part of the world that offers pristine outdoor recreation -you just gotta cash in those days off and get out there!
I can’t wait to see the other peeps coming up from southern Japan who have little to no snow in their regions. When they hit Hokkaido to come boarding with us they may be in for a shock. For cold!

Drink something warm. Cocoa works, too, and I’ll catch you next week.
Ciao!

And keep on wherever you’re at!

Spring, it happens

Here we are. Spring has come at last. Or has it? Now not to trouble any understanding of Spring but last Friday was Setsubun. The day was a celebration of a division of the seasons. Practically speaking, winter has now been set apart and soon, very soon Spring will come -after this very snowy month of February passes on..

Setsubun (節分) as it was explained to us at the kindergarten on Friday, is a special day. Practiced yearly, someone dresses up as an Oni, or demon. We then cast seeds (dry soybeans) or perhaps un-husked peanuts at that character and chant, ‘Devils out! Good luck come in!’

The purpose of this practice is to cleanse oneself of any ailments -minor, mental, bodily or otherwise, and to thus welcome a new season and a new life upon oneself. How fun!

As you can see per the picture (below, soon to follow), I had a turn of being ‘chased out’ by the students. Many students also took turns casting peanuts at each other practising last Friday’s Setsubun tradition. I found this tradition to be very educational and fun. After all was said and done, and a few games were played everyone was apportioned candy and some peanuts. We then ate, according to our age/grade that amount of peanuts -letting the ‘good luck’ in.

And tonight we are screening a very fun film at our recreation hall (a detective-sleuth film set in Hokkaido). I am looking forward to the movie! As an avid movie-goer the movies have finally come to Embetsu if just for one night.

(I am actually not ashamed to say that today’s post is a copy of the post I met for my local town blog. So you are not missing out if you read only this blog. Fine! I am in the midst of an unaccounted writer’s block. I will however, continue to write if not simply about simple details in effort to keep up this ‘effort’ of posting weekly. I still thank you, and thank you for your reads.)

Until the spirit of reader’s-write strikes me again!

Oh, and I will tell that I am off to a local restaurant this evening for a fried oyster dinner set before watching our locally screened movie this evening! I am meant to try the coffee at this oyster-selling restaurant, too. I am very much anticipating discovering whether this restaurant serves brewed or instant coffee. As we have no cafes in town, and I love my cafes, tonights discovery could be a breaking/finding point.

Wish me the best.
For I wish you the best in your weekly endeavours!

Keep on with your coffee or fruit juice carrot blend drinking!

And, ciao.

I found it,


A couple years ago when I was in a frenzy for all things Japan (and has that ended?) I found and read-up a fine memoir of a young fellow who came abroad to Japan and studied a year at a Japanese boys’ school. The title of that work? Inside the Torii Gate: The Journal of an Exchange Student in Japan by Jonathan Juri Buchanan. I am sure the fellow has collected a few years and aged, but that book has been an inspiration to me. And since that work that book sprung to mind for me the other day. And why did the text come to mind? Lemme tell you.

On one of the earlier days in the week I was invited to attend an end of the school year event at our agricultural high school boys’ dormitory. The event was a mash dinner with the students, about forty in attendance plus teachers, students who were graduating high school. We had a dinner of shabu-shabu, simmer, pull, and swirl pork and veggies in a kelp broth-over-burner soup dish. We enjoyed some onigiri rice balls, too.

This experience, sitting in the school dorm cafeteria while students and teachers ate, while speeches were made, while laughs, and pokes, and jokes were exchanged all across the room -well I felt like I was living that text that I read so long ago. I remember those years ago thinking just how much I would have loved to have experienced a year abroad in a Japanese high school. And, well, here I was sitting, laughing, eating, and watching everything growing on around me experiencing it all firsthand myself.

It has been so very interesting to ‘be there’ and to see everything going on around me in high school, in my town, and in Japan. Somehow, it has almost been as if much of, if not all of, what I’ve wanted to experience in my coming to Japan has been coming true and happening every day. Wow, how lucky I am. And how lucky I feel that I have been! And hey, its not over yet.

I have however come to the recent decision that I will be returning back home to Canada after my contract year. It was not easy to resolve this matter so very halfway through the year in the midst of a busy work schedule but I have a plan and I am sticking to it. It will be back to school for me. As for the rest of the experience… well, we still have months to go. The time yet to be spent could be equivalent to something like travelling by ship across the pacific -for months at a time. Or traversing the desert on a faraway continent -for months at a time. And here we are. I still have months left on this more than fine experience to go.

Today is also setsubun here in Japan. It is a day that divides the seasons and marks the coming of Spring. So with today let me invite so many nice and full things to come my way -along with Spring. And we could use a little Spring up here in Hokkaido considering that we’ve still got so much snow all over!

Thanks for the read. There have been amounting observations and experiences fiddled in between the weeks, but again as time comes and goes, and as it all allows I will be sharing more and more of it with you, too.
Have a nice day.

And, go and do something to celebrate the coming of Spring.
My Spring-coming celebration will be had, too. But not before a smashing winter boarding trip to Niseko next weekend and you can bet there will be more to chatter about that.
But now if you’ll excuse me, I have a coffee to consume.

Ciao.

mental health day,

This weekend I found myself aboard bus again, headed for a larger town than my own. This weekend was deemed mental health day. So I rode the bus past my town limits down into Sapporo. Needing a break, and just wanting to shop. I saw a mighty good movie, too -Fright Night. A motivated-horror film I would call it. I was impressed by the mix of snarky comedy and vexing visuals. I would love to get into the gritty details of why this flick stood out to me but I would hate to bore you with details.. or maybe, you want to hear?
And I chose to watch it in 3D. Do you like Colin Farrell? Horror-like films, too? Get out there and watch this one. I recommend it. I’d snap this film an 8/10!

I wish the talk would get more exciting than that, but that’s really about it. But if you are truly keen on hearing details, I can give you those, too..
Details on how for example, our bus was so snowed down that we had to exit the express highway because of closures, and meander our fifty or so seater bus through local roadways, townscapes, and traffic lights for hours. Two hours more than it takes to get to Sapporo from my country location. A four hour trip turned into a six hour excursion.
But we’re talking SO much snow here that the only other place I have seen such heavey, fluffy snow falling or pelting away at stationary objects was during the blithering of a blizzard in my northern country town.
Needless to say I was impressed by the snow and how long people were able to hold their bladders while remaining seated on board bus in snowy traffice. But upon my arrival at Sapporo station I was needing to be fed and the first place I sped to was a Chinese-style Japanese-inspired restaurant wherebefore I enjoyed quite the radical plate of miso-fried cabbage and pork for one. Yum, yum, yum.

(The weather may have been snow, but the fish was fine as frosty waters can offer)


(And yes this littery snowfall turned into a curtain of heavy white within minutes of my stealing into a taxi to trek back towards Sapporo station)

The Sapporo trip saw me pick up a 3DS, a nice new tool to remedy long bus rides and tired eyes -but don’t worry, I was planning to buy that tiny handheld gaming system well before the weather drew snow.

But I am sure you don’t want to hear about me wandering through department stores, staring at display screesn watching mesmerizing video commercials about the latest dating games, or shoot-em-up games, etc. Though I have to admit I saw some real nice clothes and picked up a radically discounted sweater from a fashion outlet that I have grown to lull over.

Through all my trundling I ran through Odori Park in Sapporo only to find a military presence carving and whittling away snow with servant-precision in preparation for February’s Snow Festival. It was amazing to see, and I wasn’t kidding about the military presence, loads of camo-wearing people scraping away at a mountainous wall of snow. I stood stunned for a few minutes trying to remind myself to snap a few photos while standing planted with other onlookers.

The rest of the trip was fine and I made it back home in one piece on an earlier shuttle in need of some deep rest and shut-eye.

As for town life, we are surviving the cold. Mornings mean hot coffee, or Eary Gray with a dribble of honey. Hot foods all around. I wouldn’t be surprised if every meal on our school lunch roster was suddenly soup and noodles in effort to fend off cold. I am just happy for my morning cup of soup which I make up after a morning shower while letting my vision focus as drowsiness comes into check.
Each morning I cut up veggies, simmer bean curds with fish stock, and stir in miso paste to complete a tasty breakfast miso soup addition.

(School lunches never fail to impress the simplest of stomachs -mine included. This menu included udon simmered with a variety of ingredients including veggies, fish cakes, and so forth! To the right is a kabocha mochi or Japanese pumpkin rice cake. Golly I consider these lunches a tasty daily treat!)

Well, I have a few other office preparations to get around to so I may just bring this post to term with that.

If I come to consider anything else I will attach it to this post. And that will include pictures. Random facts? Well, I have taken rather heavily to dance music lately. Not that I didn’t like the stuff before, but dance-y beats really help keep the drearyness of winter at bay.
Don’t you worry neither, I have been keeping up with my Jpop, too. If you feel inspired to see just what is hot these days, you can check the youtub e link. But I do warn you, if other people hear what you are listening to they might stare at you just a little longer than usual in perplexed wonder. Me? I love the music. It’s a part of my every day. And maybe with your listen-to-link, you can make Jpop a part of your day, too.

Here’s me talking to you soon!

Ciao.