Uh...Sex Ed in a Japanese Elementary School...

I have a really short blog I want to make. I promise it will be shorter than last time. Ok..way shorter.

Anyway, today I was in the photocopier room at the Elementary school, and like every other school in this town, they have a pile of paper, (usually stored in box) that have something printed on one side of the paper, but the back side of the paper can be used for scrap, or whatever. I get pretty interested when I come across these boxes, and I always shuffle through the papers to see what was printed on them. Usually they're extra tests, hand-outs, quizes, homework, etc. that weren't handed out (maybe the teacher made too many of them). It's always interesting to see what kind of things the kids in Japanese schools are learning.

But today's experience was slightly disturbing. So as I'm waiting for my 26 copies of my worksheet to finish, I take a quick peak in the scrap paper box and see this funny looking shape, looking sort of like a stylized "W". The shape peaks my curiosity and I go in for a closer look. What I see is a drawing of a Uterus and the Ovas (I think I forgot my anatomy). And then I think to myself. Why is something like this in an elementary school?

It's hard to believe they teach a topic like that in a Japanese elementary school. If I had been introduced to something like that elementary, I probably wouldn't be able to look at a girl at the age I'm at now. Maybe I was introduced to this in elementary, just to traumatized to remember it. Maybe I'm over reacting. I dunno. But to me, this is WIERD!

Shinenkais and Winter Flags

In an effort to keep my "do more blogging" pledge, I will blog about this weekend! Are you ready for this one? Because it’s a doozy of a read.

Probably a lot more exciting than most weekends, I've had, this weekend started off with another Shinnenkai (New Years Meeting, if translated literally). It's basically a fancy term for New Years party, where you drink, eat and talk with other people. I've had about 5 of these this month, which means drinking hard for at least one day a week. I’ve had a Shinnenkai for the Rotary Club, Board of Education, Junior High School, the district which I live in and finally the Kamikawa Workers Union. All of which are fueling my raging alcoholism. Sweet.

In fact, about a couple weeks ago, when I had the Shinnenkai for my city district, which started at 12:00pm and lasted till 3:00pm, I was invited to someone’s house to do more drinking. So basically, I drank from about 12:00pm to about 10:00pm. Of course there was a break in between where I took a nap (or passed out) after the Shinnenkai. But I woke up again, only to start another round of drinking and eating shortly thereafter. Fun times in Japan…now only if I could remember them… (Just kidding, I’m not drinking so much that I forget what happens.)

My Shinnenkai last Friday, was for the Kamikawa workers union. It consisted of people that were working and that had joined the union, which surprisingly, is not very many. I think there were 100 people there, which is significantly small for a town of 4500 where I’m sure two-thirds the population or more are involved in some sort of occupation. Perhaps there were people absent, but I don’t think many people tend to skip things like Shinnenkai as they’re pretty important in Japanese work culture.

We started off at Coming Hall, the place where my Board of Education is located, and then moved on to a restaurant called Kyoshi, and finally to Manly, a karaoke bar (though we didn’t do much singing). By the last destination I was pretty hammered and didn’t feel so good, almost falling asleep on the sofas. I somehow managed to hold it together, stumble home, drink a few glasses of water and fall asleep.

Saturday was a lazy day, as I just stayed home, cooked food, watched TV and played the guitar all day. Right now I’m debating as to whether I want to put on a pickguard on my Les Paul, as it involves drilling holes in the wood (which I’m kinda scared of). Of course if I decide to do it I’ll go ask a professional technician to do it, rather than do it myself. The lack of a pickguard means there are a few scratches on the finish, nothing that can’t be touched up. But on the other hand a pickguard looks so much cooler on a Les Paul (especially if you want to look Jimmy Page, but don’t play like him).

Sunday, I didn’t even want to get up as I had stayed up pretty late just playing the guitar (thank god for amps that let you plug a set of headphones in, otherwise my neighbours would be hollering at my door). But I had to get prepared for Winter Flag, which is basically a race to retrieve a flag. The track is 1/3 ice and 2/3 snow.

The rules of Winter Flag is pretty simple, it’s about a 60 metre dash to the flag. You start off lying on the ice, facing away from the flag. At the sound of a gun (not a real one of course…) you get up and run to towards the flag(s). Starting on the ice is the hard part as it’s hard to get the momentum going, but once you hit the snow part of the course, you can really get going. Usually retrieving the flag requires diving for it, as races are usually pretty close. If you get the flag you make it to the next race, don’t and your out.

There’s also another version called Lucky Winter Flag, which is the same thing, except there’s a flag for everybody, but the flags have a slip of paper saying if you make it to the next round or not. Basically it doesn’t matter how fast you are, you just need to grab a flag that allows you to advance to the next round, where the Luck part comes in.

I invited two Nayoro ALTs, Jenna and Jill. By the way, if you’re a Hokkaido ALT, sorry if I didn’t tell you about Winter Flag, it was sort of a last minute thing and there was registration to be completed. Definitely, next time I’m going to send out invites on Facebook or something, so free up your schedule near the end of next January if your interested! I should mention there is a total cash prize of 100,000 Yen. Oh! You also get a free ticket to the onsen just for participating.

None of us did too well. For Winter Flag, I only barely made it past the first round and was out by the second round. In Lucky Winter Flag, only Jenna made it past the first round. Which proves that I still have no luck what-so-ever.

Despite not winning we definitely had a fun time. Though the boots we had to wear for winter flag made standing in the cold almost unbearable, as they were just rubber, with no insulation. Luckily, there were heating rooms in which you could warm your feet.

There was a food stand, where you could buy meat buns and ramen. There was also an ice slide that they made, which had a Mario bros. theme (I’m going to steal that picture you took Jenna! I really need to start brining my digital camera to these things). I was impressed, since the ice slide had you going pretty fast. Though the bumps on the slide didn’t feel too good on my Arse.

After that we went to ramen at Asahishokudo restaurant, the best place for ramen in Kamikawa, in my opinion. I tried the Maboroshi ramen, on the advice of another Nayoro ALT who we coincidentally met at Asahishokdo. It was really different than anything that I’ve had. It had a different broth and allowed you grind up your own sesame seeds and add them into the ramen (as well as pine nuts and leeks) to your own liking. It had delicious nutty taste. I only wish there was more meat added into it.

After that everybody went home. I had a nap, and then went to the convenience store to buy dinner. That was followed by sitting on my arse and playing guitar for about 4 hours.

We have two songs that are decided for the band. “My Sharona” by the Knacks and “Ame agari no yozora ni” (雨上がりの夜空に)By RC Succession, a Japanese Rock Band in the 1970s. I really some classic rock songs but I’m not sure if the vocalist can handle it, as some of them you pretty complicated English pronounced pretty fast. We’ll see what they decide on at the next Band meeting.

My goal is to get the solo part down for “My Sharona” (no matter how slow), “Let it be by the Beatles” and to be able to play a few Led Zeppelin songs. I’m currently working on “Heartbreaker” minus the solo part, as that’s going to require a many months to be able to play that up to speed.

Anyway, I’m hoping that my guitar skills will grow enough so that by summer, I’ll to be able to put on a decent sounding concert with my band come this summer.

Congrats if you to the finish of this blog. As it’s really really long. It fills up about 3 pages in word. I’ll end it here, because if I go any further, my blog is going to turn into a novel. Till next time!

OMG Wing finally wrote something...

So its been about 3 months since I wrote anything in this blog. I've been super lazy, but hopefully thats changed. As from now on I'll TRY to write in this blog on a more consistent basis. Why? Because 1) to at least let you know that I'm alive in Japan; 2) Because I want something for the record, where I can look back and say, "Yah those were good times"; 3)I can practice my English, which is slowly getting worse (I'm using spell checker more and more everyday); and 4) to entertain you when you are tired of staring at your desk and twiddling your thumbs.

So what has happened in 3 months, besides me being missing from the blogging world? I've been playing guitar as much as a heroin addict takes crack. Perhaps more...I devote about at least 2 hours a day playing guitar. On weekends, I just sit in front of the TV with my guitar, just playing random stuff and learning new songs to play. Then I have guitar lessons with my teacher 1 hour per week. So I would say about half my time here in Japan is spent playing the guitar. Kinda weird how I come all the way to Japan to just play guitar.

But lemme explain... I have a pretty well paying job in Japan, which means I can afford to fuel my hobbies now. I also don't go out as much as I do in Edmonton, and even if I do go out, I pay at most $50 a night to drink as much beer, and eat as much as I can. There has been NO night, where I have spent beyond $50 to party hard. Seriously, I love the Japanese country side. It's a good place to save money, while having fun.

Furthermore, I have access to a guitar teacher in my town. Hes only a 5 minute drive away. Super convenient.
That and the fact that he charges me $15/lesson (which is basically an hour). Each lesson is privately taught, I'm getting a much better deal than if I actually went to a music store to learn guitar. And yes, hes a legit teacher, he plays in band and teaches at the Shimamura Music Store (Big music chain store in Japan) in Asahikawa (the nearby city) on Sundays.

Lastly, I've found music connections really easily. In fact, I've formed a band with a nearby bartender, her friends and a guy at the Town Office. Which will further my musicianship (which is at the level of none or really really low). We have a few songs that we're thinking about playing and then expanding from there. The name of the band? We haven't decided on that yet...

Oh, by the way, I bought a Gibson Les Paul. Got it on sale, and its a hell of a guitar. Set-up is really nice and the tone is pretty versatile for rock music. You can play so many types of Rock music with it, which is great for me as I've been starting to listen to Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers and the likes. Of course its like 10lbs, but it feels really solid when your playing it. Somehow, I locked myself out of the hard case after I took the guitar out, so I'm waiting for Shimamura to fix it for me (I Love the customer service here).

I went to Hong Kong at the end of December, to visit my family and Les. Hang out with the family was really fun. It's been so long since I've seen my little cousins (10 years) and I was pretty surprised to see them grown up into full fledged Elementary school students.

One thing that bugged me was the people in HK who walk like jackasses. They would bump into you on purpose, or just get in your way. Even if theres like open area they could walk in. So eventually, I would just start walking like a dick and giving people the hard shoulder. Even little old ladies who refused to get out of my way. HK people seriously piss me off.

I also did a bit of exploring of HK by myself and got a hang of the transit system. It's pretty simple once you get used to it, and HK is not as big of a place as one might think. Well, at least its not as big as Tokyo, which I went to after my HK visit.

I hit a few tourist spots in Tokyo, but didn't really get to do too much in the way of touristy things (i.e. going to Disneyland, visiting Tezuka Osama world, taking a tour inside Fuji television and many more were things that I missed out on). But that couldn't be helped as my stay only consisted of 4 days. Most of which were hanging out with friends and shopping. I didn't buy too much, as I was planning to buy my Les Paul right after my flight to Asahikawa airport. But there will definitely be a next time, as I have to go back to Tokyo for my re-contracting conference. Hopefully, I'll be able to head there a few days before and do some of the things I missed out on with my friends.

Hockey is going well... Finally got a goal with that Vapor 30 some of you guys sent me. Btw, thanks. The card and that stick are great reminders of whats waiting for me back home. Hopefully I'll come back around July or August for 3 weeks ,to come visit you guys. I'll let you know what my plan is when it gets closer to the date. However, I do have to be a translator for a group of kids coming from Rocky Mountain House in late July, so I probably won't be able to leave before then. If I'm coming I'm not sure if I can bring my Les Paul over, and not sure if I want to, just because of the hassle it turned out to be when bringing my Epiphone Acoustic to HK just to practice. I have a Squire back home so I'll be able to practice on that. Although, it'll probably need a wipe down, string changes and a set up.

Anyways, I'll leave it at that for now. Making this any longer will probably make you quit reading altogether. Hope things aren't too cold back home. I'll upload some photos on to facebook later, once I get them off my camera (which may be a long time, just because I'm sooo lazy). Talk to you guys later.