bumblingmumbler

Dried Crab Chips (?)

2010-03-29T17:34:00.001-07:00

Just ate a dried baby dead crab, husk and all... It was the size of a marsh mellow but it's dead baby blue eyes had still looked up at me and said, "Don't eat me." But I did. And it was ok. I think I have sand in my mouth though now.

Art Gallery

2010-03-09T18:35:00.001-08:00

I had some of my work featured in a gallery about a foreign look at Japan. My friend set up it and asked me to bring some of my stuff in. All in all 6 of us brought work in and we all got to share it with a lot of people. It was fun... and awkward. But ya... I had a cool time.

The Art Gallery Site:
http://himming2008.jugem.jp/

A newspaper article showing me off to the world muhahahaah:
http://himming2008.img.jugem.jp/20100307_1685394.jpg
(My buddy is the guy standing up across from my pictures. He is fluent in Japanese and put the whole thing together.)

Bear Bullet Smuggling

2010-03-07T20:22:00.001-08:00

I had a teacher walk up to me last Friday. He brought one of the English teachers with him and asked her to translate for him.
As translated,
"I hunt bears.
'I hunt bears with my father.
'My father is a bear hunter. [ mimics pointing a gun and shooting ]
'We kill the bear and open it. [ mimics ripping open the bear ]
'And we use it for ..." [ I forgot what he said particularly]

He then hands me an empty case of bullets and asks if I can "get him more" for his father. He explains to the English teacher that its really difficult buying bullets in Japan and that sometimes it can take up to 6 months delay. Thus, if I know of any way to purchase bullets please help him.

He wasn't actually asking me to smuggle in bullets... but to be honest I have no idea how to actually help him out. Too bad. I tried e-mailing the bullet company about the proper way of importing bullets into Japan but considering how oddly suspicious my e-mail looked I can't imagine I'll get a response.

Every year in February this town has a Snow Festival where they serve Boar and Bear soup. I am kinda worried that if I don't get the bullets then maybe next year's Bear Soup will be canceled... Then no tourists will come, and no one will make money...etc... My failure could destroy the town. OH THE PRESSURE!

Still... Funny way to finish a Friday at work while grading papers.

Windows

2010-02-22T17:53:00.001-08:00

So over the course of this year students have broken 5 different pains of glass. I think its all the first year gang. They always claim an accident... but...

Last year there was only one incident of glass breaking. Somehow glass fell all over a student. He looked quite out of it in class. I kinda am curious how students approach this whole glass breaking thing. I always thought it was difficult to do.

That and the school year is about to end. I'm sad to say goodbye the the oldest class (3rd years). But i'm happy to welcome the new younglings in. I have had two years of elementary school so it will be cool to see them turn into junior high school students.

Whale

2010-01-26T20:13:00.001-08:00

Hmm. Just ate whale for school lunch today. Midway through eating my small chicken tenders someone pointed out that it wasn't chicken... Heh.

Its been a while.

2010-01-25T04:27:00.000-08:00

I should say I kinda went into the keep my own personal journal thing. So I haven't been as willing to post much publicly. I imagine when March comes around i'll start posting more stories here.

Horrible Timing...

2009-11-16T20:01:00.000-08:00

Hmm... I was just reading this article and I was thinking that, wow, talk about a bad time to strike up more commotion for the 'US Military Base in Okinawa' conflict...talk about a prickly issue with North Korea so close by. I imagine this will be an awfully frustrating problem for Japan's new party and for Obama, considering the two countries only met just recently about this issue -- without accomplishing much.

U.S. soldier mum on fatal hit-and-run | The Japan Times Online

New Computer

2009-11-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

I just got a new computer... Yippy. But ordering a computer through a Japanese branch is stupid, impossible and simply frustrating.

Japan's Battle Royale

2009-10-23T06:48:00.001-07:00

I just watched an amazing movie called "Battle Royale". I'm not positive but I think when the movie went to the States the name got changed to (I think) "Suicide Club". However...its not really about suicide so much as it is about killing people...unless you find some poetic suicide type meaning from it...which I didn't find.

Its an amazingly violent story that parallels High School life in Japan. In Japan students spend one year in the same class with the same other 40 students. Every class also has their own assigned teacher. In the movie a specific class of 40 students is abducted to an island and the teacher comes out to tell the students that essentially they have to kill each other and that only one student can survive. ... oh ya... its violent. But it is tragically beautiful...I don't really even know why.

Why? Why did it have to be Huffingpost?

2009-10-23T06:42:00.001-07:00

I just read this amazing opinion piece written by the 'president' of "Media Matter's For America." I love the article, I think it rationalizes all of my frustrations about Fox in a way that just makes me happy.

The only problem is that the darned fool had to post his opinion on The Huffington Post, an online news source that even I can tell is way too far left.

But still...here it is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-e-burns/fox-news-is-the-story-wit_b_330102.html

I think Fox Network's obvious right lean is ok, and should be respected so long as the news networks discloses this simple "Consverative" name tag to their reporting. Obama's pitiful PR/Media crew, however, has really crossed some lines. I pity Obama for having such tragically inept advisers.

Yay! Obama and a nobel prize!

2009-10-09T03:05:00.001-07:00

It doesn't really mean much. In fact, I think Obama is kinda failing at...most things... for the time being. But... still... good for him!

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize - NYTimes.com

On the other hand, I can't wait to see what Fox has to say about this. **eagerly waiting for RSS feed updates**

Perhaps another look at China

2009-10-08T06:50:00.001-07:00

Perhaps it doesn't hurt to consider:

The People's Republic of China Isn't What We Think ...: Gazeta of Russia

My day at work TODAY!

2009-09-29T00:22:00.000-07:00

SO I thought I'd share my day's worth of events.

1. Class #2 of the day. 8th grade students. I'm leading a repeat excercise for all the students. And because everyone is..like always...tired... there wasn't really much response from the students. However, in the middle of my repeating, I got "concho'ed" by one of the students from behind. I wont go into details what this is, but I will simply say that it isn't pleasant.

2. Class #3 of the day. 7th grade students. I was walking around helping people with a simple English essay. Students on occasion would ask me questions. I enjoy having questions asks. Two students were pointing to a student like the student had a question. I walked up to the student whose back was facing me. When she turned around, she saw me... and then she screamed in a very inconveniently loud voice. I don't think she had a question.

3. During soji time. A student told me his name was Jackson. Way to inappropriately early for that joke bud. Give it a few more months.

4. After soji time. I saw an 8th grader being forcefully dragged into the teacher's room. As soon as he entered the teacher's room he stopped dragging his feet and looked quite dignified as he started gleefully sharing a story while presenting interesting pieces of evidence. As it was, he had just been picked on by another student and had been dragged to the teacher's office by the teacher so that he could rat him out. The irony of all this? The student that got dragged in to the room is as tall as me...while the student that picked on him is about 3 feet tall. I love Japan.

Now I get to go listen to people prepare for an English Speech Competition. It is definitely my favorite and most rewarding part of this job. Yippeee.

Tragedy in the midst.

2009-09-19T02:22:00.001-07:00

I know its feasible to look at every news source and automatically assume a political bias... But the difference between biased reporting and lying should be recognized... I mean come on, if Fox news keeps going towards a far right or neoconservative bias, that is permissible. But if the network wants to simply start lying, I feel like it should be punished shouldn't it? Twenty years ago accountability existed... but does it exist anymore? I don't think it does.

This is just a quick video clip of CNN responding to Fox's ad that CNN did nothing during the Sep. 12th march. Obviously the Democratic party that is holding on to power right now in the White House can't do much, so I guess the only people that can respond are the other news agencies.... There really is no way for Fox to lose is there, though?

Campbell Brown on Fox ad: "Sometimes they do forget there is a difference between covering an event and promoting it" | Media Matters for America

froggies

2009-09-12T03:05:00.001-07:00

Four frogs now consistently live on my window by the front of the house. They are sooooooo cuuuuuttteee.

OK - A Quick Reflection on my job here

2009-08-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

An anonymous friend typed about a one minute tirade on why this being a JET/ALT in Japan is not all its cracked out to be -- im not gonna fix the typos im afraid...so just decipher through all the coded angry-ness:

"you come out to japan all professional, all keen to teach english and do your job

adventurous, energetic

... [edit] ...

but the job is just barriers

you must talk to the kids - no, you can't do it NOW, they're cleaning/training for something/practising for exams

you want to put communication in lessons? good, but you must do it after we've finished the textbook lessons

you want to learn japanese? great. but we're not going to talk to you

you want to travel japan and learn about our culture? feel free, but we're not going to give you any time to do it"

The rant may be a little confusing, but it made me feel happy to hear my own thoughts re-iterated in an equally confusing tone. However, because it is summer vacation, i don't actually have anything to complain about at the moment.

Tennis Tournament

2009-08-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

I'm playing in my firs tennis tournament in Japan thi weekend. My racked is old and my strings are dead plus I haven't played a serious match of tennis since maybe two years ago. Still... It should be fun.

My Weekend

2009-06-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

So. I want to talk about my last three days. It's not going to be interesting to anyone else but me. But unless I write about it, I will probably forgetnit ever happened.

This last Friday night I finished work at around 6:00 and came home planning only to play video games. Luckily, my Chinese neighbors also wanted to play video games so they came over at around seven and we played a couple if their favorite video games. At first I thought they sucked at the games but then they ended up killing more people in the Samurai game which kind of pissed me off... 3 Chinese women should not be able to beat me at video games. I was tires from the video games and passed out at around ten. On Saturday I woke up at 6:30am and started cleaning my house while watching a real entertaining but ducked up Anime Show entitled Death Note. The show is about a selfrightous kid that finds a journal that enables you to kill people by simply writin their names in the journal. It's pretty much a 30 episode series that goes straight downhill from the beginning with reall creepy death sequences. However, it is also a really great philosphical, chess game mind twist that has left me craving more. I watched around 10+ episodes until I got a call from my middle school asking me to come in to help make a recording for the listening test. One of the English teachers who is really nice to me brought me local beer as a thank you gift when she asked me to come to come to work. Needless to say I was grateful but I felt guilty because i didn't deserve alcohol for doing my job.

After receding my voice I had to rush to the train station to meet a rather unique English teacher who works at one of my Elementary schools. I enjoy the guy but communication is sometimes difficult so I was nervous about how the evening would go between just the two of us. He wanted to go to a beer garden... I will skip over what transpired in the few hours that elapsed at the beer gardens but long story short the teacher was quite fun to talk to despite the fact that he was a bit of a bully.

That same evening, after saying goodbye to him I rather joyously met a number of other people. As my typical lack of grace with women is I am fortunate to say that all these people I met were men. And I succesfuly acquired seven phone numbers that evening. (I'm pretty sure they just wanted to setup an English exchange ps)

The next day on sunday I woke up at 7:30 and just as i was about to take a shower my old lovely Japanese neighbor walked to my side door and offered me a collection of fresh cooked fresh picked potatoes as well as fresh picked eggplant and onions. After eating this and I got picked up by a member of my Thursday night Eikaiwa class. He drove me to a place where about twenty people were learning how to make a traditional Japanese dish called soba. Like everything else in Japan there are Karate like grazings for people's skills in the various arts. As such I was honored to be in the company of a level 3 and level 4 noodle making specialists. They had amazing grace and i felt lucky to be signified by their presence. For the next four hours my Eikaiwa friend taught me how to make soba noodles. The experience was wonderful and I got a surpise free lunch and extra noodles out of it. Furthermore, there was a photographer for what I thought was a local paper but was actually the entire prefectural newspaper. I discovered this the next day when I was shown a picture of me in the paper, (I was rather heroically chopping up noodles if might be permitted to say so).
That evening my Chinese neighbors wanted to borrow some big plastic bottles from me so that they could make plum wine. In return they made some home made curry for me. Later that evening they sent me a txt message asking I I wanted dumplings, too.

Sooooooo. Basically I felt like I had a pretty good weekend. And since then everyone and everyone's mother (literally) have been mentioning how they saw me in the newspaper. Heh.

Playing video games with my neighbors!

2009-06-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Recently my Chinese neighbors have been coming over to play video games. I have to say it's really funny to hear games being played in Chinese. Like, "Use the shotgun" is translated into Chinese as "Use the big wind gun!!"...

Kamiichi Festival

2009-06-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Recently the town I lived in had a small festival that I went too. It was funny. To be the only foreigner in a small town meant that I was constantly attacked by a number of kids from either the junior or elementary high schools.

I'm too lazy to go into details about specific stories but I can say that I stole a lot of festival food from my students.

Hehe.

Work and a movie.

2009-06-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

Today I watched a movie at work with the students. It was about the mountain close to where I live. The movie is pretty famous and it might even be released in the United States as an Indy type film. Maybe.

I'll link a clip sometime.

Also. I hate this job. It makes less and less sense.

Ok. Cheers!

Summary

2009-06-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going to summarize the past few weeks with random sentences so that I don't forget anything down the line.

2 weeks in Indonesia equals the same price as a day trip to Tokyo. The Chinese neighbors' boss is scary, so very scary. The students keep beating me in Tennis. I have three new teachers - quite a confusing new dynamic. I have a new list of "enemies" and allies in terms of students. Hmmm... The yakitori chef hates me again. Oh! And I have a new 80 year old Japanese friend whose husband cut my grass. (She is my other neighbor!). My Chinese neighbors can't throw frisbees.

Ok. Random. But I needed to get this all thrown out for the time being.

Mobile Blogging from here.

O-Hi-Sa-Shi-Bu-Ri

2009-06-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

..."Long Time, No See"... to my internet self...

I haven't written anything in a long time mainly because I have been trying to catch up on work after Indonesia. But I plan on getting in the groove again. For some reason the program I use to upload my comments stopped working a while back and only just now I got it to work.

So ya... I'm happy at the moment. Work is going well. And I have a lot to reflect about... to myself... since no one else actually reads this...

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I am convinced that...

2009-04-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

a single bowl of missing rice could bring down the entire Japanese education system.

New Teachers!

2009-04-01T03:42:00.001-07:00

As of 2 days ago, over half of my school's teacher population vanished into thin air. And surprisingly, today of all days (when no one told me I had to dress in Business Suit and Attire) all 15 of the new teachers showed up all at once.

It was complete and utter chaos. The teachers room was torn apart and everything was gutted. Apparently we all keep the desks we had, so instead of simply changing locations (people-wise) we had to actually get up and move our humongous clunky desks around everyone else's clunky desks to get to our new location.

I...have been conveniently placed near the door to the hallway where all students can scream and yell at me from there hallway safe haven. This actually makes me quite happy as I still feel like the students are the only thing that makes this job worthwhile.

As for the new teachers... I am very excited!! A lot of them can speech rather impressive English and I think they actually want to... gasp!! use the ALT!! So that means I might actually have to do real work this year.

On another new tangent, I saw Chicken Little just tear through the new English teachers. I have many thoughts on this but none I will share publicly.

Yes... a very interesting day indeed.

Next week the new 1st grade students will come. Considering I have met every single one of them at their respective elementary schools, it should be great fun.