Category Archives: japan - the general

Wednesday Night...

Nothing special. Just a random Wednesday night in the hood... My sundappled kitchen, in all its messy glory. The hood... I have no idea who painted this building, but......

Tokyo Blue Skies II (Sky Worship IV)

Damn, that title could have used some work, huh? *laughs* At first I was going to call it something like "tokyo upshots" but decided against it because that might bring in exactly the wrong kind of intarnets traffic... (see, 'upshots' can apparently also be used to describe (especially in Japan) the phenomenon of taking a picture up a woman's skirt... which, needless to say, is not what today's post is about.) (sorry to disappoint...) Lacking...

Akihabara Wideangle

First shots from the wide angle Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM. Sorry for the lack of interesting subject matter, this was kind of an off-the-cuff series of snaps as I walked around Akihabara. Pedestrians headed home after a long days work... The weather has been getting warm and damp recently, reminding me that the incredibly humid and uncomfortable rainy season is just around the corner. Which, when added to the daily grind of a life...

Nighttime Sakura

Nighttime sakura on a rainy, drenched sunday evening in Tokyo. Can you believe this is the only shot of the cherry blossoms I got all weekend? The irony of it is, last weekend was the last opportunity to see the cherry blossoms in prime bloom here in Tokyo (northern parts of Japan bloom later). Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so I thought about going to see them then, but decided in the end to...

Mashiko

A bit out of chronological order, but a few weeks ago a friend and I went up to Mashiko in Tochigi prefecture on a day trip package offered through JR. Tochigi itself is famous for several things, not least of which Nikko, an important tourist attraction and a generally interesting and beautiful place to visit (especially in the autumn, save the almost unimaginable throngs of tourists - a friend told me he was stuck in...

Snow Panda

Haha, in all the years I've kept this blog, I don't think I've posted as many photos of myself as I have in this entry (and the previous one). Is the panda blog turning into a venue for indulging my inner narcissisist panda? Oh my goodness, look, I can never spell that word. Narcissist. Ha. That's it. Thank goodness for spell check. Clearly the thing to do when surrounded by snow is to make a...

Castles and Sunsets

I happened to have my camera with me as I was walking home yesterday, so I decided to snap a few pictures of that perfect time in day when the sky rapidly changes from the brightness of afternoon to the duskiness of evening in the span of like a half-hour. There's only photographs in this entry (and they're all HDR images, in case you're wondering why some might seem a little "surreal"), but I just...

Nekobukuro Kitty Kats

There have actually been some very disturbing things happening here in Japan land (not to me personally, but at the political/civil liberties level) that have put me in a severely depressed mood recently and are making me seriously - like, seriously - think about leaving next year, or possibly sooner. Shit, to put it nicely, is about to get a lot more oppressive is you're unfortunate enough to have the wrong skin colour and you...

Birthday Scarf Panda

There's still a part three to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 (parts I and II can be found here and here, respectively). But it's taking me a while to get to it since I've been kinda down recently, and busy at work to boot. It was my birthday last week, the big 28, which means I've spent nearly a fifth of my life here in Japan. Kind of scary when you think about it...

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part II

After our unsettling experience putzing around the smelly Gates of Hell, we cracked open the guide book and tried to figure out where to go next. "Hey panda, I've got an idea." piped up KC as we headed away from the noxious odors of the sulfur fields. "How about visiting these temples in Yamagata?" "Sounds good!" I mumbled absent mindedly, trying not to drive the Purple Elderberry of Doom off the side of a cliff...

Crayon Post, the Time Lapse Video

Somebody asked me how long it took to make the Crayon Post I put up the other day - well as it happens, I was wondering the same thing at the outset, so I had set up my camera to record a time lapse video of the process, which you can view below. This pretty (HDR) picture of Shibuya, Tokyo is a sneak peek of the next upcoming post... The video itself is a 4.5...

Emperors Birthday

I look at her.

Panda: "Umm, do you need to check my camera or the camera case?"
Officer: (looking back at me) "Oh, your camera? No, it’s okay, you can take photos inside!"
Panda: "...."
Officer: "Just walk that way for the body check and then you can get in."

Shrugging, I take my messenger bag and sling it around my shoulder, safe (and entirely perturbed) at the though that had I wanted to sneak a couple of tools of assassination into the palace, I would pretty much have just completed my mission successfully.

Great Takayama Road Trip II

After our adventures frolicking in the "downtown" area of Takayama (population like 200) and running away in screaming terror from the stuffed knife wielding animatronic denzins of the "Eco TeddyBear Village", we looked at our cheesy tourist map and realized we still hadn't been to the "Hida Folk Village". The "Hida Folk Village" is basically a small enclave of old traditional Japanese houses which have been carefully preserved in their (more or less) original state. They are gathered together to form a village which is supposed to recreate how Japanese lived hundreds of years ago.

Sun and Rain...

It was simultaneously beautifully sunny and gloomily rainy one day earlier in the week. How crazy! Since I'm suffering from massive writers block lately, I'm afraid you're just going to have to settle for a picture post! The day started out wonderfully, with sun beating down gently through cool early spring breezes onto tiled rooftops outside my apartment. You can see the "downtown" in the distance. When I first got here, I really disliked the...

Asbestos breathing Panda

His level of alarm seems a bit low considering I've just raised the specter of a potent airborne carcinogen floating about our immediate environment. Since the man clearly has paperwork to do and no time to devote to worrying about asbestos, I bring up the point with several other people, only to be similarly rebuffed. The over-arching theme seemed to be a conclusion that "if there was truly something dangerous in the air, we wouldn't be exposed to it." Who or what was supposedly tasked with safeguarding us from these supposed dangers was never explicitly stated, but one can infer that it might obliquely reference either the workmen or the office manager who hired them.

Random Photos

It was worth it though, to see everything bathed in amber sunlight on the way back down. I've gone up and down this road a hundred times before, and each time thought it was ugly and filled with concrete. But like so many things in Japan, sometimes the beauty is hidden deep down inside of it, and you just have to catch it at the right angle to see it, I suppose.

Square root of wha...?

Oh. my. goodness. And this is supposed to help you remember something!? I need a mnemonic just to um, remember my mnemonic! Now if this was as simple as the one above - just using the on/kun readings of the characters, then it might - might - be useful. But what a mess! You've got characters which are read using the Chinese readings. You've got characters which are read using the Japanese readings. You've got characters are read using the abbreviated Japanese readings (na(na) for "7"). You've got other characters which are read using the roman alphabetical reading and yet another character ("0") which has to be read both in English ("oh") and in truncated (old-style) Japanese ("re(i)")...!

Himeji-jo and Acclimatization

What starts as a simple comparison of differences between cultures quickly spins out of control into a series of increasingly disconnected judgments, finally culminating in a bizarre tangent about the supposed submissive role of women in Japanese society! In the process a fully painted - yet completely falsified - picture of moral drama unfolds, complete with villains (Japanese teachers, "repressive Japanese system"), heroes ("I'm not going to sit down and do nothing"), treacherous deeds ("brainwashing"), and the archetypal damsel in distress ("this frail young girl"/ "timid and erased Japanese girl with no will to fight"/ "a good and submissive housewife").

The last panda

Kind of sleepy, so this will mainly be a picture post. One of my new year's resolutions - to be a better teacher - seems to be paying off as a back-to-the-basics approach coupled with copious amounts of panda patience have generated what must be a milestone achievement - one of my classes actually did homework...! I am Tom Cruise. My l33t samurai skillz ownz j00r's. Well, technically, nobody really did it at "home" persay...

Akemashite, omedeto

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a fun, safe New Year's eve! *sniff* another year, another Tarepanda calendar gone into storage... Here in Japan, there are a variety of customs which are supposed to be observed on New Year's day (oshougatsu). Feeling particularly "cultural" today, I decided to do my best to follow some of them. First of all, New Year's day is a holiday to be spent with your close family and relatives....

Happy Emperor B-day.

errr.. or not. Most people in this country don't even know his name. Things have been quiet here in the House of Panda (HoP) lately, which suits me just fine. Winter vacation is officially upon me now, though virtually every other ALT has already blown this frigid popsicle stand for places much warmer, including, but not limited to, Malaysia, Thailand, and Bali, as well as the usual array of "back home" countries. Which to the...

New Year cards

In Japan, it is a custom to send out "Nengajyo" or "New Year's greeting cards". These are little cards you can buy (usually from the post office) for around 50 yen each, and then brightly festoon with a variety of your own designs, personalized greetings and set phrases heralding the coming of the new year. They are supposed to be timed such that they arrive on New Year's day itself, and are often intended for...

Dragon Ash

Going to the Dragon Ash concert tonight! *jumps up and down enthusiastically* Pictures to follow tommorrow. Also, I am in love with the Acomu Girl (ono mayumi). Pictures of THAT to follow later as well. (translation: another cheezy post filled with random pictures nicked from the web). Now listening to: "Dragon Ash - Harvest" (Uh!!! Yeah!!! Woot woot!? *waves hands around the air, as if he just don`t care*) 4:05 am...

Ken roku roku

Dusk is setting in the hood... First of all, I am overjoyed to report that finally, finally after months of suffering from withdrawl, disconnection with the world, intense boredom, and lackluster productivity, I am finally getting a computer again. How I have missed it...! *is currently a sweaty, pale shade of gray generally seen on recovering meth addicts...* Said sweet box of beeping, flashing deliverance should arrive within the next couple of weeks, so then...

A is for apple

So nothing exciting has been going on as of late, hence the lack of updates. That and I`m trying to save money to finally buy a computer, so I haven`t been heading over to the internet cafe so often. Ironic, isn`t it? Random link of the day: Endings for all those video games you never managed to beat... Perhaps feeling the need to do something productive with my life, I went and signed up for...

Enkai and all that.

had my enkai (welcome party) today (of which I was informed of yesterday morning). Not only that, but today was also sports day, albeit a very rainy one. Pictures of me drunk at the former, and beating up on hapless highschool students in the tug-of-war from the latter tommorrow, as I`m heading out for some more drinkage as of now. Now listening to: "The Streets - Has it come to this?" (Original pirate material -...

Goblin goods

A quiet weekend, save for an all-nighter saturday night spent watching a nerve-wracking English victory over Macedonia (I`m steadily on my way to turning into a full fledged brit) at the local sports pub and culminating in what I can only describe as an early morning debacle at Mr. Donuts during which we consumed donuts en masse in an (eventually successful) attempt to amass enough "point cards" (awarded for every purchase over 300 yen) to...

An auspicious start...

I apologize for the lack of posts this week - i have been attending a business meeting all week. Speaking of business meetings, the purpose of this trip was ostensibly to "foster a closer, more professional relationship between JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) and ALTs (Assitant Language Teachers)". Also, we are supposed to teach them english, since that is sort of what we are paid for. So for three days, I have been attending...

All about bicycles...

My predecessor was kind enough to leave me a bike. Two of them, in fact. They`re very nice bikes, I should add, complete with baskets, and a little cute bell, and one of them even has some sort of jerry-rigged lamp attachment. They are, all in all, two very nice asian style bikes. Now why the emphasis on asian...? Hmm.. Well, there are certain, idiosynchrocies (spelling...? only one week and already forgetting my english...) about...

So this is Japan... again.

first of all, let me apologize for my horrible spelling in the last post... as many of you may know, japanese keyboards are quite different than ours, and the keys are not only smaller, but in different places (plus with some weird characters we don`t even have on ours). Plus i was writing it in a hurry ... ah, the joys of internet cafes. speaking of which, I am currently in an internet cafe which...

"Nu-uh! According to my Japan p3n0s..."

The battle for Japan has officially begun.... I was sitting at breakfast along with 6 other gaijin, sort of aimlessly staring at the ceiling (jet lag, you see... plus the chandeliers were so pretty...) when some arse in a big ugly green jersey (mind you, i`m pimping a suit!) starts babblign on about the intricacies of `wa` and `ga`. at this point gaijin #2 starts in not-so-subtly letting us know that HE studied japanese for...

In Japan... again

I'm currently in Japan... Things went a lot smoother than I had anticipated. Now I'm starving, and chilling in a fantastically gorgeous hotel. Off in search of food. Thanks to everyone for the support below! And Jenny, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!| 5:26 am...

The Hood

well, the long wait is over. All in the span of a 3 hours, I got my JET placement in the mail AND a nice long e-mail from my predecessor. The verdict? [b][Redacted - 10.03.2005][/b] - prefecture, probably in [b][The City Now Referred to as "The Hood" in this Blog][/b] (as garnered from my predecessor's e-mail). Hmmmm... I don't really know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm not...