Shaken time

Since yesterday, I’ve been driving a replacement car because my car is in the garage getting its shaken done.

My old, but cute little purple car’s shaken is costing me more than I thought it would. Shaken is a mandatory check up to be done on cars every 2 years. Not only did I have to change all four wheels, but there was also something about the oil boots for the front wheels needing to be changed. I just found out today that it will cost about $900. Argh. There’s not much that can be done about it…I should be getting my car back tomorrow.

Davidie's Birthday

Happy Birthday David!

(or "tanjobi omedetto gozaimasu" as they would say in Japan!)

I found some pictures, and thought I would share them with you. Unfortunately I dont have too many older ones (before digital cameras) with me in Japan. However, few as there are, they always make entries more interesting..!

Here you are with Chakou, when you were....huh? This was taken before you were born?? oh no, my mistake, you were born in 86, soo..you were almost 1 year old in this picture. And here we are, all looking tanned (or fried..), just home from the Bahamas, back when Roxy and I were taller than you.

Just back from 'Grade 9 Day' at school. Looks like you had a lot of....fun!Sleeping comfortably with Yoshi...Sleeping not-so-comfortably with Yoshi...The first picture we printed using that cute mini-printer that made funny noises.

Helping dad shovel the driveway. Aww...what a good boy! You and your little toy.

Eating a snack. (fish! dried fish! if you look closely, you can see the fish's eye socket..eewww)Taken last summer before we went to a professional photographer to get family pictures/portraits done. Just before you headed off to Isreal for a year or service, and me back to Japan.

How old are you now? 18? ..20??? Wow, you're no longer a teenager! Does that mean you're going to have to start acting like an adult?

Love you little brother!

“Good luck!” vs. “Ganbatte!”

I think the difference in the choice of words used in North America vs. Japan to encourage someone who is about to take on a difficult task reflects the different attitude people have towards work in general.

In North America, one would usually say ‘good luck!’. This sounds like the amount of effort you put into the work you’re about to take on will have no impact on the results.

In Japan, they say ‘ganbatte!’ which loosely translates to ‘do your best’. It implies that hard work will give you good results.

There are many aspects of Japanese society that I really admire. The importance placed on education is something that I think North America could use a bit more of.

Also, the value of hard work. I’m blown away by the way students strive to do their best in everything (studies, extra-curricular activities etc.). I don’t know where these students find their motivation. In school, not only subjects at taught, but also how one should behave in society. When you speak to students, it’s amazing how much the well-being of the society they live in is at the forefront of their mind. You don’t appreciate just how strong the ‘group mentality’ is until you live here.

I’m responsible for preparing Oral Communication classes for the first year students at my high school. However, recently my work has involved correcting 3rd year students’ essay during my free time at school because they will be taking their university entrance exams, which incidentally begins tomorrow. Everything the students do while in school revolves around the university entrance exam. It’s kind of like the French Bac, but much more difficult to succeed. Because Seiryo is an upper-academic high school, about 95% of the kids will be accepted to university. There is a lot of pressure on both the students and the teachers to be prepared for the entrance exams.

So, in preparation for this entrance exam, students have been doing many kinds of writing exercises. One of them involves giving reasons why they agree/disagree with a given statement. One of the topics was:

‘if you could change one thing about your school education system, what would you change?”.

The students' answers were interesting. One student stated that they would implement an entrance test to be taken by children before they enter elementary school. This test would determine what school children should be placed in, because the way the system is now, children are randomly placed in elementary schools. This, according to this student, holds back the students who really want to excel. This shows just how much some students want to excel here..

I doubt anyone in Canada would dream of making 4-5 year olds write a test in order to decide what elementary school they should be admitted to.

There are obviously good and bad points to having students’ lives revolved solely around school until they are 18 years old. Though I have to say that their school life also includes mandatory participation in many physical activities (such as the ‘Sports Festival’, marathon, and the bi-yearly ‘sports day’, a hike, among others.), as well as community involvement types of activities. These all help to balance out all the studying the kids do.

The results of the Japanese school system are very capable young adults who are hard working, polite, respectful and willing to put up with a lot of hardship (studying in non-air-conditioned classrooms during summer, and no heating during winter..these kids really suffer. Actually, we all suffer at school). What I see graduating from schools in North America, for the most part, are kids who try to get by doing as little as possible, to be paid as much as they can for doing as little as possible, think only of themselves and show no respect for the community they live in.

Though the Japanese school system is not perfect, I think it’s much better than what we currently have in North America.

"We protect only what we love, we love only what we know, we know only what we are taught." -Author Unknown

Chilly mornings..

I don't think i'll ever get used to waking up in the morning and having it be so cold that i can see my breath. It makes it difficult to get out from underneath the covers...I won't even start on what it's like taking a shower in 5 degree weather.

Anyways, when i looked out the window this morning, i saw the following:

There was a white streak in the sky..I thought it was beautiful, i took a picture. I wonder what it was.

Yoshi news

my dog!Last week Yoshi had an operation where 7 of his teeth were removed. Yoshi is only 6 years old! I knew small-sized dogs were prone to losing their teeth at a young age, but still!

My mom has been sending me updates on how he is recovering. I got an email from my mom today saying that although when he first got home he wasn’t his usual cheerful self, he seems like he's almost back to normal.

Dinner

The gang from the hospital and I went out for dinner at a nice Italian restaurant (well..Japanese-italian) in Yagami. In attendance were Dr.Izumi, his wife and 3 children, Kawakami san, Iwata san and myself.

I couldn't help but think that a lot of good has come out of the accident I had over a year ago. On Sept 11th 2004, a few weeks after having arrived in Japan, I had an accident that landed me in the hospital for a little over a month. It was the first time a foreigner had been admitted to this hospital, also and the first time i've ever had to stay the night at a hospital. No one spoke a word of English, except for a part time nurse (Iwata san) who was called in on her day off when I was brought in. My stay in the hospital turned out to be a very positive experience! It gave me the opportunity to get to know some really great people. The staff at the Chiwata hospital are amongst the kindest people I have ever met.

Since leaving the hospital, I have still remained in touch with a lot of the staff. We had an end-of-year party at the doctor’s house which, despite the language barrier, was loads of fun.

When my parents came to visit 6 months later, the doctor treated us to dinner. It was a fun evening. The language barrier didn’t prevent us from having a good time.


A month later, when Roxanne came for a visit, we had another get together with some of the hospital staff. This time, we went to a soba restaurant in downtown Nagasaki. Afterwards, Dr. Izumi, Kawakami san, Roxy and I went to a jazzy place for a drink.

Anyways, back to this evening’s dinner. Dr. Izumi’s kids have grown since the last time I saw them. They are such sweet kids! The evening ended with plans to have another get together in the near future to celebrate Iwata san’s return from Spain/Portugal. Sounds good to me!

JLPT results....I passed!!

Je viens de recevoir les resultats du JLP test (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) dans le courrier...j'ai reussi l'examen!!

Maintenant, il faut que je me remette a etudier regulierement parce que je compte passe le 3eme niveau ce decembre.

Je vais 'gambarimasu'-er!

(Depuis que je suis arrivee au Japon, j’ai presque jamais l’occasion de parler en francais. Alors de temps en temps, mes entrees seront en francais. Comme ca, je peux au moins essayer d’ameliorer mon francais ecrit!)

Please Be Naked!

...is the sign that greets you at the counter when you enter the Hoyo Land mud bath/onsen in the very scenic city of Beppu. Not a sign you're likely to come across back in London!

Some friends and I went on a weekend road trip to Beppu (about 5 hours from Nagasaki), where we spent 2 days visiting several jigokus ('hell'), onsens, a sand bath, a mud bath and Mount Takasaki.

The main attraction are the 9 'hells'. We visited the 'blue hell', 'red hell' and 'bubbling mud hell', and got to dip our feet in the foot onsens.

Beppu is famous for its many onsens. The sand bath that our guidebook had highly recommended was under the construction for the month of Februrary. Just our luck. But, we were able to find another one. This was my first experience going in a sand bath and I didn't realize it would be so much work first digging yourself a hole to lie in, then covering yourself. Once buried, the sand really weighs you down..it felt good to finally wash it all away and soak in an onsen.
We also visited a mixed outdoor mud bath. We were enjoying it so much, we lost track of time and ended up staying almost twice as long as the recommended lenghth of time. Despite having lightly burned my ankles, once i washed away all the mud my skin felt very suwa suwa. I would definitely recommend taking a mud bath!

The only non-onsen related site we visited was Mount Takasaki, which is a mountain on the ouskirts of the city inhabited by 2 or 3 clans of monkeys. According to the brochure, each clan has over 1200 monkeys. For the mere price of 500 yen ($5), you can wander around freely amongst the monkeys. They have become very used to having people be in close proximity. One of the baby monkeys climbed up my friend's leg! Not shy at all. They seemed to spend most of their time grooming each other. There was so much grooming going on, it rubbed off on us...!

The weather was great, we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. The drive back from Beppu was gorgeous. We were a little pressed for time on our way back, because we couldn't afford to miss the last ferry back to Nagasaki since we had to be at work the next morning! The scenery was so beautiful we couldn't resist stopping to take some pictures along the way. We still made it to the ferry with a few minutes to spare!