Low Japanese crime rates.

A thief broke into my apartment complex today. Apparently (s)he stole some stuff from my neighbour. My landlord called one of the English teachers at my school who, in turn, notified me. So, I grabbed my umbrella and headed for home, wondering what I'd do if I walked in to find someone looting my place. Fortunately, the only thing I have of value is my laptop, which was at the school at the time. Even more fortunately, there was no one in my place, and nothing seemed to be missing. Apparently, since the Japanese economy is really crappy right now, theft has been on the rise.

So, at the expense of having to reschdule a class for next week, I got to take some time off work for a nice walk home.

It's official...

...I'm flying into Montreal on July 15th. Hooray!!!

Won't be a day too soon, since I'm kind of starting to get fed up with this place.

Oh yeah, rainy season started. Once that's over, I have "hot and humid" season too look forward to. All the Japanese people I talk to tell me that they don't like this time of year. Great. Seems like there are a few months of the year between summer and winter where the weather is nice, but the rest of the time you're wet, freezing, or sweating.

Can't wait to get back to Canada where I only have to worry about cold weather and Polar bears that wander into towns and eat children (at least that's what I tell my kids).

See you all soon.

Louis' latest lavish life-event

That's the best title I could come up with right now.

Anyhow, I went to Nara on a solo trip for the day before meeting with one Miss Rebecca Midori Kent in Kyoto, and hanging out with her and her family. The trip to Nara was really neat. It was raining for most of the morning, which was both good and bad. It was bad because it was raining, but it was good because no one else was around (as opposed to being the usual jam-packed Japanese tourist attraction). Not really much to say about that that's not in the pictures (except that my batteries ran out at one point, and I missed taking a picture of one really cool-looking temple that had a great view of Nara).

My time in Kyoto was quite fun. It's been a while since I've seen any friends from back home. Basically we went on a little walking-tour of Gion district, and then went to a show that was kind of like a "sampler". They played some musical instruments (some of which sounded absoluetly terrible, others which sounded delightful), and put on a few plays. The highlight was probably watching the Japanese equivalent of slapstick comedy.

After the show and more walking, we got booze and went back to Rebecca's hotel room. Then we got drunk and watched South Park episodes. Was good times. Enjoy the pictures.

Miniature model of the most impressive temple complex in Nara. I have this thing for miniature models where I think they're really cool. The pagodas on either side were destroyed in an earthquake or by fire or some such thing, so they don't exist anymore. Also, the temple itself used to be much bigger; after they rebuilt a smaller version of it, though, it still classifies as the world's largest wooden structure.

A pillar inside the temple (see below). People line up to crawl through this hole in the base of it. Once you emerge you are said to be blessed with good health for the next year (ok, I made that up; although there might be a symbolic reason people crawl/squeeze through it, I figure it's equally likely they do it just because it's fun).

One of the statues inside the building (see below). Unfortunately, it was dark, and the flash only lit up the bottom half of most of my pictures inside. This statue is huge, by the way, but is dwarfed by the massive Buddha that is the centerpiece of the temple.

Largest wooden structure in the world.

Cool-looking temple. One dude tried to sneak in through the exit, being too cheap to pay the 500-yen fare (about $6 CDN). It was funny to watch a priestess (well, she wore some kind of priest-type-uniform) explain to him that he had to pay the entrance fee like everyone else, then wait patiently beside him until he left through the exit.

Two preist-type-dudes leaving a temple from which they recently finished a ceremony. I took a few pictures of the ceremony, though none of the pictures turned out very well.

This one shrine is famous for the sheer number of lanterns that decorate it. Apparently they only light them twice a year, and the display is quite spectacular.

There are thousands of these concrete lanterns that line the streets of a few shrine/temple areas.

A pretty bridge in the botanical garderns.

Some of the many "wild" deer that roam the temple grounds. At one point, my batteries ran out, so I went and bought some extras from a street vendor (who just also happened to sell deer food). Deer must have followed me around for a good 2 minutes after that, assuming I bought food. I tried to show them the batteries, and explained (in Japanese, no less) that batteries don't taste good, but they must have thought it was a ruse. One tried to eat my shirt. Eventually they wandered off to pester someone else.

Sekisuike

seki = stone
sui= water
ke = (something along the lines of "valley", or "place where seki and sui co-exist"; I'm not sure, apparently it's hard to explain)

A couple of weekends ago, I went to this place called sekisuike. There was a group of Asian exchange people (I originally thought they were students, but they all turned out to be young people employed in various lines of work) who had been travelling throughout Japan, and this was one of the last stops on their tour (the tour is sponsored by both the Japanese and their home countries' governments). They came from a bunch of different countries in Asia, but, incredibly, they all spoke English. I haven't met a new group of people that I could communicate with since...well...since coming to Japan. They were all really warm, friendly, outgoing and open, which was a nice change to the Japanese demeanour, which is basically much more reserved/shy/cold.

Basically, I got invited along by a teacher who used to work at my school because they thought it would be nice to have a "local" in the group who could actually communicate with the exchange people. In the morning we did some rice planting, then we made lunch, had some arts and crafts time, and ended it off with some interesting games.

The rice planting was interesting, because none of us had really done it before. We kept making jokes about how they would re-do it after we left, or about how this was the field that was supposed to be fallow this year, and they didn't really expect anything we plant to grow. There was a group of about 20 of us working on it, and it took us over an hour to plant half the field. When we were done, some dude came out with his machine, and finished the other half of the field in 5 minutes. His half was much less crooked than our half too.

The arts and crafts consisted of taking a small rectangular sieve and submerging it in this water solution, which had some sort of plant fibre floating around in it. After letting the water drain, you're left with a "base" of "paper", which you then decorate. When finished decorating - and here's the part that makes me believe it's a traditional art - you pass the bottom of your sieve over a vacuum cleaner, which sucks a lot of the water out of your creation. Leave in sun to dry, and you're done. I made a flag of Japan, with the Japanese characters for "Japan" in the corner. One Japanese person commented that I should take up calligraphy, to which I replied "thanks, but that would imply knowing more than 30 kanji".

The games after everything was over were really fun too (one game was from Laos, and the other from I'm not sure where). The first one basically involved two teams, where a member from each team had to say the word "Teeeee" continuously while they tried to "catch" someone from the other team. If someone from the other team "pulled them over", or they stopped saying "Teeeee", then they became captured. I had a really hard time understanding what was considered a "catch" and/or a "pull over", but I did manage to free the prisoners on my team, which apparently was a good thing. The second game was basically a version of duck-duck-goose, except the person walking around the circle drops a balled up sock instead of saying anything. The person behind whom the sock was dropped must stand up, and chase the person to their immediate right (who, in turn, must run around the circle and try to sit down before getting hit with the sock). After a couple of rounds, I learned that the point of the game was not really to hit the other person with the sock, or to not get hit, but to induce as much laughter as possible. Examples include: hitting the person with the sock repeatedly over the head while they flail their arms and try to run around the cirlce; when it becomes apparent that you can't catch the person, throw the sock at them, then pick it up and throw it again; stop chasing the person, and start running the other way; keep dropping the sock behind the same person, so that they get so tired that they can't run or chase.

Just imagine a group of adults running around hitting each other with balled up socks. It was hilarious. I hadn't laughed that hard or that long in a while.

That's it for now, gotta go teach. Check below (and the archives) for updates if you haven't checked the blog in a while.

A froggy jumped on my arm. Hello froggy.

Before...

Planting rice the old-fashioned way.

Planting rice the not-so-old-fashioned way.

...after. Kind of hard to see, but trust me, there's rice there.

No, seriously, I can totally slice this sushi without looking and without slicing my thumb...

An expert demonstrating how sushi is made. The bad news is that I found out the pink stuff in the sushi that I thought was vegetable actually has some fish stuff in it. Boo. Looks like only inari from here on out.

Doin' the arts and crafts thang. I knew my undergrad degree would come in handy eventually.

The gang