Aloha month...

Every school seems to be having Alohoa shirt month at the moment, but actually it's really great because in return for wearing a psychedelic nightmare of a shirt, you can also wear jeans and trainers. Here's a charming photo of me in mine:

I'm holding fans because that's what we're giving out at the moment as flyers to pimp ECC, and I went to the station to give some out. It was pretty fun - most of the punters thought it was hilarious that a gaijin in a terrible shirt was chucking fans at them, and some even tried a bit of English out. I also ended up giving a load out to a gang of troublemaking youths hanging around the local fast food joint ("troublemaking" in Japan being "wearing outlandish clothes and talking quite loudly"). The police eventually turned up to have a word with them - not sure how good a publicity that was, them chatting to the local constabulary while twirling our fans.

Here's a nice photo of the Japanese teacher Eri and me:

Behind the scenes info - Eri is actually quite tiny and is balanced precariously on a tiny stool. She also taught one of my students that day who said to her "Chris is my teacher, he's really fun" - which chuffed me up until she told me he added "and he's got a big nose!". Whaaaatt???!!! Where did that come from?!

Finally, here's a couple of my students getting into the Aloha spirit - maybe not entirely willingly.

Summer Intensive Course...

This week all normal kids classes are off and the kids have a Summer holiday. However, work doesn't stop for the teachers - oh no - as we get to teach Summer Intensive Courses to 2-3 year olds and 4-5 year olds. The students come every day for three days and have a different teacher each day. It's a nice chance for the kids to mess around with a new person and for us to play around with some new kids. HOWEVER, I was a little nervous as past experience dictates that kids that age have one of 4 reactions to me:

1) Shyness
2) Curiosity
3) Enthusiasm/amazement
4) Fear/crying/telling their mum they want their old teacher

In fairness, I'd be freaked out by a gangly foreigner with big starey eyes and - as it happens - a loud Hawaiian shirt on (it was Aloha week at that school), but that's little comfort when children all around you are sobbing and forming massive snot bubbles out of their little noses.

Thankfully, all the kids were great - a little bit of shyness, but generally hugely excitable and very very cute. One kid in particular was full of beans and kind of roared before every answer - "what're these?" "rrrrrrRRRRRRROAR BANANAS!!". I have more of these classes on Saturday so it could still go tits up, but at the moment they're not the cry-fest I feared they might be.

Nagashima Spa Land...

Monday 16th July was a national holiday in Japan, which means pretty much everyone gets the day off and can recover from the exhaustion garnered by copious amounts of work, and going "ehhhhh?!?!?!?" 40 times in every conversation. I was just going to sit about in my pants, but the Japanese teacher at one of my schools - Chieko - suggested that we check out Nagashima Spaland which she had some discount tickets for. After great consideration, I decided that my pants could wait, and the trip was ON.

It was as we were driving there that Japan experienced a pretty nasty earthquake - actually, Chieko was demonstrating how cool her satnav was but showing me it could pick up tv too, and we saw a news program with pictures of destroyed buildings and wrecked motorways.

Me: "Oh, is this from a while ago?"
Chieko: "No, this is today".
Me: "What!?!? You mean this morning?!"
Chieko: "No, now. Right now. This just happened".
Me: "........um.........shit".

Nagoya was untouched, and most people didn't even feel it outside the epicentre, but still - nasty.

Anyway, on a more cheery note - Nagashima Spaland is a big amusement park with loads of rides and roller coasters. Here are some photos:



This is the Steel Dragon - 3rd highest rollercoaster in the world, longest roller coaster in the world, and quite frankly one scary looking bastard. You can see how high it is from these other photos:


Aieee! So before we went on that, we went on some slightly smaller rides:

The White Cyclone - actually made of wooden struts which creak and shudder a bit. Worrying that the tracks your zooming around on might suddenly collapse into a pile of matchsticks nicely heightens the tension.

There was also a cool log flume which I didn't take a picture of (doh). The neat thing was, there was a bridge over the main splashdown zone with a plastic shield so you could stand there watching the wall of water shooting towards you like the Poiseidon Adventure (or Titanic for you young'uns). You could also stand next to the shield and get soaked, thusly:


Chieko also took a rather well timed photo of me about to get shat on:
Here's another ride which was fairly tame by the park's standards - one loop-the-loop? Piece of piss.

If it looks a bit grey and miserable in these photos, that's because it was - it started out as a gloriously sunny day and slowly got darker and darker and began to rain. The upshot of which was....they had to close the Steel Dragon! Apparently one of the cars derailed a few years ago (!!!!!) so they're very cautious about the weather conditions.
On the one hand I was pleased that I didn't have to worry about losing control of my bowels on a terrifying rollercoaster AND having a legitimate reason for passing, but on the other I felt a bit defeated, so me and Chieko resolved to go back again soon and conquer the beast.

Nagashima also has an amazing hotspring place near it with proper hot water coming out of the ground so we decided to check that out too. No photos of that as everyone wanders around nekkid (segregated by sex of course), and frankly you wouldn't want to see aged Japanese winkies bobbing about on your computer screen. But, in the main spa bit you have to take your shoes off, and you can also change into a yukata. This gives the whole place a weirdly serene Star-Trek feel, everyone wandering around chatting a weird language in their eccentric uniforms. I half expected Commander Riker to strike up on his trombone and ruin my day.


Here's me and Chieko in our yukatas lookin' cool:

Nagashima Spa Land ROCKS, and I can't wait to go back and try the waterpark....

Yukata Week at Kasugai....

The school I teach at on Saturdays - Kasugai - is having yukata week this week. A yukata is kind of like a kimono, except much less time consuming to put on and less restrictive once you have. The staff all wear them, and so do the teachers, except me because I forgot to look for one on my day off (although the chances of getting one in my size are slim).

So here's a picture of the wonderful and radiant Masumi Hiyama, staff member and all round superstar :)

The kids where them too! There's sweeties as bribes, but it's still cute:

The kid on orange is the brother of the kid on the far left, and has moved through through several stages in knowing me - beginning at abject terror, onto shyness, familiarity, and now friendliness and maybe a little unchecked aggression. This can be a problem as small children such as him tend to have their heads at groin height meaning any high speed charge towards me can mean I sound like I've been inhaling helium for the rest of the day.

Also, the girl on my knee always fights to get on for photos, then looks downcast when they're taken! She's there voluntarily, honest!

Neighbourhood tour part 2 - Robot Museum!!

If you ask people to name some things Japan is famous for, they'll no doubt say "robots". Actually first, they'll probably say "sushi", then "those weird comics with the schoolgirls showing their pants", and then many many other things - but if you punch them a couple of times and tell them to stop ruining the introduction to your blog entry, they'll probably say "robots".

With that in mind - Nagoya has a robot museum! Now, don't get too excited - it's actually more of a shop that sells robot related toys and gadgets rather than a place you can buy a second hand Johnny-5, but still it's pretty cool, especially with the Transformers movie coming out here soon.

This is what is looks like:

Here's a couple of close ups of the various robots they sell:

If you know your robots, you can pick out some Gundams, and also a couple of Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion I think. If you're not interested in such geeky information - well, you've probably already stopped reading.

Some more, older fashioned robots. Oh yeah, it's not ageist the robot museum - all robots of every age, creed and colour are welcome. Except Chinese ones of course .

This is Paro, the World's Most Therapeutic Robot (fact!). It's really really cute and cooes and looks at you with it's big eyes when you stroke it - kawaiiiii!

I wonder if when Josef Capek (thanks Wikipedia) first coined the word "robot" in 1920, he ever imagine in his wildest dreams that one day such a thing as this would exist, and that Japanese people would pay a frickin' bundle to own one.

While we're dealing with all things kawaii, check out super deformed Darth Vader!


The only thing he uses the Dark Side of the Force for is making sure his enormous head doesn't cause him to topple over like a chump. "Apology accepted, Captain Nee-oof, I've done taken a spill, so I have". [Wow, this is the turning into an extraordinarily geeky post].

Strangely, whilst the most powerful Sith Lord in the galaxy looks pretty cute here, the renowned bundle of fur that is Hello Kitty looks rather sinister as a robot:

Look at it's blank, dead eyes - almost certainly plotting the destruction of the human race. Creepy.

I liked this big silver one, even though he didn't do anything except look a bit gay:

This one is also cool - I'm not sure if it's from Astro-Boy or another Osamu Tezuka manga, but with his steel companion above, he ups the gayness of the Robot Museum by a considerable degree. I think it's the wrist bands.


Here's some more Gundmans - at first, there's not much that catches the eye.
But look closer.....who's that in the back....?



Wow, it's a sexy girl Gundman. Phwoar! Actually, because it's very hard to fully emasculate what is essentially a hundred foot tall killing machine, this looks more like a cross dressing Gundam. What a diverse shop this is.

This is my friend Jacqui who I went to the Robot Museum with. Now, I know she might be a bit annoyed at me for saying this, but I think if you squint a little she looks just like Optimus Prime. I know I shouldn't say it, but it's true:

And finally, and not very interestingly, I had to take a photo of this:

OFFICIAL yo-yo strings. Wouldn't want to unofficial strings on our yoyos now would we? It's probably make them explode into a fiery ball of death if we tried to do a Round-the-world.

That's all for now, but just in case you were dying of curiosity - the shop in England that's name is "selfish" in Japanese is.....Wagamama! Cool huh?

Neighbourhood tour - part 1....

Japan is full of stuff that's cute, quirky, or just plain weird, so I thought it might be nice to show you a little of what's near where I live in Nagoya. One of the main places that's fun to wander down is Osu Kannon Arcade- this is basically a covered market full of Japanese cuisine, Engrish covered clothes, and shonky looking toys from China and other dubious Far Eastern origins.

This is it from the outside - I went awandering in the day this time, but at night it's lit up with neon like almost every other building in Japan. If you squint, you can see a Big Issue salesman on the left - I don't know why, but I was surprised to see that here.



This is the inside of Osu Kannon - this is a fairly quite day, so not too many people bustling about. What you can't tell from the picture is the noise of the place - pretty much every stall has people yelling "irrashimasae" to passersby which is "welcome" in Japanese. With that vowel in the last syllable, you can really drag it out, which they do until it almost becomes unintelligible - "irrashimasaaweeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEAaaaeeeeeEEEEE!". Also, you look on the right, you can see a Pikachu suit that's for sale.

Have you ever eaten octopus balls? Stop sniggering at the back - bits of octopus tentacle in batter - takoyaki - are tasty Japanese treat which you can get at this stall.
The guy running it was awesome, singing welcome to people and some other stuff I couldn't understand, probably about how ace his balls were. So I took his photo:

This is what takoyaki looks like btw

Further into the marketplace, there's this rather nice shrine. Or temple - there is a distinction, but I'm buggered if I can remember what it is. The main shriney bit of it is behind, but I wanted to take a photo of this to show you the white bits of paper tied to the washing lines - these are wishes that people have made when they've prayed to the deity that inhabits that shrine. The Japanese are more superstitious than religious, so it's kind of like crossing your fingers or touching wood for us.

I had to quickly include this poor sod, dressed as Japanese here Ultraman. He's advertising a pachinko parlour and had to just stand there waving his forlorn flag back and forth. I was boiling hot that day in shorts and a t-shirt so I don't know how he felt in that fetching body suit.


This is a shop on the outskirts of Osu Cannon and it is geek central - so as you can imagine I felt quite at home there.

It's about 5 floors of comics and various paraphernalia, but it's actually a very frustrating place for me as a foreigner because every bloody thing's in Japanese. Gah - all those lovely comics and I can't read any of them. This shop also follows the general Japanese comic shop rule of making little distinction in the organisation of comic genres - the upshot of which is you can be browsing some fairly tame stuff and suddenly find yourself looking into the pair of bare school girl breasts on the same shelf. Zoinks.

A few floors up in this shop, there's this section:
This is the cosplay section which, if you don't know, is a contraction of costume play. You can hire and buy various outfits here from famous manga and anime series. I haven't seen anyone wearing this on the street so I assume they either only wear them in private, or there's some kind of club you can go to.

Here's another pretty shrine in the middle of the shopping arcade:
If you don't know how these work: inside the main wooden hut is usually some kind of object which is endowed with a kami - a kind of deity or god - which you can pray to to ask for something. You throw in 5 yen as an offering, clap your hands twice (or in this case, pull that bellrope) to "wake" the kami, then put your hands together and pray. Some of the famous shrines have supposedly ancient and powerful items which only the head priests are allowed to see - one of which is Atsuta-Jingu. There's a link to some pictures of that on the right.

While we're on shrines, there's yet ANOTHER in another part of the arcade - the area's not really that big, so three shrines is somewhat excessive in my opinion. And this one is a biggy:

Most of it is off limits unless you're a priest though. There's some nice incense burners outside at the top which some people were congregating around. Although temples and shrines in Japan are sacrosanct, they don't have quite the holy gravitas that churches have in England - people waiting outside were chatting away and smoking cigarettes, there's no impetus to keep your head bowed or worry about being smited (smitten?). It's a pretty nice peaceful atmosphere, even for a heathen foreigner like me.

Finally, I thought it was worth showing this shop off:



it has a rather comical name as you can see. But - interesting fact - did you know that there is a famous chain of outlets in England with the SAME name, but in Japanese? Answer in the next blog entry....

Late night karaoke....

Saturday was Thom - a fellow ECC teacher - 's Birthday, so he organised a night of cavorting and carousing in the main social area of Nagoya, Sakae. After dinner, we went to a rather posh looking bar for some drinks - I ended up sitting opposite a Japanese girl who didn't speak any English, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to practice my Japanese. Aaah, hubris.....my skills were in fact stretched to breaking point, as although I can order food and sort out train tickets without getting too stressed, my conversational abilities are next to nothing. So after asking her if she was studying English at the moment (she understood that at least), it kind of ground to a halt. She could only stay for half an hour though so the seat opposite me was soon empty. This meant I could see the group of people on the next table, some of whom were foreigners (i.e. Westerners) and some of whom were Japanese.
Now, there's kind of an unwritten rule that when you see other Westerners in Japan, you don't acknowledge them. Certainly, the temptation is to give a little nod or say "hi" (or in your first week, to throw your arms around them and sob "thank god, someone that I can speak to!! Where are some toilets that I can sit on instead of squat over for the love of god?!?!"). but we don't - we're strangers after all so it'd be a bit weird. Wouldn't it?

Anyway, a few of the Japanese guys looked round, chatted amongst themselves, and then two of them bounded over and launched themselves facefirst into a big friendly conversation with me and Jacqui (another ECC teacher who was next to me). I was a bit taken aback initially - the guy's face who was talking to me lit up as he gabbled English a mile a minute; I was half expecting him to whip out a pamphlet and ask if I'd considered letting Jesus into my life.
Turns out they were social event organisers for people who didn't know anyone in Nagoya - Japanese and foreigners - so they took my number and said they'd give me a call if they have one again. Watch this space....
Afterwards, we went to karaoke which was awesome fun, although I was banned from playing with the tambourine just because some people developed chronic tinnitus last time we went. *sulk* I don't think Thom will mind me saying that by the end of the night he was out of his tree and ranting about philosophy and how great Japan is to anyone in his vicinity (including random Japanese people and his own reflection a couple of times).

When you're in the karaoke booth, you order your drinks by picking up a little intercom/phone, and it was a timely reminder of the fact I've been in Japan for a while now that not only did I not mind speaking to the waiters, but that I could understand when they said they were out of certain drinks and apologise when some of the guys changed their mind about what they wanted. Time was when we'd all draw straws to make the dreaded order, bellow "FOUR. BEERS. PLEASE!!!" in English down the phone, and then sit back with fingers crossed to see what we ended up with (one time - ordered:four beers and a whiskey and soda. Received:one glass of plum wine. Baffling). I mean yes, we didn't get the coke that I asked for, but still it was nice to see that all the time I've been spending bent over textbooks mumbling "everyone should just bloody speak bloody English" hasn't been for nothing.

Anyway, karaoke was great fun, but we rather over-enthusiastically stayed till 4:30am which means I got home at 5am. And then got up at half 9 for work. Thank the great monkey god for Starbucks and his bounteous mocha frappuncinos which got me through Sunday lessons. Lo, they were good.