i'm quitting my job and moving to tokyo.

oh Tokyo…i’ve used the words ‘big city envy’ before…this time i really mean it! six of us stepped off the bus at 4:30 am in ikebukoro, one of the many neighborhoods that comprise Tokyo. we wandered through a concrete park and plopped down to watch some of the night denizens; a huge group dancing, what we could only assume were prostitutes, some homeless people, a few couples, lots of drunks. we made our way on foot to Shinjuku as we watched the sun rise. then to tsukiji fish market, the most famous in japan. due to the public holiday it wasn’t bustling but there were a few stalls open and a few sidewalk sushi vendors selling nigiri and sashimi on the spot.



we visited the imperial palace and lounged in the park for a bit.


we hit the famous shopping district, ginza, which is way too ritzy for my taste.


then to shibuya, famous for nightlife and trendy shops.
checked in the hotel about 5 pm and showered and rallied for odaiba, a entertainment complex on the waterfront. we were thrilled to stumble upon the cantina restaurant where we gorged ourselves on pitchers of margaritas [wonderfully strong] and plate after plate of nachos. i also ordered soft beef tacos and shrimp tacos that were out of this world. very tex mex, with sour cream and all. i did have to order extra cheese twice though…no point in skimping when we finally find somewhere that serves real cheeje.
friday morning we made our way to Tokyo Disneyland.


if you ever thought Disney at home was packed and frantic i would tell you to consider this place. at times, you couldn’t see a spot of sidewalk. and the Japanese love to line up, they’ll wait for anything in a queue. after an hour and a half wait to buy tickets, we bolted straight for space mountain. only about a 45 minute line. they also have what’s called a fast pass, you take a number and come back at the specific time when you can jump to the front of the line. thanks to these beauties we didn’t go absolutely mad. we hit the classics, splash mountain, it’s a small world [in which America was not represented by the way] and pirates of the Caribbean. and, in case you were wondering, snow white and Cinderella were both Japanese. by the time we made it home, cleaned up and headed to dinner it was midnight. we chowed at a cheap, rowdy bar near the hotel where we met some guys who invited to sing karaoke. me and a couple girls went and sang the night away, literally.
saturday, on about 3 hours of sleep, we headed for asakusa which i’d heard was a huge famous temple. turns out it was also an incredible market with tons of food stalls and an amusement park; a place that married the ancient and contemporary in a wonderfully tacky way.
this guys making fresh rice crackers.




here people bathe themselves in smoke for protection and blessings.


i could’ve spent the whole day browsing around there but we wanted to hit up the seedy parts of kabukicho before it got late and dangerous. this is the red light district made notorious by the yakuza, Japanese mafia. it was adequately sleazy and interesting…sex shop after hostess bar after peep show.


we met up with a friend of a friend and a few other alts who were also in town for dinner at a bangin’ izakaya. all food and drinks were 300 yen each. the 10 of us put a hurting on that place. i learned the word ‘iki’ which means ‘chug’ in Japanese. later we played darts and billiards before heading to club asia, one of the most famous in Tokyo. it was two like two clubs in one spread over three crowded stories throbbing with hip hop and dance sounds. dance groups kept taking the stage, then rappers. for a 30 dollar cover charge the place shoulda been happening though. the trains don’t run between 1 am and 5 am so we had to outlast the hiatus…no problem. at 7 am the walk and ride back to the hotel was definitely interesting. people pouring out of clubs and bars, eating and dancing in the streets everywhere.
we hopped the bus sunday at 1:50, arriving back home about 7 pm. i was so exhausted i slept the entire way. what an unbelievable place. just the sheer population density means every nook of the town is alive. with the energy of over 12 million people in the air, how can the place not be exciting?

Yoshikawa Koko...

tuesday i visit my satellite school, yoshikawa koko. they have obento lunches delivered everyday with an odd mix of foods, always surprising. they are about $3.50. here's this week's spread...
the meat is deep fried weiner, as they call it, and a chunk of fish. this week's was boneless thankfully. it's amazing to watch them dismember a whole fish and strip the head and bones from the edible parts with chopsticks, a skill i've yet to acquire. then clockwise from bottom left: sweet candied beans. marinated tofu flavored with carrots, shimeji shrooms and chicken skin. pickled daikon radish, which has a spicy sweet thing goin' on similar to ginger. a tofu pouch full of a veggie mix and another unidentifiable, but tasty, brown sauce. a cross-section slice of lotus root which is delicious, it has the texture of an apple even when pickled or marinated and is great in stir frys. and burdock root salad. i've been seriously battling my distaste for mayonaizu lately cause it's on or in everything, even when you least expect it. i was able to choke down some of the root salad. burdock has become one of my favorite veggies and you can pick it up in the grocery here in a ready made salad of soy, carrots, sesame seeds and red chilis. killer.


here i'm waiting at the bus stop with a couple of my students. you should hear them call me miss tiffany. hilarious.

about last weekend...

Alright…this is really like work. I:ve been so busy that I haven:t had time to email, book a hotel in Tokyo for this weekend, plan my upcoming trip to Thailand or write a bit on the site. I:ve even taken to drinking caffeine packed green tea by the liter so i:m on high speed at work. [all these late nights aren:t helping. now i understand the american office coffee dependency] Sorry. So here:s what:s been goin: on…
[note* i:m on a Japanese computer again so there:s no apostrophe.]
Friday:s my early day off so after work Melanie came over and we ate lunch together and worked on planning our trip to Tokyo. Thursday is a national holiday and we:re taking Friday off. We:re gonna hop an overnight bus on Wednesday, which leaves at 10:30 and will arrive in Tokyo at 4:30 Thursday morning, with 4 friends. [Liz isn:t going cause she:s being fiscally responsible. Boo.] the highway bus is the cheapest, 9450 yen [about 94.50$] and slowest way to get there.
Friday night I did dinner with a few of the brits at a rowdy Japanese pub and then to karaoke for a friend of a friend:s birthday. This spot gives each party there own room to hang in. There were about 15 of us in all…everyone pays the same no matter what you drink or how much you sing…that:s the standard Japanese way. So for 2500\, about 25 bucks, we drank and partied from 9:30 till 2. the best deal I:ve seen yet.
Saturday Liz and I hit the international food market which is a 35 minute bike ride or so away. i:m on the verge of renting a car for such excursions because the ride home with enough Mexican fiesta fixin:s to feed 6 people plus beer and tequila was not pretty. We played badminton for a while until the girls came over and we absolutely gorged ourselves. We even found pepperjack cheese at the market, 5 bucks a block, and sour cream [woohoo!!].
Here's Lizzie cooking it up in her nice roomy kitchen...note the budweiser in a bottle [which was all strange. really heavy with a small opening] we paid about 2.50$ for them at the international food shop. not bad.

lizzie hates this picture. she thinks it's horribly unflattering. she wants everyone to be aware that she doesn't really look like this. let it be known. word.

Later we rode bikes to a club downtown but we were a few short so some of us perched on rear fenders and axle pegs. The police stopped us and told us they didn:t like that idea [we think]. One of the girls took quite a nasty spill. She:s the reason it:s technically illegal to ride bikes drunk here.
Sunday was glorious. I packed Liz and I lunch [Japanese style, which means lots of little portions. Two types of fish cakes, some strange white cheese, shrimp balls, seaweed salad, pickled cucs and radishes, edamame, krab sticks and rice] and we headed to Takada park, about a 6 minute ride or so from my place. There:s a castle there, beautiful lotus flower ponds, lots of stuff to play on and plenty of people watching.
We basked in the sun, studied some, played a lil: badminton [one of my new favorite pastimes] and watched some kids play soccer. Later we cycled a bit before hitting the town. We took the train to Naoetsu to check out a little restaurant i:d seen with turntables and awesome décor. The menu was entirely katakana, which is neither of our strong suits. The food was great, but expensive. We tried snails, shimeji mushrooms and octopus sautéed in butter and garlic which was as good as it sounds. Also, deep fried white fish salad which was nothing like we expected. Turns out these white fish are like little minnows they deep fry whole, beady eyes and all. The taste was actually alright and they were fried so crispy they doubled as Japanese style croutons. We gathered that chorizo sausage was in one of the dishes under the stir fry heading so we went with that. They delivered a plate of three horseshoe shaped whole sausages that were battered and deep fried like tempura and smothered in a sweet asian sauce that was balanced perfectly with chili pepper. We definitely overdid our cholesterol intake for the day considering we mopped that plate clean.
At that restaurant we saw a flyer for a dance party that night and off we went. Oh culture shock. We needed money first so we headed to the post office which we:d been told is 24 hour. Well, the door was open but none of the atms were on. Then to a gas station…no atm. By the bank…nope. Then to another convenience store where there was an atm but it kept spitting my card out. I finally got brave [read irritated] enough to pick up the phone on top of the atm, they all have them. The man speaks only Japanese, I did well and managed to gather that it was simply too late. Back to my place to count coins. Barely enough to get in. we head to the club on our bikes. Awesome. It was packed and we were the only foreigners around for sure. We talked with a few people but were self-concious about dancing because we were such a spectacle already. Liz left early, her eyes were killing her. After all, this club was simply a small box on the second floor with no windows or ventilation and dozens of chain smokers. The show only got cooler. Four guys rapping over two djs entirely in Japanese. Then a dance exhibition of breaking, popping, robotics and hip hop. Later, the night went all Japanese reggae.
Monday was respect your elders day, a national holiday. A friend picked me up in his new leased car [jealous] and we rounded up Melanie before heading to a complex called Cowboy. Several home stores like our lowe:s, pier one and home depot. A huge used clothing store and another trendy clothes mecca where I scored an incredible crushed blue velvet blazer. We also hit up the second hand bookstore, the hyaku yen shop [equivalent of the dollar store], an awesome winter sports shop [snowboarding, here I come] and a crazy large market.
What a long winded account this is. Figured if I can only find time to write every now and then I should cram in as much as possible. Missing you all. Compensating by staying incredibly busy. Love, love.

oh, right...teaching...yeah

it’s probably a good thing classes started. i’d almost forgotten that i came here to work. so the first terrifying moment was the speech i had to give in front of the whole school at an assembly in the gymnasium…entirely in Japanese. i practiced my paragraph intensely and bumbled through it well enough. i also gave the same intro to the night school kids, who are a much tougher crowd. they are all the bad boys and trendy girls who are way to cool to pay attention. apparently minamishiro koko [my base school] is fairly low-level academically. some of the students didn’t even finish junior high school and far fewer plan to go on to any sort of higher education. i’ve been told attendance is the most important criteria when it comes to passing these students. while this sounds ludicrous, it also means that we are not confined by the government-issued criteria for university entrance examinations. some teachers don’t even use a book and i’m free to come up with all sorts of activities.
in my first class there were five students. four were completely disinterested, three played on keitais [cell phones] the entire time. i’ve been told we don’t confiscate their keitais because some of the students are ‘mentally imbalanced.’ it is terribly frustrating when you kneel down and look them in the eye and ask them to read a sentence and the only reply you get is a blank stare. most of these insubordinate kids are kinda funny though and there is a rapport between the teachers and students that ensures the interpersonal, if not the academic, relationships are good ones.
i teach two shakaijin [adult] classes by myself. i can tell these are going to be the toughest and most rewarding. there is a basic and intermediate class, each of which meets for 90 minutes per week. they are all enthusiastic and totally interested in learning so i won’t be able to b.s. my way through these classes. in the advanced class i can speak only English and they’ll be able to explore many complex themes. in the basic class they need more help deciphering vocabulary and making sentences, which isn’t all bad because i get to practice my translation skills and Japanese.
every tuesday i visit yoshikawa koko out in the countryside. i wake at 6 am to catch the 7:10 train, after a long haul i transfer to a bus which traces rice paddies and farms for miles before dropping us off at a slightly dilapidated school. yoshikawa is much more traditional. they offer a sake making course of study [i was given the grand tour, amazing, and was able to dip my fingers in and taste sake at every step from sediment to liquid] and they also require that i remove all my piercings which is a huge pain. i have three classes there which are also more conventional. the students wear uniforms and answer questions when called on and segregate themselves in every class from the opposite sex. on the whole, their English is much better than the kids at minamishiro. it’s a welcome reward to have them listen to you and repeat what you say in a convincing fashion.
i can already see the varied ways in which the job will challenge me. oh sweet patience… i also see many opportunities for enriching my own life; honing intercultural social skills, improving my Japanese language ability, challenging my notions about the education system and human nature. i think it will be great. after all, that is why i came here…to teach and be taught.

i can't quit writing about food...

on wednesday night liz and i mounted our trusty iron horses [read- bicycles] and headed down joetsu odori, the main vein that runs through town, looking for some chow. it’s not a way we normally ride which makes for good exploring. we stopped at honey bear restaurant, odd menu. dishes comprised of 5 or six tiny portions of mix match things. a little pasta with red sauce, chunk of hamburger, one fried piece of chicken, shredded cabbage salad, unidentifiable brown lump and corn. we decided to ride on… we came to a restaurant with a red lantern out front, the symbol for an izakaya, which is a bar food kinda place. as we looked over the menu we spotted a yakiniku shop across the way. at these restaurants you grill your own food at your table. this was a more commercial, chain type spot than the hole-in-the-wall shops we’d eaten this at before. they brought out an iron bucket with smoldering coals and dropped it in the recess in the center of the table. i ordered a large beer [which turned out to be about a half gallon] while we looked over the menu. it read like a biology class lab report complete with pictures. there was a seafood section, a beef section, vegetable, pork, so on. we went with the safe stuff; pork tenderloin, choice beef loin, scallops wrapped in bacon. although some of the pictures were tantalizing [honestly] we skipped the hormones, glands, tongues, stomachs, etc. a couple of guys at the table beside us didn’t however and i was mesmerized watching their plates of raw parts be delivered. they were more than happy to explain to us, through charades, what everything was. the food was killer. there is a tray of spices and pastes at the table that you can slather on before cooking and then there’s a traditional brown sauce that you dredge the pieces in before eating them with rice. definitely worth a repeat visit.