Nobu Shirase

Last Sunday was the annual Konoura town Nobu Shirase memorial snow walk.

Nobu Shirase was a man born in Konoura who led one of the expeditions to the South Pole in late 1911, early 1912. Everyone knows about Roald Amundsen, who got there in December 1911 and returned safely, and Robert Scott, who got there in January 1912 and died on the way back, but no one remembers Nobu Shirase. I just checked Encarta Encyclopedia. He has no entry.

Nobu Shirase, the virtually unknown Japanese polar explorer, had serious troubles with funding his expedition. He did a lot of fundraising, and yet did not manage to raise much money at all. Not one to give up, he borrowed a lot of money and then went anyway. His boat was made out of wood. It was a miracle it was not crushed by ice in the Southern Ocean. His equipment was primitive compared to Scott’s, but ultimately better, because he used arctic dog fur and other natural materials to make his party’s clothing, which was much better than anything man could make at the time.

Shirase did not lose a single man on his expedition. But he never made it to the South Pole. He ran into bad weather, and then heard that Amundsen had already reached the Pole. Not willing to risk his men’s lives for a dream that had already been crushed, he turned back, and that is why the world forgot about him.

When Shirase returned to Japan in defeat, he immediately set about paying back all the money he borrowed. It took him the rest of his life to do it. He toured Japan giving talks about his adventures and about Antarctica, but because no one knew who he was, no one ever gave him much money. His wife stayed here in Konoura raising all their children (I think there were six of them) alone. His descendants are among my students.

After Nobu Shirase died, some Norwegians (I think they were Norwegians) came to Japan to find out what had happened to the third contender for the pole, and through their efforts the story of Nobu Shirase was brought once more to light. This tiny town on the coast of Northern Japan heard all about the remarkable and disciplined man that had been born amongst them. Now there is a Shirase Memorial Museum in Konoura, and every year on January 28th (which I think is the day he turned back) the children of Konoura walk through the snow from the museum to the small shrine in Konoura where Nobu Shirase was born.

This year the walk was a bit strange. There was no snow, and it was sunny and warm, so it was not much of a snow walk really. But we went anyway and paid our homage to a man who was overlooked and forgotten for most of his life, but who really did not deserve to be.

Changdeok Gung

These are pictures from my second day in South Korea. They were all taken at Changdeok Gung. I don't know what anything is because I could not understand the tour guide, so I will not try to explain any of the pictures. With one exception: the second photo from the bottom, the one with the tree. That tree was half concrete. That's all I have to say.

Outspoken

Wow! Read this blogpost from jane's daily blah. The bit I want you to see is the part about USA and Canada.

Day 2 in Korea

My second day in Korea started with an expensive hotel breakfast and a taxi ride to Changdeok gung, a big palace in the old centre of Seoul. The day was bright and sunny. There was snow lying about all over the place inside the palace compound although most had already disappeared from the concreted city streets. Icicles hung from the eaves of the buildings. It was all very picturesque indeed.

You can only enter Changdeok gung with a tour, and the tour that was leaving when we got there was a Korean language tour. I didn't mind because I was there primarily to take pictures. There were only a few people on the tour, so it was very easy for me to take pictures without people in them. Later on our tour caught up to a huge gaggle of Japanese tourists. Miwa wanted to join up with that tour so she could understand the guide. Since she can understand enough Korean to realise that the Korean guide and the Japanese one were saying different things, I could not quite follow her logic, but oh well. After we joined the Japanese tour it was very difficult for me to take pictures.

Miwa and I did not find the weather particularly cold. It was sunny and there was no wind, after all. We did not even bother with gloves or hats or anything. But a lot of the other Japanese tourists seemed to be freezing their asses off. We saw one woman who had gloves, scarf and hat on buy a can of hot coffee from a vending machine and then hold it against her face because she was that cold. Miwa and I looked at each other and laughed. "Where do you think she's from?" "Kyushu? Okinawa, maybe?" (Two places down the south of Japan). Miwa has lived her whole life in Akita Prefecture, but I have only been here for a few years. It seems as if I have acclimatised, though. I wonder what this years NZ winter is going to feel like to me?

After we had finished the tour of Changdeok gung we walked to the subway station. We found an underground bookshop on the way. I bought some postcards and a 3D jigsaw puzzle of the world (as in, make your own globe). The map itself is all written in English, but on the box it says "For sale in Korea only." Mostly the map looks just like any other, but there are a few differences in Asia. Such as, South Korea and North Korea are not separated, but instead labeled together simply as 'Korea.' Also the Sea of Japan is labelled as the 'East Sea.' Interesting.

We went back to Meongdong to do some more shopping. The evening before, Miwa had her picture taken at a portrait place, and had ordered 100 business cards with her face on them made up for her, so we had to go back to the same area we had been shopping in the evening before. After that we had lunch in a restaurant in the basement of Migliore, a big cheap department store. Then Miwa wanted to go have an 'estee,' which seems to be a facial massage and application of creams and stuff like that, in order to make one more beautiful. People are always talking about estees to me as if I know the word. In Japan it is written in katakana, so everyone assumes it is an English word, but it sounds to me as if it is actually French, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, I didn't want one, so I sat in the waiting room for an hour. I took the opportunity to write out lots of postcards.

We browsed around in Migliore until 5pm, and then headed back to the hotel. We were very tired, but Miwa had already organised to meet some of her Korean friends for dinner at 6pm. A little after 6, we were picked up from the hotel by someone (I can't remember any names by the way. I should get Miwa to write them down for me sometime, because I can never remember anything unless I have seen it written down). The someone used to be an employee of the hotel we were staying at. Anyway, he drove us to the area of Seoul in which he lives, which is near a big university. We drove up and over a mountain, through these very winding steep streets. The man spoke quite a bit of Japanese, about as much as me. When we got to the area, we wandered down a street looking for another of Miwa's friends, who was arriving on foot. There were all these baskets full of goods lined up in rows along the footpath. It turns out that they were the Korean equivalent of a $2 shop. People come out of the University and have to walk between the rows of merchanside. Sometimes they get tempted and buy something. People can't avoid the shop because it is the footpath.

We ended up walking back the way we had come, finding Miwa's other friend (a really nice woman about my age whose Japanese was very good, much better than mine) and then entering an establishment. I would hesitate to call it a restaurant. It was much more casual and laid-back than that. It was the kind of place that only locals, never tourists, go to eat. There were lots of wooden benches and iron-frame stools in a small, dimly-lit brick building. The menu was written on a saucepan lid. Ecclectic music was on in the background and the front window was a plastic sheet that was, get this, zipped into place. I really liked it, although it was a bit chilly.

The first dish to come to the table was a big bowl of mussels (still in the shell) in a garlic soup. Everyone had a spoon and a set of chopsticks each. There were no little personal dishes to transfer the food to like there are in Japan. Everyone just spooned the soup straight from the big bowl to their mouths, or picked the mussels out with the chopsticks and left their shells behind. The soup was really delicious. Then a big plate of cheese-filled egg was brought out. It was kind of like a giant omelette cut up into lots of small pieces, but the egg did not appear to have been fried in oil. It was just nice and yellow and moist. However it was cooked, it had been done expertly. The guy who had come to pick us up randomly disappeared and came back later with two huge bags of puffy crackers, kind of like giant prawn crackers. I don't know what grain they were made out of. The next dish to appear was a large plate of seafood and rice stick stew. (Btw by rice stick, what I mean is sticky rice pounded until it resembles playdoh and then rolled into little sticks. There are similar things available in Japan, called mochi.) The sauce was bright red. Miwa would not touch the stew; she said it was too spicy for her. I dived right in (making sure to avoid the squid). The two Koreans were looking at me expectantly, waiting for the 'OMG! Hot hot!' but actually I had no trouble eating it at all. It was really delicious. The red chili pepper sauce gave it quite a kick, sure, but no more so than Tabasco. At first I was using a cracker as a dish, but then everyone laughed at me and so small plates were brought out. I thought it was much more fun using the cracker, but oh well.

A fifth person joined our little party, a student who had just finished his last class of the day at the University. He spoke no Japanese, and only a little English, but we were talking anyway. He is 24 like me, but has not yet finished University. Anyway, the five of us had quite a good time, although the guy who drove us at the beginning of the evening (who had seemed so boring and normal at first but who turned out to be a very strange and shameless person indeed) kept disappearing to give people drunken calls from his cellphone, and Miwa was not touching the alcohol at all. Speaking of alcohol, Koreans have a very interesting drinking culture. They don't just say cheers at the beginning of the evening, like their neighbours the Japanese do. They say cheers and clink their glasses together every single time they drink. They all sit there for 5, 10 minutes without drinking, then they clink their glasses together and all chug down everything that's in them. Then they fill each others glasses up again and spen another 10 minutes or so looking at their full glasses until enough time has passed that it is polite to call for another 'cheers.' I got told off for sipping at my drink over time.

Another strange thing about the restaurant that I have just remembered; the location of the toilet. It was outside on the main road. The door to the toilet opened right out onto the footpath. I don't mean a room of separate cubicles or anything like that. There was only one toilet, and only one door, so essentially it was a toilet cubicle that opened straight out onto an 8 lane road.

After we had finished at the restaurant we went to a karaoke establishment. It was the type of place that has separate booths. There was not a very good selection of either Japanese or English music, although the English selection was better than the Japanese one. All Japanese music was between four and ten years old, so there were no currently popular songs, and neither were there any classics. The English music at least contained some classics i.e. The Beatles. We did not stay there long because it was already very late. Miwa and I said goodbye and then caught a taxi back to the hotel, and by the time we got there it was already after midnight and we had to get up early the next day.

Cultural Oddities

I talk a lot on this blog about my life in Japan as if it were just ordinary life. Which it is. To me. But of course, not everyone has lived in, or even been to Asia. I should probably talk about some of the oddities or just plain ‘different’ things that I encounter in my life here, simply because someone else may find it interesting.

The first has to do with how well people are capable of growing used to things, given enough time. You know, I get a shock every morning when I go to clean my teeth and see my face in the bathroom mirror. Why? Because I can clearly see the difference between the irises and pupils of my eyes. Everyone I see on almost any given day is Japanese, and has dark brown eyes. I am the only person I see in a day who does not have brown eyes. My own eyes freak my sleep-addled brain out. How weird is that?

The other year, before I knew much Japanese, some people were having a conversation about something or other in the staff room at the Jr. High. I wasn’t really listening, because I could not understand what they were saying. All of a sudden the English teacher held out a box of coloured pencils and asked me to pull out the pencil which I thought of as ‘skin colour.’ I pulled out the peachy, flesh coloured pencil, of course. Some people said ‘yappari’ (I thought so), and some others went ‘heeeeeh’ (a noise made to express surprise). The people who said heeeeeh had been expecting me to pick either the white colour pencil or the pink one. Mostly the white one, I think. Because, you know, all foreigners overseas are paper white (despite the fact that the ones who come to Japan aren’t).

People still complement me on my amazing chopstick-wielding skills. Or are surprised to find that I like umeboshi. And noodles. And rice. And that I don’t eat hamburgers, or even bread, every day.

My diet has changed since I have been in Japan. This past half year or so, my diet has been more Japanese than Western, and I don’t just mean the school lunches. I eat lots of stews and soups for dinner, made from mostly vegetables, a lot of which I never really ate before, bulked out with things like tofu and processed fish sticks, or with dim sums or Chinese dumplings as a side dish. Vegetables I eat a lot of now: carrots, leeks, potatoes, spinach, onions (that’s normal enough), but also Chinese cabbage, Japanese parsley, various forms of seaweed, weird skinny mushrooms and other assorted fungi, and lots of root vegetables we don’t really have in NZ such as ‘nagaimo’ (a super slippery sword-length vegetable) and burdock root (which I eat as often as carrots, and maybe more often than potatoes). The only meal for me in a normal day which is not at least half Japanese is breakfast; I am still eating cereal.

When there is no snow there is no winter, and at the moment there is no snow. I can’t quite believe that I already think this way, considering that before I moved to Northern Japan, I had never lived in a place where winter snows could be depended upon. We were lucky to get more than one day of snow a year in Crawley, and from the age of eleven onwards, I only ever saw snow from a great distance, i.e. on distant mountains.

Most people make me feel welcome here in Japan, but every now and then I’ll be walking down the street and someone coming towards me will cross to the other side so they don’t have to get close to me, despite the fact that there is only a footpath on one side of the road.

You will not believe some of the things I have been served at work parties. I once got served a part of an eel’s head in sauce. There was this eye as big as mine right in the middle of it looking up at me. Raw fish guts make an occasional appearance. There was also this time when I found a little bowl of white lumpy stuff that looked like curdled cream on my tray. I asked what it was. The maths teacher told me what it was, but I didn’t understand the word. So he said in Japanese, “You know how we can eat fish eggs?”
“Yes,” said I.
“That comes from a lady fish.”
“Yes . . .”
“Well, this comes from a man fish.”
Yay, fish sperm on my plate.

It is not safe to order chicken kebabs in Japan, unless you are very knowledgeable on the specific terms for different parts of avian anatomy. You are just as likely to get chicken skin on a stick, chicken feet on a stick, chicken hearts on a stick, chicken cartilage (sans meat) on a stick or chicken necks on a stick as you are chicken muscle meat on a stick.

In Japan, fish is not meat. It is totally acceptable to serve fish to a known vegetarian.

Even my male Jr. High students have little cute things hanging from the zippers of their pencil cases. They would get beaten up in NZ. Oh, and speaking of strange Jr, High boy behaviour, boys here like to sit on each others’ knees and play with each others’ hair. I’ve often wondered about this, and I think the reason is that most Japanese people seem to believe that there are no gay Japanese people, that it’s a foreign phenomenon. Therefore they don’t have to worry about being labelled a ‘fag’ or whatever. I suppose that boys may act more free in expressing affection, i.e. more like girls, in any society that is free from homophobia. Or maybe it is just that most of the young popular male actors on TV here are so damned effeminate.

I cannot find CDs in CD stores here. I am in Japan, but I order all my Japanese music online. I know what order the CDs should be listed in: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki . . . , but even so I can never find anything. It is not just because everything is written in Kanji. I was looking for a CD by the Yoshida Kyodai, who are two brothers who play the shamisen in a ‘cool and hip’ way. I made sure I knew what kanji their name is written in before I went to the store, and what the pictures on the front of their CDs look like. I looked under the ‘a’ to ‘wa’ Popular category at every single CD in the ‘yo’ section, to no avail. So I went to check the Classical section. Again, no Yoshida brothers. At a long shot I checked under Jazz/Blues. Nothing. These guys are super popular in Japan. I cannot believe that a largish CD store would not be carrying their CDs. Looks like I will have to put in an order with amazon.co.jp again.

The setting sun really is red here in Japan, just like on the flag. I think it has something to do with Chinese pollution or sand from the Gobi Desert. I have tried to take pictures of the sun, but as I’m sure everyone is aware, you cannot take good pictures of the sun or the moon with point-and-click cameras. They shrink down to little blobs.

Japanese people think that the rules of cricket are far too difficult to learn. “They throw a ball at those sticks, right? But how do people get home runs? And what’s with the number with the decimal point in it?” I’ve tried explaining cricket to people, but before I’ve finished they say “But one game goes on for a week, right? Too long, too long,” and they stop listening and start smiling and nodding. As in “I’m never going to have time to sit down and watch five days, or even one day of the same game, so why bother learning the rules?”

My friend Atsuko thinks I’m a dirty foreigner. This statement may need a little historical backup. You see, Japan has an abundancy of water. Japanese people have never really had to worry about water shortages. Therefore, a rather interesting *coughwastefulcough* bathing culture has emerged here. Japanese people, each and every day, have both a shower and a bath. First they wash themselves completely under the shower. Then they get into a big steaming bath to soak and relax for a few minutes. No soap or flannels are allowed in the bath. No washing occurs. This is because in a family household all people will use the same bathwater, so everyone has to be absolutely clean before they get into the water, and leave the water clean for the next person. People who live alone still go through the whole ritual. That is a shower and a full steaming bathful (right up to the shoulders) worth of water to wash only one person each and every day. I think that is bloody wasteful, so unless I have a cold and really want a bath, I will only have a shower, just like before I came to Japan.
Now, this is where Atsuko’s opinion of me comes in. She thinks that because I only have a shower and not a bath every day that I am dirty. And that I can’t help it, because that’s just how gaijin are. I tried bringing up the point that, if a Japanese person has to clean themselves fully under a shower before getting in the bath then surely a shower alone is perfectly capable of getting a person clean. But she can’t see it. No bath, no clean, is the Japanese point of view.

In Japan, everything comes in oodles and oodles of packaging; such as on a tray, in plastic, inside a plastic wrapped cardboard box; or in a bottle that is wrapped in plastic; or on a tray in a bag, with each individual item (e.g. biscuit) individually wrapped in plastic. I’ve heard that all of this stuff can be recycled, but where? I think that some towns have a day for plastic collection, where all the plastic wrappings can be put out together, but my town doesn’t. I’ve also heard that a lot of the plastic wrappers can be put out with the PET bottles, but I had a peek at other peoples’ rubbish on PET bottle day, and all people were putting out was bottles. So I throw huge mountains of plastic away every week on the ‘burnable rubbish’ day because I don’t know what else to do with it. And I thought that Japan was supposed to be leading the world with its recycling capabilities.

Japanese people typically don’t have gardens. They buy a small plot of land and fill the whole thing up with a huge house. They can look right out their kitchen windows into the kitchen of the house behind theirs. No cooking in your pajamas in Japan.

Speaking of Japanese houses, people here don’t seem to believe in insulation. The specialists all apparently believe that insulation, although it would be nice to have in the cold Japanese winters, would keep houses hot in the hot Japanese summer. Which is a fallacy. Insulation helps to keep the heat out in summer, does it not? How the entire building industry in a country can fail to learn from the accepted wisdom of many other countries and also fail to do tests and learn for themselves such a basic fact, I do not know. As a result, the whole Japanese population suffers from hot summers and cold winters, even inside their own homes, and has to pay a fortune in heating and cooling because half the heat from their heaters escapes to the outside, as well as half the cooling power of their air conditioners. In summer, the cans in my kitchen cupboard are warm to the touch, all chocolate has to be kept in the fridge (which I don’t like doing because cold chocolate doesn’t taste as nice) and I can’t use my computer for very long or it will overheat. In winter I spend a small fortune running my heater enough to keep my breath invisible, but all the while the snow (when there is some) melts along the wall that my heater is set against.

A lot of people here, when they meet me for the first time assume that I am American. They ask stupid questions like “Do people eat sushi in America?” and I’ll say “I don’t know, I’ve never been there,” even though I know quite well that there are plenty of sushi restaurants in America, and I have in fact been to Hawaii, which is (politically) a part of America.

People seem to think that New Zealand is a dry, hot, flat country like Australia. They don’t seem to believe me when I say that NZ is green and has a lot of rain. Not until I remind them of The Lord of the Rings, anyway. They also seem to think that koalas may be found in NZ. I will admit that this problem is not limited to Japan, but in fact affects most of the world.

Apparently I speak ‘The Queens English’ as all Brits, Kiwis and Aussies do. Of course all our English is exactly the same. North American English being so different to make all other Englishes look essentially the same merely by comparison has nothing to do with it. Actually, I hear that ‘Queen’s English’ phrase a lot. I wonder where they are all getting it from.

There are no trolleys in supermarkets here in Japan. None that I’ve seen, anyway. They have baskets and little wheeled frames to put the baskets on if you happen to be old or have trouble walking. But no trolleys. Why? Every household does grocery shopping every day, that’s why.

And speaking of trolleys, Atsuko told me that Americans just put anything in their shopping trolleys without even looking at what it is. Um, what am I supposed to make of that? I assume she got that idea from watching American movies, where the actor doing the shopping has to look at the actor of the character they are having a conversation with, as well as keep their face turned kind of towards the camera. I wonder if Atsuko thinks that ‘Americans’ don’t watch the road when they drive because people on TV are always looking at the person in the passenger seat.

And speaking of roads, many Japanese people seem to think they are the only left hand drivers in the world.

Oh, and roads don’t have names here in Japan, which makes it very difficult to find a place you have never been to before. Addresses look like this in Japan: Akita City (city level), Higashi Akita (district level), Omachi (section of a district encompassing, in my area at least, about 10 streets), 350-89-2A (a code that indicates which particular building within the area of 10 streets, and also room number if the building is an apartment building). These numbers are not written on peoples’ houses like street numbers in other countries, nor are they written on street signs. In big cities the number for that block may be written on the corners, but not out here in the country. Therefore the only people who addresses are actually helpful for are postal workers who have charts and diagrams on their office walls and in their vans telling them the code of each building in their area. Oh, a lot of people have the family surname written on the letterbox, but since half of all Japanese people are called ‘Satou’ or ‘Sasaki’ that doesn’t really help. If you tell a Japanese person how, back home, all streets have names and all buildings on the street are numbered linearly so you just have to walk down the street until you get to the right place, they go “Wow, that’s such a good idea! I mean, you could find someone’s house without them having to send you a map first!”

I guess about 95% of Japanese people can play a musical instrument, and I don’t just mean the kazoo.

Japanese people on the whole eat a lot of food and yet remain skinny. But a lot of young people these days practically starve themselves, and are on average about 0.5kg lighter than their noodle- and fried shrimp-loving brethren. I don’t know why they bother.

Any stream in Japan bigger than a trickle in a ditch has concrete banks.

Hot, canned, sweet milky coffee is very popular here. It is available in vending machines all over the country. I have to wonder what on earth they are putting in the coffee to stop the milk from going off as it sits for weeks on end in a perpetually heated can.

Vending machines can be found anywhere in this country. There are of course vending machines in the places you would expect to find them; outside stations and sports gyms etc. But you can also find vending machines placed randomly on residential streets, clustered at the side of the road in the middle of all these rice fields without a building in sight, overlooking a particularly nice beach, or even high up on the side of mountains! Most vending machines sell drinks. A select few sell snacks. There are also vending machines that sell tobacco or alcohol, and these vending machines are also placed in random areas, with no way to make sure that kids are not among the customers. Then there are the types of vending machines that just make you go ‘Huh?’ such as egg vending machines, which tend to be large and bulky, and inside their own little building. Or bouquet vending machines, just in case you wake up and suddenly realise it’s your anniversary and you haven’t bought a present yet. Apparently, before I came to Japan there was a vending machine behind Akita Station that sold used panties, but it’s gone now. 1,500 yen for nylon or polyester, or 2,500 yen for nice scent-retaining cotton. Yuck! That kind of thing is usually found in ‘omoshiroi’ shacks, these little tin huts found on inter-town roads that have the word ‘omoshiroi’ (interesting) painted on the side. They typically have one parking space hidden behind some bushes, and inside they are filled with vending machines selling everything from magazines to DVDs to the aforementioned underwear. I remember being told about ‘omoshiroi’ shacks half a dozen times when I was new here. It is a story foreigners living here just love to tell, one of those “OMG Japan is so weird!” stories.

Japanese people peel their grapes before they eat them, because apparently they are covered in pesticides. They also peel their apples, pears, and any other fruit that I would normally eat the skin of.

I had a lot of trouble last week trying to convince someone that I have no religion, that I am in fact an atheist with very slight agnostic tendencies. Actually, I don’t think I convinced her at all. She just kept saying “No, I think you’re a Christian.” When I said I was never baptised, she said “I think you’re lying.” But then this was the crazy woman who randomly sent me three bowls of ramen one weekend, and who keeps leaving books in my letterbox that I don’t want to read.

Inside the Mind of a Me

Today I had some free time at work, so I pulled out some scrap paper, picked up a pen and wrote this:

I feel bored. I feel like there is something I want/need to do but can't do here. I want to run about loony-like, as I was last night. I VERY MUCH want to read A Wizard of Mars. I shouldn't have been reading Wizards at War last night: I only reopened the wound. The jolt of energy I got when I touched a 'Young Wizards' book last night has not been let out properly yet. I want to run and yell. I always do. That is why they are my favourite books. Other books may be better structurally, but they don't affect me the way YW does.

And the next book is going to be a Kit book! Nita used to be my favourite character, but now we have seen inside Kit's head, I think he is. He's so cool, and he has his own style. Nita is still borrowing others' styles.

Ahh, I'm feeling the pull of the imaginary. I need to take a trip there. Now. I can always come back later. It is hard being at work when I feel like this. I need to be alone with a good book, or with pen and paper, or with a great fantasy movie. I kind of feel like watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I want to go see good ol' Captain Jack Sparrow.

Doing art and reading my way (slowly) to the end of The Sandman is taking the edge off things. Writing my own story helps too. Or wait, is that causing the trouble? I mean, I wrote a lot last week, and then on the weekend I got the calling again, renewed.

Should I figure out some way to channel the lion's share of the calling into my writing efforts? If I could figure out how to do that, I would get so much done. I would have Acorn's story finished within a few days, and be well onto the next by spring break. It is also good to save some of the calling for my art. I got some good stuff done over the weekend. I am proud of that.

I need to find some way of making sure that whenever I read or watch something, that I am charging. At the moment that is not so. Sometimes when I read or watch stuff, I am letting it out. No, I need to charge my creativity. How? Maybe if I take the time to think about why I enjoyed something, that will inspire me to put what I learned into practice.

Another thought. Writing this piece is letting some of my urgent inspiration out. It is not so urgent anymore. I am not writing as fast as I was a minute ago. Have I done something bad?

Moo, I ran down. How awful. No . . . inspiration . . . fading. Must . . . . recharge . . . . . __________

BTW, it's 3.05. I have 70 minutes to kill.

What if I make a charging ritual? What do I associate with increases in creative power? I ought to make a list of books that have a good noticeable impact on my creative power; books I can re-read when I am feeling poor. YW obviously should be written at the top of the list. The next down should be The Sandman because it had already demonstrated itself with the Mara story. What else? Hmm . . .

55 minutes to kill.

Let's just say anything by Neil Gaiman. I think I need to read more Discworld books to make myself more funny.

45 minutes to kill.

I ate grapefruit yesterday. I will eat it again today. I will also draw. I will work on that blue thingy that I don't know what it is. I also need to clean a little. I am doing nothing now but writing random things, so I can spend half an hour when I get home on cleaning, can't I?

I need to go to the toilet. I will go do that now. Okay, I'm back.

35 minutes to kill.

I have tried to associate the green star necklace with creative power. Have I succeeded yet? Hmm, not really.

Should I blog this rambling whatever that I am writing now? This direct transfer of random thought to written word? Would that tell people too much about me? Would they think I am weird? Am I weird? I don't know what other people look like from the inside of their heads, so I don't know how I compare.

This is not an accurate protrayal of how I think anyway. I think too fast for me to write everything down. I wonder what percentage of my thoughts I am catching here.

I have 'Train train' in my head. I guess it must have been played during lunch or cleaning time. When I write 'cleaning' by hand it looks like 'deaning.' My writing is very messy. I guess that's just one more thing to convince me to be a writer. Don't most writers have messy handwriting? Like there's no time to care about the writing style because we are all too busy just trying to capture alll of the fleeting thoughts and get them recorded on the nice paper (computer screen).

I read an article in New Scientist magazine, how many years ago now? It was about how in a decade's time or so they might be able to make paper computer screens tha can be rolled up. Imagine that. If I had one, it would get rumpled within two minutes and irrepairably damaged within four. And I take good care of my stuff compared to other people.

25 minutes to kill.

I just thought of Rumplestiltskin.

The article also talked about how product wrappers will be little computer screens capable of playing videos on them to attract customers. I can imagine all too well what it would be like to visit Japan after that technology becomes widely available. Buy a bottle of tea and find some lethally cute thing jumping around all over the outside of it and doing little dances. Oh no! All foreigners who come to Japan will die of the horrible cuteness! And then they will go to Korea and die again! Because Korea has caught the cuteness fever!

15 minutes to kill.

How come everytime I look at the clock, exactly 10 minutes have passed? This is getting weird. And it never feels like ten minutes, more like five. Is that just another example of my terrible time sense? Or is time flying because I am having fun? I usually have fun when I am writing. Most people hate having to write more than 100 words at once. I love writing 1,000 or 2,000 all in one day. It just makes me happy. As long as it is something I want to write, then writing is one of my favourite things. It cheers me up when I am down, and calms me when I am frustrated. I really ought to write more. I must have written 5 or 6,000 word last week all together. No, probably more like 7,000. Excellent.

We had kinako bread with school lunch today. That stuff is so difficult and messy to eat. But yummy. Who would have thought a hotdog roll covered in oiled, sugared bean powder would taste so good? I can eat it again when I get home because I got a spare one. Maybe I will eat it with my grapefruit. I won't be able to save it until breakfast tomorrow. It will lead me into temptation long before then. Did I just quote a Christian prayer? How rare.

I am onto my sixth sheet of paper. Sure, I am writing big and only on one side. (because there is something on the other) but even so, this is getting long. Maybe I will not write this on blogger after all. I will intend to but then procrastinate, because it will take so long to type out.

No! Do not be so lazy!

I am hungry. Maybe I should put the kinako bread in my bag so I can't keep looking at it. it's tempting me already.

Still no snow that lasts more than a couple of hours. The real snow is a month late now. I have only been in a country that has winter snows for a few years, and already it doesn't feel like winter without it.

5 minutes to kill. Didn't I write '70 minutes to kill' not so long ago? I guess it must have actually been 65 minutes ago, unless there is something seriously wrong with the clock.

Stop looking at me, kinako bread.

The third grade boys are singing in the corridor. How old are they supposed to be again? Older than they act, surely. They are not as interesting as last year's 3rd graders. The girls too. I know that is not a nice thing to say, but it is true. They really are a 'broken class.' They are only just getting better now, but they will be split up forever in a few weeks. Too little, too late.

My hand hurts. But it is time to go home now, so that's okay.

Wow, finished. Sorry about that. I ended up cutting some things out because it was taking so long to write. The actual version was about 15% longer. Maybe 20%. I think everyone should try doing this, at least once. Just write down as many of your random thoughts as you can as you think them and then read over them afterwards and look for patterns, be amused etc.

The Forces of Nature

Something rather rare and frightening happened in Konoura today.

The weather forecast for today was for rain. Throughout the morning it was drizzling. A little after 1.30 I was sitting in the staff room typing on my computer. Also in the staff room were Hosoya-san and Machiko-san sitting behind me by the window; a female teacher called Aiba-sensei sitting across from me; and to my left with their backs to the door and to a set of equipment (the school bell system and the surveilance system screen) were two male teachers. All of a sudden there was this click sound just like a camera shutter and a flash like a camera flash. It seemed to be coming from one of the two men, Hiroshi-sensei's direction, and all four of us women thought that he took a picture of us and made to turn our heads to find out why he would do that. But a fraction of a second later there was this HUGE crash of thunder. (It's times like that when you realise just how fast the human mind thinks; that most people can have several complete distinct thoughts in a row in such a small time that the body's reflexes don't even have time to react is something that I find fascinating.) We all jumped up and kind of went 'wow!' and compared stories. The two men had no idea until we told them that to out eyes it looked as if the lightning had come from them. We at first assumed that lightning had struck behind the school and we had seen it flashing through the glass panel of the door from the window in the corridor just outside the door. But then Togashi-sensei came into the staffroom and said he had been looking out a window when the lightning struck and it had shot up from somewhere to the west, which is in front of the school, in the opposite direction. (Did you know that lightning bolts go upwards? Not everyone does.) About this time Mitsunori-sensei (the other male teacher who had been sitting next to Hiroshi-sensei) started saying that he had a sore back. We wondered if the flash had come from the equipment behind the two teachers, but we couldn't see any damage. The surveilance TV was still working fine. All the computers were fine. We all ran around checking to make sure that there was no damage or anything in the school; no blown lights or singed areas, stuff like that. Nothing.

Togashi-sensei could not say how far away the lightning had struck. All he could say was that it was beyond the train line. There is only about half a kilometer of land between the train line and the ocean, if that. We all sat back down at our desks and had a (tension-relieving) laugh about how Aiba-sensei, Machiko-san, Hosoya-san and I had all thought that Hiroshi-sensei had taken a photograph. We were all still feeling shocked; there had been no lightning that day so we were not at all prepared for it. About ten minutes after the lightning struck, the sirens started. Uh-oh, somethings on fire. There was an announcement over the town speakers saying which neighbourhood the fire was located in. The two male teachers started going through the student records checking how many children lived in the area, while the rest of us went to the window, peered through the sheets of rain that had been coming down since the lightning struck and saw that there was indeed a column of smoke starting to rise to the sky. At first the teachers were saying that they did not think many of the students lived near there, but when they checked the records they found they were wrong; many students live in that neigbourhood. A call came to the school from somewhere telling the name of who the house was registered to. The teachers started to go back through the record again looking at each child from the areas' father's name. At first they thought there were no students affected, but then it was noticed that one of the second grade boys grandfather's name matched. Less than a minute later another call came through confirming that yes, that boy lived in the house that was on fire. Someone double-checked with the elementary school and found that the boy's little sister had already been taken to the house by her teacher (I don't know, to watch it burn I suppose). The boy was taken out of class, sat in the Principal's office for a few minutes with a glass of water, and then the second grade dean took him down too. I think the fire had been put out by that stage. As an aside, every single student in the school knew what had happened to whose house about 30 seconds after the boy himself knew despite the teachers trying to keep it hush.

Many other students were worried about their own houses. It turns out that on every side of the lightning-struck house (both sides, behind and across the road) for several doors down are the houses of other students. But luckily for them the fire did not spread. If heavy rain had not followed the lightning, who knows what could have happened? The firestation for Nikaho City is close to Konoura, but the house is in an area of town with narrow winding streets so it still took the firetrucks long precious minutes getting there.

It was just chance. If lightning strikes enough, sooner or later it is going to hit someone's house and set it on fire. That's just how nature works.

Gaudy Asia

It seems as if the school network and Blogger are willing to talk to each other now. Here are some disturbing pictures.

The lobby. Notice the giant snowman and the Neo-Classical restaurant.

This was decorating the bell boy counter. How embarassing.

The headboard of my bed.
A drawer. One of many.

This was on the cabinet that held the fridge.

This footstool was sitting in a corner where it could not be used. And who would use it anyway? Who sits on the edge of a bed and then puts their feet on a footstool?

This is not quite so disturbing. This is a department store (I think) located in Meongdong.

Day 1 in Korea

Well, I was going to talk about my trip to Korea with pictures, but blogger and the Nikaho City school network are not communicating very well at the moment and I can't seem to upload any pictures. Instead, I will just write and then post the pictures later.

Last Monday morning, Sayaka's friend Taisuke who has now become Miwa's friend drove Miwa and I to Akita airport. I was expecting there to be snow at the airport, because it is in the mountains an hours drive north of here and in winter is usually snow-bound (as in last year Amanda couldn't find her car in the carpark when she got back from Australia because it was buried under the snow). I don't know how so many planes can still land and take off at Akita during winter, but they can. Although, not all of them to be sure. Cancellations are frequent. Anyway, instead of the mountains of snow and the climbing over snowbanks to get into the terminal like there is most years, there was just a sprinkling of snow on grassy areas and none at all on any concrete. We checked in, drank coffee (no tea available) and were in the air by lunch time.

We got to Incheon by mid-afternoon and were picked up by a guide from the travel service we used. She was holding a card with Miwa's name on it. I've always wanted to be met at an airport by a card-wielding person. Next time it will be my name written there! (BTW now I think of it Mum, if you pick me up at Wellington airport when I return to NZ, please bring a card with my name. With the frequency that your hair changes colour, I might not recognise you.)

We were taken by van into Seoul with another family. We were dropped off at our hotel at about 4pm. The first thing I noticed when I entered the lobby was the twinkling tree and the next thing was the 8 foot tall inflatable snowman that was behind it. The hotel room was well and truly tacky too. I will post pictures later.

We went to a convenience store around the corner for snacks and then back up to the room. It was at this point that Miwa noticed that she no longer had Atsuko's camera, which she had borrowed for the trip, in her pocket. She remembered walking to the store with her hands in her pockets, so the camera couldn't have been there then. She spent 15 minutes tearing the hotel room apart before ringing the guide to ask whether a camera had been found in the van. The guide told her to wait while she checked. Twenty minutes later she rang back to say that the camera had not been found. No doubt either the van driver or the guide pocketed the camera, because it never did turn up in the hotel room, and we hadn't been anywhere else at that stage but the store.

We couldn't do any more about the camera, so we went into Myongdong, a famous cheap shopping area to spend the rest of the evening. I bought a few eye shadows at a pharmacy and got a free eyeshadow case, face cotton and if you believe it or not, a free Gucci rip-off cosmetics purse, with 'e's embroidered on it rather than 'G's. I mean, those things are illegal, and have to be smuggled out of the country. And I got one for free. I don't particularly want it - I don't really like Gucci.

Greetings From Korea

Hi, how are you? I am in Korea. I'm using a computer in the hotel lobby to blog, so I won't write long. The weather is great here, only chilly not bloody freezing like Seoul in January is supposed to be. It has been sunny with cloudy patches the whole time I have been here. I went to a palace yesterday. It was impressive. I will post some photos later.

BTW, blogger is all in Hangeul (the Korean alphabet) and I can't remember which button is which. Wish me luck posting this.

Happy New Year!

Welcome everyone to 2007. How was your new years? I saw in the new year with Atsuko, Miwa and Taisuke (a friend of Sayaka's). We had been planning on going to an onsen, but of course the plan got cancelled. We had dinner at Atsuko's house instead. I cooked a beef mince pie for them. We spent hours watching the K1 because Miwa loves it, and Atsuko loves Masato. (Ok, maybe I like him a little bit too ;) )

When the K1 finished at 11.30pm I put on Pirates of the Caribbean 2. What better way to see in a new year than by watching a Johnny Depp movie?

After midnight we went for a walk to the shrine. It was actually quite a nice walk on account of the unseasonably warm weather. No snow has lasted in Konoura for more than a couple of hours yet this winter. I spent pretty much the whole time at the shrine saying 'Happy New Year' repeatedly to students of mine both past and present. I went home at about 2am.

Today I didn't go anywhere. I watched a couple of DVDs and cooked a spinach, tuna and cheese pastie for lunch. The weather was disturbingly nice, and I briefly entertained the idea of going somewhere until I realised I had nowhere to go. Such is life.