Raping Samurai Soccer

Here is an awesome commercial.

Back in Business

Since October I've been working for this Canadian guy who had to go back to Canada for whatever reasons. I lived in his house and took over his English classes. He would call once and a while to check in on me but overall it was a pretty good gig. The agreement was that he would be back at the beginning of April and then I would be screwed. Out of work and out of a house. And so April came.....

Sometime in mid-February he asked me if I could work an extra month. I agreed and didn't hear back for another 3 weeks, at which time he mentioned that he bought his ticket for March 29th. That's the date we were going on and 2d ays before his supposed return he calls me and asks if I could work an extra month. This guy was a real piece of work. By that point in time we already had our keys to the new place. The story with this guy ends with us just making it out of the house with all our stuff moments before he pulled up with his family in a taxi. I'm ecstatic that this part of my visit to Japan is over. Sometime I'll come back and tell you all about this guy.

Now I enter phase 2 of my Japanese experience. We now have our own place and I currently have no employer. Honestly, it's not that bad. I'm currently, in the process of recruiting new students to teach. From what I figure I only need about 8 to cover all my expenses and the rest will be extra. You have no idea how easy it is to teach English and everyone here wants to learn. I highly recommend the experience. I haven't tried that hard to get students and I already have 3.

But April was just for me. I saved up enough moola to take the month off and prepare my university applications. Now if you asked me to write an essay on what I think about "whatever", I could pull something out and make it sound good. But these applications ask deep and meaningful stuff like what I want to do with my life before, during and after the program....I don't know. So I needed to do some soul searching. At least deeply enough so it sounded good. I've currently applied for two universities in Japan and I'm thinking if I want to apply to a third. I'll come back to this topic once I hear something back from them.

April had another big project, Japanese. From my experience in France, I now know that in order to get over the first hump of learning a language you can't learn it part time. In France, I tried for at least a year to learn French part-time and it got me nowhere. Same thing happened here. Thus, I knew that April needed to be devoted to learning Japanese EVERYDAY. (well maybe not everyday but almost everyday, I am a procrastinator which is a very bad habit I know.).


Somehow we've accumulated a great collection of how to learn Japanese books.

For about a month I was looking for a teacher who would want to teach me everyday. Sure enough no one wanted that. But as it turns out a group of elderly housewives that I was teaching for the last 6 months offered to teach me Japanese in exchange for English lessons. That sounded good to me and so, everyday I go to Starbucks near my house, buy a coffee, learn and practice Japanese and then pull an English lesson out of my...... you get the idea. A different teacher everyday. It's been working well. This Thursday will be the last class of the month. It's been really fun. If I ever learn another language...one month intensive is how to do it.

April has been filled with stealing Internet, learning Japanese, shopping for stuff to fill the new place and working on these applications. None of it turned out to be as easy going as I thought it would be.

As for the internet. I'm finally back online. In order to get internet hooked up. I needed to call the company and tell them I was interested. Then I waited for them to send me my account stuff by post. I had to confirm a date when a guy would need to come by and "do construction" BY POST. I called the company and they told me I had to do it by mail, there was no way to speed this up. COME ON! We're in the 21st century. People NEED the Internet. In the end, what in Canada would have been done in 2 days took 30 in Japan. I waited 30 days for a guy to come over here and "construct" my Internet. What that really meant was he opened the box with the modem and plugged it into the socket. Ta-da...Internet.......At least it was full service.

Black Hole in the 21st Century

Let's get you back up to speed.

Its been over a month and a half since I've updated this thing and there is a lot of really good excuses of why I didn't do it but I'll leave those to your imagination and for future posts. Overall, I've been backlogged with stories that need to be told before I can get anywhere. For starters, my visit to Taiwan, visitors from Canada and the move.

When will all these stories be up. Well here is the story for today.

Do to my boss returning from Canada we lost the house and I of course I lost my job. However, we got a new place and due to the complexity of trying to get internet...We don't have any. I just spent the better part of the last hour walking around with Helene's computer trying to get a wireless signal that I could steal of someone. Yes, that's right, I'm a total Jerk. I'm that guy.

My computer is too weak for such pirating needs. Even with this computer the signal is really awful. It feels like I'm back in the 50's wiggling the antenna trying to get Leave it to Beaver to be clear enough to understand what is happening.

Anyway, from what I understand there is a guy coming next week to check something in the house and then sometime next year, I'll get internet. I'll be updating everyday. I'm currently unemployed so I have lots of time to entertain you and myself. I hope all the memories have not been exaggerated and altered due to the length of time. It took me to write the stories.

Lots of catching up to do. The list is here for your reference and mine,
1) Christmas in Taiwan
2) Jordan's New Year's Eve
3) First Canadian Visitor
4) Birthdayness
5) Second visitor from Canada
6) TOKYO
7) Broken Computer
8) Okonomiyaki (don't look it up, I'll explain)
9) Finding a place
10) Getting stuff for said place
11) Moving out and dealing with the Boss
12) Japanese lessons
13) University applications
14) Sakura

I'll be back as soon as I can get a good enough signal. Trust me it suck living in a Black Hole.

Cheburashka's Revenge!

Due to popular demand here is all the extra Cheburashka stuff I found.

I find it a little ironical that a symbol created by a socialist government could become such a wonderful icon in the capitalist world. Yay Capitalism!!!

And of course for any Russian missing that last little taste of home...

Technology is EVERYTHING

Japan is known for having Technology before anyone else. I have to admit that the moment I arrived here I understood what they've always been talking about. I've been avoiding writing about it simply because I didn't have the words to describe it.

Before I mentioned that electronics are typically not available in any supermarket, department store or little shop. Sometimes you do find a little camera shop because the Japanese are crazy about cameras. But overall, there is no electronics section in most places that I could name. So for the first couple of weeks I kept asking where all the advanced Tech was... Well within a few weeks, we found it.

Electronics are almost exclusively sold in electronic stores. The biggest one we found is called BIC Camera. They sell everything that is electrical in some way. Air conditioners, hair dryers, fax machines, video games, TVs, stereos etc. Imagine Best Buy or Future Shop compared to a Loblaws or Costco. Basically it's huge.

In Canada and France most electronics you come across are from some unknown company. I suppose, for example, your air conditioner, escalator, or drink machine are probably made by either companies you're not familiar with or companies that only make that product. Here in Japan, from the moment I arrived in Japan, the security camera was made by Toshiba, the drink machines by Hitachi and the scales at the airport were made by Kawasaki. I now know that Mitsubishi ,the Korean electronic company, makes EVERYTHING!

Now when I was saying that BIC Camera was huge, I wasn't lying. This is the section to choose your style of mouse for your computer. Every shape, colour or mold in any pattern you can think of.

There's THREE rows of it. Don't get me started on little add-ons for an MP3. That's just a sea of consumerism.


Here's a video from BIC Camera to give you an idea of what kind of craziness I'm talking about.

Hiroshima Technopop Perfume

This is a Technopop group from Hiroshima. They've been around for a few years now. They're so cute. It was released on March 25, 2009.




This one is Computer City January 11, 2006.




This is Love the World July 9, 2008.

Autumn Colours

From the beginning of October, everyone Helene and I met told us about how beautiful the autumn season was. At the time, I could hardly care. Living in Canada most of my life made me pretty immune to trees changing colour. Besides, it was October and the season would be over soon. At least that's what I thought. Well that's somewhat true by Canadian standards as by Halloween nothing much is left on the trees. But the season here doesn't really start until the second week of November and it goes until the first week of December or so. Then all of a sudden one cold day comes along and all the trees loose their leaves and you get that barren look.

When the time came to see what all the fuss was about we were absolutely amazed by how beautiful the trees started to look. It was right out of a painting. Looking at one tree, the tips of the tree would be red (and by red I mean a strong vibrant red that I've never seen on a tree before) and the middle would be yellow but the centre still green. I think it has something to do with the fact that it gets only slightly colder here everyday through the season and thus the trees change just a little at a time. In Canada, you know the Autumn season is over when you see snow. But that's Canada for you.

For the entire month of November, the major topic of conversation in every class was where to go to see the trees. Now this may not sound like a big deal to you but look at it this way: many of the most important temples and shrines in Japan are located in the big cities. During WWII, the Americans bombed the hell out of most of them but for some reason left most of Kyoto intact. Thus this is the number one tourist spot in all of Japan, especially for Japanese people wanting to travel within Japan.

During the month of November, and from what people tell me April as well, mass flocks of people pour into Kyoto to visit the shrines and temples on the backdrop of the beautiful colours of the maple trees. Some of the gardens at these temple sspecifically plant maple trees for their Japanese garden to get a more Zen effect.

I know these pictures are three months late but I wanted to put it together in a fun way. The video is about 4.5min. I threw in some pictures that I took beforehand so that you can see the change. The video starts off with the view from outside our door. I saw this sight everyday. Enjoy