Autumnal Penitentiary - Week 26 (November 4 - November 10)

Autumnal Penitentiary

Week 26

6 Months

Busy work week to say the least. Friday had 8 classes and Saturday had 9. Rough way to end the week, but always a great way to ensure a good night's sleep on Saturday night. Other than that nothing particularly noteworthy occurred.

Oh wait.

A little something happened.

Change happened.

And Ayn Rand looks like she's about to lose a lot of her influence in the White House.

As a little experiment I asked almost every one of my students their opinion on the election. The almost universal answer was that the election was good for the US but questionable for Japan. The latter was a bit surprising but stems from the somewhat protectionist nature of Obama.

I guess we'll find out soon enough. Round about January 20th.


Thank god for the weekend. First chance in almost a month to really go out and do something!

Saturday night I stayed home.

*cough*

Melissa and I concur that our new schedules do not encourage wild clubbing outings on Saturday night. We're just too exhausted. Instead I went home and spent a couple hours chatting with my mom and, in a couple of cameo appearances, my grandmother and my aunt Val. First time I'd talked to anyone outside my immediate family since immediately after the Fuji trip. I was very happy to speak to them.

Sunday I...slept in. A lot. Unfortunately this meant that I managed to piss off my friends that were waiting for me in Ikebukuro. It didn't help that I also had to stop by Shinjuku for an hour or two in order to renew my internet at the Leopalace offices there. That's done now and should be good for the next six months though.

I ended up meeting the crew (Winny, Melissa and a new acquaintence Miguel) at about 4 PM in Shibuya. We spent the next hour or so wandering around the city trying to locate the restaurant we were interested in going to that night. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the place. We wondered around through Shibuya's narrow streets for an hour or so. M, M and W had all been walking for hours so far that afternoon, so at this point they were getting quite exhausted. Time dragged by as we wandered around in a light drizzle trying to find our elusive quarry.

Eventually we took shelter in the Hobgoblin, a bar that I've frequented on numerous occasions. We sat around for about and hour sampling British beverages. After some consultation of our cell phones and Google maps, we discerned that our restaurant was close at hand.

Venturing back out into the slight drizzle, we eventually found the restaurant discovering that it was only one block further than when we had stopped looking earlier.

And so we entered The Lock Up.

Mel had been here a couple of times before, but it was new for the rest of us. It's one of the many themed restaurants in Tokyo, the theme in this case being that of a haunted prison. It's a shame we hadn't gone a couple of weeks earlier, would have really been a great place to hang out at Halloween.

The food was pretty damn good, when it finally showed up. I say finally because the time that elapsed between requestin service and receiving it was monumental enough to be indescribable under the auspices of simpe seconds, minutes and hours. Perhaps parsecs is a better gauge. We had to slap the service button more than ten times before finally tracking down a server and dragging them up to our table.

There's a kind of dinner show at the restauarant too. Every hour or so a sort of prison break occurs, with all kinds of costumed employees running around, shaking bars and whatnot. Klaxons, strobe lights, wardens firing cap guns, the whole nine. Certainly an unusual experience, but a lot of fun. The drinks were pretty neat to, arriving in test tube racks and large beakers. Winny drank a concocation that contained a large jelly eye. Awesome.

Engaging conversation was had by all, as we discussed the merits of, among other things, Kevin Smith. Miguel give me a nice history of the political turmoil in Ireland which I've never heard first hand.

After dinner Miggy had to take off, so Mel, Winny and Ben (who showed up at the end of dinner) headed off to the nearest Karaoke place and proceeded to belt out an hours worth of songs before catching the last train home. It'd been a long time since I went out for Karaoke, so it was welcome opportunity to get back into the groove.

The next day started nice and early for me. I woke up, packed my bag, loaded the camera and departed for Mitake station and the start of my second solo hike in Japan. It was also November 10th, the 6 month anniversary of my arrival in Japan. Not a bad celebration in my opinion.

Fall is a bit delayed as far as I can tell in Japan. Although I was out hiking in early November, many of the trees still had yet to exhibit any significant loss of chlorophyll. Still, there was more than enough colour at the top of the mountains to make it worth while.

My 5 hour hike began at around 12:30 and ended close to 5:40. This was much later than I expected it to go because I had left at what I thought was a relatively early time. Not so as it turns out. Bad train connections are any Tokyo hiker's achilles heel. Next time I go hiking my departure time will be around 5 or 6 AM to ensure that I'm off the mountain before it gets dark.

The hike ran from the cable car at the top of Mitake-San (929m) across 12km of ridge line and mountain to the city of Oku-Tama, nestled in the same river valley that houses Mitake. The summit of Mitake-San is also resident to a shrine that has existed in some form since 90 AD.

The weather wasn't all that great, pretty overcast, but not cold once I started moving. The trail itself, despite being listed as Easy, was at times a bit daunting. I got my first taste of holding chains on narrow ledges near the top of Odake-san, which was also the high point of the day at 1267m. The climb itself to the top of Odake was also quite a bit more physically taxing than Takao-san due to the short distance and vertical rise. It was enough that when I reached the top of Odake-san I let out a little whoop of accomplishment.

It was a picturesque trail though. There's a small waterfall at one point along the path which is serenely beautiful. The views of the surrounding mountains were also stunning at times. All in all, a very good hike despite my second late arrival at the destination. The final hour of my descent from the mountain took place in a dark cedar valley guided only by the light of my headlamp. At least it was safer than the highway last time near Takao.

I got home around 9 o'clock after stopping by the Bic Camera in Tachikawa to buy an Xbox 360. I like to think that going hiking and then buying a piece of high-tech hardware says something about the duality of humankind, but it might be a bit too lofty a statement.

Carting that heavy piece of game console goodness home, I relaxed, had some food, and then promptly passed the hell out and slept the sleep of the dead until the next morning dawned with a new week of work.

And that leaves us at the end for now. Next update: Kyoto Special!

As always

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Malicious Culture - Week 25 (October 28 - November 3)

Malicious Culture

Week 25

This whole week can be summed up in one name: Acute Onset Sinusitis.

Or at least I think that's what I have. The incredibly unreliable webmd.com diagnosis should never be trusted, but as far as I can tell, I have a minor sinus infection. At the time of this writing it's most of the way gone, but it certainly made for an unpleasant week. I spent essentially the whole week, including the weekend, trying to deal with this. That means a ton of vitamin C, very hot showers since steam helps clear the sinuses and producing an unusually large amount of phlegm. Pleasant, especially that last part.

On the plus side, I'm now caught up on my backlog of posts. Hopefully I get a bit of time to write about Thailand this weekend. I spent last weekend playing World of Warcraft and cleaning my apartment. Excitement. It's starting to get cold now at night though, so I pulled out my winter duvet and I gotta say, it's super comfortable.

Anyways, I remain, as always, a somewhat sickly

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Gallery Exertions - Week 24 (October 21 - October 27)

Gallery Exertions

Week 24

Ah, another week down.

This particular assemblage of 7 days contained an atypical set of events the section usually dedicated to work, which is always a nice change of pace.

The abnormal sections of this week began on Wednesday when Kayoko and I were accosted by one of her students and escorted downstairs to an art gallery that occupies the basement floor of our building.

This was surprising.

I had no idea the gallery was there. I guess that's one of the downsides of being mostly illiterate in this country. But seriously, complete question mark. I've been working in this building for nearly 6 months now and all of a sudden I find out the basement has an art gallery. That's kind of surprising. Not as surprising as the first time you discover that, with the right deftness of touch, you can separate the two halves of an Oreo cookie and eat the filling without the cookie, but still pretty surprising.

I'm eating Oreos while I write this.

The gallery was exhibiting the work of local painters, who had set brush to canvas with the subjects of a notably floral persuasion as their focus. One of the painters happened to be the wife of one of my students. My student's wife is also an acquaintance of Kayoko's student, the very same student which escorted us so enthusiastically downstairs. Upon our arrival, my student's wife was elated. What followed was a long conversation mostly in Japanese. My student's wife was very funny, despite my incomprehension of the language she was speaking. Kayoko translated a few choice tidbits too. Great stuff, really energetic lady. We took a few photos with her portraits (she has a really nice camera!) and then chatted some more. Her husband showed up a few minutes later, which was a nice coincidence, so I got to chat with him a bit before teaching him that night. Kayoko and I took our leave a few minutes later in order to go and get some dinner.

When my student showed up later that night he brought along the pictures that his wife took of us. Ah the miracles of digital photography! They're nice pictures too! I'm sending them back to Canada first chance I get.

My Friday was a little bit unusual too. This week we were teaching the Halloween lessons to our kids classes, which was a nice opportunity to take a bit of a break. Vocabulary was pretty easy and fun to teach, stuff like 'Werewolf' or 'Ghost'. On Friday though, things were a bit different. My high level KH class (8-10) came in all dressed up for Halloween, which was pretty awesome. I got to teach Peter Pan, Dracula and a Witch. Oh, and a Montreal Canadians Fan...One of my students left too early last week to hear about the costumes. We had to improvise...

Due to my costume being stolen (see above mentioned early departing student), I ended up throwing on a Manchester United Jersey and going as Sean. I'm not sure the kids got it, but I think it was more about them getting dressed up than the teacher...

The rest of the week proceeded apace. No real hiccups, just the usual 11-or-so hours a day. It certainly makes for a fairly exhausting work week, let me tell you.

Sunday was the only day of note for this weekend. Events would transpire that would prevent Monday from containing any interesting activities...But I digress. Sunday was...

Sean's Birthday Party!

I woke up Sunday morning to a bad sign...a bit of a sore throat, the beginnings of a cold. Eh, no matter, had to soldier on through it.

I met up with the party's attendees on the train. We were headed for an area of Tokyo called Odaiba, which is located in Tokyo's Harbor area. Odaiba is fairly unusual in that it's almost completely constructed on reclaimed land. Odaiba also acts as the location for a very peculiar amusement park: Muscle Park!

The concept for this 'park' is based around engaging in physical activities. According to the website, this is to counteract the increasingly virtual types of entertainment preferred by children these days. So that's basically all it is, a bunch of physical activities. They're pretty diverse though, ranging from kicking a soccer ball at a target, to seeing how long you can maintain your balance, to shooting at prizes with a popgun.

We started off by taking a general agility/balance/coordination test. The wonderful part about this particular set of activities was that in the end it spits out the theoretical physical age of your body. This was a fortuitous coincidence considering the occasion that brought us to the rather inconspicuous 5th floor location of Muscle Park.

As it turned out Sean and I tied in this section...apparently we're both 58 years old. Also, sadly, we were the youngest of the group according to this test. I question the test's scientific validity, however.

The next few hours were filled with a variety of challenges. The most interesting of these by far in my opinion (and also the most difficult) is the much-touted Sasuke section. Sasuke, or Ninja Warrior as it is known in North America, is a television show in which contestants compete at insanely grueling physical challenges. These challenges are so grueling in fact that most of the contestants on the show will usually be eliminated in the first set of challenges.

Muscle Park is kind enough to provide the average person the opportunity to compare their physical skills with the nearly super-mutant levels of vim exhibited by the athletes on the show.

As it turns out, average people compare poorly.

There were 4 different events in the short Sasuke circuit at muscle park. The first is the overhead bike, wherein you basically hang from the pedal assembly of a bike and pedal with your arms across a five or six meter stretch.

The second activity is aptly named "Cliffhanger". It consists of a very narrow piece of wood nailed to a suspended steel backing. The backing itself is about 2 feet tall and cuts off about 6 feet above the floor. The idea is that you grip mostly with your finger tips and palms and shimmy across the 5 meter game that way. This was the most difficult event in my opinion. Of all the people in our group and everyone else that tried it while we were waiting in line, not one person managed to move from one grip position to another without falling. The grip-wood is so narrow that you really can't get a proper grip on it without serious experience. Hell, it's difficult just to support yourself on the thing to begin with.

The third activity was also pretty impossible. Basically you had to do a chin-up on a bar that is not attached to anything. Instead it rests in the lowest of a set of three suspended brackets. The idea is that you heave yourself and the bar up to the next set of brackets twice...There's gotta be some kind of ancient ninja technique for this, because I have no idea how you're supposed to accomplish it without some kind of telekinesis.

The final challenge is a pair of overhead rails that have a number of dips and rises in them as well as perpendicular offshoots that extend above the rail. The prospective ninja warrior has to grab two rings that loop around the rails and move from one side of the rail to the other, again while hanging in mid-air. This one seemed as though it might have been the easiest, if not for the fact that you're already exhausted after attempting the other challenges.

I guess I was pretty happy with my performance. I managed to complete the air bike section, but completely whiffed the middle to. I made it about 1/4 of the way across on the 4th. I guess that was about an average performance. That's some tough stuff though.

Once Sasuke had finished completely belittling us, we went off to Monster Burger, the resident fast food restaurant in Muscle Park.

Think about this for a second.

Fast food restaurant in pro-physical health amusement park.

Yeah, doesn't make much sense to me either, especially considering that the Monster Burger, the flagship burger of the restaurant, is in fact 3 sandwiches stacked...A chicken burger, a hamburger and a BLT. Needless to say, I didn't finish mine.

It's almost like the restaurant is designed to replace all the calories you've burned off in the last couple hours, completely negating any health benefits you may have accrued through your hard work. Strange. I would have expected a health food place.

Then an entirely different possibility occurred to me.

Perhaps the restaurant is meant to close some kind of loop. Fat is burned throughout the course of your stay at Muscle Park and then immediately restored when lunch time rolls around. This thereby creates a closed loop and ensures continuous patronage of the establishment. People never get more physically fit and the difficulty of the activities is such that you would have to extremely well conditioned to perform well. This is on top of the inherent difficulty of each of the games the first time through. Maybe this is thinking too deeply on the matter, but seriously, the Monster Burger is the only food I've seen in 6 months that looks like it might have been portioned out in an American restaurant.

I also made something that I prefaced with the ominous disclaimer: "I'm about to making a sweeping generalization on Japanese society and culture." The following was uttered after the disclaimer:

The nature of the games in Muscle Park reminded me of a common gameplay feature in many Japanese-developed video games. Muscle Park's activities are far to difficult to master on the first time through. In this sense, activities like the agility/balance/coordination tester cannot present a truly accurate representation of your physical conditioning without many, many repeated visits. One test simply isn't enough, thus making the initial results inherently inaccurate. This is similar to Japanese RPG design. In order to truly experience all the content the majority of these games offer, you have to play through it numerous times, despite the extreme length of the game (as much as 40-80 hours in some cases). This focus on repetition on a task that should really only require one iteration may not be entirely pervasive in Japanese society, but it certainly does seem to pop up from time to time. Perfection seems at times to be absolutely integral to certain aspects of recreation in Japanese culture. Or maybe again, looking too deeply into this.

We did a couple more games before we left. The most interesting one was a team game. Two people stand on opposite sides of a model of downtown Tokyo. There is a model train that runs around the perimeter of the model and, most importantly, two removable sections of track which are mounted on sliding boards. These two boards are each manned by one of the people participating in the challenge. Beneath the sliding board is a small cavity filled with square blocks. The concept is simple: take the blocks out and stack them into a tower. The problem is that you are not allowed to touch or modify the positioning of the blocks when the drawer is closed. You have to slide your section of the track out in order to get the blocks and to build your tower, then close it in time to stop the train from derailing when it gets back to your section. Oh, you also have to build your tower on the sliding track segment, and if that topples, you lose as well. Yeah, and there's a 3 minute time limit.

Pretty tough.

Tuan and I gave it a shot, and we came out pretty well. Ended up close to finishing our towers, but we ran out of time. Close, but no cigar.

And this was where things took a turn for the worse.

I had intended to go back to Toyoda with Sean and everyone to play a round of poker. Unfortunately, my cold was starting to seriously fuck me up. I had a splitting headache at this point and was beginning to feel a fever coming on.

By the time we left Muscle Park and Odaiba I was in seriously bad shape. I had to duck out of poker. The train ride from Tokyo station to Musashi-Koganei basically involved me resting my head in my arms and trying to fall asleep but failing to due to the headache.

The walk home from the station was torturous. I had my hood up and was shivering like crazy, probably looking something like an unusually fashionable meth-addict. This walk also had one of life's bizarre little coincidences nicely wrapped in it. I ran across one of my students from my very, very young children's class (3-5 years old). My head was bent over so I think she was the only member of her family that recognized me...I gave a little wave as I went past and hoped that I didn't look too much like a zombie. I bought a bunch of Vitamin C packs at the 7/11, made it home, and quickly hopped into my futon shivering like crazy and went to sleep.

The next day was tons of fun. I sat in front of my computer for about 14 hours trying not to move my head because it would instantly give me a terrible headache. I spent nearly the entire time playing World of Warcraft. Sad, I know, but god damn, I felt like crap, and additionally bad for bailing on Sean's poker game. What a shame.

Well, that was that week. What a disappointing ending...

Once again, this is a (still recovering)

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello