Communications Uplink...Week 2 (May 18th to May 25th)

black screen

At the bottom of the screen the following words fade-in:

Communications Uplink
Week 2

Fade to black

End obnoxious opening. Anyone who plays a select PC shooter named after the process of radioactive decay will get that.


So, onto the second week of this most amazing of working vacations. When last we left our protagonist he was enjoying a wonderful dinner of Japanese beer and Korean BBQ at a neighborhood eating establishment. Good stuff.

Sunday and Monday! My first real weekend since I got here. No time to relax though, as this was also the first chance I really had to poke around the city I'm in. And so it came to pass that on Sunday morning I pulled out my trusty Canon S5 IS (that's a camera) slung it around my shoulder and headed off to find Koganei park, which is noted for it's cherry blossoms and being the location of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural museum.

The park, as it turns out, is only about 2 minutes from my apartment, although it took me much longer to get there the first time I went. There's a bridge right on my road that takes me into the park, so it's quite easy to get there.

I didn't go into the museum while I was there. I spent most of my time just walking around, admiring the fact that there is a HUGE park in the middle of this (dense to me) city. Very impressive and very very nice. The trees are very old and quite large, and there were a lot of nice flower beds. Hell, the canal that runs through part of the park had Koi in it! It was very nice. There were a large number of crows around the park (or Ravens, whatever they are, they're huge). It was pretty busy in the park but that's to be expected because after all:

A: it was a nice day and
B: This is Japan.

I walked around for about three hours then headed home and did some shopping. I have a ton of pictures, but they're all posted on Facebook, so you'll need an account there to see them.

The rest of Sunday was fairly unremarkable. I cleaned the house a bit more and continued to nuke my sink with drain cleaner and my washing machine with...washing...machine...cleaner...stuff.

Now Monday. Monday was a trip. Monday was pivotal. Well, not really, but Monday did allow me to post this.

Monday started for me around about 10 o'clock. I had breakfast and left the house at around about 12. Headed down to Musashi-Koganei station...

break.

My mother just informed me that I should write this as though my grandmother was my only audience. I'll try to get this finished within the next year, but the amount of details necessary to accomplish this feat is quite daunting.

Train Stations. These are the arteries that pump life into the monolithic metropolis that is Tokyo (alliterate that!). They operate in a fairly unconventional (for a North American) manner. Fortunately their signage is mostly bilingual as well. Anyways, before you get into the station, and unless you have a Suica card, you have to buy a ticket. This is an interesting process. You crane your neck and look at the huge colour-coded map of the Tokyo rail system and figure out your location and your destination. The destination on the map is accompanied with a value in Yen. You then key that value into the machine, deposit the money, grab your ticket and put it into the gate.

Now you're in the station proper. Depending upon the size, they're either difficult to navigate or simplistic. Musashi-Koganei is simple. Shinjuku is not. As my esteemed coworker once exclaimed "It's like a fucking airport mate!". As the kids say these days, tru dat. The two times I transferred in there I spent quite a while just wondering around. The other unusual thing is that the trains play this bizarre jingle every time they leave the station. I hear it all the time from my classroom. The trains themselves are fairly typical I guess. Except for the LCDS that play commercials and give news reports while you're riding them. That's pretty cool. Also, advertisement, and lots of it. Now, when you get off the train at your destination, there's one very important thing to remember. If you haven't put the right amount of cash on your ticket YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE STATION. The first time I took a trip on a train I was totally confused when the gate closed on me. I had a serious feeling of everyone in the station pointing, laughing and saying "look at the stupid gaijin." That probably wasn't the case, but I still felt like an idiot. Anyways, you have to go the fare adjustment machine and pay some extra money to leave the station. Weird? I thought so. Maybe I'm just some wide-eyed country boy though.

This trip, much like my previous ones on the train, did not fail to be entertaining. I love riding the train. Even on the way home from losing at poker this past weekend, drunk. Still loved it. There's just so much to see, whether it's the colourful billboards, the neon signs, or the neighbourhoods that look like they've been built and rebuilt for the last 2 centuries. Which they kind of have been. Anyways, it truly is a unique city.

Which is an interesting point I have to bring up about the architecture. I find that all the buildings seem very tall, but this isn't really the case. They're just very narrow. It makes buildings that are 10 or 11 stories tall seem deceptively tall. Still, pretty neat.

Anyways, so here I was on my way to Tachikawa, the largest city that is close to my apartment and school. Tachikawa felt like a movie when I got there. My destination was the Leopalace offices in order to cajole their fine employees into giving me access to the inter-web. The route to their offices was almost entirely over elevated walkways that spanned the city streets. Very impressive. Really smart way of taking pedestrians off the road. It was very odd walking along the walk though. To either side of it were either blank office tower walls, streets or odd little buildings that looked like they'd sprung up spontaneously one morning at the whim of a particularly enterprising individual.

Tokyo is rife with juxtapositions between the old and the new, the defunct and the ultra high-tech.

Leopalace's offices were interesting. It took me 45 minutes or so to get through the process. The apartment I'm living in is very old, it's been used by GEOS teachers for about 10 years. So, although I'm SUPPOSED to get internet for free with the apartment, due to the length of the contract I'm stuck paying 3500 yen a month. $35 is more then worth it though. Thankfully, the process was sped up due to a timely phonecall from the Japanese English Teacher at my school who assisted with some translating of the highest of standards. The only real downside of the visit was looking at the advertisements for other Leopalace apartments playing in loop on the televisions in the lobby. My apartment is a hell of a lot dirtier and more disorganized then those are. Eh, you can't have everything.

I left the offices of Leo Palace feeling pretty accomplished. After all, that was my first major interaction that I had with someone who spoke the bare minimum of English, much like my grasp of Japanese. Well, that's unfair. The Leopalace representative had a little bit of spoken English, so it wasn't so bad.

Anyways, after stopping to gawk and take a few pictures of Tachikawa (seriously now, facebook damn you) I hopped back on the train for the hour long ride to downtown Tokyo. I remembered on this trip that my first trip, down to Yokohama, I'd heard a baby crying. The thing that had occurred to me at the time, while I was beneath that crushing culture shock, was that, oddly enough, no matter where you go, every baby cries in the same language.

I wasn't feeling nearly so melancholic this train ride.

I made it to Shinjuku station without any problems and, after getting turned around a couple of times, made it onto the Yamanote line. This line circles downtown Tokyo and hits most of the major cities: Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku. The last was my destination. I'd heard tell from one of my coworkers that Harajuku was home to a legendary SoftBank store that had full English service. SoftBank is a cell phone company in Japan, and guess what I was on the hunt for.

This process went very smoothly, took about half an hour and I got a free coke out of the deal. I was now the proud owner of an INCREDIBLY powerful cellphone. The camera in this phone is within spitting distance of the $400 camera I bought to Japan, just much more compact. Proof, again, is on Facebook. The store itself was very odd. Everyone was wired up with a headset and moved around in black suits like a Secret Service detail. When I asked the first guy I saw "Eiigo-ga wakarimas-ka?" he put his hand to his ear and within seconds I was speaking English with a very nice Japanese woman. She had to pins on her blouse, both shaped like pigs, one coloured with the Chinese flag, the other with the American. I assumed this meant that she knew English and Mandarin, but that was merely an assumption.

I saw very little of Harajuku after I got the cell. I was quite tired and headed home. The one thing I did notice about this city was the large number of gaijin (foreigners) around. All the way out to Tachikawa and back I could count the number of non-Japanese on my hands. Especially in Koganei. In the two weeks I've been here, I've only seen 2 other gaijin. Harajuku was foul with us gaijin though. I heard at least French and German, and other English. Eh, I guess it's a pretty touristy spot.

I headed home after that, totally exhausted. I went to bad around about 11:30 and shortly after I hit the futon, realized that the rain that had started at ten pretty heavily had not only failed to lighten but was in fact getting heavier. I love falling asleep to the sound of rain, so I slept well that night.

I woke up at 8 the next morning. That was a luxury I wouldn't have for the rest of the week. It was still POURING rain in the morning. As it turns out Tokyo had been hit by a small Typhoon which had developed due to a warm air pocket off the Pacific coast. Pretty crazy. The drainage system is pretty advanced though. By the time I left for work at 12 the rain had stopped and you never would have been tell that so much rain had fallen.

The first three days of the week at school were fairly unremarkable. I got more and more into the swing of teaching while getting a little faster at planning lessons. I taught many of my students for the first time, which was nice, but stressful. On Thursday I taught kids classes for the first time by myself. I'd been worried about these since the interview way back in January. So far *knocks on wood* They've been quite good. Tuesday night I went to 7-11 and bought what the Japanese call a "Kok-sai Terefone Cardo" or International Phone Card for $35 and talked to my mom for all of 26 minutes before I burned through it. It was nice to hear her voice though.

Thursday the internet arrived and was installed before I left for work. I couldn't sign in until Friday morning due to some kind of administration thing, but that was pretty much it.

Friday I made my first contacts with everyone online, which was quite nice. I also bought a desk and brought it home. That, as it turns out, was incredibly hard to do. Lugging along an 11kg box that's about 3 feet tall is kind of annoying. I was also very tired.

Ah, an aside. The sun rises incredibly early in Japan. I'm talking around about 4:00 Am. Totally bright. I'm guessing that has something to do with the way the Earth is angled. It goes down much sooner then it does in Canada. It's usually pretty dark by around 8 these days. Because of this, I spent the whole week snapping awake at 4 in the morning thinking it was time to go to work only to realize that I could sleep for another 4 hours. Ah well.

Saturday ended the week pretty solidly. I was completely exhausted due to the lack of sleep stress of teaching for the first week. A couple of guys and girls from the training group were going out Saturday night to go clubbing and dining in Shibuya. I really wanted to go, but was far too exhausted to marshal my forces enough to head off. I'm sorry I missed it, but I should see them this weekend.

Anyways, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll get this updated before next Sunday, but we shall see. I kinda like the idea of doing this on a bi-weekly basis. Opinions?

later everyone!

Oh, and a final word. I have a theme song for this trip to Japan. Click the blue.

This was the first song I listened to when I took off from Vancouver.

Flight in and week one (May 9th/10th to May 17th)

I wish I'd the opportunity to write this sooner, but I haven't really had the free time until now. I've been cleaning my apartment all day, so I'm pretty exhausted, especially since today was the first time I'd jogged in about a month. Busy day all around I guess. Anyways, let's get right to it.



The Departure and Flight.

I realize that this post is titled for the 9th to 17th, but I must relate a story from the 8th before I begin. After the last day of training in Vancouver, myself and a few of the other male trainees went out to take care of a large amount of shopping that we had left (naturally) until the last possible moment. We spent nearly seven hours running around downtown Vancouver. The most remarkable part of this however was what happened to one of my fellow teachers to be. Early in the day, he left a folder that contained all of his paperwork from the week long training session, including his plane ticket, at a currency exchange office. We ran back there and got the folder fine. However, towards the end of the shopping at about 7PM, we realized that he had left it again. What followed was one of the most hectic searches I've ever taken part in. He and I managed to find the folder in only 1/2 hour though, and so everything ended up being okay.

We woke up at around 8 on Friday in time to make it to the airport about 3 hours before the flight. A number of us were staying in the same hotel and taking the same flight, so we had all agreed to leave at the same time, 9 AM. With the exception of some trouble getting loaded up into taxis on account of 4 cruise ships having come in that morning, we managed to make it to the airport in plenty of time. I ended up riding by myself which was too bad. On the other hand, it did let me appreciate Vancouver one more time. I swear, it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I understand why my grandmother loved growing up in the rockies so much.

I made it through the security checkpoints in the airport without any problems. They didn't even swab my computer amazingly. Guess my new khakis and polo shirt made me look as clean cut as possible. My last meal in Canada was a Tim Hortons Breakfast Sandwich and an apple fritter. Appropriate, no? We got on the plane without any problems. Vancouver's airport is really quite beautiful. They have a very impressive aquarium in the departures lounge. Certainly I nice final look at Canada's flora and fauna.

I flew to Japan on a 747, largest plane that I've ever been on by far. Our group all checked in together, which was very handy. We ended up sitting in the middle row, four people filling one row and myself and one of my roommates from training, Kevin, sitting alone in the next seat up. Despite a little friendly feud with the teacher behind me, the trip was excellent, if somewhat cramped. Leg space wasn't really available, so I was incredibly cramped by the end of it. On the plus side, they had a halfway decent selection of in-flight movies. Okay, not really. They had one good movie. I saw Sanjuro first and was INCREDIBLE. Especially the last 4 minutes. Some of the best film making I have ever seen. Totally worth watching. I highly recommend it. The next one was Jumper, which had a great idea, good effects, but ultimately week acting from the lead actor and actress and a pretty abysmal script. "Did I just teleport?" says it all. I also watched the first half of I Am Legend with Kevin. That's all the good parts of the movie, so that ended up being okay. The rest of my time was split between playing Final Fantasy: Crisis Core and reading the graphic novel for V for Vendetta. Also, I got a nice little bottle of red wine with my lunch, so that was really great!

We took off from Vancouver at 12:45 PM. When we landed in Narita Airport in Japan, it was a little before 2 PM the next day. The flight path took us basically up the coast of North America past Alaska and down over the Aleutians past Kamchatka to Japan. Never thought I'd be able to say that I'd flown over such remote places.

It took us about 2 hours to make it through immigration and customs in Japan. I was exhausted by this point already. I had only slept about 4 hours the night before due to one of our roommates leaving at 2 AM. We gave him a hand on the way out, which didn't leave for much time to pack and sleep. We met the teacher that would escort us to Tokyo and beyond outside customs. He was very nice and gave us a hand getting all of our large luggage shipped to our apartments (I'm glad I packed some extra clothes in my carry on.)

We rode the Narita express to Shinjuku station in the middle of Tokyo. The whole way there the students were quizzing our escort one what to do and how to get around setting up in Japan. I was trying to pay attention, but honestly I spent most of the time staring out the window. I was amazed. There were so many things I hadn't seen before: rice patties, tiled roofs, bamboo stands...everything was so new and amazing. It was rainy, but it somehow added to the mystique of things. Especially when we hit Tokyo and things started to get very, very large. I have since said that when looking out a trains window at the cityscape of Tokyo one has the impression that they could walk over the roofs of the buildings in any directions for hours with little to no difficulty. It's so very, very dense.

Sadly, this train ride didn't really prepare me for the insanity that was Shinjuku station. I thought i'd seen busy places before, but I was wrong. Our escort chauffeured us around, ultimately meeting up with the other two teachers that would ferry groups of two out to their appropriate schools and apartments.

I was the second student to be dropped off. The new escort took me and the other new teacher to a different station (I have no idea where) and we all got off, ready to go. I had, unfortunately at this point, lost my train ticket. I have no idea where it went. The upshot of this was that I had to wait behind the gate at the station while the escort took the new teacher to her school.

I have no idea how long that took.

It felt like a year. I think that may be the longest I have ever waited. I felt so...isolated standing in that station. It was complete sensory overload. Everyone was moving around so fast and I was completely disoriented. I consider myself to be a fairly aware person. I read everything, everywhere that I go, signs, T-Shirts, whatever. It was so bizarre standing in a place where everything that was said sounded like gibberish and I couldn't even read anything to figure my way through things. It was extremely disconcerting. It was also the first time I felt what it was like to be a minority. That's kind of unusual. This short time also gave me my first feeling of being unusually tall. Never thought I'd feel that either.

Anyways, after a scary length of time, my escort showed up again and we headed out to my new school. We rode the Chuo line. We had a little bit of conversation along the way, but I gotta say, I think I made a complete ass of myself. "Wow, look at this! Look at that! I can't believe what I just saw..." etc. etc. etc. What do you expect, it was my first time there!

So we stopped by Musashi-Koganei school briefly. I met the NET (Native English Teacher) and the JET (Japanese English Teacher) and a couple of my students that were there. Then Karen and I trudged off through the pissing rain to my apartment. It was a 30 minute walk to the place and the whole time I was kind of freaking out. Sadly, it didn't get better after I got to the my new place of residence.

The apartment was a shit hole. I can't stress that enough. It was dirty as hell and to top things off, at some point, the previous resident had managed to lose the drain trap for the sink. The sink also didn't have a kink in the pipe to prevent vapors from rising up from the sewer. So the whole house smelled like raw sewage. That was a nice way to get an introduction to Tokyo. The escort and I trudged back through the rain to the Family Mart down the road where I got some food and the first of many Nikkuman, which is a meat bun similar to the one my aunt Theresa used to cook for me.

After returning to the apartment I sent to the task of unpacking a little bit and getting my bearings in the place. Like I said, it was a mess, and I'm very happy that as of this writing I'm mostly finished cleaning it. I unpacked my futon and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how it worked. But eventually I got it set up (wrong) and went to sleep. The futon was three pieces: A small mattress, the futon itself, which is a larger, softer mattress, and a small comforter. They're supposed to go on the floor in that order. I had it set up with the futon on the floor, mattress on top, and comforter on top of that. Oh well, it was still comfortable.

I got up decently early the next day, which was good. My plan of not sleeping ultimately paid off, letting me synchronize with Japanese time a little bit easier.

Sunday was a hard day to make it through. I distracted myself in the morning with a little bit of cleaning and unpacking. My larger bags showed up at 9 o'clock, so I unpacked those and started setting the place up a a little bit.

There were two critical points on this day that I made it through, which I found kind of surprising that I managed to make it past. The first was leaving the apartment for the first time. I've made it fairly well known that my natural tendency is towards maintaining the status quo. Change is a scary thing and should be avoided. Every part of me was saying that I should just fortify my position in the house and stay the fuck away from the outside world. Play a video game or something, just don't go out.

Well, I managed to squash that instinct.

I headed out to the station area to get some food for the house. I ended up missing Seiyu (more on this later) and going to it's competitor mall which was about a half block down. Honest mistake on my behalf, the building were so close together that I didn't even realize that I was going into a different building. Just not used to the tight proximity of everything.

I must take an aside for this right now. The proximity of everything in Japan is AMAZING. People DO NOT have lawns in Japan. If they're lucky, they have a little fenced in garden with a few small trees. It's very beautiful and, honestly, I think I prefer this to the way neighborhoods are organized in North America. Everything is so much more efficient. Anyone who's seen my pictures knows whats I'm talking about. For those who haven't...

Anyways, shopping took much longer then anticipated. It's a hell of a lot longer to do when you can't read what's on the packages. I still can't figure out what's soy sauce. I found myself gravitating towards western products, so I ended up with some Frosted Flakes, a bunch of Ramen, Oreos and Ritz crackers. Taking my bounty home I was still freaking out pretty hardcore. I wasn't listening to my Ipod like I would normally because I wasn't used to the traffic patterns yet. Cars drive on the opposite side of the road in Japan, and there are no sidewalks on the back streets. Furthermore, people on bikes ride very fast on the sidewalk most of the time. Kinda dangerous. I'm used to it now, but at the time I was pretty paranoid.

It helped walking to the store that day. There's a few familiar things along that route. Namely the 3 Seven Elevens, a Denny's and a KFC. I'll have to stop by one of those restaurants at some point, but I'm content with the Japanese food for now.

Anyways, I got home around about 1 o'clock. On the train from Narita the previous days the new teachers and I that lived in the Tokyo area had decided to try and meet at Yokohama the next day. I had no idea where Yokohama was and I was really, really set against going. This was mostly because I didn't have a cell phone or anything to help me if I got lost other then an incredibly rudimentary knowledge of Japanese and a small Japanese-English dictionary. I spent a long time sitting in my apartment debating whether I should go or not. A long time. Nearly two hours. This was the second salient point for me on this trip. I fervently believe that if I hadn't left the apartment that day, I wouldn't have been able to make it through the first two weeks here. Fortunately, I did. I managed to navigate that train system for the hour long trip down to Yokohama. I spent the whole time gawking like an idiot out the window of the train and everything in the city. It's pretty neat riding the train in Tokyo. You'll be looking at blank condominiums for the longest time, then suddenly see a quick glimpse of a scramble crossing with brightly lit TV screens and everything. It's like a glimpse into a fantasy world of some kind, very cool.

I arrived at Yokohama and hour and a half late and completely disoriented. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet the rest of the group and the station was incredibly busy. I ended up walking out and around a little bit. I passed over a beautiful canal where a Japanese Woman handed me my first handbill. Then I took a right and passed by a cat that was standing beside a small fountain right next to a building. It was kind of comforting seeing something as familiar as a cat in that environnment. Right after that I took a right and left one of the major streets. I had this weird moment of clarity as I walked between the buildings on that pedestrian walk. It seemed so quiet despite being so downtown. The path was lined with large stones that had been sawn in half and polished to act as seats I suppose. On the right there was a hospital of some kind I think. The wall on the building was glass and all I could see were beds and nurses. Very strange. However, I felt this huge sense of accomplishment the whole time. I had made it halfway across Tokyo by myself. If I could do this, I could do anything. I left about 1/2 hour after I arrive, as awestruck as I had been on the way there. I forget what I did the rest of the day, but I know I slept well.

Monday was unremarkable. I went out and spent another couple hours staring at store shelves in the not-Seiyu super market and ended up with some more food stuffs, including four apples that cost me 600 yen ($6). They're good, but I've only 2 so far, a week later. I also cleaned my kitchen today, which was absolutely filthy, like the rest of the apartment.

Tuesday I began my 3 day training session with a sub-teacher. It went pretty well, I spent most of the day observing how he taught and getting some lesson planning practice. My trainer was kind enough to set me straight and bring me to Seiyu rather then the other department store. We also went out to lunch that afternoon.

This was not a good thing.

Oh, I was happy to go out for lunch, but the food I got did not inspire confidence for the rest of my year in Japan. When we were ordering I just pointed at the dish I wanted. It ended up being composed of 5 things: Rice, Natto (a sticky, tasteless bean), some kind of vegetable I'd never seen, and a thin white paste. Oh, and a raw egg. I had to mix that all around and then eat it. After I poured some of these peppery-seasame seeds and a bunch of wasabi it was pretty good, but before that it was just tasteless mush. Nothing else remarkable about Tuesday. I was exhausted by the end of it, jet lag being what it is. Went home, slept.

Wednesday saw me teach my first class, which was a KH class, children between 10 and 12. It went pretty well all and all, even though I only had one student. Again, more planning and whatnot, nothing else too special. The trainer and I got a sushi bento for dinner (a bento is a sort of boxed lunch in Japan, but is generally used to refer to any packaged meal). This meal proved that I do in fact like sushi. I was unsure if I did before but I dug everything in this meal. If I remember correctly the bento contained the following: 2 tuna rolls (the rest were pieces of fish on sticky rice), a larger piece of tuna, some kind of mollusk, a prawn, another kind of fish, salmon roe, a fish paste and... that's it. Oh, ginger of course on the side, as well as soy sauce. Very good stuff.

Thursday I taught a couple more classes and planned some more lessons. Towards the end of the day the trainer and I went out to Jonathan's, a western-ish restaurant for dinner. It was pretty damn good, I had some curry soup and sticky rice. Thursday was also my 24th Birthday. Yay. I only told my trainer about it. He bought me a very nice soup bowl and chopsticks, which I'm looking forward to using the first chance I get. On the way home that night I bought an Orange Kit-Kat and a large can of Sapporo. It was a pretty shoddy celebration, but I felt good anyways. I got the email from everyone the next day.

Friday was the big day. Teaching by myself for the first time. I wish I could say I wasn't nervous, but that would be a lie. I was dying at the beginning of the day. Friday is very busy for me, 5 classes with a few short breaks to plan more lessons. I made it through okay, although by the end I was wrecked.

Saturday was worse then Friday. I got up very early to plan a few lessons and made it with plenty of time to get going. I managed to pull it off though. At the end of the day my new coworker, the other NET, took me out for Korean Barbecue, which was excellent, although the weather was terrible. It actually had been all week, quite rainy and cold, not what I was expecting.

That was it. The first week. Very intense over all. I'll post about the next week tomorrow probably. As it is, I have to head to bed shortly. Thanks for reading and, as I always, I will continue to provide impressions of Japan from the Canadian Eye.

First from Japan

And this is not going to be some crazy story of my adventures out here. This will be a much more banal post then you would likely expect. Crazy stories will come later tonight or tomorrow.

I woke up this morning with a mission. Some might say it was a mission fraught with disaster and overzealous in the extreme. I would agree with them. But at the time that I received said mission I was full of youthful energy and felt that nothing in the world could destroy me, least of all the journey to attaining my objective: a clean bathroom.

And so, clad only in a pair of boxer shorts and armed with various japanese commercial cleaners, an assortment of brushes and a child-like optimism, I set forth to cleanse the lavatory of its microbial invaders. The battle was hard fought from the start, pillboxes and killing zones set up over valleys, around corners, beneath the surface. But my troops were strong, moving through the grooves and cracks, evicting the biological contaminants that had colonized my water closet. Some areas were particularly hard fought, one crevice earning the nickname "suicide canyon" for the number of forays which were repulsed along its width.

Two hours later, I emerged, along with a cloud of steam, from the bathroom. "Mission Accomplished" I proclaimed with a false air of bravado. I knew that it had been impossible to oust some of the insurgents that had secreted themselves in narrow mountain crevasses. But I would persevere, I would stay the course, and perhaps not this week, or next, I would attack again, and hopefully bring order to chaos. I knew I would conquer despite my eyes stinging from the noxious cleaning fumes and my hands having become more shriveled then the testicles of a 97 year-old-man. I would win.

So yeah, I cleaned my bathroom today. Exciting. I'll talk about my trip out here later tonight. I'm running off to play poker with some teacher from the school, so I'll be back online around about 1:00 AM Tokyo time, that would make it around about 11AM Canada time...on Sunday.

So long for now, be posting again later.

Well, this is it.

And here begins the true adventure.

I'll be flying halfway around the world tomorrow to a country I have never seen. I'm finally leaving continental North America.

An incredibly long day, got my Visa, finished my training, and walked around for nearly five hours shopping. That was ended by having to look in a panic for the folder that one of my new coworkers left in Sears that contained, among other things, the substrate of all he had learned this week along with his actual itinerary for the flight tomorrrow morning. Had a last meal in Canada, at the Speakeasy, a local bar. Had a nice plain hamburger, with fries. Very tasty. I have a copy of Harper's to give to the guy that is meeting me in Japan, a box of chocolates for my new manager and students, and a flask of maple syrup for someone else. I'm packed, and I'm leaving at 12:45 tomorrow. I'll be landing at 2:00PM.

It's been a great, if intense, week. I'll be online as soon as I can. I need to plan my next couple of weeks on the flight over.

Let me end this by saying...good bye Canada. I'll miss you.

I should be updating again within a month (hopefully).

Ja mata!

First two lessons finished!

Well, I intended to update this yesterday, but unfortunately it took far longer for me to create my lesson plan then I thought it would.

*insert 3 hour break, my last steak in Canada and three glasses of beer*

It's good to be back. The model lessons I taught yesterday and today were quite challenging. Having now taught two native Japanese speakers, I feel much more confident in my abilities as an English teacher. That's not to say that I feel I've come anywhere close to mastering the GEOS method of teaching, but I'm somewhat better at it (I think). I had a few problems with my course yesterday and a few more problems with it today. But, if I look over the shortcomings of these two lessons, I figure I can probably learn from my errors.

It's been a pretty crazy day. It was nice to get the second teaching demonstration out of the way. Just have to worry about all the lessons for the rest of the year now. Speaking of which, I got my schedule today. It's a little bit different then what I thought it would be. I actually don't have any classes earlier then 1:00, so I guess my days start a little later then I thought they would. I'll update this later, but I tend to have a lot of open spaces.

We've been having dinner at various bars around our hotel the past couple nights. Today it was Wings, which is just a half block down from the hotel. Very good food, nice decor, and conducive to intelligent, if somewhat drunken at times, conversation. On the way there though tonight we walked around the neighbourhood a little bit looking for a different place. We'd already been to Wings a couple of times and the night before our bar was a little bit underwhelming. As we walked through the neighbourhood we were confronted with one of the most bizarre sights I've seen in my time on this earth. An old man in a hospital gown and some white underclothes wheeled past our group in a wheel chair while expressing insane utterances as though cthulu himself had infested his mind and soul.

Weird.

Vancouver's really beautiful though. Huge construction boom right now for the Olympics. They're already building the Sky Traing station that's extending across the bay. Speaking of views, wow. The GEOS school has an AMAZING view just down the way close to the ocean. I'll get some pictures of that tomorrow hopefully. Not sure if I'll be able to upload them for a while though. I'll be in Japan a couple weeks before I can get phone and internet.

Anyways though, I gotta do a bit of homework, I'll post again tomorrow before going dark for a week.

First day in Vancouver

So here I am. Vancouver, BC, on the other side of Canada and on the edge of heading over to the other side of the world.

The flight was fine on the way, other then having to drag all those heavy suitcases around. Also, laptops are so handy, but they get a lot of attention in airports, kind of unfortunate. The hotel is in downtown Vancouver, and it's kind of lame. Pictures to follow...I'll upload them when the internet doesn't blow.

Anyways, yeah, I'm heading for dinner soon. Suffice it to say that the trip into Japan should be very easy. I'm heading direct to the apartment, no time spent in a hotel before that. Rent's about $47000Y a month, so that's cheaper then expected. So, it's looking really good. I'm working monday-saturday 12-9 during the week and 11-8.

I'm about to head out to dinner, I'll update this some more tomorrow.

later everyone!