Mein Schloss!

Went for a drive the other day and on a whim decided to visit some historical sights. As it was a whim, I didn't have my digital camera so these low-res cellphone shots will have to do:

And in other news, the following excerpt from my company bulletin board:

The spring Police Safety Driving campaign is on! Speed traps, safety belt checks, and cell-phone checks are up around town, so please be aware and forewarned. Penalties are: no safety-belt: a written warning, no fee. Speeding: fees depend on amount over the limit, talking on your cell phone: 6,000 yen. (in order to legally use a cell-phone in your car, your car must be stopped with the engine off)

So theoretically the police DO care how people drive around here... they just have no effect. Speeding, running red lights, and cellphone talking are all par-for-the-course in this town. I don't know about the seatbelts though...
Some idiot today nearly hit me head-on because he decided to suddenly lurch out of his turn lane and go straight... while I was making my "protected" right turn. Foolio.

Something in the air...

We had Spring festival last week so the streets were even more crowded than usual. The festival itself was somewhat boring this year, but it's always interesting to see the huge floats taking up one side of the only wide street in town.

SaKuRa

Even in Tokyo there are plenty of blossoming cherry trees...

My hovercraft is full of eels...

German-style beer hall, filled with Japanese people (plus me), with some guy playing 'Tequila!' on the saxaphone. Yeah, it was one of those nights...

Faces have been blurred to protect the innocent.

Noise noise noise

Sometimes I get asked by my ex-laguage school in S.F. to help give prospective teachers advice about Japan.

So you want to teach English in Japan? Here's some advice:

1) Pretend you're a celebrity.
That way when people stare/glare at you in shock you can pretend it's because you're famous and they're just trying to remember where they know you from rather than being xenophobic.

2) Learn Japanese.
People probably still won't actually speak to you in Japanese, because everyone wants to practice English (not just being xenophobic), but at least you'll know when they're talking about you.

3) Bring a dictionary with you at all times.
Even if you don't need to look up a word do so. It reminds people that you're new to all this and they should go easy on you and also gives you some time to think and try to figure out just what the hell is going on.

4) Learn how to draw.
A picture says a thousand words which is nice because saying a thousand words is tiresome and your students won't know 998 of them anyway.

5) If you're over 5 feet tall bring clothes.
Lots of clothes. And shoes.

6) Practice driving a huge manual-transmission Mack truck the wrong way down a narrow one-way alley blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back.
Then you'll do okay driving here for the first time.

7) For goodness sake, get some teaching credentials.
All of the fast-food English teachers around here make it difficult to actually teach students because the students become used to half-assed alleged teaching and confuse talking about the weekend in broken English for language studying.

8) Beware of the Dark Side.

Ume and take

'Tis the season to hike around...

Last weekend marked the end of the blossoming plum trees so I went out to see them before it started raining again.

Later I visited Futamata castle for a picnic lunch.

Okay, so only the stone steps are left but these stone steps have a lot of history behind them.

Among other things, this was the castle of Tokugawa Nobuyasu. He was accused of plotting against the then ruler Nobunaga Oda and so his father, Tokugawa Ieyasu (the future Shogun), had to order him to commit suicide, which eventually he did. Famous story, old stone steps.

Proposer Of Your Life

I won't even comment on this sign but it does remind me of two stories from class:

1)
I have a late-middle aged ladies conversational community class once a week and the ladies like to try to embarrass me sometimes. Here's one incident:


K-san: I know a joke.

Me: Okay.

K-san: There is a reality show contest where one very rich man must choose a wife. Three women enter the contest. The man gives each woman $1000 and will choose the winner from what each woman does with the money. One woman spends the money buying an expensive gift for the man. The second woman spends the money to make herself look beautiful. The third woman invests the money and doubles it. Who does he pick?

Me: I don't know, the one who invested it?

K-san: The one with the biggest tits.

(Everyone laughs except C-san)

Me: Okay...

C-san: What are 'tits'?

Me: Er, you know... a woman's.. er... chest area.

C-san: Oh!

N-san: Neh... men like big tits.

Everyone except me: (Nodding in agreement) Neh...

Me: Okay... er....

M-san: But some men say the shape is more important than the size.

N-san: So desu neh...

K-san: But most men like big tits.

C-san: What kind of tits do you like Sensei?

Me: Okay, we are not having this conversation.

K-san: Sensei, do you like big tits?

Me: This conversation... is over. Now... past participle...

2)
I also have a young ladies community class once a week on a different day. Two of the ladies are addicted to watching Sex and the City on DVD and always want to start the class by talking about it.
So, we just spent about twenty minutes talking about the uncensored last season when:


M-san: I don't like orgies.

Me: What!?

M-san: I don't like orgies, they're too loud.

Me: Huh?

M-san: On my last vacation there were too many orgies and they were loud.

Me: Um, I don't think you're using quite the right word...

M-san: Orgies... people from Australia.

Me: Oh, Aussies! You mean Aussies?

M-san: I don't like orgy beef either...

(オージー･ビーフ)