Manila - Quiapo

Nao e a palavra filipina por "quiabo" como eu imaginava, mas talvez voce pode comprar arroz doce aqui, pois vendem de tudo nesta feira.

  
Quiapo is one of Manila's many street market areas. Cheap clothes, pirated DVDs, black market pharmaceuticals, watches, handtools, knives, toys, fruit, handmade baskets, anything you can think of.

  
Fresh mango may be the most popular fruit here.

  
Bob took a couple of these shots with my camera.

  
This guy is selling wire hotpot holders.

  
The keyring guys were taking a little break.

  

Crispy Chicken Ass

  

"Bunda crocante de galinha"
Mehmet had to order it, just so we could see it.

  

It's the part of the chicken where the long tail feathers grow. I nibbled just a little and yes!-- tastes like chicken! But we just couldn't get over the unappetizing quality of the word "ass," so it was a waste in the end.

  

Grilled tilapia for only about a dollar. 美味しいよね！

Boracay Part 2

Here are a few more photos from Boracay. I don't think they require any special explanation.

  
Me lembra das praias nordestinas no Brasil.

  

  

Manila - Malate

Malate is a poor neighborhood near the bay. It is perhaps the closest thing Manila has to Bangkok's Khao San Road, a quasi-backpacker's haven with a range of hotels, restaurants, and discos, but without so many tourists. Malate is a slice of real life. Small children selling peanuts or roses or just begging for money. Waiters working 7 days a week for $200 a month. The guy with the stack of cheap guitars on his shoulder. The rich cruising down the street in big black cheuffeured SUVs. Groups of young Filipinos out for dancing. Japanese or Korean guys with their young Filipina escorts. Trash. Pedicabs and motorcycles. Guys hawking Viagara or cheap old coins. There is a Starbucks in the middle of it all where you can pay 10 times more for a cup of coffee than at the Filipino coffeehouses down the street. There is an enormous clean Western-style shopping mall a couple of blocks away with all the western chains. Across the street it is all run-down storefronts of money-changers and lotto booths. Down on Remedios and Atlantico streets there are nice restaurants with great live bands inside, while outside there are cheap plastic tables and chairs with very cheap food and drinks.  
I don't know who the statue is, but it sits in a park at the entrance to Malate. We saw a show of a famous Filipino ska band in this park one evening.
  
There is an improbable number of these stainless steel bus things. They are a form of privately-owned public transport.
  
Pedicabs abound as well, if you don't have far to go.
  

  
The church in Malate. 80% of the population in the Philippines is Catholic.

  
Late afternoon at a fruit stand on a sidestreet in Malate.

  
Need a new hairstyle?

Boracay

Started off my first Philippines experience with 3 days on the island of Boracay. The Philippines has 7,101 islands, and Boracay is one of the smaller ones, with no airport of its own. From Manila we took an hour flight to a neighboring island, a 2 hour van ride to the other side of the island, and then a half hour boat ride to reach Boracay. These are the only two good pictures that are accessible at the moment, but I may add more later.

Comecei minha primeira experiencia nas Filipinas com 3 dias na ilha de Boracay, uma pequena das 7.101 ilhas das Filipinas.
  
Boracay is perhaps the Philippines' most famous touristy resort island, with one whole side of the island lined with hotels, restaurants, and discos. There are tons of foreigners there, lots of people hawking diving excursions, surfing and parasailing and jet-ski rentals, and there are loads of Muslim vendors selling fake watches and sunglasses.
  
It's a beautiful place with fine sand and very clear water, but a bit overpriced by Pinoy standards and it was a bit too tourist-heavy for my tastes. I had a good time there but was glad to get back to Manila.

Random pictures

A little froggee pointed out that I was overlooking the obvious, normal way of posting pictures here. Silly me. Thanks Moiji!

Here are a few random pictures from the rest of my Thailand-Cambodia trip. Click to enlarge them.


Amok, the national dish of Cambodia, is a mildly spicy coconut milk curry dish, usually with chicken, fish, or shrimp. Very tasty!


Images of the king and queen of Thailand can be found everywhere in Bangkok and throughout the country. King Bhumibol (poom-i-pon) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is Thailand's most famous jazz composer and performer. He has played with many famous musicians, including Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Lionel Hampton and Jack Teagarden. He also holds an honorary jazz degree from my university, UNT, among others. He's actually like 78 or 80 years old now, but all the images you see of him are of his younger years, like this one.


I don't know if it's a sacrilege to post the king's picture right next to that of a toilet, but there is no doubt that he has often used a toilet much like this one. Even less convenient to foreigners than the Japanese squat toilet, the Thai toilet is sometimes raised off the ground, with little wings to balance on, and it has no flush mechanism-- Usually you find a bucket of water nearby with a bowl floating in it, and you do the flushing manually.


A snack cart in Bangkok. Deep fried crickets, grasshoppers, scorpions, and grubs. I heard of one place in Cambodia where the specialty is big deep-fried spiders. But no-- I did not, would not, could not, and will not try any of them.


The road between the Thai-Cambodian border town of Poipet and the Angkor Wat anchor city of Siem Reap is, though only about 100 kilometers, a very dusty 3-hour rollercoaster ride on a heavily potholed red dirt road with a moderate traffic of jerry-rigged tractors, pickups piled improbably high with people or goods or both, motorcycles carrying anything from a trio of dead pigs to a stack of bicycles to a quartet of tiny Cambodian grannies, and also a number of other difficult-to-describe improvised vehicles. To either side of the road, the rice farms you see are heavily land-mined, so you occasionally see a de-mining team at work, as there are estimated to be as many as 2 million unexploded land mines left in Cambodia, planted as recently as 1998. (People who are missing a limb are a common sight throughout Cambodia.) The easiest way across this stretch is to find a couple of fellow travelers and negotiate a price with a share taxi, i.e. some random guy with a dirty mid-90s model Toyota Camry. The picture above could have been taken in front of any number of stilted shacks along that road, and when your driver gets low on gasoline, he'll probably stop at one of these.

Wat Arun

Walking to the west from Wat Pho down what appears to be a dead-end street lined with hawkers and food stands over a tiny footbridge and through a small open-air market building, one comes to the edge of the Mae Nam Chao Phraya, the big river that runs through Bangkok. Across the river is another small but famous wat, Wat Arun, named after the Indian god of dawn, Aruna. A small rickety ferry will take you across for 3 baht, about a dime.

 
Wat Arun, taken from a ferry like the one in the foreground. From here the structure looks like granite, but when you get close to it you see that it is covered in intricate mosaic tiles.

 
Lonely Planet says "The 82m prang (Khmer-style tower) was constructed during the first half of the 19th century by Rama II and Rama III. The unique design elongates the typical Khmer prang into a distinctly Thai shape. Its brick core has a plaster covering embedded with a mosaic of broken, multihued Chinese porcelain, a common temple ornamentation in the early Ratanokosin period, when Chinese ships calling at Bangkok used tonnes of old porcelain as ballast."

 
The stairs are very steep. The upper parts are closed to the public.

 
Back down on the river, the waters are crowded with small boats, mostly private tourist boats like this one, that are chartered by tourists for more lengthy exploration of Bangkok's extensive river and canal system.

 
As we floated by this one, I notice that it was not a charter boat but rather a floating pub.

Wat Pho

 
Across the street to the south of the Grand Palace complex is another very famous maze of chedi, shrines, and statues. This wat is known as Wat Pho.

 
The most famous monument here is this enormous golden Reclining Buddha.

 
This is the back of him, his head resting on two gold cushions. Check out his corkscrew perm!
 
All along the backside of this Buddha is a row of pots, I'd guess about 200 of them. The faithful walk along the row and drop a coin in each one. You can hear the plink-pli-plink-p-pli-plink-plink well before you come around this corner.

 
Some more 20-foot-high guard figures. Nice top hats, guys!

 
There are hundreds of Buddha figures all around Wat Pho, both inside and outside. This is the largest indoor shrine.

 
The number of colorful chedi here was striking.

Wat Phra Kaew

 
Situated next to the Grand Palace about 15 minutes' walk to the southwest from Khao San Road, Wat Phra Kaew is the most famous temples in Thailand. The weather was cloudy and hazy today, so these pictures are even more insufficient that they normally would be to convey the enormity of this place and the brilliant designs and colors this place has to offer.

 
The grounds are really a maze of statues, chedi (stupas), small shrines, and five larger structures, all surrounded by an ornate outer wall. The Upper Terrace holds four of the large structures, as the brochure says "a reliquary in the shape of a golden chedi; the Mondop, a repository for Buddhist sacred scriptures inscribed on palm leaves, contained within a beautiful mother-of-pearl inlaid cabinet; a miniature Angkor Wat crafted by the order of King Mongkut (Rama IV); and the Royal Pantheon in which statues of past sovereigns of the ruling Chakri dynasty are enshrined."

 
Offerings for sale. For a nominal fee, you can dip one of these lotus blossoms in some water and bonk yourself on the head.

 
There are a lot of these huge guards, of varying color, two at each gate. I come up to about mid-calf on this guy, I guess.

 
The two larger structures are the Phra Mondop (left) and the Royal Pantheon.

 
The Royal Pantheon is surrounded by all kinds of statues of mythological beings.

 
These guys are holding up a golded chedi. Lots of tourists were taking pictures of each others in front of this doing the same pose as the statues.

 
The entire inside surface of the outer wall of the complex is covered in one big mural telling the Thai version of the life of Buddha.

 
These vulture-like statues surround the fifth and most important structure on the site, the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha. You are not allowed to take pictures inside, but I snapped the following photo through the crowded doorway.

 

The brochure says of this site, "North of the royal residence and linked by a connecting gateway lies the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha, one of the most venerated sites in Thailand where people convene to pay respect to the Lord Buddha and His Teachings. The Emerald Buddha is enshrined on a golden traditional Thai-style throne made of gilded-carved wood, known as a Busabok, in the ordination hall of the royal monastery. The sacred image is clad with one of the three seasonal costumes (summer, rainy season, and winter). The costumes are changed three times a year in a ceremony presided over by His Majesty the King.

The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from a block of green jade and was first discovered in 1434 in a stupa in Chiang Rai (far north Thailand). At that time the image was covered with plaster and was thought to be an ordinary Buddha image. Later, however, the abbot who had found the image noticed that the plaster on the nose had flaked off, revealing the green stone. The abbot initially thought that the stone was emerald and thus the legend of the Emerald Buddha image began.

The image was later taken to Lampang where it remained until King Tilok of Lannathai moved it to Chiang Mai, his capital, where it was fittingly enshrined. In 1552 an interruption occurred in the Lannathai line of succession. King Chaichettha of Luang Prabang, who was the son of a Chiang Mai princess and a Laotian king was invited to fill the gap. However, after a relatively short reign he returned to Laos to succeed his father's throne, taking with him the Emerald Buddha. The image remained in Laos for 226 years until 1779 when a Thai army under the command of Chao Phraya Chakri, who later became King Rama I, captured Vientiane, the Laotian capital, and the image was brought back to Thailand. When King Rama I had built the city of Bangkok, the Emerald Buddha was housed within the Royal Monastery with due pomp and ceremony.

 

Outside the front of the monastery there were a lot of offerings for sale, candles and incense being burned, and people praying.

Wat Phra Kaew is on the same grounds as the Grand Palace, which also has a great deal of interesting Thai architecture, but as most of it was under roof restoration, I didn't get any outstanding pictures there.

Thanon Khao San

 
Street vendors setting up their carts for the morning.

 
A row of tuk-tuks lining up to hassle tourist for the day. They taxi people around town at rip-off prices, unless you speak Thai, of course. They are also quite apt to change your destination midway because they would rather drop you off at a jeweler's shop or a tailor who will pay them a commision for delivering tourists there.

 
A noodle vendor. Her spring rolls were delicious.

Krung Thep

Well, after having my flight out of Nagoya canceled because of snow and sleeping the night on the floor in the airport, I finally arrived in Thailand and got checked into a hotel, took a shower, and all that stuff. No pictures yet, since I literally just got here, but I'll post them when I have them. For now I'm staying in an old hotel in the backpacker's haven known as Khao San Road, located in the Banglamphu district of a modern metropolis, the real name of which is, in Thai, Krungthep mahanakhon amonratanokosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amonpiman avatansathit sakkathattiya witsanukamprasit.

According to my Lonely Planet book the name means, roughly, "Great City of Angels, Repository of Divine Gems, Great Land Unconquerable, Grand and Prominent Realm, Royal and Delightful Capital City Full of Nine Noble Gems, Highest Royal Dwelling and Grand Palace, Divine Shelter and Living Place of Reincarnated Spirits." Quite a mouthful. Luckily, in everyday speech, the Thais shorten it to Krung Thep, "City of Angels." For some reason foreigners always refer to this city by mispronouncing the name of a very small old neighborhood within the city known as "The Place of Olive Plums" , or Bang Makok, which of course you and I know as Bangkok.

From the makers of Black Black comes...

 

Seiko SR-M4000

 So after losing my electronic Japanese dictionary and going a month without one, I have bought a new one and recommenced my studies. It is maddening how quickly you can forget a kanji if you don't use it all the time... Also, the Japanese class that I keep talking about joining has now been put off until after New Year's because the others are taking a break. I'm looking forward to that, but it's just a grammar class. I also really need more speaking practice. The 2-minute-long conversations I have at school are not really getting me anywhere, so I need to find some good conversation partners...

PC Danado

Sorry to keep you waiting. My computer had some kind of nervous breakdown, but it seems to be marginally okay now, albeit slower than it was. Time to reinstall Windows, perhaps.

Seldom Asked Questions about Japan, here.

Sankyuu

 
The new Thank You building has gone up behind Zaza City East. In Japanese, the numbers 3 and 9 are pronounced san and kyuu, which together sound exactly the same way many Japanese prounounce Thank You when trying to speak English. I've recently heard rumor that there is a chain of grocery stores in Kagoshima called Sankyuu with affiliated liquor stores called Berry Machi. (Very much = berry town)

Groovy Gravy

Cold outside. Tejano Christmas music in a pub that sells square sesame-mango-cashew pizza. A small Christmas tree with french fry, catsup, & Mickey Mouse ornaments. A functional Mr. Peanut nutcracker underneath, with a can of diced tomatos sitting on its top hat. A lava lamp is still warming up. About 5 bucks for a bowl of imitation Doritos. Same for a beer. An electric ET doll holding a tiny box of cereal. Maybe that one guy is eastern European. Looks bored. A special machine that jiggles poured glasses of canned Guinness to make them look like draughts. A talking clock. A Japanese guy is talking about aviation. Another Friday in the neighborhood...

Playing with your food, Japanese-style

Some interesting bentos here.

Thailand

来月２２日から１０日間タイに居ます。二回目です。去年お盆の間にもタイに居たけど、梅雨だったからあまり観光しなかった。そのうえ、あそこで撮られた写真のほとんどは無くなっちゃった。パソコンが壊れて、いまEメールで送った写真だけしかない。今回まだ予定をしてないけど、始めにバンコクに行ってカオサン通りのどこかの安いホテルに泊まる。後はDougって言うバンコクに住む友達がちょっと案内してくれて、もっといいホテルを進めるかも知れない。そして時間があったらカンボジアのアンコールワットにも生きたい。母が送ったガイドブックがすぐ来たらよかった。

名古屋の紅葉

 
Kouyou means "autumn leaves" or, more literally, "red leaves." Certain parts of Japan have very famously beautiful autumn leaves, and like cherry-blossom-viewing in the spring, people will sometimes travel just to see the fall colors, particularly in Kyoto.

Kouyou significa "folhas de outono," ou literalmente "folhas vermelhas." Certas regiões do Japão tem folhas muito bonitas, até que, como os flores de cereja na primavera, gente as vezes viajam só para ver a folhagem, especialmente em Kyoto.

 
I, however, cannot afford to go to Kyoto right now, but I did finally make it over to Nagoya today, a 40-minute bullet train ride away, and there were some very nice autumn colors around Nagoya castle.

Agora não tenho dinheiro para visitar Kyoto agora, mas fui hoje pela primeira vez para Nagoya, que leva 40 minutos de trem bala. Lá tem uns cores bonitos nos arredores do castelo de Nagoya.

 
Here is the castle itself, with Nagoya Noh Theatre on the left:
Eis o castelo aqui, com o Teátro de Noh de Nagoya ao isquerdo:
 
Nagoya castle is considerably bigger than Hamamatsu's, but was built by the same guy, Ieyasu Tokugawa. (This statue is not him, by the way.)  Nagoya castle was built on level ground, has an outer wall and an inner one, with a moat outside and another between the walls.  The main castle and several surrounding buildings were destroyed by fire caused by bombing during World War II, though some of the outer towers remained intact. The main tower and annex were restored in the 1950's, and the city is currently fund-raising to rebuild the adjacent palace as well.  Inside the castle now is a small museum with reproductions of how life in Nagoya would have been in the Edo period, and also some old photographs of the grounds before they were destroyed. They don't allow people to take photographs inside the museum.

Vou explicar em português tambêm. Cheque de novo mais tarde se quiser ler.

Mom Milk

I discovered a really big 100 yen shop way down my street. The selection was pretty impressive, especially these notebooks: Click to enlarge.
 
 
 
Café tem cú?!? Quem sabia?

And there were lots of cards too. Look out Hallmark!
 
Is your life complete?

 
"I'm glad to know you're fine. That is about all I want to tell you this time."

 
A world of kittens in macaroni would be a fantasy indeed!

 
A card for every occasion!

 
You cannot cancel happiness. What can only be done now. You cannot cancel happiness.
This one is a card too, believe it or not.

西鹿島

Português em baixo

Hamamatsu has a population of about 800,000 now, up 200,000 from last year due to the large annexation which occurred in July or so. This is a phenomenon which is happening all over Japan recently. I recall the same thing happening in Tottori last year. One reason is that if a city reaches one million inhabitants, it can become a candidate to receive the status of "designated city," which would give it more autonomy, more independence from the rules of the prefectural government. In Shizuoka prefecture, Hamamatsu and Shizuoka are in a sort of race to one million, with Hamamatsu now in the lead. Hamamatsu is Japan's fifteenth largest city by population, but it has absorbed so many small, surrounding communities that it is now the third largest city in Japan in terms of area, following only Tokyo and Osaka. As a result, Hamamatsu has a lot of rural places within its city limits.
So today, because I hadn't ridden it before, I hopped on the Entetsu Akaden, the little red train from Shin-Hamamatsu station, and I rode it 30 minutes north to its terminus at Nishikajima Station, still within the city limits. There isn't a great deal to see there really, that I know of, but I took a few pictures at the side of the Tenryuu river. It's certainly a different side of Hamamatsu.
Devido à anexação em julho, a população de Hamamatsu subiu de 600.000 à 800.000. Anexação é um fenômeno que está acontecendo por toda parte do Japão porque, quando uma cidade chega à ter uma população de um milhão, é possível receber, como "cidade designada," mais autonomia do governo prefeitural. Aqui na prefeitura de Shizuoka, Hamamatsu e Shizuoka capital estão fazendo um tipo de competição, e agora Hamamatsu está ganhando. Por população, é a 15a maior cidade do Japão, mas já engoliu tantas pequenas comunidade vizinhas que é a terceira maior cidade por quilômetros quadrados, depois de só Tôkio e Osaka. Como resultado, Hamamatsu inclui muitos lugares rurais.

Hoje fui explorar um pouco mais da cidade. Peguei pela primeira vez o Entetsu Akaden, o tremzinho vermelho que vai da estação Shin-Hamamatsu pro norte. Levou 30 minutos para ir para a estação Nishikajima, no fim da linha mas ainda dentro das limites da cidade. Parece que lá não há tanto para ver, mais tirei umas fotos ao lado do rio Tenryuu. É com certeza um lado diferente da cidade.

Grandma doesn't ride that scooter anymore...

Neighborhood #329

My street rules!-- The covered sidewalk that runs for several blocks has speakers that play music all day. This evening's selection: The Arcade Fire.

First time I've heard that here!

Is your child a WASK?

 

Visitas às escolas primárias

I've been visiting elementary schools a lot lately. There are four of them that I visit with varying frequencies, though I never see a given class of kids more than once in a semester. So far I've taught some fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classes, though I did have a Halloween party at one school in which the whole school participated (It's a tiny school, with as few as 10 students per grade.) All the kids have been super-genki, happy and full of energy. They get very excited about having a foreign teacher, and almost all of them participate very enthusiatically in the lesson, something which is quite a relief after teaching at junior high all the time. Regarding my base school, at least, I don't understand what it is that happens between sixth grade and the first year of junior high that turns down the overall enthusiasm so much and causes some of them to completely lose their ability to follow directions, rules, or common sense. These elementary school kids are great, and a few of them speak better English than anyone at either of my junior highs.

Click to enlarge

神原下

木曜と金曜は朝早く神原下って言うバス停から学校へ歩いて行く。

To get to one of my schools in the morning, I catch a bus at 6:50 and ride for 25 minutes, and then I have to walk for almost 20 minutes. The whole neighborhood is full of small farms. Above left is a field of green tea, for which this prefecture is famous. Above right is an orchard of mikan trees. Sometimes I see passing elementary kids looking for a mikan they can reach through the fence...   Click to enlarge


They also grow a lot of lettuce, cabbage, kale, and other greens.


In the picture above on the right, the fields go right up to my school's grounds.


Nas quinta- e sexta-feiras tenho que andar à pé por 20 minutos entre a parada de ônibus e a escola onde trabalho. Tem muitas fazendas por lá de chá verde, produto famoso desta região, de mikan, um tipo de laranja pequena e doce, e também de lechuga e outros vegetales verdes.

Body Remover

 
If any of you need to dispose of a body, just relax-- I know a little place that'll take care of that really cheaply.

Hamamatsu at night

 
The sun sets about 5PM these days... I had a long, rather chilly walk this evening and took these photos.

 
Can you guess what this is?

 
This is a long park-type space stretching north from Act Tower.

 
I went up to the 45th floor of Act Tower and took these last two. The one above is a bird's-eye view of the same park space in the previous picture.

 
The round building in the foreground is the main bus station. The blue and green building across from that is the Forte Building, which houses Hamamatsu's international center, among other things.

Pachelbel, Pavlov, Muzak, and the catchy fish song...

Pachelbel's Canon will forever take me back to lunchtime in the Japanese school staff room, with children shitsureshimasu-ing in and out, and a tray of cold fried fish or little cold gray weiners in front of me, with a half-pint of that slightly cardboard-flavored Japanese milk. I'm not sure if that's what Pachelbel had in mind or not, but he is a sort of pre-recorded dinner bell for us every day at my base school, followed by some Verdi overture, before Vivaldi sounds the call to recess. In the afternoon we know it's cleaning time when Mendelsohn comes in with his Italian Symphony, and then that's it, until Bach starts up his Morning Meeting Brandenburg #3 at 8:05 the next day. Every day there it's the same program. I don't know if it's intended as some kind of Pavlovian conditioning to spur the kids into action or what. I almost think there would be an uproar if they played Pachelbel early in the morning-- kids might start circling their desks and getting out their chopsticks and placemats. At my other schools, a similar musical routine takes place, though each school has a different repertoire. One of my schools lets the kids listen to their Backstreet Boys or Orange Range or whatever, after the let's-get-ready-for-lunch tune is over, but an apparent over-arching rule of Japan is still at work: Everything must have a theme song.

It's not at all limited to schools. In the grocery store, in addition to the store jingles, you might find a little tape player next to the deli section looping a song about how korokke is watashi no oishii tomodachi, "my delicious friend," or the mushrooms in the produce section singing in a low voice, "Kinoko koko kono genki no ko..." The fish song was actually a real radio pop song several years ago. I can't understand much beyond "sakana sakana sakana" because of the high-pitched voices and my underdeveloped Japanese ability, but I am told that it extols the nutritional virtues of fish. Sickeningly catchy too.

One of my first impressions of Japan was in the bullet train station in Okayama, where every time a train arrives the intercom plays a Japanese-cutesy-ized Muzak version of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," all round bouncy synth tones. After being in Tottori for a while I noticed that not only would they play the same song on repeat in the train station for weeks at a time, but the special tourist bus which heads hourly for the sand dunes blares, everywhere it goes, a special cartoony theme song which was composed specifically as the Tottori Sand Dunes theme song. I can't recall it at the moment, but I'm sure if I heard it now, a flood of memories would come rushing back of random things I was thinking about when I heard the bus go by on a daily basis.

What is especially strange to me is the seeming ease with which the Japanese can become used to and/or completely tune out all the theme songs around. Particularly the people who work around them. The bus I ride every morning turns off its engine every time it stops for more than 10 seconds or so, and when it does it plays quite terrible toy-keyboard-demo-style Musak. If I were a bus driver I would never turn off the engine, because there are only about 10 tunes on the tape, or rather, about 20 seconds each of 10 tunes, after which it fades into the next tune. The tunes include "O Tannenbaum," "It's a Small World After All," John Lennon's "Imagine," one of those Peruvian folk tunes that you can hear played by traveling folk troupes in shopping malls across the US, and several tunes I recognize but don't know exactly. Since August, the same 10 tunes. I can assure you that "O Christmas Tree" and "It's a Small World" are hardly what I want to be listening to groggily every morning at 7 AM for months, and I'm sure the bus driver gets to listen to it well more often than I... Even worse, two well-known Best Buy-type electronics stores that I know, DeoDeo and Yamada Denki, both play a 45-second loop of their theme songs, complete with irritatingly high or low vocals, non-stop all day, every day. I cannot imagine working in a place like that, listening to that nonsense all the time. Even being in the store for 10 minutes, I tire of the repetition and start to dread having the ridiculous jingles in my head the rest of the day.

All I can say is that the public use of music is different here, and that sometimes my brain just screams music abuse! It snuggles right up against some other aural annoyances that abound, such as all the candidates just before election time who take advantage of the lack of noise ordinances, driving around in vans lined with loudspeakers blasting onegai shimasu's and introducing themselves over and over at peak volumes from 7 AM on any day of the week. (I actually once saw a helicopter with loudspeakers strapped on the bottom, flying low over Tottori-shi doing the same thing.) If I were Japanese, I would certainly vote for whichever candidate did the least of that particular type of campaigning...

Sometimes it just seems like unchecked noise pollution. The ping-ponging crosswalks. The beeping automatic doors. Talking ATMs. The sensor-automated speakers bleating irasshaimase and arigatou gozaimasu in certain restaurants and shops. The random gangs of minors intentionally drowning out all conversation by revving their motorcycle engine at full blast from one end of the street to the other, turning around and doing it again, legally immune from being pulled over by anything less than a roadblock (but that's a different story...)

Let's just says that Japan has different concepts of music and noise, and it sometimes draws the line between them in a different place than a Westerner otherwise might...

遠州風

Já está ficando frio aqui, e acho que logo vai começar soprando o enshuukaze, um dos ventos urbanos mais fortes do mundo. No inverno, neva em quase toda parte desta prefeitura, menos Hamamatsu, onde este vento vai soprar quase sem parar até o fim de fevereiro ou o início de março. Não estou muito animado pela idéia de lidar com ele às 7 e pouco da manhã pelos 20 minutos entre a parada da ônibus e a escola, só para chegar lá congelado e dar aulas o dia todo em salas sem heater, com as janelas abertas para "fortelecer os alunos contra os elementos" e deixar entrar ar fresco para que "ninguém ficar gripado." Lógico! Agora Natal está por perto, e a única coisa que eu quero é receber uma caixa grande cheia de puro verão brasileiro. Nao esqueça incluir 30 ou 40 mil toneladas de aréia ensolarada com palmeiras, uma galera de moreninhas, e um ar de festividade. Agora, quêm vai ser meu Papai Noel?

Meu apê

 
Well, I finally got around to taking some pictures of my place, for those of you who are curious to see just how small a Japanese apartment can be. This is my living/bed room, or approximately half of it, I suppose. You can see my futon folded up there on the right. When I unfold it at night, it stretches from wall to wall. I can actually put my feet flat on one wall and my hands flat on the other. The room is about twice that long. Here is the other half:
 
Through the door to the left is my kitchenette:
 
To cook anything more complicated than a bowl of instant ramen sometimes requires a carefully sequenced shifting of pots or plates from one place to another.
 
Through the kitchen is a long narrow hallway which leads to the front door:
 
Off of the hall is one door, which opens into a small space which holds my washing machine.
 
And finally, off of that space is the door for my tiny cellular bathroom:
 
And that's it for the inside. I have a small balcony just wide enough to stand on, with a somewhat less than exciting city view:
 
This month there is additional excitement off my balcony to the left-- They've been knocking down a 6-story building, a chunk at a time, it seems.
 
Here's a view of the fun from the next street over:
 
Luckily, I'm already up and around by the time the construction starts, so it doesn't really bother me. I suppose another building will go up, hopefully a little more pleasant to look at than the rust-stained wall that was there before. My view certainly doesn't compare to the one I had last year in Tottori:
 
 
I do miss Tottori sometimes... 懐かしい。。。

早口言葉

Some Japanese tongue-twisters I came across... Try them...

この竹をこの竹垣に立てかけたのは、竹を立てかけたかったから、立てかけたのです。 Kono take o kono takegaki ni tatekaketa no wa, take o tatekaketakatta kara, tatekaketa no desu. The reason I have leaned this bamboo against this bamboo fence is that I just wanted to lean bamboo against it.

東京特許許可局、今日急きょ許可却下。 Toukyou tokkyo-kyokakyoku, kyou kyuukyo kyoka kyakka. The Tokyo patent office hurriedly rejected the approval today.

スモモも桃、桃も桃、スモモも桃も桃のうち。 Sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi. Japanese plums are a kind of peach, a peach is also a peach; both Japanese plums and peaches are kinds of peaches.

この子に常夏のココナツ九つ、あの子にも常夏のココナツ九つ。 Kono ko ni tokonatsu no kokonatsu kokonotsu, ano ko ni mo tokonatsu no kokonatsu kokonotsu. Nine everlasting coconuts to this child, nine everlasting coconuts to that child too.

鹿もカモシカも鹿だが、しかし、アシカは鹿ではない。 Shika mo kamoshika mo shika da ga, shikashi, ashika wa shika de wa nai. Deer and antelope are both kinds of deer, but seals are certainly not deer.

Alguém sabe como dizer "tongue-twister" em português? Pode me dar exemplos disso em português?

"Willow Street"

 
My street has a motto.

Japanese Brazilian Return Migration and the Making of Japan's Newest Immigrant Minority

I think most people are surprised when they learn of the large Brazilian population in Japan, and also of the large Japanese population in Brazil. Here is a very good article which can provide some backgroud information for the curious.

I think what he says about the identity issues of Brazilians, towards the end of the article, holds true for most other immigrant populations in Japan as well. One of my Japanese-Peruvian friends, for example, has lived in Japan since he was 14 years old, speaks fluent Japanese, and even works now as an interpreter for the police department here. Outside of work, however, he shuns being identified as Japanese to the point where he refuses to speak Japanese in most situations, pretending not to understand when being spoken to. He identifies himself as Peruvian. He says that when you learn to speak Japanese well, your personality changes, since to speak Japanese like a native you must obey the etiquette rules of Japanese to hide your foreign-ness, holding back comments, gestures and opinions you might otherwise say in your native language. He doesn't seem to like putting forward the Japanese side of himself; he spends most of his time outside of work hanging out with other foreigners, speaking Spanish, English, or Portuguese.

And he speaks Japanese fluently-- Most foreigners, even part-Japanese foreigners here do not, whether they are Peruvians, Brazilians, Americans, Philipinos, etc.

浜松城公園

 
In front of Hamamatsu castle is a bronze statue of its builder, Ieyasu Tokugawa, who is considered perhaps the greatest shogun and one of the three people most important people to the unification of Japan. Tokugawa lived here from 1571 to 1588.
The English brochure they provide at the castle museum says:
Hamamatsu Castle is positioned at the southeast tip of the Mikatahara Plateau. It was built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose rule founded the Edo Period (1603-1867). Ieyasu was born in 1542, and spent 17 years at Hamamatsu Castle, from the age of 29 to 45.
 
During this time, many famous battles took place, including the Battle of Mikatagahara in 1572, which was one of the toughest battles fought by Ieyasu. Although Ieyasu's 17-year stay at Hamamatsu Castle endured many difficult years, it did commence 300 years of glorious Tokugawa history.
 
The Lords of Hamamatsu Castle after Ieyasu were always to be very influential figures. In particular, Mizuno Tadakuni, one of the Lords, was credited with reforming the Tempo Era. As a result, Hamamatsu Castle is known as the 'Castle of Success'.
 
The boundary walls of the castle stretched approximately 500 meters from north to south, and 450 meters from east to wast. The castle tower, dungeon, and the 2nd and 3rd buildings were all in a straight line. After the end of the Edo Period, the castle buildings were completely devastated. However, in the spring of 1958, thanks to the efforts of the people of Hamamatsu, the tower of Hamamatsu Castle was re-built, and on June 1st of the following year, it was established as a historical site.
 
This is a well in the basement of the castle.


 
North of the castle is a very big park with a Japanese garden, a ceremonial teahouse, and some commons areas.

 
I don't know who this guy is, but he didn't look very happy to see me. (click to enlarge)


 
Some high school kids hanging out in the park. Notice how some of them are wearing their school uniforms even on Sunday. Can you imagine American kids liking school uniforms so much that they'd wear them when they didn't have to?


 
Very tall bamboo stalks.

五社神社

 
 
 
 
Evidently I live in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Hamamatsu. This morning I went to Gosha Shrine, just a couple of blocks from my place, and right next door to Hama Hall. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I suppose it has been around for a long time, because it appears in a miniature model I saw, in Hamamatsu Castle, of Hamamatsu in the period between 1603 and 1867. In the model, there is another shrine just next door to Gosha, but I didn't see another one, so perhaps that one has been destroyed. I also don't really know what was going on at the shrine this morning. There was a woman dancing with bells inside, and a load of dressed up families out front taking pictures of their children in kimonos. I couldn't resist taking some myself.

Esse templo é bem perto do meu apê aqui no certo de Hamamatsu. Não sei o que estava acontecendo hoje de manhã, mas foi irrestitível tirar fotos dessas crianças vestidas de kimono e tal. Muito lindas!

アパートから近い神社でかわいい子供を見て思わず写真をとってしまった。。神社の歴史について何も知らない。知っている人がいたら声をかけてね。

A walk around my neighborhood.

 
HLO. So yesterday after getting home early, I took a little walk around my neighborhood and took these photos... This first wonderful shop is half a block from my place.

 
Shabby Chic. For the not-so-stylish woman.

 
Is "poot" a Hebrew word?　Is that kosher?

 
No idea...

 
Hey Buddy, I'll take a Caffé Americano with cream, and a knuckle sandwich. For here.

 
Well, IS it? You tell me!
(To be fair, the Japanese part says "sports cafe," so it's not totally random.)

 
This publicity campaign was thought up by the previous CIR here, and accepted by the folks at city hall just before the CIR remembered that this gesture usually means "Loser" back home in the states.

 
Drawing upon my vast experience of dealing with construction tarps, I deem this to be one of the niftier construction tarps ever.

 
If my blog gets a little boring, remind me to go play a little pachinko so I can get more exciting.
 
Mommyyy... I gotta go weeee-weeeeeee...
Ok, hon.. just be back by 2AM.

 
Cocktailと言う単語はフランス語から来たので、cockともtailとも関係がないね。Tail of Cockとは昔の言葉で訳したら鶏の尻尾の意味だけど、現在の言葉では「チンチンの尻尾」の意味。それっていったい何？

文化発表会

Today my base school had their annual bunka happyou kai, or "culture festival," though actually it was all music. I got to sleep in this morning because I live much closer to the event location than to the school, so I met everyone there at 9:45. Each of the 16 homerooms performed a song, with one of the students accompanying on the piano and one of them directing. I was a little surprised that there was a decent piano player in each homeroom.  I wonder if they have to take that into consideration at the beginning of the school year when they are assigning classes. Anyway, all the songs were in Japanese, and I didn't recognize any of them except for one group singing that really pretty theme song from Spirited Away. A couple of the groups sounded pretty good, though several of them had one or two boys standing off on the end with their uniforms unbuttoned, head cocked, arms crossed, sucking their teeth in obvious displeasure at having to do anything that wasn't their own idea. Same thing they do during class, bleh.. (I think that's one of them on the far right in this picture above.) My supervisor seemed to imply that last year's bunkasai was practically ruined by bad attitudes, but that it was much better this year. And it wasn't so bad, just a little distracting. At any rate, after all the singing was done, the wind band performed a few songs, mostly stage band tunes like "Tequila" and some 70's rock song I forgot the name of. Except for the first tune, a student was allowed to direct them, and there were a number of good soloists.  The odd thing for me was that the band had about 40 girls and only 4 boys. (I suppose that is a result of the system of only letting the kids be in one club. If they are in band, they can't do any sports, so I guess a lot of the boys choose sports.) After the band played, two of the teachers gave a kind of silly rock guitar performance, complete with light show, a pile of stompboxes, and some noodle-rific guitar licks.  They really played it up as if they were rock stars, striking poses and headbanging, to the absolute delight of all the students. Really hilarious. Then they had a short awards ceremony to announce the winners of the singing competition, and I was home by 2:45.
These photos are unclickable
for the previously mentioned reasons.

Mais um dia em Takaoka...

Fui hoje para uma escola primária onde cada aula tem 2 ou 3 brasileiros. Alguns deles nem falam muito de japonês, coisa que me surpreendeu porque tem uma escola brasileira lá no mesmo bairro. A professora que me deu carona ajuda eles mas pelo que ouvi, ela não fala tanto de português. A escola tem até placas em português em frente de cada sala... Além disso, das tres aulas que eu dei lá hoje, teve duas criancas que já falam inglês quase nativamente, melhor que qualquer professor japonês que conheci aqui. Uma delas passou 6 dos seus 11 anos morando no estado americano de Ohio. Na hora do almoço, fui sentado entre ela e um menino brasileiro, ele me perguntando coisas em português e traduzindo em japonês pro amigo dele, ela me perguntando em inglês e traduzindo em japonês pras amigas dela. Acho que eles nem perceberam que eu também entendia a maioría do que falavam em japonês, mas tudo bem. Foi interesante. Porque será então que os alunos brasileiros na escola segundária mal me dão um oi?

新鮮な小指？

 

 
Say hello to my fresh pinky! I feel it's gotten a lot fresher since I started taking this new product, though I'm not sure if it's my left or right pinky that is fresher. Perhaps I should consult a freshness specialist.

また変な英語だね。Pinkyとは俗語で小指と言う意味だ。他には意味がない。Freshとは、新鮮。だから、アメリカ人は「小指をもっと新鮮にする薬ですか」と言う洒落もちろんあるね。

Actually it's a slightly funny-tasting breath mint. For a country with such rampant, unchecked halitosis, there is a bewildering variety of breath mints available here. There is a certain co-worker with absolutely vomitous breath, who should really put himself on some Fresh Pinky.  And when I say "vomitous," I do mean that that is exactly what it smells like. Consistently. Every time he talks to me. Maybe what he really needs is some Dry Hard.

浜松マンドリンオーケストラ

The concert was interesting. The program had a funny drawing of an Indian boddhisatva playing a very Italian looking bowlback mandolin. The group was composed of a section of maybe 15 mandolins in place of the normal violin section, guitars for the viola section, maybe 4 or 5 mandolas or mandocellos, a string bass section, a clarinet, an oboe, a flute, a harp, and percussion. My co-worker is the first mandolin, concertmaster I guess. They did one set of classical stuff, a Verdi overture, a Mozart sonata, Debussy's Claire de Lune, etc. And then some pop stuff-- Unchained Melody, a tune from the King and I, a tune from Howl's Moving Castle, etc. It was pretty cool. A unique but not unfamiliar sound.
I forgot my camera, but there is a photo of the group (along with, inexplicably, a photo of a blimp) here.
Their website is only in Japanese.

携帯から

Evidentemente da pra postar usando meu celular tambem, mesmo que nao consigo acesar o proprio blog. Este aqui e um teste.

Snowee Café

 
 
 
 
If you haven't been introduced to the phenomenon known as Engrish, you are missing out on an endless source of laughter. For some reason, it is super-cool in Japan to use English on any and everything, yet no one seems to check their English to see if it makes any sense. I'll post pictures of the Engrish I come across from time to time, starting with this fine specimen here to the left.

Welcome to Snowee Café. What you see here are parts of a gigantic sign on the wall of this restaurant, on the sixth floor of MayOne, inside Hamamatsu station. It is presented as if it were a menu, but try clicking on each picture and see if you can make any sense out of this at all. Classic!

Festival de Samba

 
ちょっと遅いけど、先月８日新浜松駅前でこの写真をとった。ブラジル人の祭りだった。写真はサンバのグループだ。ブラジルの音楽も踊りも食べ物の屋台もあった。よかった。

Posting these a little late-- I took these on the 8th of last month at a Brazilian festival over near Shin- Hamamatsu station. These three shots are of a samba troupe performing, but there was also other kinds of music and dance, and Brazilian food　stalls. Quite nice.

Um pouco atrasado, mas eu tirei essas dia 8 de outubro, na festival brasileiro em frente da estação Shin- Hamamatsu. Teve varios grupos de música e comida brasileira. Esfiha, espetinho, bolinhas, etc. De verdade, nem toda a música foi boa, mais o tempo foi bom e eu me diverti...

文化の日

OK, so I was pretty annoyed at livedoor for the way IE displayed the page, but this site seems to do wonderfully, so here we go again...

Anyway, today was a holiday for me-- Bunka no Hi, or Culture Day. It's kind of nice to have a holiday in the middle of the week. Only three classes tomorrow, and then the weekend. Monday after first period at my base school, I have to go to another elementary and teach three classes of 5th graders. That should be fun-- The elementary school kids always make me feel like a celebrity. They have so much energy, plus they haven't yet developed the reluctance about speaking English like the middle schoolers have... Then on Tuesday, my base school is having it's Culture Day festival at Hamamatsu Hall. Each homeroom class has a song they have been practicing to perform on that day, as a kind of contest. For the record, neither of my schools has a choir, only this kind of singing contest involving everyone once a year. So the singing performances will take up most of the day. Perhaps there are some other things planned.. I'm not sure.

Also, this Sunday afternoon I'm going to see one of my co-workers perform in the Hamamatsu Mandolin Orchestra. I'm not really sure what to expect. I assume it will be classical music, but I don't really know. Mandolin orchestras are composed of mandolins, mandolas, mando-cellos, and mando-basses. They were popular in the US in the very early part of the 20th century, but apparently they are still fairly common in Japan. Some of the high schools here even have mandolin clubs...

In other news, I bought a round-trip plane ticket to Bangkok for Dec. 22-Jan. 1. It's a shame I'll have to be waiting at the airport for my return flight during any New Year's Eve festivities, but I couldn't find any other flight for the given time frame. My friend Doug teaches English in Bangkok, so hopefully he can show me around a bit this time. There are also several other JETs going to Thailand, but nobody seems to have their plans exactly hammered out yet, so I don't know if I'll see any of them there...

自己紹介など。。。

Well, I will try again to keep a blog. Hopefully I will keep it up longer this time. 頑張るぞ！　If you just see a lot of boxes or garbled text here, it just means your browser isn't configured to display Japanese text. Just skip whatever you can't read.

Tambêm vou escrever em português de vez em quando.

私はアメリカ人です。テキサス州からきて、今静岡県浜松市に住んでいます。二つの中学校で英語を教えています。楽しかったり大変だったりです。興味のない 生徒に教えること難しいですね。去年ずっと鳥取県鳥取市で英会話イーオンの先生として働いていました。最初の一年目での日本で過ごした日々はとても印象的 でした。本当に優しいひと達に会いました。よかったです！この二回目の来日も現実になった夢です。今浜松には二ヵ月半ぐらい居ます。浜松が大好きです。と ても国際的だからというのがその理由です。浜松地方は少なくとも三万人のブラジル人と約四千人のペルー人がいます。ポルトガル語を話すことが好きなので浜 松に来ました。楽しい！

下手な日本語で、ごめんなさい！

So anyway, you can just ignore it if you can't read it. It's just a sort of a self-introduction. You probably already know that I'm from Texas, that I lived in Tottori, Japan last year and that now I live in Hamamatsu teaching English to 500+ insane, hormone-ridden, Japanese junior high monkeys. I've been here two months already, and I only just now get around to starting a blog... More, after these messages:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Bom, vou me apresentar um pouco em português tambêm. Sou um norte-americano do estado de Texas. Faz 4 anos que estudo português. Vivo apaixonado pelo Brasil, que passei 4 meses viajando la, adoro música brasileira, leio de Machado de Assis e Jose Alencar até Clarice Lispector e Luís Veríssimo. Já estou querendo muito me mudar para o Brasil, abrir uma escola de ingles talvês, quem sabe. Mas é dificil para americano tirar o visto, a carteira de trabalho e tal. Daí pensei que se eu fosse ter mais experiência dando aulas de ingles, poderia mais facilitar uma mudança pro Brasil.

Assim cheguei no Japão em janeiro de 2004, sem saber nada do Japão nem saber falar nada do japonês. Passei ano passado inteiro em Tottori-ken, no meio do nada, dando aulas de ingles numa escola particular lá, e aprendendo um pouco de japonês. Gostei. Nem tanto quanto eu gosto do Brasil, mas gostei. Em dezembro, o contrato acabou e eu voltei pros EUA por 7 meses. Trabalhava de novo na loja de partituras musicais enquanto esperava saber se eu ia ser escolhido pelo programa JET, pra voltar ao Japão e dar aulas de ingles nas escolas publicas. Fui escolhido, graças a Deus, e no fim de julho vim morar aqui em Hamamatsu, que fica no litoral sul à meio caminho entre Tokyo e Osaka na linha do trem bala.

Pedi Hamamatsu porque a cidade tem, de uma populacão total de 800.000 pessoas, mais ou menos 30.000 brasileiros. Em baixo aqui tem os dados oficiais da populacão estrangeira aqui. A maioria do brasileiros são descendentes de japoneses, e me parece que a maioria são ou paranaenses ou paulistas. Hamamatsu tem restaurantes brasileiros, lojas, açougues, agências de turismo, bares, tudo, falando relativamente. Eu estou gostando muito.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, Hamamatsu has been a blast so far. It's a city of about 800,000 people, very spread out over a large area on the shinkansen (bullet train) line almost exactly halfway between Tokyo and Osaka, on the south coast. It is known as the City of Music, because many musical instruments are produced. (Hamamatsu's only skyscraper is supposedly designed to look like a harmonica, though I've never seen an oval-shaped harmonica...) Hamamatsu is famous for several other things too: eel, green tea, and automotive parts. There are a lot of factories here and loads and loads of Brazilian-Japanese immigrants who work at them. Hamamatsu is ridiculously international for its size. A real oddity in Japan. Have a look:

Hamamatsu Non-Japanese Resident Population
Brazil	17,255
Philippines	3,291
China	2,366
Peru	2,088
Korea (N&S)	1,691
Vietnam	914
Indonesia	950
USA	178
Nepal	158
Canada	90
UK	73
Australia	46
New Zealand	25
Other (68 countries)	934
Total (81 countries)	30,059

(Thanks to HICE for the figures)

The above is the official count of legal foreigners here, but the total number of Brazilians is closer to 30,000 and of Peruvians maybe 4,000. Not sure about the others. At any rate, it's an interesting mix, and you can't walk down the street without noticing it.

The diverse international population also gives Hamamatsu a pretty wide range of restaurants, which is great. There is a Brazilian rodizio and a number of other Brazilian restaurants, a German beer garden, a couple of French and French-colonial places, a Russian restaurant, several Indian restaurants, Indonesian, lots of Korean and Chinese places, etc. There's a Nepalese restaurant a block from my apartment-- when's the last time you saw a Nepalese restaurant? But ALAS, there is no Mexican food here. Most grocery stores carry Old El Paso products, and I can pay a fortune for a few tortillas at one of the import shops, if I want. That's about as close as I can get... Oh for a sizzling pile of fajitas with guacamole and pico de gallo... mmmm........

Anyway, I will certainly go into more detail about my schools, but for now, just a picture of some kids playing tug of war at the sports meet at my smaller school. Every high school and junior high in Japan has a sports day once a year in which every student participates. They are divided into a few teams, 4 in this case, and they do lots of races, relays, tug of war, jump rope, etc. It's an all day affair, and they have a lot of practices for it beforehand. The kids enjoyed it, and I did too. Normally you will be able to click on the pictures to enlarge them, but I don't want to put any recognizable photos of my students on the net, so I disabled it this time.

Please leave me a comment, so I know I'm not writing in vain!

Deixe um commentário, que eu quero saber que nao escrevo em vão. E se tiver erros no meu português, faça a favor de me corrigir, ok?

コメントを書いて下さい！間違えた日本語があったら、訂正をしてくれませんか？もっと正しく話したい。。よろしくお願いします。。。