operationosaka

Lady Boy Water Buffalo and Trekking

2007-12-01T01:30:00.000-08:00

The ride from seim reip back to thailand was not so bad as the way in. I still swear they took us on another road. We arrived on the other side all dusty and reddish from all the dust blowing into the bus.

If you see an ad for an air con bus ride in cambodia, let me tell you it is fake. There are no air con buses in cambodia. They sell you and air con bus ticket, then tell you the air con is broken, open all the windows and then say " air con!" as they laugh to them selves.

I was not laughing, my hair and my lungs were ashy red from a layer of dust. Getting into Thailand was so good, the roads, the service, the buses. everything screams 1st class after you come out of cambodia. we got dropped of on the famous Khao san for like the 10th time now... and we made our way back to Sawasdee house, for like the 10th time now...???
i lost count. We di how ever meet to nice nihingos (Taike and Sho) they are "little bit famous" comedians from Tokyo. Sho has been on tv in osaka, so maybe we might have seen him. Then he could live up to his "little bit famous" title.

we invited them to the sawasdee house with us, and then we all walked the streets around our guest house. We chilled in Bangkok for a few days, spending our days at the internet, relaxing, eating street meat and pad thai. On the wednesday (i think) we booked a 3 day 2 night jungle trek up in the north of thailand. While we were waiting in the lobby we met Jess (from Tacoma), and the 2 Hollands (Sabina and Marilese) we all became fast friends and embarked on the 12hr bus ride to chaing mai.

We got to chaing mai at about 6 am, and i dont think any one was fully awak because some idiots kept talking/screaming on the bus all night. They loaded our packs onto the top of a truck, then put 13 ofus in a Sangthew ( a truck back with 2 benches in it) and drove us to some random guest house. Usually his type of situation has scam written all over it, but we've been very lucky. The guest house was very nice and not a rip off. we were alowed to go and shower and rest, and be ready at 930 am for our trek to begin.

On our trek we had a fun mix of people. I really think we were lucky to all be placed in the same group because we were all basically the same age and really cool.
Our group consisted of
Jan, shiv, Matthew (california), Marilou (Cali), Matthew (NZ), 3 Danes (Morten, Morten, Kasper (denmark), 2 Hollands (sabina and marilese), 2 koreas (Can't remeber their names), aviel (Isreal) Jess (Usa)

we started our day at a small camp lodge on a mountain where we had a lunch of fried rice and fruit, then we got set on walking up a mountain in the jungle. Our end point for the day would be a hill tribe village at the top. On the way to the village we stopped at a water fall. The hike was hard, but not too painful.

At the village we stayed in a wood hut, with 13 mats and blankets in it. it was really rustic, and we were able to walk around the village and see people doing their daily bit. It was really nice. Northern thailand gets SOOOO cold at night, so bring a fleece and hoodie. Me and shiv could have never thought it would be so cold. The warmest ting we brought were long sleeve shirts. So we layered, and have been layering our clothes for weeks now!

We ate an awesome dinner at the lodge and them our tour guide "jim" started out some "games" sort of like weird thai ice breakers. it was good weird fun. The next day we hiked to another village at about 10am, then hiked to an even bigger waterfall camp and had lunch.

After lunch we hiked to another lodge in the jungle and proceeded to have the stranges night ever. the night started out with dinner and chat, and then a crazy thai drinkking game ( where no one got to drink) ensued. If you got the movements wrong jim took out a big "used" dirty grease charred pot and put the greassy charcoal on your face. it was nuts! you also had to dance like a water buffalo while this was going on.It was also LOI KRATONG during the time we were in northern thailand. Its custom to light a big landern and watch it flaot up into the air, Jim said the lanterns go to burma, but i dont know? we also wrote all our names on the lantern and made a wish as it sailed away. After that we all jammed around a fire and danced the night away.

The next day we started of on another hike, that led us to an ELEPHANT FARM!! me and shiv were really lucky to have a great guide walk us there. He told us all about witch doctors and the village people. many hilltribe people still see a witch doctor, but more so as a secondary specialist after a regular doctor. In the past, many people only saw the withch doctor.
he told us how to know if an elephant is male of female just by looking at the poop and pee. As well we learned how to tell the age of an elephant just by looking at the poop or pee!
We got to ride elphants through the jungle. I dont know how to explain that expeirnce, but it was nuts! they are so smart, and actually talk to one another. we were on the dad elephant and jess and morten were on the mama, and we had a baby elephant come along inbetween for the walk. it was amazing.

Next we went white water rafting. In our raft was me shiv, matt , marilou and jess. we screamed all the way down the rapids, and got so wet. I think thailand is so good at introducing people to all these amazing sports and experiences, some of wich you can try again when you get back to your home country. cause i know i would never have tried white water rafting in alberta!

Next we rafted down the river on a bamboo raft. Shiv was the main paddler and he sang "the log driver song" it was really amazing. Shiv said it was like his all time boy hood dream to paddle down a river, it was very tom sawyer.

To end the crazy day we had pad thai, and bought photos of our adventures! every one has to get their hussle on!
so amazing was this adventure!

Ankhor wat and my birthday week.

2007-11-24T21:50:00.002-08:00

we are staying at the Ankhor Hilton hotel. But it is not really part of the hilton chain of hotels, becaus its only costing us 5 USD a night, and the lizard on the wall comes with the room. We got in really late at night, so we were pooped. The next day we decided to venture out on our own. WOW! Siem reip is pretty much a sess pool once you leave the touristy areas.

We were in searchof a street called "bar streeT" is is sort of the back packery area of the city. i dont think we found it at first. but what we did find were heaps of garbage, so many dirty people. The poorest scene I had ever witnessed. all i could think was " no one would beleive us if we were to try and describe thjis sight"

But all the while, you feel frozen. i could hardly take a picture because you feel so bad. there were these women pushing these carts with what looke like chilli covered shells. They were spread out on a peice of metal roofing. We never say anybody buy these shells, but the shell carcasses were every where.

We did find some hostels/hotels and some backpapckers. The area was a little dissapointing, but the prices of accomodations made us happy that we didn't get scammed by the hilton Ankhor.

It was really hot, but decided to keep on walking will we came to the real bar street area. We say lots of street kids just playing in the temple coutyards and on the streets. Cambodia has some of the worlds chicest hotels. But they are completely fenced in. Once you check in, you levae the filty street scenes at the front gate and enter a world of luxury!
I think that idea, speaks for cambodia in general. You get beautiful places, fenced off and protected from the real gritty cambodia.

We did run into some Tuk TUk favoritism wars. We were unfairly quoted a price by one tuk tuk driver, and our friend andreas from switzerland got a much cheaper price for the same tour. In the end we ended up switching drivers, getting into a little argument and getting a pretty good price for a tour of ankhor wat and surrounding areas.

On nov 13th (cambodia time) (ps. my birthday eve) we went to ankhor wat to watch the sun set! wow! is all i have to say. not many words can explain or express ankhor wat. All i can say is that, visiting ankhor wat is probably the most expensive thing you will do in SE asia. and its completely worth it. Its just so hard to comprhend that human made structures could be so complex, and intricate, and long lasting.

Cambodia has been sacked in war so many times, yet these structures have some how survived until today. Its a testament to human engineering and strengh of sprit.
Cambodians have gone through so much, and every where you turn you see povery and loss of limbs. The war has been over for nearly 40 years but its still very fresh here. there are still places you cant walk. and people have lost brother, children, husbands and wives to landmines, sickness and genocide.

Its such a sad country, yet you find some really nice people that want to show you what their country has to offer. its a grimy place, with alot of life, but we are so glad we went.

The next day we did a full on tour of ankhor wat and ankor thom. Banyan and other temples. wow wowo owowowozers!!
it was great. you can climb on the ruins, walk through them, hike to the ruins. It was like the jungle cruise at disney land times 1000!!

for my birthday dinner we watched "in her shoes" on the movie channel and then went for an apsara dance performance and dinner buffet. i was in heaven.
Dinner, dancing and ankhor wat, i couldnt ask for more!

Ankhor wat and my birthday week.

2007-11-24T21:50:00.001-08:00

Cambodia at first glance

2007-11-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

AFter leaving Krabi, we took the bus back to bangkok. Bangkok is sort of feeling like a base now. We have arrived here 3 times now, and its starting to grow on me. We used our time in bangkok sort of like a rest, relax and compose our selves time.

We got into bangkok at 6 am, and decided to be brave and walk from the down town area to the back packery area of town call khaosan road. I was a little nervous. bangkok at 6 am is sort of grimy, all steel bars, and strangley vacant. We sort of knew the area, because we had been driven around that area many times by tuk tuk drivers in the previous weeks. We were lucky enough to run into this well traveled euro man that pointed us in the right direction, and after about 20 minutes, we made it! We checked into our trusty inn: sawasdee house. If any one is travelling to bangkok, i would suggest it! www.sawasdeehouse.com . We then proceeded to sleep untill the afternoon. That night we just lounged and got some grub, did the internet cafe thing and relaxed.

The next night was a little but more intersting. We find our self at a nice pub sat next to this british guy named adrian and his thai wife named cat. The evening gets a little foggy from here on out, but here are some highlights in the order that i remember.
1. Adrian and cat introduce themselves and warn us of the dangers of drinking thai beer (it is supposedly fill of formeldehyde)
2. They also warned us about thai cigarettes, doctors, hospitals and traffic
3.Cat is a huge fan of Linkin park and wanted adrian to compete in an air gituar contest to win tixkets
4. we are at a strange bar watching a small german man perform the maddest air gitaur routine to black sabbath??
5. The order many buckets of vodka and red bull
6. Fortune telling starts
7. Cat performs a feice air gitaur routine to red hot chilli peppers and wins the tickets to linkin park!
8.me and shiv wake up with white string tied around our wrists.

It was such a strange, but interesting evening. The next few days in bangkok, we spent at the internet cafes and sampling new food establishments around town.

We decided to book our tickets to Cambodia through sawasdee house, and Im sort of glad that we did because they were very helpful and literally "walked" us over the border.
Walking into cambodia was an experience like none other. The first thing i saw was this huge arch way that was carved so inticately like the archways you might find at the ruins of ankor wat. Surrounding the border crossing were so many people pulling wooden carts, and the main road leading away from the border was a huge red dirt road. The thai side is pretty much freeways, paved roads and shopping plazas. The cambodian side was dusty, smelly, and full of people wanting money, anything really to help them out just a bit. It was really heart breaking. I honestly could not belive my eyes. You don't want to stare, but its hard not to. And you want to give some children money, but when does it end. You cant give every street child money. And then it just perpetuates the cycle of begging and being dependent of forigners for money. It was so hard.

Our bus driver took us the long bumpy way to siem reip, The bus we were in was "defying the laws of physics" as shiv said, because it was basically "off roading", but we were on the high way. It was insane.

The thing about cambodia that has stuck in my mind so feircely was the fact that in the poor areas, there was hardly no light and the smell of wood burning. there were no street lights, no paved roads, no lights (as in bulbs), only candle light and the occasional lamp. You could se dinner being cooked out side on a fire and it just seemed that you had stepped back in time a good 50-100 years.

I wont forget that any time soon, as soon as you hit the out skirts of the city, the road is paved, street lights appear, as do the most amazing 5 star hotels I Have ever seen. Being part of the bangkok-seim reip scam, our tour guide was also affiliated with a guest house in Siem reip, so of course as soon as we get into the city, he drops every one off at his guest house.

Im just glad that the place was nice, clean and well priced. The aim is to have you arrive so tired and worn out, you will basically just pay waht ever they say because you are to worn out to barter or get a cab and try looking for a place on your own. We won out this time! and our room had hot water and the movie channel.

Facing our fears and the krabi moto diaries

2007-11-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

hello all, welcome to a new and exciting edition of opertaion osaka, with me , your host : JAN!! (applause)

any ways, so we are here in Krabi. we split from mum and tabs on nov 6th and took a small/medium sized boat (the longserm) from thongsala port in ko phan ngan to surrathani. The boat ride to surrathani, started off well enough, and then the waves started to get insanely huge and start rocking the boat. It was mindly scary and we were sittinf on the stern with a really nice world traveller girl named laurie (from beantown). She had been living in china, she speaks chinese quite well. traveked from china, to vietnam, to cambodia, to laos, to thailand, and then to india and dubai and lastly her aim was to settle at a womens health clinic in ethiopia. all we could saw was wow!!

she was really great though, at telling us what we have in store for the next big leg of our trip to cambodia and laos. She honestly quelled a little bit of my fear/nervousness and replaced it with a higher percentace of excitement.

Then the rain started... we were forced off the deck and into the under part of the boat that had the seats. this would have been real nice, except that the seated are of the boat was sooo heavily airconditioned. The temperature was about 4 degrees celcius. it was nuts.Everu one was shivering like mad, and we got going on this rant about fleece and a warm fire and socks. The 3 hour boat ride was really fun, but fridgid. As soon as we saw land, a monsoon rain hit the surrathani area and we were basically drenched. I could hardly see 5 ft infront of me. we got inside the port station, changed into drier clothes, had some fried rice (my new fave food) and then waited for our van to take us to Krabi.

Great scot! the van was airconditioned too. we basically felt like human popsicles. the good news is the ride was only 3 hours and when we got to the Krabi bus station, there weremany good prices (NICE!) guest house sales men to meet us. Score! we found a place called P's guest house and it has been a slice. great room, movie channel, hot water for 350 bhat.

the next day we booked a boat tour of 4 island and a snorkling trip. we were both really seas sick and drowsy from the boat ride the day before, so we took some gravol. bad idea. it made us really sleepy. The scenery was so nice, and we stopprd 1st off to railay beach and went to a cave that had really big sprit house in it. Thai people often belive that good sprits are all around us. They build these elaborate shrines and put them on their property. they put food, water, flowers, money etc.. into the shrine, with the hopes that the sprits will come to live and be happy and comfortable on their property. its great really!

After railay isand we went to poda island and it was a dream. it basically looke d like a movie set for a tropical isalnd. it was everything that i imagined a island in thailand to be. we were still really tired so we slept on the beach until lunch time. after lunch we got back on the boat and saw and island shape dlike a chicken (smartly named-chicken island). Then i thought we would go to a beach to do some snorkling, but the boat stops out in the middle of the ocean and the driver says this is where we will go snorkling.

ummmm... all i saw was really deep water, and i cant swim and am pretty much terrified of deep water. shiv was great! when i told him that i was going to stay on the boat and watch our bags, he was like "no, you have to try this!" and im so glad he made me get in the water and giv it a try. I was sooo scared, but i jumped in the water and i immeidieatly started to cry (very quietly) because i was so scared. the water was so deep and full of so many fish. i think i nearly broke shivs hand because i would not let go of it no matter what.

snorkling was such a distorted mind trip. under water the sea floor and coral looked almost like huge fish condo buildings rising up from the ground. then above water the sky goes on for ever. under water you almost forget you are human, and you feel like a fish in a huge aquarium. it is just wild.

Im so glad we did it. shiv looked like such a natural. It was scary for both of us, but im so glad we just jumped in and did it. go team. we got back in the boat and headed back to the main land. That night we went to a night market and had street vendor food and street meat.

The next day shiv did rock climbing at railay beach. i didnt go, but i saw the pictures from his day and they looked amazing. i will try and post them soon.there was one climb he didnt complete, but he took a picture of it, with the goal to complete i next time hes in thailand. I walked the town and did the internet cafe thing. Great day, and we wended it off with a huge grilled fish, rice and some changs!

Today we watched a supeb movie (aroundt the world in 80 days-with jackie chan) its really good. then we rented a moto and zipped around town. i feel really cool on the moto. but im sure we look more like the 2 guys on dumb and dumber. it so good though. we leave for bangkok this afternoon. 3 hours to surrthani on bus, then another 12 hrs to bangkok. im so excited. talk to you all soon.

big hugs from krabi.
love jan and shiv!

hustling the hustlers

2007-11-01T01:55:00.000-07:00

So, I seemed to have missed out on our summer time in Osaka. But i will add those blogs later. What is really important is that we are in Thailand right now. We got here on the 25th of october and we flew from osaka to shanghai to bangkok.

It just feels so classy to say we flew via shanghai (dont you think )

well..our little taste of china was interesting. some things that stood out for us were the 20 minute tv commercials glorifying beijing and china and china eastern airlines. it was grand. the airport was super impressive, tons of stores,and i mean tons, selling the exact same over prices stuff. that was a little odd. but over all, the smog impressed me most.

we got to bangkok that evening and walked around the backpackers ghetto (khao san road) checked into our hotel, and the lady is telling us that our room is 800 bhat, when our online reservation says its 500 bhat. so we had a little bit of a scrummage with the lady and ended up paying the higher price cause she was very mean.

later on that night, tabs and mums flight arrived. i couldnt sleep, so i waited up for them to call our room. It was soooo nice to finally see them. It was like Skype 3D. there is nothing quite like seeing family after a long strech.

The next day we swiftly checked out of our comfy rooms and checked into more of a guesthouse type of deal. mine and shivs and tabs room would be what some might call (bare bones- cell room thai chic) it was grand. mum opted for the bathroom, room with aircon. shes not really roughing it. But i was suprised that she came with a hiking backpack. I never would have thought i would see the day mum would don a hiking backpack.

That day we got hustled into the tuk tuk world. oh my! you have to really experience the frustration, because its hard to type and really relay how frustrating, dirty, hot and ridiculous the whole system is. So, tuk tuks are like a motor bike that have a carraige attached. you can fit about 3-4 passengers on them , and 1 driver.
You ask them to give you a lift to a place, and they basically will take you to a jewelry shop, a tailor, a travel agency, or some other random place in order for them to get their gas coupon from the affiliated vendor.

The best scam came when we hired this tuk tuk guy to take us to the grand palace, and we promised that we would go to a travel agents and "pretend" to iquire about a trip in order for him to get his gas coupon. In exchange we got a free(round trip) ride to the palace. In reality, we got used and hustled. we completed his part of the bargain, but he ditched us at the temple. we felt sweaty, used and dirty.

Bangkok is good for 2 days. the 1st day everything is new and amazing and exhilarating, the 2nd day the grime and everything starts to get to you, by the 3rd day you want to commandeer your own tuk tuk to get stuff done.

The food in bangkok was amazing, and Sooo reasonable. We met some really fun peeps around the area that we were staying. A highlight for sure was the party (tabs b day) at the Shell gas station. So after about 12 am, the shell gas station closes down and it turns into this cool out door club/cafe. live music and ridiculously cheap drinks. We found our selfs here after a dinner of grilled fish and 50 bhat chang beers. wE then proceeded to drink thail herbal wine and cheap sprits till the place closed down.

The next day we went to the floating market wich was really nice. we rented a boat and rode down the canals while people tried to sell us all sort of food, fruit and souveniers. it was great.

While in Bangkok we got hustled into signing up for a 8 day vacation package. At first he quoted us 750 cdn dollars per person for hotel,transportation and 4 days in phuket, and then 4 days in ko phanan island. Yes, that sounds resaonable, but you can barted down almost anything in thailand. We left paying about 100 dollars CDn for the whole 8 day trip. grand!

So here we are in Patong beach. its a sort of sunny beach town. lots of euros. no americans or canadians. wich is often refresging. But europeans are sort of weird, and love wearing speedos/being topless etc.. you dont know if you are winning or loosing really. We leave for Ko phan an tommorow and we are really excited!

We will keep ya'all posted.
xoxo

Fuji Rock Festival and being ghetto

2007-07-29T01:38:00.000-07:00

me and shiv have many similarities, one of them is that we love rock music, and have been wanting to go to fuji rock since we were both in junior high. We both love the beastie boys (shiv loves their older stuff, i like their newer stuff) and we booked our tickets for FRF the same day that the beastie boys would be headlinig the event. coincidence, i think not!

So here is where the adventure begins. We let jan plan this tip because jan likes to be in control... i booked all of our transpotaion to and from the concert, but we i didnt book accomodations for 2 reasons. 1) we could probably find cheap accomodations if we needed to (its japan!!) we could stay in an internet cafe if need be. and 2) we are too cheap and ghetto to spend for hotels!!!hahah

so the trip to niigata from osaka was long, but we had a really nice bus so it was a classy trip all the way. we got to niigata, wich reminded us of edmonton for some strange reason. maybe the flatness, the lack of a down town core...hmm. But any way we got to nigatta and it was only 7pm. so we decided to keep on going, and try to get to echigo yuzawa. The main station before you get the shuttle bus to the concert. We got our tickets for the shinkansen bullet train!!! and away we went. The bullet train by the way was fantastic. It was full of genuine tokyo business men eating salty fish snacks peanuts and drinking beer. It was what dreams were made of. It couldnt have gotten any more japanesey in car #12 of that shinkansen!

We got to echigo yuzawa station, and luckily it was the FRF station we neede to be at. For a while we were scared that we had bouth tickets to the wrong station. but we saw the banners and we had finally made it. So next we decided we have to find a place to sleep. We went to the FRF info desk and asked if there was an internet cafe near by, and the lady said "no"
a hotel---NO
a ryokan--NO
is the train station open---NO
for real?? we were seriously with out a place to stay, the lady was genuinly concerned fot us and called every hotel and ryokan (inn) near by. they were either full, or charging about 7000 yen per person.
She couldnt seem to understand why we were still saying no to all of her efforts, at one point she offered to have us sty at her place.. for 3500 yen per person, wich is a deal for a ryokan, but not a deal for cheapsters like me and shiv!

So we decided, hmmm either we can 1) walk this small deserted mountain town till the AM then take the shuttle to the concert or 2) go to the concert, be with the people and see what happens.
we chose #2 and got on the next shuttle for naeba ski resort, where the festival was being held.

This story is starting to sound like a choose your own adventure, but thats honestly what it was like the whole weekend.

we get to the ski resort and the town looks like a japanese version of jasper, quaint, but packed with people, tucked in the mountains. by the way osaka temperature is about 30 degrees and humid, and naeba temperature was about 17 degrees , no humidity, so a little chilly in comparison, and me and shiv only have on t shirts and have rain ponchos in my purse.

we decide to roam the town and look for a place to stay. after checking with about 20 places we start to feel like mary and joseph and relaizing there is no room at any inn for us. we have convinced our selves that we are about to be sleeping out side to night, when we see a bunch of earthy peeps going into this one ryokan. so we follow. and the man says sorry no vacancy...but we have showers for 500 yen... hmmm
what do we do 1) sleep outside 2) sleep in the shower alnight
we take his information and decide to get a cp noodle and think about it, on our way to the cup noodle we saw another ryokan with more shifty charachters, so we followed them.
Lucky for us we were greeted by a really drunk japanese lady that said something to the effect of. "this place is really nice, hot water..."
the door guy must have felt bad for us and gave us a coupon. we decided to stay at this place. it was a 24 hr onsen, so you can sleep in the water, or come to a common tatami room and pass out.

One thing about japan that is great is that there are so many people, it is basically written, that there will be some one in your very same perdicament. so we sat, ate our cup noodle, sat in the onsen, slept under the brigt lights on the tatani (in 1/2 hr spurts). The place was really full, and the lights were blaring so you couldnt really sleep, but it was nice to just lay down. we didnt have any blankets so we slept on our onsen towels. this ghetto ness would be the theme of our trip. i love it!

The next day we woke up nice and early, had a big breakfast of tonkatsu curry and headed to get some snack and then to the festival.
Fuji rock festival was worth every penny. it was in a valley that was intricatly decorated to look like a forest wonderland. disco balls in the tress, 7 music stages, tons of resturants, shops etc.. it was grand. even the rocks in the streams had been painted bright colors and had googly eyes on them.

The bands we saw were :hige, motion sity sound track, kula shaker, kaiser cheifs, !!!, lilly allen, feist , iggy pop and the beastie boys. My faves were feist, lilly allen, !!! and the beastie boys. !!! did an awesome performance that me and shiv try to reinact on a daily basis. check youtube for !!! in concert, you;ll see what we mean.

great day, but the night was coming and we had to make it back to echigo yuzawa station in order to get the 1st shinkansen back to nigatta so that we could make out bus back to osaka. phew!!

we took the shutte bus back to echigo, and tried to find a place to sleep, but echigo is way more dead that naeba. so we decided to follow people to see where they were sleeping/going. aftter many failed attemepts at following people, we decided to sleep in the park. we found a nice little park, it even had a foot onsen bath. we snuggled up on the park bench, covered our selvesin out towels and rain jacket and tried to get some sleep. Shiv fell asleep fast, but i remained awake, sort of like the muma bird i guess. well it was funny because as the time went by, more and more vagrants from the festival ended up finding a parkbench and falling asleep in the park. we were really homeless and ghetto, it was nuts.

so I finally drifted og to sleep, only to be awoken at about 3 am by a bright lfash light in my face. AHHH!!! was it the cops, no it was the fuji rock staff!. I was so excited, he was saying" sumimasen (exuse me) you cannot sleep in the residential areas of echigo" and i got so excited. I though he was going to take us to a fuji rock sleeping area, maybe even a ryokan.

But no... he took us back to JR echigo yuzawa station. he rounded up every one from the park, put them in a van and drove them to the station. me and shiv were laughing, and crying inside a little...

so the station alreadt had people sleeping there from the concert. so we picked a nice little place on the sidewalk, put down out plastic bag ( that had been carrying our garbage) laid down on it, used our towels as pillows and slept till morning.
so ghetto, so good.

the rest of the trip was luxury, nice bus and good food all the way to osaka. but after this trip, i will never look at my futon the same way, ever again.

FESTIVAL TIME!!!!

2007-07-25T01:23:00.000-07:00

its summer and that means it time to go crazy and get sweaty. Osaka, has alot of festivals in the summer and they pretty much all include floats, costumes, drums and sake. we went to a nieghbourhood festival in bentencho. it was really nice, lots of dancing, drums and food stalls. The stalls sell every thing from eels, baby crab pets, rubber balls, tacoyaki, french fries. slushie cups, hello kitty parepheniliea and pet frogs. I so understand why japanese kids aren't afriad of insects. Its because from a young age bugs are treated like toys. In all of the "carnival games" you can win either toys or creepy crawlies. no aminal right here people. there was a "game" i kid you not. you have to stab the eel with a stake and if you "get it", you get to keep it. crazy heh? so kids just see beetles and spiders like a toy, fort of like a moving action figure. its crazy. here are some pics from the big gion matsuri in kyoto, we called in sick for this one, the tenjin matsuri, and the bentencho matsuri. xoxox

Climbing Mt Fuji! (july 19th-20th)

2007-07-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

so a japanese quote about mt fuji goes a little something like this..

" a wise man climbs fuji once, a fool does it twice"

And i belive this quote is very true. On July 19th and 20th me and shiv set out to climb Mt fuji. I dont think he magnitude of what we were abotu to do, hit us untill be were about 1-2 hrs into the hike. We are so glad we did it, and heres a little recap of our adventure.

So, we go to the 5th station, in our bus. the 5th station is about 2700m up, and you are well in/over the cloud level. I went to the bathroom a few times, because im known for my small bladder, then we went upstairs to change and have a lunch before we set out on the hike. While in the tourist shop we ran into some other climbers in our group. they happened to be from calgary, and some other peeps on the climb were from toronto and georgia. small world.

The small lunch was not small at all, It was a hearty udon souo, tempura, rice, chicken kaarage, meat, and other typical japanese lunch bits. very filling , very good. Before lunch we had gone into separate mens and womens changing quaters to change. I didnt know exactly what to change into, so i slyly watched what the other women were doing, and followed suit. good work detective!

We started our climb at about 530 pm, and it was very easy, so beautiful and really relaxed. Our tour guide was keeping a super slow pace, that i only understood later on in the hike when i was so tired i could hardly walk. Our tour group consisited of about 30 people, about 6 gailjin and 24 japanese people. along the first part of the hike you could see "a peak" in the distance far up the mountain, but as we kept on walking, rest staion after rest station, i started to realize that this mounatin was so high, the peak just kept on going and going.

it was really hard to mentally prepare myself for fuji, because it just didnt end. It just kept on going, you have to be so positive, sing, smile,talk to your self, to push your self to finish. I was talking and singing in my head like a shizophrenic to keep my self focused on getting to the next rest staion, and then the next one.

As it got darker, we got to put on out head lights, a fun highlight to the trip. The terrian that we hike dup was not bad, it was not a hard hike by any means. Its the environment, that was challenging. It was the altitude and the nausea that really made the hike hard for me. I got really alitude sick, shiv felt a little nauseous. At first i thought it was all in my head, i pretty much refused to buy a 1500 yen cannister of oxygen. (what a waste i though!), but after feeling so sick and almost unable to stand, i thought maybe i might be lacking O2.

Altitude sickness felt (for me) like food poisoning. You stomach is churning like you are bad bad curry, and its so bad its making your head feel dizzy. I was walking at a slower than slow pace, and my heart was beating like i was running a marathon. Its the strangest feeling, that really makes you look at the people around you, the 60 and 70 yr old japanese seniors that are doing this hike, it makes you see everyone in a new light. like human machines,

Just getting to the next rest station was a big feat, shiv was motivating me the whole time, always staying positive and giving helpful hints about how to climb the course better. I looked at him and saw him in a whole new light too. he has really been preparing for this hike. and he was carrying way more weight ( camera equipment) than I was. Every time we had gone on a hike, he has always liked to carry his equipment, to make him self ready for fuji, and the uncomfortable nature of the hike. it paid of because he was able to hike, take photos and help my sorry buns up the mountain. go shiv!!!

We walked for what felt like 2 hrs, but what must have been 45 mins of so, then took a rest, and sat on the mountain. Sitting had never felt so good. I could just feel every muscle relaxing when i sat down at a rest station. catching my breath and just trying to breathe and relax my body was the most important thing for those 5-10 minutes we had.

A fond memory i have of fuji is gasping for air at one of the high rest stations, and seeing this japanese man smoking a cigarette beside me. here i am, unable to breathe 3000 m in the air, and here he is breathing and smoking. i could understand it. the human body is a magical thing.

We climbed from about 530 pm till about 1130 pm and then rested at a mountain hut. It was a really nice hut with warm bunk beds and a pack breakfast consisting of meat balls, rice and pickless. mmmm. I went to bed feeling like crap, and work up feeling a little less like crap. 3 hrs sleep had never felt so good, but i still had a bad case of altitude sickness. We started climbing and i was determined to be more positive than ever. My game plan was going really well till i had to stop and take a deep breath of air. Instead of yawning, i started puking all over the trail. I was so embarrased. time seemed to stand still, and i still could stop puking. i just remebr seeing head lights go past me.

A few minuted earlier, shiv had said he was going to go up front to the front of the pack to take some photos and that he would meet me when i caught up to him.
here is shivs recap; so i was at the front waiting for jan to walk past, i remeber seeing a japanese girl croched down at the back of the group and the I remeber hearing a tap. and i thought, "yeah!" they have running water up here, we can get a drink... and then it hit me, where is jan??? maybe jan was that japanese girl. AHHHH!!!!

so... after puking a few times and lindsay and john helping me get back on my feet i started the hike again. I was so dehydrathed from puking up all my food and water. my worst memory wa the hike leader asking me "dijobu??(are you ok??)" and me saying "yeah" and then puking continuously.

So i caught up with shiv, and he was in shock that i was the puking japanese girl. I felt like crap, but i was determined to finish this hike. the rest of the way up was pure concentration and positivity. that last grind was probably the hardest thing ive ever done. We got to the top at about 4 am, and the cheer, happiness and the overall amazing vibe at the top was enought to bring you to tears. climbing fuji is not a competitiion. its an experience. People share in this cause its not easy, but its something you do together as a team.

I pretty much wanted to get a hot vending machine coffee, and fall on the ground, but shiv secured a seat near the edge for us to watch the sunrise. I was bitter for a bit, but all that melted away when the sun started to rise on the horizon. the veiw was pretty much like watching the sun rise from a plane, but theres no plane!! it was unreal, cold and amazing. thereare food stalls, wending machines and souvnir shoppes on the top. only in japan!

The decent took FOREVER!!! it was a very rocky wash all the way down and i couldnt wait to get to the bus. we got to the bus about 8 am and then slept for 1 hr untill we went to an onsen resort type place for bath time the lunch. after the lunch we got back on the bus to osaka, and then the trip was over. high times indeed!!

its for sure summer time in osaka

2007-07-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

well yesterday we got some thyphoon weather. that was fun for about 1/2 an hour. and then it was just too wet. it rained for about a day, non stop. and then after the rain dried up mother nature left a new gift. Cycaydas!! i saw my furst live cycadah on the wall of the apt building next to ours. I first though.hmmm what is that green rock doing stuck to the building, then at second glance i saw that it was green and rainbow shiny, had huge wings and was as big as my palm. ewww.

and if i wouldn't have seen the guy, i wouldn't have been so scared when i noticed all the "birds" in the trees were going crazy this morning. The cycaydahs are super loud in the morning, and sound like hundreds of baby birds in the trees. hmm its going to be intersting considering im quite paranoid/scared of bugs.

well, ill live. but over the past few weeks we've been busy bees. doug was here weeks ago, and we showed him a good time (as always).Me and shiv tried to get lost, this act had a greater purpose. We are trying to explore new areas of osaka. and of course we did find all new nooks and crannies.

we'll post some pics. of the bike rides. before i forget. we went to shakeys pizzaria today, and i dont think ever one fully understands the pizza combinations that come out of this place. Here are some of their creations
- ikasumi (octapus ink pizza) ** 2 stars, gross, no taste - tuna, raw shrimp and corn ** for obvious reasons-- sweet ground beef, extra cheese, potatoes **** so good, ---rosemary,ginger and salmon * toomuch weird flavors-- taco pizza with peperoni, lettuce, salsa, cheese,***** its like one big tortilla chip, with so much topping. ----

cant think of any more slices right now, but it should be known that corn, mayo and potato are as common as cheese and pepperoni, for pizza topping.

While on our bike adventures we went to the umeda sky building, that really weird looking super tall building. it has outside glass escalators that take you to the roof. very scary. but even more interesting the building had a bift shop that had a small harrods section. So you could get all types of bristish teas, jams and harrods shopping bags.
Also, in japan its very common to send a gift set as a measure of thanks. Like a cookie set, a jelly set, a beer set or a cooking oil set. yes a cooking oil set.
So what it is is a gift box full of regualr, nicely wrapped cooking oil. sandra and paul notified us of this strange asian trend, and its alive and well in japan. Just like in korea, they do have span gift sets complete with the gift wrapped cooking oil.

We went to see shrek #3 but were mildy excited. it was ok. The 300 was super good though. for our anniversary wich was on the 8th, we decided to go to kobe after work. we were going to go out for srilankan food, but then we both decided that we would probably get small portions and it wouldnt be as tasty as ammis food. so that morning we were really craving a good hearty canadian style meal, like old spagetti factory. And alas! we found one in Kobe. we were so happy. we walked around the harbour, ate over priced desserts at the desset land, and then had the most amazing crepes at the shopping mall complex near the harbour.

kobe had this amazing cathedral building that we wanted to photograph, but it was locked off by a highway and ramp. thats so japan. Inside one of the malls there was a huge bust of the mona lisa made out of pearly buttons. i couldnt stop looking, i swear she was looking at me...

This week shiv worked a ton, he did a whack load of privates for miki, so i was out and about, or at home for the week. one night i went to hard rock with tara, evania, nicole and becky for dinner and dessert. The apple crumble is so over priced, but so worth it. i will never take apple crumble for granted ever again.

xoxo

Hiking with the spaniards!

2007-06-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

so,
man, I always start my blogs with "so", but thats realy how i talk, ..."so here we go". last thursday we had a big plan to hike yabaguchi-ko, a hiking trail off in the wilds of the Biwako lake area. Its a really nice hike that is rated as one of the best to do in the kansai area. We didn't complete the hike, but had alot of fun on the parts of the hike that we did do.

The day started out really early/late, depending wich way you look at the situation. We were still sitting at the 280 pub at 1 am the morning of the hike. So needless to say i was the crankiest person in Kansai the morning of our big adventure! we got to umeda at about 730, and met fernando there. Fernando is a traveling backpacker from mexico city. He has tons of crazy stories that you think are tall tales and fabricated lies, but then he has crazy pictures to back up all the madness. Luck follows him every where and hes traveled to tibet, china, bits and peices of asia and is now backpacking through japan. we wish him luck on his seoul section of his trip, and are glad we ran into him at the 280.

We also went with our fellow nova work and photograpy friend "laura". shes super nice and from spain. She met us at umeda and then we headed out to catch the train to Takashima station in shige prefecture. the station we arrived at was pretty bland and rickety, but the main draw to the town was the HUGE statue of gulliver, as in Gulliver from gullivers travels. It was massive and was pulling these little broze replicas of lilliput ships with little bronze lilliputters in them.

The train station immediatly reminded me of being back home in canada, because as most canadians can attest, in canada small towns always have some big/weird claim to fame. eg) veggriville (huge pysanka egg), drumheller ( big dinosaur), random alberta town ( some big statue of something meaningless but oddly intersting)

takashima is no different, and i liked it immediatly. we got there a little off scedule, so we had to wait 2 hrs for the bus to take us to the foot of the mountain wich was another town called kurono. to kill time we walked around the town, wich starangely had no conveinience stores, (no family mart, nothing...strange) . We walked down by the coast, and i thought i was a rope lying on the rocks, but it was a huge snake! we trekked around for a bit, then made our way back to the bus station.

On the bus ride to the hike, my favorite japanese encounter happened. it was between us an a sweet old obachan(granny) While on the bus to kurono, we were all sitting at the very back an old lady came and sat right infront of us. she was pretty preoccupied with getting her bags settled into the seat and seating her self she didint realize a whole row of foreiners sitting right behiend her.

when she did turn around, she was so startled to see all these gailin faces staring at her she yelled "bikuri" and then appologized right away for saying bikuri and was so embarrased. ps ( bikuri-means SUPRISE, or wow, i didn't see that coming)in japanese).

The hike was great, we got lost a few times and had to back track and start from the begginng, but we all had a good laugh about it every time we got to the "rocky wash that goes down to meet the river" this was a contencious spot of the hike we couldn't really find. but Shiv was really proud of me because i am deathly afraid of bugs , especially butterflys, and moths and flying bugs. And our hike was full of flying bugs and snakes, and i didn't flip out 1/2 as much as he thought i would.
Yeah!!

For parts of the hike we were scaling boulders like in movie, i felt like a conquistadora (woman conquering a new world!) it was such an amazing feeling to be doing such a hard climb, it was tough and strenuous, but empowering at the same time.

it started to get dark so we decided to turn back on the trail, but not before our spanish hikers decided to take a mountain waterfall bath in the buff, me and shiv (being canadian prudes) stood in our clothes and ate raisins in the forest. Oh the spanish, they are light years beyond us in terms of body image and self counciousness.

when we got back to Osaka, we were so hungry we went for okonomiyaki (osaka squid pancake) so good, dont knock it till you try it! and watched a super good jazz band play at umeda station.
Great day, thanks to the compnay.!

Ians Big Adventures

2007-06-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

so its june, and i haven't written in a while. But its for good reaon. we have been showing ian the "real japan". he came last week, on may the 28 and we had a loose, but fun itinerary planned for him, he was sort of templed/sightseeing out, so we tried to keep the temples to a minimum, we did go to kyomisdera in kyoto, and that was really cool. it was super crowded but we were able to make s really good day of it. We also took ian out to eat tons. shakeys all you can eat pizza ( and dance club), Plum restaurant wich had sper food and specialises in plum wine, Yaki niku (BBQ beef restaurant) and many other mum and pop joints.
We biked around tons, and while we were at work he started to get a feel for osaka and navigate the down town area on his own. Every day was really fun, we went to see some bands play, we watched russell peters, we went to shivs gallery closing, and we went shopping and exploring.
On Ians last day, shiv and ian set out on a hiking, phtography adventure in koyasan. they came home a bit dirty and super excited. They had slid down hillsides and went running in moss feilds??? im still not sure, shiv said they had a great day and they felt like a tom sawyer duo.
it was so nice to have him here.hope he enjoyed the trip.

Dougs Osaka Extravaganza

2007-05-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

Last week on the 23rd, doug crossman, our friend from edmonton (who happens to be teaching in south korea) stopped by osaka for a 4 day visit. He was getting more work done on his tattoo and decided to bless us with his presence for a few days. We went shopping, ate all u can eat (VIking) chinese food, ate too much sushi, saw pirates of the Carribean 3, and tore up the streets of Osaka with our bike gang.

Here are some pics.

Soho Gallery Opening Festivities!

2007-05-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

YAHHH!!!! Shiv's 1st Gallery exhibition. It was held at The newly opened SoHo Art Gallery in Osaka. He was one of 24 artists (western and Japanese) to have their work displayed at the gallery. It was an awesome night, lots of people showed up, and most importantly there was lots of food and drinks. The theme was "Art Salad", wich im sure has some thing to do with many different tasty parts coming together to create a scumptious whole. As well, there was a big salad to eat.

Shivs work consisted of 10 photos, half from canada and half from his time in japan. One of the photos had to be displayed separately because it was taken at a Hanshin Tigers game. Baseball fans are dead serious here, and the photo was alittle controversial because it may of offended non-hanshin fans.

His work was super popular with gallery visitors, and so many nice things were said about him, and his art. Im one proud wifey!
A few other Nova staff contributed their art work for the show, Dom-3 videos, Clint-photos, Laura-photos... and many more.

The japanese artists also submitted art work, all really intricate and precises, very pretty, and visualy appealing. some peices seemed alittle out of date, but i think that is the style out here. Great show, the gallery looks great, and it is a very new concept for Osaka Galleries. Celio, A Nova trainer, and his wife Goldie, own and designed the cafe. They are both artists and wanted to create an space where japanese and foreign artists could come together and learn/share and display their work. Usually galleries out here are a tad stuffy, you go in look at the work, drink your tea and ponder. But this gallery is open concept, on 3 floors, has a cafe on the main floor and multimedia, teaching and artist residence spaces.

Here are some photos from the event. enjoy!
more photos can be seen on shivs site www.pbase.com/shivdesilva

Okinawa Love

2007-05-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

hi every one. we got back from Okinawa and it was greeat.
Okinawa is the main island, part of a chain of hundreds of islands off the southernmost tip of japan. We left early on the 15th and got back late on the 18th.
the morning started out a bit stressed and rushed, but by the time we got to our gate and were waiting to board the plane, all our osaka stress melted there at gate 22.
We had sweet seats on the plane, they put us up in business class because the plane was CROWDED with tons of junior high kids going to okinawa for school trips. I kid you not, the plane was ahuge heffer jet, and atleast 200 kids were on the plane. thank goodness for the semi sound barrier in business class.
Japan airlines is nice though,much better than crap air canada. I was a bit chapped though, because we just got a beverage to drink for the 1 hour and 20 minute flight. Atleast on air canada they give you those bad tasting sesame crispy sticks.

shiv fel asleep listing to traditional "Anka" music (Japanese folk music) and fell asleep to a norah jones dicography. good flight down.

When we got to okinawa, the magic started as soon as we got to our gate, the glass corridors that lead you to the airport from the airplane was lines with rows of orchids and hibiscus flowers. They gave the place a tropical smell and a dreamy island look.
At the airport we got some bento boxes for the 2hr shuttle bus ride to the resort.

The ride to the resort was fantastic. I was so suprised to see how much the island looked just like the carribean. Most of the aritecture is done with concrete blocks so the whole island looks like kingston JA. the place was so lush and green, so much greenery ,vines and flowers of all colors.

It was such a nice suprise to see people dressed in "okinawa shirts" much like hawaiian shirts, and looking so chocolatey. we ate and couldnt stop staring out the window, the place looked like a post card. green-blue water, the buildings, every thing was awesome. Our bus was pretty empty, except for me, shiv and another man traveler, but the tour hostess continued to give all of us an indepth presentation of what we were witnessing on our bus ride (in the sexiest japanese voice ever!... it was a tad uncomfortable)

We got to the resort, man, it was fantasic. We checked in, got all our travel informationa and bus scedules for our sightseeing and then went to our room. Our room was quite nice and tropically decorated. We then took a walk around the resort and along the beach and guess what we found... An army base.

At the end of our beach was an resort area for army people and their families to use. Okinawa is full of army bases, and i swear, army bases occupy the nicest land in okinawa. We guessed that once G.I's are on leave they can spend some time at that air base resort, we even saw a woman on the base-beach drinking hawaiian punch.DANG! its pretty neat that many stores in okinawa carry import US goods like Betty crocker, corm meal,A&W drive in's to cater to the military,navy and airforces.

The next day we got up early and set out to catch the local bus to manzano (a steep rocky cliff face, that drops off into a coral reef area) and Nakaguskus Castle ruins. The bus ride to get to manza area was really nice, it was great to see the island and all the little towns along the way. Manzano was nice, its a huge flat grasy clif that drops off into the ocean. we took some pics there, and at the sea side below the cliffs. Next we got another bus and headed to Cadena city where we met "papa-san".
Papa -san, was this super nice cab driver(age 76) that offered to drive us to the castle for a better price than the bus, wich he did!
he gave us a nice comentary on the area, as well as beeped at a girl about 40 yrs his senior who he said used to be his "girlfriend" great guy. It was a great interest for both of us to know more about the GI housing areas. Japan is crowded, and houses are usually wedged right up against another.
On the GI bases family houses is super american town house style with huge yards back and front as well as private park/play areas for kids. The whole place was green with grass (some thing you hardly NEVER see any where in japan). On the army bases there was an imax theatre, Macaroni grill restaurant, Pizza hut, mall etc.. it was nuts. And the school buses around the area were full of kids (spanish, black white, mexican asian military kids) being shuttlled from base school to base home. nutso.

The castle was very neat, it is the best preserved evidence of the ryuku kingdom. Okinawa was not a part of japan till the 1970s, and the people of okinawa consider them selfs a distict culture separate(but part of )japan. a very interesting history indeed. That night shiv got some awesome photos of the beach at night and me looking like a lost sea widow. i think my new favorite set of photos thus far!

The next day we rented bikes and biked to heji water fall, about a km or so away from our resort. It was very nice and full of creepy crawlies, lizards and mosquitos. After the waterfall we biked to the hetona fish market and headed north along the coast. We saw lots of people sporadically spread out in the waters. Old and young women in regular clothes, almost waist deep looking for clams in the ocean. It was great, we stopped there for a while to watch the women at work. It was great to see such a traditional speed of work, in a natural setting.
After the clam diggers we rode back down the coast to our hotel and took some jan and shiv time to enjoy the beach.
That night we ate like royalty at the hotel. It was really neat to know that okinawan cuisine has a sweet bread exactly like "festival", a sweet bread popular in the carribean. we tried every thing on the buffet table, and both agreed that we hate goya. a really bitter veggies that is super popular in okinawa cuisine. At the tourist shops in okinawa they sell all types of goya.
still not good...

The next day we went to Naha, a great city, we took the monorail to koisumi street and shopped away. we played out favorite game "oh whats this?"-- it consists of pretending like your going to buy a peice of food, but first you sample it like you are interested in buying it. Then you eat all the food samples, dont buy any thing, and then repeat at every other store.
we never get sick of that game!

on the way back to osaka, the purfume duty free lady gave us a deal we couldn't resist, so i got new escada perfumes, and shiv got a puma man cologne. it really felt like a vacation, and we vowed to take out laid back isalnd out look back to osaka. great vacation, shiv even got his forehead chocolate coated alittle due to the okinawa sun.

I love snoop at the gym. and so should you!

2007-04-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

Hi every one,
just yesterday i was in the shower at the gym, and i heard a familiar hook from a song. What was that song you ask? well im not quite sure of the name. But its that new one with Akon and snoop dogg.
I love listening to snoop at the gym as much as many gym goers do, but one thing thats so special about japan is you can listen to Hip Hop most any where in its un -cut and un censored versions.
its so odd, its hard to explain hearning hard core rap (with swearing) in a change room full of middle aged naked japanese women.
You can also go out for dinner, Me and shiv frequent our fave pizzaria "shakeys" where you can be eating a nice meal and have Ludacris singing sweet songs to you over the speakers.
My favorite has to be this little bakery near work called Hanhyou bakery, a nice japanese bakery featuring swedish style breads. God bles them for their 7am Crunk and hip hop selection.
I know some japanese people must understand american rap/swear words, So i find it so amazing,funny,strange and a tad embarrasing that in many places you hear uncensored music. It makes the change room at the gym feel like a club, and you can bop your head to the latest jams at dinner.

Man, Osaka Love!

Koyasan and the monk motel.

2007-04-18T03:05:00.000-07:00

Koyasan here we come!
we went to koyasan this weekend. and it was really good. we took out explorer sized packs to work, so that we could take the train striaght to koyasan after work. we booked through the underbround pedways and ctatcombs wich are the namba walk shopping center, and arrived at the train platform just in time to board.

getting to koyaysan was half the fun, the train ride is really scenic, with lots of mountain scenery. mountain scenery in japan, is quite a bit different form mountain scenery in japan. The "mounatins in japan, are like big "foothills" covered in lush green trees, banboo and other flowy, wallowy greens. the forests are much more temperate, and hence the vegetation that is found in the mounatins surrounding koyasan looks like BC rain forest/bamboo forest.

The train wound its way through the mountains and went through tons of tunnels until we came to the last station (cable car station). we took the cable car al the way up the mountain and the higher we got we noticed that the rain became chubbier, and chubbier untill it became fluffy and snow like. So at the top it was snowing. Wild!! our tour package lined every thign up time wise, so we didn't have to wait, for a bus, and then the bus took us straight to our temple lodgings. http://www.fukuchiin.com/index.html . That is the link for the temple. it was cold and snowy when we arrived, and the 1st thing we had to do was take off our shoes (outside) and put them into a communal shoe closet outside the temple. The main building had no central heating, and no insulation. So ya'll can sort of immagine what a wood builing would feel like in -4 snowy weather. sort of dank, and very cool. At the front office area, we were introduced to our tourguide/housekeeping lady named Akiko. She showed us all around the temple, the onsens and to our room.

Our room was amazing, it was super traditional japanese style. imagine a room straight out of a movie (last samurai or crouching tiger hidden dragon.) all tatami, rice paper screen windows, gold and black laquered doors, traditional brush stroke art. the works. loved it. Akiko settled us in and told us how to work the heating. our room was pre heated for us and tea and cakes were waiting for us in the room. Japanese service is impecable. i will write a post soley on japanese service at a later date.

We took a walk around the premises, and looked at all the artifacts in the temple, then we went to the onsen that was in the temple complex. The onsen was my favorite so far in japan. It was half indoor and half out door. The pool spanned and indoor section, and was separaed by glass and the out door portion. The indoor bit was all wood and big stone slabs lined the bottom of the bath. i was the only one in the whole onsen so that was also really nice. The out door onsen was the best thouugh. The weather had been quite warm the previous few days so the cherry blossoms and roses had started to bloom, But tonight it was snowing, and the rose trees that lined the bath had snow on them. It was a surreal evening, absolutely gorgeous.

dinner was served inroom by akiko, and was fully vegetarian. Wich was good for me cause im not a fan of raw fish. dinner was great and consisted of many small tables linked together over flowing with food. love it!!
Akiko also set up our futon beds for us and gave me a travel baggie of toothpaste, so nice.

The next day we got up early early, (5:30 am) to get ready to see the minks doing their morning prayers in the main temple hall. It was an amazing experience. to hear and see monks doing their prayers in a traditional setting. We( guests) had to sit on the floor. As a westerer, i am not very accustomed to sitting on my knees for a long period of time (you try it at home, its hard!!) so sitting like that for the whole service was hard, and me as well as many others were shifting their legs around through out the service. It was a little mesmerising, because of the chanting, i felt like i was hallucinating, maybe from the blood loss in my lower regions, or maybe because i was next to a huge heat lamp and the heat was putting me to sleep. All in all it was great to see buddhism being practiced in a traditional setting. After the service we were taken on a tour around the back sections of the temple where monuments of prominent buddhist people/ saints are kept, alongside offereings to deceased family members and statues of the buddha. It was great. all of the gold and brass in the temple along side the candle lights and insence was mesmersing. dream like is a word that just begins to explain the feeling of being there that morning.

After the morning ceremony, we headed back to our room for japanese style breakfast, and then put on our packs and set off on our hike.

We hiked up a mountain at the north entrace to koyasan to an area that was famous for its rows of tori gates as well as a mountain top shrine. The hike was great, we thought we were lost at some parts, but we kept on heading up and up into the clouds. The shirne was awesome, and we were ina big cloud, so we couldn't see out over the valley, but it was dead cool.

We continued down the mountain, when we ran into a man dressed in a beige suit, fit for an afternoon tea of church service. He directed us towards the parth ways of tori's and to this day im not so sure if he might have been an angel/real or some sort of japanese well dressed apparition. He could have been real though, because the japanese are always impecably dressed and wear dress shoes on all occasions (eg women hiking in high heels)

Once we did the hike we headed back to the town center and walked down the main drag at see all (ALL) the temples. Koya san is temple city, sort of like how vegas is all casinos, koyasan is all temples. The high light of shivs day was for sure doing to the graveyard in Koyasan. Its overwhelmingly huge and filled with massive granite monuments of all the high ups in Japanese buddhism. By comparing the size of the monuments you can graso how prominent./rich each person must have been. Buried in this grave yard are leaders and religious elite of the japanese Shingon school of esoteric buddhism. Its founder is a man named Kobo daishi, and he as well as any one important is buried there.

we spent a good part of the afternoon there taking pictures and walking around (see shivs site) and then we made our way to the touristy parts and got bracelets and a pioneer hello kitty charm for my phone.
great trip, so worth it.

Wacky Biwako!!

2007-04-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

The day started of like many other traveling days for me and shiv. We got up super early with Lake Biwako on our adgenda. shiv had researched and we were off to see the sunno festival. The thought we were going to see a huge procession of shrines held by shinto followers, and attended by thousands of people. In reality a much more fun day was waiting for us in Biwako!! we got on the trains and headed to kyoto. It was such a nice day out we decided to walk through kyoto city to the hanshin rail station. Kyoto is such a cool city, we get lost and find so many interesting things in kyoto each time we go there.

The train ride to biwako was awesome, its always so nice to get out of the "armpit" that is osaka, and see sky, trees and greenery. When we got to the train station we were sort of suprised to see pretty much no people, but oh well, we though they must be further up the mountain. We stopped for some japanese bakery goods. (god bless japanese bakerys, they know how to do baked goods!) the lady at the bakery confirmed with us that there was a festival going on, so we were excited and started up the mountain.

Sweet Sakura! the whole promenade up the mountain was alive with cherry blossoms. At this time Middle Kansai area of japan was still in the cherry blossom madness phase, and so along the whole promenade was alive with people eating and drinking under the trees. Japan in the spring is a sight to be seen. we took tons of pictures then hiked up further to the temple area.

On our wau to the temple we passed through this vine covered grove area, that had some monestary like buildings and minks walking around. By far the oddest thing was 2 caged monkeys outside the monk buildings. Why were the monkeys in a cage?
rabies, bad behavior, for fun... the whole situation was just weird.

We got to the main temple and a guy in full shito priest gear informed us that the festivities didn't get going till about 8 pm that night. WHAT!! so .... yeah, we we'rent sure what to do, so we decided to walk around this temple community and just wander. We found some a neat ryokan in the forest and a nice stream/waterfall. But what was really exciting was waiting at the bottom of the cheery blossom promenade, back on the main streets.

We were walking by, and we saw about 10 men in these short bum-revelaing robes, with japanese construction booties carrying long buring bamboo shoots. This was interesting, so we decided to sneak some photos, we were'nt sure if we were allowed to take photos, but soon one of the men crosses the road. We were like "uh oh" but he was really nice, his name was diasukuye, and he had the accent of a cith dweller from portlan oregean. So i asked him where he was from, and he said "biwako" hmm embarrassing much!! he said that we could follow the procession, and me and shiv were right in there getting some first hand shots and sights of a small town shinto festival.

It was the strangest feeling to be the only foreigners there. It felt like we were spectators of something really special, almost like we were not supposed to be seeing this event. I thought it was great that the men in the parade just sang and chanted like no one was watching, but in actualtiy as they weaved through out the tight streets of biwako, children and old people came out to give their support and watch the procession.

These men were starting the 1st part of the "climb" up the moutain to start the portible shrine festival. At the meeting place a few streets over, friends and family members were waiting for the men with crates of beer, tons of sushi and other japanese delicacies. It was amazing to be right in the middle of something so vibrant. we took our place in the corner near a wall, and it was great to note that people were smiling at us, an older woman offered us food and drinks and sent us home after the festivites with rice balls and Moochi ( japanese soy bean candy) wrapped in a banana leaf.

It was alot of men(more joined while we were there) were drinking and smoking and getting really pyshed up about the trek up the mountain. Duyusuke was saying that in the past, the shear number of men and the close proximity of the heavy shrines often crushed people to death. This festival is the oldest of its kind, it has been going on for 1000's of years, and untill recently, people died each year the festival was held.

the procession started, and they were off, we were so giddy and excited from all the chanting and festivites we had just witnessed and it set the tone for the rest of the day.
we roamed the town and made it down to Lake Biwako. A beautiful lake with a little bit of sand on the shores, we met some small dogs, and some fishermen. Shiv talked for quite a while, in japanese!! to a local man. His japanese is getting so good, i am lucky that he knows so much, because we are able to get direstions and information easier each week that we are here. i am learning bits of japanese via Pimslers Japanses cds, and i think im doing ok. I spoke to the cleaning lady. shiv on the other hand can go shopping and talk to random people about most any thing. i am dead jelous.
lastly we ate some more japanese bakery and had a smooth train ride home.

wowzers!!

O-hanami Crazy

2007-04-05T04:54:00.000-07:00

its a special time of year in japan. Its that time of year when everybody is smiling, cherry blossoms are blooming and people are drinking sake in broad daylight and gettin pissed. Its O hanami season, YAH!!!

Today me and shiv went to kyoto, and where do i start.... The japanese people love cherry blossons because they are pretty and as our friend miki put it " sakura make people want to drink outside, and japanese people love to drink". I think kyoto is the best place to see cherru blossom season cause every nook and cranny was filled with sakura trees, it was great.

We started off our day at JR kyoto station, it was so packed there today (thursday) with people and foreigners, not that foreigners are'nt people, but, Its just strange to see so many foreingers all at once. Man, im beginning to sound japanese... Any ways every day is a packed day in japan. People go out, and dress up like its saturday night, every day. and in Kyoto the place was packed like Elton John was in town.

But alas, he was not. we took the rounds walking around the station trying to find out how to get to kiomizudera. eventually our tummies look over and we caved in and got food. Glad we did cause it was some good chinese food from 551 Horai. i miss good, cheap chinatown food. Chinese food is up there with Japanses gormet food in price. No Sam Wok here. If your going out for some good chinese food, you will be dishing out money for good chinese food. we had gyozas and some pork balls done in some good good chinese sweet sauce. mmm.

After our brunch, we decided to walk back to the central exit, but half way there shiv noticed "angry mango" was missing! angry mango is shivs cellphone charm from kagoshima. Poo san had falled to the ground earlier that morning, but luckily shiv noticed his disapearance and spotted him on the floor. Angry mango did not have the same luck, he is probably scared and dirty some where in JR kyoto sation, he will be missed.

Kyoto is great because they had this kiosk set up where the lady spoke english and gave us direct directs to kiomizudera. grand! we got on a bus, a packed bus, and i knocked the old lady behiend me like 50 times.we got off at the foot of the hill that takes you up to the temple and window shopped at all the pottery places along the way. I love kyoto shops, they are japan in a nutshell. as one lady we met from southern california put it " its so japanses-y". Perfectly worded. "japanese-y!

the temple was great, we took tons of pictures and saw a fake maiko "geisha". her hair was a wig, and her clothese were a little to red and traditional. she looked like she was hired by a group of people, cause once many people started taking photos of her, the man hushed her away. Later on in the evening we saw a real maiko in a cab. The difference between a real maiko and a fake one is on quality. a real maiko is stunning. every thing is done to perfection, hair ,make up, clothes jewlery, hair fandangles. The whole package is perfect. a fake maiko is just a chick in a kimono with to white make up and some crazy red lips. A real maiko is like a mmazerti, clean lines, well done and stunning. A fake maiko is like a saturn, or a chevy cobalt, they get the job done, but not as pleasing on the eyes.

we samples tons of moochi(japanese candy) from a few vendors and settled on shivs pick (green tea falvour) and some bisquit cinnamon sheets for me. both super tasty and very japanese. next we shopped and walked around the traditional shopping streets of kyoto. we found baby kimonos, tapestry purses, japanese style boxers, nice ties, fish meal cutlets(YUm..for real), jewellery and all sorts of treasures. Our best find was this litstle pottery studio on the main road that sold lots of one of a kind peices. We cant wait to go back later on in the year for shiv fave, a set of square plates, laqueured with the a raw clay bottoms. oh how i love shopping for the hosue we dont have yet.

My new favorite thing was purchsed today, a new yukata,obe, and japanese-y slippers. Shiv got a grey yukata pants suit and japanese-y slippers to match. We are banging japanese!!!. i love it.

we walked to the conveince store on the way to mayurama koen. you could basically live out of a japnese conveinience store. the food is so good. curry buns, sushi, okonomiyaki, soba, terrikayi, bentos, big beers, chicken on a stick. its pretty much endless. After fillin up on some chicken kaarage, curry bun, water, and rice balls we walked to the koen. we did see an old ladt fall and eat the pavement. it was so sad. i hate seeing old people fall because they are so frail. She kept on saying "daijobu" wich mean im ok, but i hope she really was ok, and not just putiing on a brave face. she fell pretty hard. i hope shes ok.

AT the koen, every one was in such a good mood, drunk, but in a good mood none the less. sunshine, sakura and sake bring out the best of japan. we met one of ed's country men, this shwarma sales man from iran. Man i miss shwarma, but we just ate. Damn the conveinince store. He has a few restaurants in japan and highly agreed that summer festival times are the best tmes to be in japan, and in the food business in Japan. We walked around saw tons of tasty food, met some people from T-dot and saw the prettiest chery blossom tree in all the land. we were just in awe of it. I'll call it "king sakura" and as dilshi would say " it was too much pretty".

The highlight of the evening was hearing some crazy girl squeeling in the distance, walking towards the noise and finding a crazy group of kids dancing and chanting drinking songs. So in japan ( this was explained to me from one of the participants, who happens to be a nova ginga net student) this is true japanese culture. The kids make up these drinking songs especially for the O hanami party and each song has matching dance moves. You have a few hours to practice the songs and moves before you attend the Ohanami party. The songs and dances are shared via text and email to all people meeting at the party.

I was amazed. The songs were so funny. They had one danced to the music of nintendo in "king koopa's Castle" and one about dorimon ( a popular japanese cartoon cat). it was so funny. we me some of the crazies that were dancing and they were really nice to talk to us and tell us all about whats going down in japan. nice bunch. We may see that one guy in nova lesson some time and make fun of him bad! just kidding.

After the madness we walked down the main drag and were headed to gion temple, but we decided we had had a stuffed day and took some more sakura pics then caught the hanku back home.

High times day, we mourn the loss of angry mango and Aja from the 'Fax wanted me to put a shout out to her in the blog. So here it is. "Aja, my life is incomplete with out you, please bring your cheese pakora, and hindi movie loving ass over to edmonton for Xmas 07!" love you. thanks for being my number one slacker. you win, cause you get paid to do what i love. slack

jan

SUMO!!!!!

2007-03-22T04:47:00.000-07:00

yeah, this is going to be the best post yet...well not really but its really good. so on the 22nd of march we went to the Osaka grand sumo tournament. It was kick ass times 2000%. we got there for 10 am and were stocked with ammo. We bought super bento boxes from sun kus, a big water, desserts from the bakery, and some japanese deli specialities. We were set!
Ammi, shiv would like you to know that he bought a deli pack of about 20 little fish, whole fishes ( with the eyes still in). They were battered just like achi ammi used to make them, and he wanted you to know that he ate them.

Background: shivs grandma used to make deep fried fishes for breakfast when he was a kid and he wouldn't eat them cause they grossed him out. But now he eats fish and he wanted his mama to know that!

PS. i cooked fish in our fish griller. mum you should be proud. Omega 3 for life!

So back to sumo, when we got there it was just me and shiv, and the place was pretty sparse, so we ate some food and sat back and watched the amatuer sumo. It was great, some sumos we super small and pitted up against sumos that were double their size, it was amazing. Sumo wrestlers are big time celebs here in japan and people scream at them like its brad pitt or something.

Later on in the day the rest of the nova posse rolled in and the stadium was still not packed so we were able to go down to the lower levels and sit right up in the money seats and see the fight up close.
highlights of the day were
1) seeing that famous white guy sumo
2) seeing all the sumo boys come out in their traditional garb. (each outfit costs thousands of dollars and are hand made and embroidered with their localities picture from raw silk.
3) seeing this really big sumo put his leg up and over his head
4) seeing the yokozuma in real life ( hes on Tv alot) so its like seeing a movie star!
5)shivs favorite moment was when a security guard said "sir you cannot stand here taking photos, you will have to move to the front if you want to take photos". (OK!!)

great day hope you enjoy the photos. luv jan and shiv!

Our busy week and the lantern Festival in Kyoto.

2007-03-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

This week has been the true meaning of busy for me and shiv. It seemed like every day we did something or had something planned or something. So heres a run down on the DL of what we had going down.

so last thursday we shopped around for the day time parts, then told yuske-san we would meet him in the evening at 7 oclock. poor yuske. i dont think he has ever had ethnic friends, because he was waiting for us early at about 645, and at 645 me and shiv were still watching tv, chillin at home. we met yuske at about 740 ish, when converted to EST (ethnic standard time), we were only running about 10-20 minutes late. Yuske didn't know about EST, so according to him we were just super late. Hes catching on though.

On the wenesday of this week i had the worlds funniest student. Her name is setsuko and she is the bomb. she is a 65 year old house wife, who loves nova lessons, cant speak a lick of english and has short term memory. Stupidly i tried to attempt at teaching her a lesson, but when i started to tell her that we were going to learn about comparitves and superlatives she was looking at me like I had 2 heads. Well its a sad fact i didn't know what a superlative was untill i started teaching english!!
any ways, not only did she not know what a comparitive and superlative was, neither did she know what "do you understand", "lesson", or "example" meant. I was in for a fun ride.

I started to ask her questions like "what do you do in your free time", "do you have hobbies" and i got responses like-- "do you have kids" "do you like beef".

here is a little sample convo
jan:so setsuko what are you doing after nova lesson
SET:do you like apple juice
jan: yes i do, do you like apple juice
SET:......... my husband gets pay in today
jan: oh thats nice, what does your husband do for work
SET: are you a salary woman
jan: yes, does your husband work?
SET: i like beef
jan: me too, lets look at the board, can you read this line for me
( she starts to read 2 words ..then)
SET: do you have children
jan: no i dont, do you
SET: i like jetskiing
jan: you jetski? that seems dangerous
SET: i weigh 65 kg's, you look slim style, i not slim style i fat
jan: no you are not, you look great
SET: no.........do you like OM-rice

and basically the converstaion went like this for 40 minutes. i thought i was being punked by nova, but she was really nuts. i was laughing out loud at parts cause she was so short term memory crazy! ps OM-rice is omelette rice....

Back to Yuske on thursday, we met him, went for the most boombastic korean spicy soup ever!! then went to this cute coffe shop art gallery showing that chopstick was having. We drank super pricey Euro hotcholates, and shiv decided to be extra euro and have an expresso. By the way, shiv cannot do expresso, because regular coffe keeps him up for 1.5 days.
That night shiv went to bed the next morning, heard noises that i couldnt hear, roamed the halls searching out the "noise" and found an armoire/shelfing unit in the halls and dragged it to our apt at 5 am.

Well im glad he had that expresso, other wise we wouldn't have our new shelves! later on that night we went to BLOW bar, that cool surf bar that has the wave noises, good drinks, jerk chicken and guy that wants to take us surfing!! it was fionas b day, and it was nice to see every one out for it. good night, but i was tired and cranky, so we didn't stay past the last train.

The following sunday we met up with a large posse of novites and parlayed down shinsai bashi and went to PADRES, i think thats what its called, and had a supeb mexican meal. not LA quality, but hey, we are in japan. met some new peeps and ate tons.

The next night we went round to kimu and dom sans apt for what kim calls spag-ball. when she 1st invited us round i thought she said spy ball, and i didn't know what she was talking about, but agreed, cause i like food, and kim wouldnt poison us....
i like kim cause when she gets excited her real accent comes out and you can sort of understand what shes saying, and you feel the need to smile through the parts you dont really understand cause you just love that irish accent that much!
So spy-ball is actually spag-ball wich is irish for spagetti bolongese!!! love it!!

and kim did it up great. we had that and french bread and butter and wine with a side of comic relif a british comedy dvd, that showcases live acts from "Little Britian".If any one hasn't seen little britain, go rent it now. its that good.

On the Tuesday we went to kyoto after work, just me and shiv, to see the lantern festival. Kyoto is really pretty especially at night. I like excursions with shiv, this was another good one for the books! we got to kiyomisudera ( a wondeful temple) conplex, and realised we had to pay extra to get into it. we ( being ethnic) decided to take photos from the outside, of the inside and save our selfs some money.
glad we did because when i looked in my wallet i had 210 yen, and the bus back to the station was 240 yen. i went through every nook and cranny and could not find any more money.
poo!
so i decided to look for a banl machine, no bank machine, i decided then to walk around and see if any one dropped some change.
A man did drop a whole ton of change, but he picked all of it up (greedy). so after all that walking i still didn't have enought money, so i decided to as the japanese for some spare change. This was indeed funny because japanese people are so shocked/pertrified to see a foreigner come up and talk to them, and second: i dont speak japanese very well.

In the end, i asked the door ticket men for help. i had to empty out my change purse count it out for them, tell them how much the bus cost, them say the difference. They gave me change for the bus and we became quick friends. so nice of them.
me and shiv had a good laugh about that incident. i thought we would have to sleep in kyoto for the night!

shiv got some grat pics, i panhandled in kyoto and we had a great evening.
xoxo

Move your ass gozaimas!

2007-03-13T04:39:00.001-07:00

Today after work me and shiv,kim,dom,alex and sheila got on some trains and headed to Nara. We were going to see the ouizomisudera festival. It has something to do with the new year and the coming of spring. It happens at a gorgeous huge wood temple in the city of Nara and the monks of the temple run clockwise around the balcony of the temple holding huge fire torches. Yes i repeat: monks run around a huge wood building carry huge fire torches. It is anyones guess how the temples hasn't burned down by now!.

The got to Nara pretty early to ensure our selves a good veiwing location for the fire show. But japan has alot of people, and im pretty sure every one had the same idea going on too. So when we got to the temple we had to wait in a blockaded area until the festivities began. There was a small TV at the front of the crowd that showed live video of another large group of people. We hoped that the video feed was really our selves being video taped and not another huge mass of people who happened to be closer to the temple. As time wore on ( and it did like nearly 2hrs), we figured out that the video was of people in another area of the temple complex who were closer to the temple (poo...)

so, 730pm rolls around, and the festival is meant to start at 730. Sort of pissed off and paniced that we are going to miss it, we look at the TV and there on the TV are monks running with fire. THIS IS CRAP! we have to watch the festival from a small 20 inch TV with 1000 people sqished into an alley??!!??

And then a weird thing happened, people started clapping and laughing and getting all happy to watch the festival on tv. i thought i was in an alternate universe. Is this how festivals are done in japan? watching the event on TV with 100o strangers freezing in a park??

i was so pissed of. But then the police lifted the baricades and let us walk closer to the festival. It was like the running of the bulls. YEAH!!! we were going to see the festival! then it stopped. They put the barricade back down, we had moved about 10ft, and i was 10ft closer to the TV. I could not believe this. Did they just move every one up so the people in the back could get a better veiw of the TV screen?!?!
madness.

But after a while the cops lifted the barricade for real and every one went charging up the stairs in the direction of the temple. It was crazy, all of us got a little bit separated in the stampede and squished too. Japanese people are known for being super quiet and polite, but when it comes to festivals and fire they become crazy. I nearly got run over by a older japanes lady who was creaming "move move". The japanese may act all coy and sweet, but they know enought english to get you to move out of their way!. It was crazy mad crazy. Even the cops were getting every one to speed up, take less pictures and move along. The festival was nearly ending and they needed every one out of the park.

The festival It self was really neat to see because the minks had these huge torches full of dry wood that dropped flaming embers onto the ground (and people) below. It is said that if you get hit by an ember, its good luck. Some think good luck i think, good lawsuit, any ways...

a fun and interesting night had by all. We walked back through the town past many cool temples and shrines, i think shiv got the best pics of this event by far!! www.pbase.com/shivdesilva.
photo1) every one looking at the TV (jan so mad..) 2) Every one charging towards the temple 3) little girl cooking taco yaki 4) my picture of the gates of todaiji temple

Two great bands at Pena.

2007-03-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

This evening we went to a nice small hole in the wall club called Pena. It was really nice, and stangely had many buzz light year figurines throughout the place. Kim's student , Kimikp told us about the event, and we are so happy we went because it opened us up to a genuine Japanese musical experience. Every one exept us was japanese, but we were warmly welcomed at the club. Kimiko's husband was the gituarist for the main band that played that night, as well he is a gitaur teacher for the opening band that played that night. The 1st band was called "soul explosion" and the lead singer had a great voice.

The music was really good, sort of rock and ballads mixed to gether. I understood few words, but i did understand the word "anata" that means "you". So i could undersand that he was singing about some one, possibly a lover...maybe a woman. So It was great. The main band was amazing, sort of rock-a-billy, jazz, rock altogether. The lead singer has 2 gorgeous little girls that me and shiv are planning to steal later on this year.

The band sang twist and shout in englsih, and we got the lace going by singing and dancing and screaming for an encore. The engish songs that the band sung were really interesting to listen to because I think some japanese singers memorize engish songs by phrases, so when they sing the phrases, many words run into one another. When this happens, you cant really understand the word, although they are in english. But its the thought that counts, and the effort was amazing. we danced the night away, then dragged our selfs to work at 730 am the next morning. I dont feel so young no more....

ps in the picture with dom and shiv dancing...yes that is a pooh bear swinging and swaying from shivs pocket!!

vacation in kirishima!!

2007-03-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

we were in well need of a vacation, i was telling sarah, my state of affirs before we left on vacation.
If i saw a student log into lesson, i would swear and mutter under my breath that they dared come to class. Shiv would try and jinx his connection, so maybe it would make his students magically not show up for lesson.
i was so happy to go an vacation, and it was very worth it. we left the house at about 530 am and took 3 trains to get to kobe airport. our flight left at 8 35 am, and it was quite nice to finally go some where on a plane.
the plane ride was nice, and it was sunny in the air the whole way to Kyushu, the sunny happy ibe set the tone for our whole vacation. We met a nice japanese man on the plane who spoke super little english. He told us that he was going to kagoshima to pray to his family ancestors.
we got to the air port, and found out that it was a little more expensive to travel around from the airposrt than i had thought, so we took a shuttle to the hotel and decided to plan our travels from there. The weather was amazing. about +20 and not a cloud in the sky, for sure t-shirt weather. It was all i dreamed of, cause Osaka when we left was grey and pretty cold.
kagoshima was so green, it looked like the interior BC sort of, but with way more hot springs.
Our hotel was way up on a green treed mountain, and it was surrounded by this odd garden with weird plastic horses and sculptures. i think the japanese garden architect envisioned a french provincial garden, but threw in a little japanese animation and plastic horses... i dont know. it was weird and super crappy looking

the hotel on the other hand was awesome and really posh. I love ther posh life.
the hotel room was on the top floor and it looked out over the valley. At the bottom of the valley was the city of kagaoshima, and across the bay was Mt sakurajima. an active HUGE volcano, that regularily explodes and smokes.
we took a walk around the property, and down the main road to see the sources of all the hot spring water. boiling sulfur water was basically spewing out of the mountain, and the air smelt like egg fart.

. Before dinner i went to the onsen. It was so amazing, the best part was sitting in my own personal stone tub full of hot spring water, outside facing mt sakurajima. amazing! That night we had a massive japanese style dinner that was brought one amazing plate after another to our table. the next morning we had a buffet japanese/western breakfast and then set out to ebino kogen. ebino kongen is a volcanic lake hike that consists of 3 really blue green lakes in the mountain range of kirishima. once we got back dow to the visitor center there was hot springs foot pool to dip your feet in. We highly enjoyed the ice cream and kyushu ramen!!!
yeah! vacation.

i'll give you the time of your life gozaimas!!

2007-03-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

i think the best thing about down town osaka is the thriving host culture. Its like nothing i've ever seen. i have not been able to get a sharp photo of the hosts without then fully knowing im taking a picture.
hosts are female companions, sort of like male prostitutes. Women pay for these men to accompany them shopping, to the bar or as a male escort. Thats fine and dandy. But if you were to see these men... they are sort of like the physical love child of farrah fawcett, rod stewart and cher (during her scandalous biker phase).

These men are so well manicured, from head to toe.
here are some physical musts that most hosts have. 1) blond orange farrah hair, teased and hair sprayed to the max
2) orange brown bed tan, many hosts are darker than me 3) no facial hair, maybe a tiny violater mustache 4) green/blue/grey unnatural contact lenses 5) tiny fitted bazer 6) little attache breif case, or big purse (louis vitton or prada brand) 7) tiny skin tight distressed jeans/ or tight disco pants 8) super long curly snake boots/shoes

it is a sight to behold!. they satnd in groups, in areas where there are high people traffic. when a woman ( who looks like she is in need of attention) walks by, they start talking to her, trying to sell them selfs, bowing and walking realy fast alog side the women. me and shiv would LOVE to know what they are saying. its a great scene!
Today we saw a first! a host dressed in normal guy clothing, he looked just like a university student from kobe. normal normal. but we saw him standing at a busy cross walk trotting alongside any girl that crossed his path trying to sell himself. We love it!! but we have to admit. the regular hosts put in much more effort!!

touch your toes tootsie roll ( mino monkey adventure)

2007-02-26T23:53:00.000-08:00

So, last thursday we ( shiv me, kimu and dom-san) set out to the town/city of mino in search of the forest monkeys. We picked a great day to go to mino because it was really warm ( t shirt ) weather and sunny. the town was very cute and picturesque. The walk to mino falls was especially nice, and the fresh air was really welcomed. Osaka air will kill you (eventually...). kim shares the same dislike for squat toilets as I do, so i felt that we bonded more on this trip cause there were no western toilets. The falls was ok. i give it a 3/10 for wow value. Niagra falls getting a 9, and that falls in nordegg gets an 9.8 (cause it was so amazing and had 3 parts and could get so close. So, it wasn't too impressive, it could have been mistaken for a bust pipe line that happened to cascade down a rocky cliff.

The rest of the day was good though, we went walking to find the interpretive center mino, and like all adventures in Japan, getting there is most of the fun. the walk was great and we saw monkeys just sitting alongside the highway. It was grand. There were monkeys in the tree's and i sort of felt like we were in jungle book. me and shiv were hoping that they (monkeys) would burst out into song ( I wanna walk like you..talk like you...) but they didn't.

We did however see some really had core japanese photographers. They had lenses on their camera that were nearly 1 m long, and their camera accesories had camo print on them so that they couldn't be seen by the monkeys ( yeah right). Shiv estimated that one mans camera equipment was worth over $10,000.

So after stopping a bit, taking pictures, and visiting an insect/taxidermy exhibit at the visitor booth, we headed back to civilization and we were well pooped. Here are some pics from our day at mino.

setsubun and sushi

2007-02-22T04:40:00.000-08:00

so setsubun fell on feb 3rd (ish) i think... well its a japanese festival that is celebrated to symbolize a coming of the new year. Sort of follows the gust of out with the old, in with the new.
We have a single mum and her 2 kids living next door to us, and for setsubun she took on the role of "the devil". For setsubun families usually have the dad play the role of the devil figure. The devil is supposed to signify the evil and bad traces that can be found lurking in your home and daily life. So the children of a household will do a little role play of ousting the devil from their home via pelting it with beans.
So, next door, the mum dressed up as the devil and her two crazy toddlers pelted her with beans. I thought it was so cute. She really does alot to make her kids experience the fun in japanese and western holidays. For christmas time she even dressed up as santa claus.
even though her kids run back and forth on the hard wood, play tag at night and cry and throw temper tantrums, both me and shiv have a soft heart for her cause she works, plays and raises two really sweet kids. Often when me and shiv are settling down in to bed on our single man futon mattress, our heads a few inches from the wall-- we will hear a vibrant game of tag/running/screaming/singing.
The pictures that i have included in todays post are from a shinto setsubun festival at a temple in the nipponbashi/tennoji area.
Our day of setsubun began after work, we tepped out into the OCAT silver ball area and to our suprise there was a hip hop battle/concert going on. It was nuts, there were so many people there and they were all watching people dance, dancing to music, or dancing to music in their heads. it was just grand, and then there were battles for break dancing.

I think an interesting thing about japanese b-boy/girls is that they are stull super polite, they bow after one team/side does a break dance/battle . and they shake hands after. its a thing to see all these super decked out hip hoppers bowing to each other. its so japanese.

next we ( ps we is kim-mu, dom-san, shiv, and jan) took the train to umeda area (the commercial/finacial business district of osaka) to find a setsubun event. we tried following a map, asking directions and finding it ourselves but in the end we found nothing, and had a great time doing it. As with many adventures we've had, getting to the destination is 87-99% of the fun, for example -- take a hike to one of japan's thousands of slightly different temples and you'll know what im talking about.
So after exploring umeda for that setsubun thingy, we gave up and tried our luck at finding the "Burning Man" display going down at a shinto temple closer to namba area.
and boy! was that worth it. there were only a few people at the event, and it looked felt and sounded more like a cultic ritual than a holiday gathering.
There was some really creepy sounding chanting and a huge fire, that got bigger and bigger because the "priests" were throwing wooden tablets into the fire. The preists were wearing there huge white baggy shawls, and there shiny plastic hats that were really interesting. I think the whole festival had something to do with " in with the good, out with the bad". More so, a nice little lady ushered us over to the beverage counter where there was a hot, sweet ginger drink..dad you would have loved it. I loved it and you know i dont like ginger!
great photo ops, i think shiv got some great shots www.pbase.com/shivdesilva and so did dom and kim.

We were really hungry after all our walking and searching for a setsubun display, so we decided to save our hunger all day, and then go nuts, NUTS at Ryu-Gaku , and all you can eat sushi train restaurant. and go nuts we did. As you can see in the photos, we ate on average 20 plates each!!, shivs pile is the smallest, BUT, the waitress took away most of his plates before he could stop her. So shivs pile would be higher.
So in 1st place is dom, then me, then kim then shiv. (plates-wise). i dont even like raw fish, and I loved this sushi place. i like the egg, omlette ones, the shrimo ones, the surf clam and the beefy ones, there are also tuna ones and crab ones. So even if you dont like fish, you can do well at Ryu-Gaku. ps, there are also desserts on the sushi train.

These are the photos to prove the carnage

Buns o steel part 3: Dimonji Mountain

2007-02-21T00:16:00.000-08:00

good day readers!
i forgot to put this post in, so i am writting it in march, but it actually happened in february. we went to kyoto, to see a slightly different temple "ginkakuji temple". So by now i thnk i should have learned my lesson. the temple was built to be a summer retreat home for an emperor. and he actually wanted it covered in a silver leaf paint, i guess to be sort of frivolous. But i think he was ambushed before his dreams of a silver house came into fruition. I was really disapointed by his home. I was more impressed with the walk way up to the temple, than with the actual temple. And what made me more pissed off was spendind 1000 yen to enter the grounds. If the temple "experience" was free, I would have been much happier, but 1000 yen. what the hell!!!
The temple was about the size of a small house, but the rrounds were quite large and tree-y. The high light of the ginkakji experience was meeting a professor from toronto in the bath room. She was really nice, and was on a short trip form korea. she was teaching engligh methodology to korean english teachers.

After the ginkakuji bit, be and shiv set out on the real adventure for the day, climbing dimonji mountain and then hiking down the mountain weaving our way through some other mountain temples. well that was the plan..

we did make it up dimonji mountain, and boy was it great. I like hiking with shiv, cause he makes the trip really fun, you forget that your sweating like a pig and your legs are numb. dimonji mountain is a huge mountain that towers over Kyoto. In the summer during the dimonji matusri (festival). tons of wood is "pully-ed" up the mounatin and set up in many individually spaced fire pits that form the over all shape of the "dai" symbol.

So in all, there is a huge "dai" symbol made of little fires burned into the side of a mountain. Quite a spectacle if i can say so myself. some of the pictures are from our accent up to the peak. There was a really cute temple right on the peak of the mounatin, as well as a great veiw.

we also met a really nice friend at the top of the mounatin. a 75 year old man, that was so friendly and offered to take us down the mountain. We told him we were going to nanzen ji temple, and he said he was going there too. We were hoping to see other temples on the way down, bUt i think he misunderstood and took us on a sweet short cut down the mountain.

He was so nice, and relentless at english, he did NOT use a lick of englsih for the 2 hours it took to get down the mountain. It was great. Shivs japanese is getting great.mne not so much. But the little man was bounding down the mountain like a gazelle, i actually think he was sprint-hopping the whole way. This man was the epitomy of fitness.

It started to rain, and he took us through a more treed area so that we didn't get wet. The whole time i thought he was taking us into his secret lair to kill us, My moms wild imagination has genetically been implanted in me and I cant help but always imagine the worst. So the whole way i was looking for any sign of accomplises, booby traps, clothing scraps etc.. my mind was racing a million miles a minute, but all in all, our lives aren't so intersting.

He got us down the mountain, safe and dry and in the court yards of nanzen ji temple. such a nice man, he even gave us historical commentary about the areas, temples, japan and other stuff all in japanese (with lots of hand motions).
great day, enjoy the photos.

Buns O steel Part 1-B Mt. Ikoma

2007-02-04T03:56:00.000-08:00

Hiking trip # 2 was great. It was attended my me, shiv, Dom, Kim, Alex(USA) and Sheila(Vancity). we started our real early. 7:30 check out time from our apartment. We then headed to 211, dom and kims apartment and from there we headed to shin_imamiya station to meet alex and sheila.

From the station we took the train to Mt Ikoma. The plan was to hike the mpuntain, see some shrines, an abandoned amusment park and have fun. All initatives were met and my calves still hurt 4 days later.

We took some wrong turns getting up the mountain but we saw some cool shrines, a pool of ceramic turtles, some chanting by shinto monks, old stone shito relics in the forest and much more cool stuff. We started off our hike by walking along a pilgramage path. so every hundred meters or so there were shrines and relics and all sorts of neat rockery.

Me and shiv came well prepared with our MEC bags, full of food and extra clothes. They were a tad heavy, but atleast we were warm, well fed and dry (dad!). we passed through lots of residential areas, it was really nice to see actual houses and not so many apartments. As we made our way up the mountain we passed by probably the best smelling place ever. it smelt like cinnamon, cloves and wintergreen.

we got to the top and waiting for us was a old old amusment park and vending machines. YAH! we passed by this gate that was full of pad locks. the pad locks have an interesting story though, lovers lock pad locks on to the gate as a symbol of their bounded love. some of the locks were really old. I think 1950's at least. very neat.
we then started to make our way down the mountain and at the end of the path was my pot of gold. a ramen shop!!
I love ramen. i love ramen. its a big bowl of beefy broth, noodles, mushrooms, sprouts, and a slab or ham. i love ramen.

we started our hike at 9ish and ended at 2 ish. all i can say is i worked muscles i never knew i had. to make the evening perfect we finished off the night by heading to alex and sheila apartment for Burritos. so good, i had to put a picture up on the blog to commemorate them.

I cut my nails for this!

2007-02-04T03:31:00.000-08:00

so last wenesday night we went out for one thing only! to kick some ass.
we went bowling with the MM troops.
It was a great night. Team de Silva did really well, shiv got most of the points for our team though (216 for the night). Sophie wasn't doing so hot at the begining of the night, but by the end, she was on FIRE!! great fun had by all. Also there were this crazy group of japanese pre teen girls that loved to show us they could speak english by screaming random english words at us ,and getting into all of our photos.
photos of lee, the girls team, jon, the bowling shoes dispenser machine

Buns o Steel part 1-A. Rocco-san mountain

2007-02-04T02:56:00.000-08:00

hello there.
so me and shiv have taken to a new fun hobby here in japan. yes you guessed it. climbing mountains. Well it was bound to happen. Japan basically is one big volcanic rock pointing out of the pacific..

So last week, me and shiv got up really ealry (on our day off), got our packs on, packed some salad, prunes, Ghana chocolate and kimchi and headed off to climb Rocco-san. The japanese often like to attach the word san (friend) to people, places and things that are fun and nice...hence Mt Rocco.

so we took the train to kobe, then another train (back towards Osaka) that took us to the foot of Rocco Mt. The main station sort of looked like a turn of the century german train station/disney land station. I liked it . we asked for directions, and the conductor lady said it would be an hour hike up to the top. Our plan was to hike up to the 1st platform, then from there take the gondola to the peak. But alas, they were fixing the gondola so we couldn't use it.

Our hike up was really fun... at first. then it got mad crazy steep. it was hilarious, we were at such an incline we had to stop every 5 or so steps to take a breather. The great thing about hiking a beast like rocco mt, is that older super fit japanese folks walk up rocco Mt like it was a sunday stroll.

Altogether it was a blast, i pretended that i was leading a big troop of expeditioners and shiv was one of the travelers and we did army-like sing songs through the bush. At one point the trail got really tiny and shiv had to take the lead and plow through the trees (such a man). Many times through out the expidition i though a wild boar would jum out and attack me, or that we would get lost and run out of food, or maybe a polar bear would attack us. I even thought i saw balck smoke at one point. Man.. i can't wait till LOst comes back on.

But we made it to the check point and all was great, there was a nice hot vending machine coffee waiting for us at the top.
Some interesting things we have notices about hiking japanese *mountains*
1) there are often vending machines full of most anything that can fit in a vending machine at the top of your climb
2) there are power lines and lots of electricity towers on the mountans, so you have to hike around them
3) The climb often starts out nicely, then gets steep, and steeper.

The climb was awesome. it was such a treat to breathe fresh non-downtown-osaka air. And as always the company was very enjoyable.
the pics are of our climb up rocco, the station, and the vending machine!

Shiv-san the sushi chef

2007-01-24T04:53:00.000-08:00

so.. last night shiv made sushi, maki rolls and sashimi (from scrach!)

i have been excited for this dinner for days, and it was worth the wait. every one already knows i dont like raw fish. except maybe the occasional surf clam. But shiv made me chicken Kaarage maki rolls as well as crab rolls. the pictures dont do the food justice. it was really good. He also made 2 diping sauces for the fiasco. One a home made spicky terriyaki dip and the other a spicy mayo dip. altogether the meal looked awsome and tasted awesomer.

Also, my hair is getting longer and since its quite humid here i can just wear it out like a wild woman. and i quite like it. so freeing. some times i have visions of me with straight hair again, and i miss it. there i days i miss being able to run my fingers through my hair. But those thoughts are all but fleeting when i get ready for work in 15 minutes in the morning.

shiv was quite delirious today after we went to shakeys. he had some really funny sinereos in his head.

1) Saying "what up playa?" to the bank teller at UFJ bank
2)Doing a feirce macarena in OCAT amongst all the J-B-Boys and J-B-Girls
3) 2 fully suited japanese business men holding hands in namba walk. Oh the burning hell stares they would get!
4) screaming "its going to fast...STOP!!" on the shinkansen (bullet train)
5) Falling all over people on a packed, and i mean PACKED train out of JR Namba station

ps. the trains are so packed here. it actually looks like a glass tubular sardine can that every time the train made a slight movement, i could tell the thread count of the business man's jacket infront of me, with my tounge. no lie! it was good quality.

here are some pictures of the dinner and my hair.
xoxo

Im learning English to understand richard simmons...

2007-01-22T02:23:00.000-08:00

Yeah, its true. Students will spend thousands upons thousands of dollars with nova to learn such life altering skills as
1) talking to foreign countries people
2) to read the back of DVD boxes
3) to understand their daughters fiancee
4) to tbe able to understand Jay-Z (ps she is 60 and a house wife)
5) to show off to co-workers
6) for the joy of learning englsih converstaion

so work has been good. you get some really amazing stunners who make you happy to be in japan teaching english. and you get some duds. Some students so slow that you want to (and do ) turn off the screen and proceed to gauge out your eyeballs with a chopstick.

in the past few weeks we have been doing lots of errands on our days off. working out. shiv is down to a svelte 67 kilograms and looks like a god. I an the other hand have lost 3.5 kilograms and am down to 58 kgs. by the way i came here weighing 61.8kgs and shiv 78kgs. nuts hey. if any one is super determined to loose some weight. come to japan.

shivs friend doug crossman is getting some mad work done here in japan. he is getting his whole back tattooed at chopstick tattoo here in osaka. Shiv and doug bonded and became fast friends in edmonton due to their shared interest in tattoo and Ton ( tattoo artist's) work here at chopstick. Doug is planning on making monthly painfull trips from Seoul Korea to osaka to get his tattoo done in increments. during his time spent in osaka, he can bleed techno colored patterns on our kitcken floor. Doug there is always a place for you in our home.... and thats infront of the fridge.

The crew at chopsticks seem to be really nice and well...diverse. you have Ton who is a huge ball of friendly energy, and amazing artist with good ideas. you have the part time girls that work there that are like well.... they look just like a japanese girl from a high fashion magazine, but way more colorfull and much more tattooed. super intersting. from their blond hair down to the pink nails, super amazing make up, afro perm, glitter eye liner, hot pink nails, and super cool style. They basically make regular japanese girls look like mold.

then there is osaka ben. on the web site he is .... the attractive blond, or in another picture the attractive brunette with pigtails in the gothic lolita out fit. We met ben in his "boring" clothes. black shirt and pants. He was very kind. gave myself, shiv and doug a great back ground on tattooing, the shop, its history and staff. He was even so kind as to show us the work that he and chopstick tatoo staff have done ( on his own body). Ben seems to be a really kind and out going person. If you see him on the street you would faster think he was a mormon missionary, than a tattoo artist. And it probably would never occur to you his whole body is tattooed.

How do we know this, because ben took of his shirt, then pants (and underwear) to show us his "body of work". I think he has alot of self esteem because i noticed i was in the room. but i dont think he cared much. so there he is naked, holding his crotch pointing out all of his different tattoos, who did them, when. All the while shiv and doug and me are like
" is he naked... i think hes naked..does any one see this... i think hes naked"

all i can say is the artists at chopstick are focused on producing great art.it shows in how excited they get to talk about it, it shows in the art work around the offices and especially on the artists themselves..

This week me and shiv are super excited to go on our next adventure ROCCO MT. he are going to go hiking. shiv is going to take photos, and i am going to paint. i think it will be a goo break from grey osaka to see the wilderness, and i hope some fresh air will help me sleep better.
till next time

ps the pictures are of 1) dougs tattoo in progress 2) zeev and pooh-san 3) shivs super dinner (featuring his garlic miso tofu!), 4) jan and one of the chop stick tattoo receptionists (see what i mean..so cool)

the governator-san..

2007-01-22T01:39:00.000-08:00

so its been quite some time since i wrote, but i'll make it worth your while...arrrrrrrr!

im starting to think that america is not the only country that has a super entertaining political landscape. Japan political scene is rip roaring good time. when we had TV, on any given day you could turn on the TV and see some politician being ousted for fraud or embezzlement. While american politics is rife with personal scandal. The japanese have kicked it up a notch. We were really suprised to see how commonplace it is to have a politician who has been using his parties funds to take a year long vacation. My favorite though is this one little politican Tadahiro Ando, of Miyazaki Prefecture who was foud to be embezzling tons of money out of his prefecture, involved with criminals, and doing some dirty business deals with some high rolling Japanese companies.

What hes accused of is not the entertaing part to his story. The funny part is that he was convicted of all these crimes. The whole country demands him to step down, and every day hes on the TV saying " i dont know what your talking about". I love it.
The kicker though is, the people did infact boot him out and replaced his devious ass with a more trust worthy personality. TV entertainer Sonomanma Higashi !!!! thats him in the picture. I can tell hes a real people person and hes looking out for the national good. you can see his kind caring demenor in the way he raises the roof. PEACE! (picture from the Japan Times Newspaper. www.japantimes.com)

On another note, i have been doing lessons on Japan and the modern world with my students. I really like to teach this lesson because it showcases 3 types of japanese people
1) world-ly japanese people: the type who know japan ( the good the bad and the ugly) and are willing to talk/debate topics
2) crazy japanese nationalists: the type who think japan can do no wrong, and pit the demise of japan on China, Korea (basically any country that isn't Japan)
3) Frozen Japanese people: they are a little motionless face on my ginga net screen. either their camera is frozen or their minds dont work. Either or, they dont say or do much.

So, i love to talk about the declining birth rate in japan. Many of the house wives I talk to are married but have no kids. either they or their husbands dont want kids or the thought never crossed their minds. Its really interesting to see how many adults in japan have no kids of grand kids. There is such a culture of work work work in Japan. I really do fear for the upcoming generations of japanese kids who dont want lives like their parents . I also fear the masses of elderly people in Japan that keep on growing in number. I think the elderly live for ever here. but i have to admit, they can keep on doing what they are doing, cause japanese grannies are so tiny and cute, you just want to pick them up, and put them in your pocket.

Its expensive and hard to have kids in japan. I think thats why so many people for go having kids and have dog babies and cat-children instead. I hate the former and the latter and will dedicate and entire blog to the subject at a later date.

Also, the japanese have this draconian immigration system that is not to friendly. Basically you can become a Japanese citizen if...you're japanese.
So i dont know where that leaves you, but i dont think that many people are becoming japanese any time soon.
you can be living in japan for 50 years and still be considered Gaijin "foreigner", its nuts. Even if your grand ma is Chinese and you were born in japan, you're chinese.

A big news story that happened this fall, was the deportation of this Iranian family from Japan. The kids were all born in Japan, the family had over stayed its visa and had been living and working in Japan for about 20 years. The daughter was even going to university in Japan. But the go'v t said "times up" and booted them out. Gotta love that.

Oh japan. its such an interesting land. Lastly i have a short story about a mum and son that sticks in my head. Me and the mum were talking about the education system for kids and what things have changed in Japan since the 1960's. One thing she said was "there is no where for my son to play". weird enough, she was living in Yokohama, a concrete jungle of a city. So she told me how she and her son were talking and he told her that he couldn't play baseball or any thing cause there is no park, and he wondered if there could be a park built to that he could play with his friends.

so him and his mum sat down and wrote a letter to the mayor of the prefecture asking that a park or play area be built for the kids. They recived a letter back stating something like this
" there is no plan for a park or play space in our prefecture. as you know there are alot of people in japan and space is precious. Land is expensive and realestate should be zoned for more economically important developments such as buildings and housing",

so sad, but true. much of the down town areas (wich are massive) have very few green areas. I think in the whole of down town osaka there is about 2 square meters of grass!!! the schools have a play ground, but its super tiny and all dirt. no grass. I feel for the youth in osaka, tokyo and yokohama. I think in the future they will spend far too much time inside, studying or playing PS2 and not enough time outside, socialising and getting fresh air.

I think the effects of this stiffled generation is being felt. I have met some interesting nut cases at nova, and some really shy closeted teens. i hope my lessons at nova bring a ray of sunshine into someones life.

01.01.07

2007-01-01T19:49:00.000-08:00

well new years was very good, considering most of the plans made for new years didnt end up happening. In the end good drink and good company equaled a good night.

So the night started off with our posse( me, shiv, zeev, ania, jon, yuske and sean) running a tad on the late side to meet up with the nova posse at the 280 bar. We stopped off to have Wendy's (YAH!) and boy was it worth it. Their hundred yen menu is great and the burgers so succulent.

Well, after Wendy's we headed to the 280, but luck was not on our side because the bar was crowded and we had to wait outside. The host/waiter that met us at the door didn't really look too entertained by a huge group of gainjin standing outside the bar wanting to get in. Also he may not have looked to impressed because he had 2 black eyes,a cut on his forehead and red eyeballs because of a burst vessel in his eye. All i kept on thinking was “dont any one annoy this guy...cause he will probably kill you”. But as luck you have it, we didn;t have to wait too long, and “he” escorted us to our table. At our table we proceeded to drink and drink and order kawai (cute) appetizers from their amazing menu till 2 or 3 in the morning. We made kampai friends with some japanese people sitting beside us and we toasted to every one in the bar at midnight. Tons of fun was had by all.

After the 280 we walked the streets of dotombori area to find an all night all you can drink karaoke place. But all the karaoke places had hiked up their prices for new years eve to about 4000 yen per person. We also tried to find a night club to dance the night away in, but the cover charges we hiked up to about 5000 yen per person. So, we decided to have our own party back at our place. Me, ania, sean and yuske took a cab back to our apartment, while hot shots shiv and zeev walked home. They got lost, but found the place after calling jon (in bed) for directions. We (every one but me) stayed up till the wee hours of the morning (6ish), i went to bed at about 5:30.

A real fun night, slept in till 11 this morning. I made kiribat (milk rice) a traditional srilankan meal thats served in the morning on the 1st of the month. We were quite suprised that it turned out well. Shiv had tons of energy in the morning and was rearing to go running at the gym. He went to the gym, but to his dismay, the gym was closed. We ate a late breakfast and went back to bed. For some strange reason shiv decided to check his email at 4ish to see what time his friend doug's flight was getting in. We were expecting doug on the 2nd. But Doug had emailed shiv to say that his flight got in 1.5hrs ago and hes at the airport!!! well what day. Went for some good curry with the whole gang (me, shiv, zeev, ania, doug,jon and jons friend from tokyo) and now its relax time.
Happy new year every body!!!

Adventeurs!

2007-01-01T19:43:00.000-08:00

So, we had to work on the 25, 26 and 27th. But from the 27-5th we are home free. I was so excited for the 28th because it was the 1st day of our vacation, and we were actually going on vacation!. We booked a trip to Shirahama. A beachy/onsen town in the southern Kansai region of Japan. The whole trip was great. We left our apartmento at 5:30 am with our MEC back packs on, hiking booties, camera equipment, umbrells strapped to the back packs. The whole 9 yards. We looked pro. P.S. dilshi/matt we love the bags.

If any one is doing the slightest bit of carrying, get a MEC back pack. It makes any weight feel like nothing. We carried thouse bags all day, and they were stuffed. And they felt like nothing.

Any ways... there we were looking like back packers walking down the side walk in bentencho with all the morning rush hour traffic looking at us like (what the.....) but we caught the train to shin-osaka staion and from there we had to wait a bit for the 7:35 train to shirahama. So in that time we went to Lotteria and ate some breakfast “set-tos”. setto=combos. Often in japanese, all you have to do is change your accent, put a little J-style into your pronouciation and you will be understood better.
For example
Coffee- they wont understand Kaw-fee=they will understand
vanilla Wanilla
apartment apartmento
bus Busu

And you get the point. So we read magazines, looked at cell phone charms (very popular here) (shiv has a fist sized winney the pooh dangling off his cell) his name is Pooh-san. Then at 7:20 we went to the platform to board the train.

The train ride was really nice cause it went along the coast, and it was really nice to see the grey building of Osaka fade away and we slowly snaked out of the downtown areas and into the burbs. I found it really intersting to see that there was really no wide open space along the train paths. Every where you look, was houses, building etc... just less in some areas, and more in others. It was a breath of fresh air to see the sky, and grass. Two things we hardly see in Osaka. After staring at the scenery for a while I fell asleep and didnt wake up will we were nearly at shirahama. And to my suprise there were orange trees every where (In december). Japan is so nutty!.

We could see the ocean, sunshine and orange trees. Taking a break from the city was well needed. And just like that i could feel my bitternes fading away.

Shirahama is a smaller city with lots of hotels and ryokan(inns) situated on the rocky coast line that faces the pacific ocean. The main attraction in Shirahama is the white sand beach. The sand was actually imported from austraillia and its any ones guess how much that beach costs to maintain because sand just washes away with each wave that hits the shore.

We took the bus from the station a bit too far into the city and had to hike/backtrack towards our hotel. It was a good walk though cause it familirised us with the area. We got to our hotel and it looked a little dodgy from the outside. But the inside was great. All this fake renaissance period peice furniture, tropical carpets, every one in uniform. It was great. We couldn't check in till 3pm so we had some time to kill. We put our bags at the front desk, and got information on how to get to (EBIKI) we hiked in the typhoon strenght winds along the coast . It was real nice and sort of funny, we had to balance becaue the winds were so strong, they could almost knock us over. We got to the island and took lots of pictures and then made our way back to the city center, and to our hotel.

When we got in, we were so tired, we took a nap. Then we got up and put on out Yukatas (japanese robes) that came with the room and our slippers (geisha-like ones) and went to the bathing pools!!!
Our hotel had hotspring pools onsite. They were segregated by sex, and you have to shower off before you enter. They were awesome. In the biig room there were 4 pools. Each one different. One pool had slanted rock seats that you sit in and have jets built in and another had rocks and water falls. It was so nice. And to top it all off there were these scoopy buckets that allow you to pour the water on you to keep nice and toasty. And there was also another pool outside. The weirdest thing by far is that you have to be butt naked in the pools. I thinks its a good thing i cant understand much japanese because im sure there was talk when the naked black girl kept on running from pool to pool and dunking herself in each one. (i couldnt help it, the whole place was so nice, you cant just sit in one!).

After the spa fiasco, we changed back into our Yukatas, and went for dinner (P.S. We are naked under our yakatas). So that was funny. We had to sit properly and make sure there was minimal flashing. Our dinner was fantastic. Our trip package came with dinner and breakfast included, so we were lead to a table that was reserved for us, and it was already set with our dinner on it.
Dinner was BOOMBASTIC!. There was, nabe ( a seafood hot pot), tempura stuff, sashimi, escargot, little finger foods, dumplings, miso soup, rice, dessert, this weird egg dish ( i couldnt eat it, shiv did though), pickled goods, dessert, steamed fish, mushrooms..... it was great. After dinner we sat in our room, stuffed and watched crazy japanese TV.

The next day we got ready a little late and missed out on the free breakfast. We were a little peeved, but decided to be positive and start out on our adventure. We took the bus, to sandanbecki cliffs. This huge cliff tourist area. Its also a populat suicide point. There are signs that warn of this as well. It was sooo windy. I stayed in the interpretive center and chatted to one of the staff. She had learned englsih on a home stay in austraillia and was a nanny there too. We talked for quite a bit and I also made an english sign for the center “ Internet free for public use- be courteous and share the computers” i was quite proud of my self. So if any one goes to Sandanbecki Japan and sees a sign hanging over the computers, i did that. Just think it could have said “ Free time computer-all people use short time please”.

Yes, i help in what ways i can.
Next we hiked to Senjo-jiki a crazy horizontal cliffed place that happened to be even windier than the previous cliff. Odd! Next, was my most favorite part of the trip. We went to Sakinoyu open air hopspring. It was great. The hotspring is built right into the cliffs, and huge waves from the pacific actually hit the rocks and some of the cold water comes into the lower pools of the hotspring.
The hotsprings are actually 3 separate pools, each one higher than the next, and facing the angry pacific. The veiw was surreal and the water was soooo hot. The pools are separated into mens and womens pools. And you undress in a covered area, that is still outside. So its so cold. PS there was blowing snow in shirahama that morning, so you can understand that it was not warm weather. Especially undressing outside. But jumping into almost boiling water will fix most any cold day. an Intersting point of the day was that japanese women seem to like to talk about foreingners beheind their backs. Another interesting point of the day was that i met another foreigner emily collins (a british jet teacher from a small mountain town) and we talked for what seemed like hours in the pool. So it was nice to have some one else to talk to, and the japanese women must have had a field day talking about both of us beheind our backs. Great day over all though. I cant explain how nice it is to talk in english with some one, about everything and anything. Its like music to your ears in japan. Especially when 99% of the people you see and meet only speak japanese, its great to talk about movies, work, homesickness, food, tv shows with someone who knows what your talking about. That is indeed priceless.

Got the bus to the JR train station in shirahama, ate some super good okonomiyaki and made our way home. The trip rejuvinated us in many ways. Some days work is really trying and boring and you just dont want to be there. And it gets us in a down mood. But going to shirahama made me realize that If is wasnt in japan, if i wasnt teaching english i wouldnt get to experience the hotsprings, see the pools, meet new people and etc.... having this job is hard some times, but i have to see the positives in working in japan. We will never fit in here, and we know that, but japan has alot to show us, and we have been really lucky to experence japan comfortably. Working is a means to our end: wich is experiencing a new place, traveling and learning more about ourselfs and our surroundings. Work is sucky some days, and so good other days, but with out it we wouldnt have our train passes, our apartment, our vacations and all of our adventures.

This trip was so good, because it opened up our eyes to how lucky we are to be here, have each other as adventure parteners and have a comfy place to come home to.

Happy new year guys. Dont forget to think about what your thankful for.
Love jan and shiv!!

ps summ and minu we miss you guys! the pictures are of the dinner, us in our yukata's (in a japanese stlye hotel room), and our hike around the coast near shirahama.

christmas is for the lovers....

2007-01-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

So hello every one. Even though its new years eve day. I will back up this blog just a bit to recap how our holidays were here in osaka.

First, to set the scene, christmas time in Osaka is not as festive as it is back home. There are lots of decorations and christmas music blaring in the malls. But i would have to say it the season here lacks a little...Je ne sai qua? I think the word im looking for is authenticity. Christmas is a adopted commercial holiday here. So any weird christmas traditions or any interesting christmas decorations have all some how jumped ship, crossed the atlantic and ended up here in japan. Many of my students have talked about getting a big chicken for christmas dinner, and asked me if I have chicken for christmas. Here in japan, Its super popular to have KFC for christmas dinner. People also give/ buy christmas cakes. In my opinion I think this tradition could have evolved from seeing lots of x mas baking in movies or TV. But for lack of huge ovens to bake in (In most apartments there is a flat grill oven, that can cook flat things like fish, burgers, frozen okonomiyaki) many people dont bake cookies or things like that. They buy these elaborate christmas cakes. They are like devils food cake or angel food cake but with crazy pretty icing on them. You can buy these every where. From highend department store deli's (like at Tacahimaya) to the neighbourhood conveinence store (family mart). One of our friends from work, Sabrina, is lucky enough to have an oven in her house and for christmas day, she brought in all types of baking. Like gingerbread cookies shaped like stockings, shortbread stars etc. It was great.

What was not so great with the holidays was the insame wave of home sickness that hit me and shiv over the holidays. I was quite bitter going to work on christmas. In the back of my head i have this colonial superiority in my thinking that every where, every one should celebrate christmas the exact way as it's done in north america. But thats a silly thought to have. Because Japan in a secular country and Christmas day is just like every other day. Its a working day. So off to work we went on Christmas day. The day started off great though, me and shiv got up nice and early to open our gifts, and we got to wear our new stuff from Uni Qlo ( new fave shop) to work. But i was in a horrid mood. I was feeling very home sick, on the verge of tears all day, and i wanted none of my lessons to show up today. But to my dismay, each and every student showed up for lesson. And to my grand irritation, every student was in the most chipper of moods. I was so irritated. After lunch though, I tried to buck up and be alittle bit more cheery, and the day started to go better. All of my students wanted to know about christmas in Canada. And i even had one student who made me laugh pretty hard. Here's the dialouge

Jan: So, its christmas today. How bout you choose the lesson. We can learn about any thing that you want to learn about
Student: ......................
Jan: Anything, pick a subject and I'll make up an english lesson for you
Student: what number is that
Jan: No, its not a number. You can choose what you want to do today.
Student: Oh! ok. You choose teacher
Jan: Ok. How bout we do a lesson on Christmas
Student: I hate Christmas
Jan: Why?
Student: Because christmas is for the lovers.

As shiv says, you cant make this stuff up. Thats what she said and man i started laughing. But she was dead serious. Christmas here is not about spending time with family and friends, Giving gifts and getting fat. Its all about spending time with your significant other (girlfriend/boyfriend) getting gifts from them and going on dates to christmas locations in and around the city. If you have a family, some japanese might get gifts for the children. Some students i talked to got one joint family gift; like a tv or trip to some where nice. But over all. Christmas is like she said “for the lovers”.

But im very lucky that im here in japan with my “lover” shiv. I was as bitter last week as a case load of lemons. And he's always tried to make me see the bright side of the situation. This past week was really bad, and i do belive christmas day was the hardest.

After work, we went out with friends to Shakeys for all you can eat pizza, and boy was that good. Then after that we set out to find Murpheys Irish Pub. It was hard to find, and we lost Dom and Kim on the way there. But in the end we found it and it was quite quaint, very irish and over priced. A piny of guinness was 800 yen. And a tiny cocktail 750 yen. They were serving Christmas dinner at murpheys too, steak and kidney pie, chicken, veggies, gravy and a drink for 2500 yen. Very over priced in my books.

But alas, we had to leave Murpheys 1) because i was in a grumpy mood and 2) zeev and Ania's train was due to arrive at our train station in about 20 minutes. It has been so nice having them say with us. Zeev ( or lord Zeevius as he likes to be called) is shivs friend from back in shivs grant macewan days. He was also the usher at our wedding. Him and Ania were doing a semester of university in Japan and now that its over, They are doing some traveling around japan. Such a treat to have people over for the holidays. It makes the house feel that much more christmasy. And thats what the season is all about...

Kobe's delights-Costco and the delightfull Illuminarie

2006-12-21T23:28:00.000-08:00

so.... today we went christmas shopping for our own gifts. i know that goes against what christmas gift giving is all about. But i figure that those rules are merely just guidelines. Also, i thinks that those rules dont apply once you venture outside of north american airspace.

So 1st we went to the body shop. the body shop is important to me 1) because it sells shower gel. Shower gel is hard to find here. i've looked in 2 huge drug stores twice and walked out with Spa moist milk bath. it looks like shower gel, smells like shower gel, but alas it is a gel that turns into a milk like substance when it hits water. it does nothing to clean you, you feel like youve been lightly coated in a thin layer of rose scented vaseline.

yesterday me and shiv headed out on our kobe day trip adventure. we took the train from our place to amagasaki station. Amagasaki is a city just between Kobe and Osaka. but what really brought us to amagasaki is COSTCO!! it was the real deal folks. case loads of mac and cheese, discount meats, tacos,spices, mulivitamins, BBQ sauces etc... it was great. And to top it all off they deliver!. it cost about 1500 yen for our 3 boxes to be delivered to our house, and boy oh boy, i cant wait for my costco sized bottle of tabasco sauce and my tubs of prego.

we really have 2 people to thank for their guidance on the costco situation. timesha and charles. they are a cool duo from ATL!! we dropped by their place 2 nights ago to visit and it was so nice to kick back and watch tv in english. wow what a treat. we dont get our cable till thursday, so it would be 2 months and a few days to be exact since we have watched english cable television. shiv and i felt like mush, we could have sat there in thier apt for hours watching "the hills", the diary of pharrel and a steven segall. And to top off the evening charles fed us oreos and pepsi. wow! gotta love those americans!

Getting back to our Kobe adventure, we hopped back on ther train to Kobe ( by hopped we mean walked around, stared at kanji signs, asked for help, made hand gestures, ran after a bus and ran to another train platform) and headed to the Illuminaries. Illuminars is a lights display that goes down in kobe every year to honor the people who died during the Kobe earth quake in 1995. Over 6000 people died in that earthquake and it leveled most of the city to rubble. Most of the areas we saw were pretty new, new buildings, new roads, new stores. It is very odd to see a completly new city, devoid of any old decrepid areas. I think Kobe City is the perfect description of a phoenix-city. A city charred and destroyed and somehow reborn out of the fire and destruction. It still has a long ways to go, there is alot of construction still going on. The sight of the land being plowed, parted and moved reminded me of home. Of the developments just south of the city and the land that is constantly being torn up, ripped apart and planted with new homes and strip malls.

We were not quite sure how we would find the illuminaries from Motomachi station in Kobe. But one thing you have to remeber is japan is: Japan is a country rife with people. No festival is a small festival because evena small festival will pull crowd of thousands of people. So, when we got out of the station, we were suprised to see all the down town roads shut down, police with light sabers and guides with loud speakers directing thousands of people. So we joined into the madness and that winded through the super-clean streets of downtown Kobe.

The ligh display was gorgeous. it felt like we were in a christmas open air catherdral. they had loud speakers (that were hidden) that were playing classical christmas music and every where you looked was bathed in the softest-warmest peach glow. the display was my defitinion of beauty. Actually i have seen two beautiful man made sights this year. 1) The glass flower ceiling in the Bellagio Atrium 2) the Illuminarie street displays in Kobe.

Shiv is the one that got the good shots of this wonderment www.pbase.com/shivdesilva

by far the day was well spent, took the train back home and slept off the day
ps! dishi and matt i used my backpack all day and we carried quite a bit of weight in it from costco. And its Amazing!! the weight is so evenly distributed you hardly feel any thing. Props to those masters at MEC!

Also, over the holidays we have been so lucky to meet 2 of shivs host brother from Lions club that he met 10 years ago in japan: Akio and Ben! they have been so kind to us, taken us out for anazing meals, introduced us to their families and their super ccute daughters and showed us some really amazing sights round Osaka. Photos of the girls are included here.

love jan and shiv (3 sleeps till christmas)

the gifts are here and x mas can start off right!!!

2006-12-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

hows it going. just thought id drop ya'll a line to say that the rough part of the move to our new apt is done. it has hard today carrying chairs and a table from the "konan home depot" in the blowing freezing wind. but at least we have something to sit on now. standing and eating dinner just wasn't cutting it.
we just recived your x mas parcles ammi and thathi, dilshi and matt. thanks sooo much!. mom we saw that yours it at the post office, we have to pick it up.

i dont know what it is. but chocolate in the mail is soo much better when you are far away. we are not going to watch the dvds till x mas. we set up our tree yesterday, bling'ed it out with decorations and lights even!. we decided to call it henry the x mas tree. and i made a wreath for the door. it is very "winners chic!" and its home made!. if any one steals it, i will be so mad. i will break into their aptartment and personally put coal on their futon!!
work is going well. i had a group of students today that hardly talked, and i think for a few split secoonds i fell asleep on camera. but i also had a wicked group of students that loved to talk about food, needless to say we all became fast friends.

so much has happened in the past 2 weeks since i wrote. but to recap we have been ghetto, no let me say that again G-H-E-T-T-O!!! just last friday we got paid, but before that we were honestly living on...no money. its been a great experience for me and shiv. we thought we were down and out in halifax, but this beat it badly. we some how survived for the last 5 weeks on about $200. so to break that down, thats alof of 100 yen store food and noodle packets. we learned how to find the super sale food, entertain on a budget and see the city without spending any money.

the day we got paid was the sweetest day, we went for indian buffet, bought a tree, moved into our new place and got train passes (finally). so life is a tad bit more comfortable. but some how eating pasta, tuna and dollar store orange juice, using our stolen internet will remain a fond memory for years to come.
Another event im so happy about is our new YakiNiku BBQ. shiv is genius and found and bought this indoor table sized BBQ grill. We have been making some of the best BBQ i have ever eaten. So tender and tasty. You know what it tastes like....The satay sticks that you get at the phillipines tent ot the Thai or polynesian tents at heritage days. Its soo good. Ive included a picture!

dad, we would like to have you know that it was only up untill 2 weeks ago that we used that safety hundred. we saved it all through our halifax poverty and only cracked it out just recently. it was a life saver.

on a goodnote we have booked our x mas trip to shirahama. its a onsen (hotspring) resort beachy town. we are so excited to get out of osaka's unrelenting grey and see trees and the ocean. also over the holidays we have zeev and his girl friend coming to stay with us from the 25th-3rd. and we have doug coming on the 2nd-5th from south korea coming to stay with us while he gets his back tattooed at chopstick tattoo.

the new apt is much newer and hence a lot less grungy. we like it tons more. have a good pre x mas week every one.

love jan

Oyishii, You lie!!!!!

2006-12-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

So after dinner me and shiv sat down to watch some tv. Like most nights in osaka, tv consists of a crazy food themed show. And by crazy food themed show i'm talking extreme close ups on gravy, screaming and jumping when the food hits the tounge, floresent letters roughly translated to mean "Super Good Yum!" "Good Food Taste" "Oh MY I love the Chef". The grammar of japanese pop culture will be another indeph posting soon to come.

But right now i must stick to my task at hand. Describing these crazy shows. Each night we see at least one partially live animal scooped from the sea, sprinked with some salt or soy based product and eaten while still moving!. All the while the hosts are jumping up and down screaming "OYISHII!!" wich can mean " SOOO GOOD!" All i have to say is "you Lie!". TV hosts "YOU LIE!!"

Scooping your hand into a trawler full of live baby fish and plopping them into your mouth does not equal dinner. It equals madness, with out proper cooking time. The japanese are feinds for freshness and that is why on many shows you will see the animal alive, then on a plate in less than 2 minutes.

shiv and I witnessed a strange cusine dish of squid. 1st the squid is not killed, its skin is just peeled back, then it is chopped into small moving bite sized peices, then its ink is hand mixed with dollops of rice, and lastly the twitchy squid is placed atop the dollop of ink rice and downed my a hyperactive japanese tv host.

I dont get it. Just once i would like to see some one puke after eating a live fish baby, or atleat not scream in excitment while the squid is attaching its tenticles to their esophagus. But i highly doubt that i will ever see the day of japanese refusal of strange food. they are too damn polite and love crazy food

jan

ps the pictures from this post are some random shots of food, Nara japan, deer, todaji trmple, a big buddha, and the jan and shiv! enjoy

lovers and haters!!!!

2006-11-28T02:27:00.000-08:00

hi all!. its the 27th today, and the weirdest instance happened today.
scene: OCAT, square, near namba walk, near work
time:3:30 pm japan time
who: jan, shiv, kim,dom, and a crazy irate japanese supremisist!

so there we were, just minding our business, when we noticed out of the corner of our eye that a small man was screaming at us in japanese. He had this crazy menacing look in his eyes. sort of like a cauldron of pent up japanenese hate for all people non-japanese.
this man stood about 10 ft away from us, for a good 10 minutes yelling and shouting profanities. shiv picked up on some of his words, but just a few, not enough to know exactly what he was sawing. he was pointing at is and getting really mad. the strangest thing is that no one, NO one did anything. they let crazy crazy-son just yell at us. so we stood there and just ignored him. That made him really angry. we took a picture of him, and he went nuts. he walked over to us and started shaking his fists. the thought in all of our minds was "hmmm if we hit him, i think we will get deported". he just came real close, but no punches we swung. we left the scene soon after. and we all stood there in shock.

we had just been reemed out by a japanese supremisist.
What that guy said, and the extreme hate he had for gaijin (foreigners) is probably not uncomon to what feelings and thoughts many japanese people have. the difference is that he "SAID: what some people think. this man was the personification of some peoples inside thoughts.

has it tainted us. hmm not really. on a whole i think many people talk about us beheind our backs. it seems to be quite common when we talk to other people at work about their experinces. But it hasn't made us bitter. this guy is just one guy who had the guts to say what he feels. i'm sure many japanese share the same dislike for gaijin, its just that they dont say it out loud.

there are also these grey vans that have the old style japanese flag on them and they have loud speakers that blast out things like "gaijin devils" " we hate gaijin" "gaijin go home" etc.... we haven't seen these vans but some people from work have. yah! can't wait!

last night we went to our first japanese lessons. It was great. we went with fiona (N ireland), lee (manchester), dom&kim (britan) and us. it was a great walk there, it started to rain, but lee did tell us about NOVA soccer matches that go on every monday. shiv is excited. the classes were in a elementary school class room, and run by a group of super friendly, energetic japanese people. The teacher that me, shiv and kim had was sort of sketchy, hyperactive, neorotic, and twitchy. over all he had a weird vibe, but he was a good teacher. we learned to pronounce and write some simple japanese sentences.

our teacher did say the funniest thing though. well he didn't say any thing, we wrote it in his traveling white board tablet avec white board marker. he didn't really talk at all. he wrote everything down franticly, then erased it.
so he wrote: married or lovers?. on his whiteboard and pointed at me and shiv. me, shiv and kim all laughed. we pointed to married. them he pointed at kim. and she pointed to lovers. "dom is my lover".
alot of japanese people get their words from a word converter machine, but they use the wrong words. we taught him the word "common law". but from this day foreward lets all introduce our other half as "my lover"!!!!

next week we get to make new years cards! shiv was the Golf (in nova grading, golf is the highest level for japanese-english speakers) in our group. the teacher was suprised he knew all his hirigana, and could read the words the teacher wrote on the board (Show Off!). me and kim were boiling piles of jelousy inside!

it was great, a good evening out with friends, learned alot and it was all free. cant wait till next week.
on the way to and from class we all got talking about what we enjoyed about work. here's some of the points we noted last night
1. you work with people from all over the world. 500 in the MM center. so there is always some one new to meet and talk to
2. you live in good proximity to other people from work, so you can meet up and hang out. we have heard of some english companies that really spread out their staff, and have a small # of people working at each branch/school
3. you get to teach!!. you dont just sit and stare
4.you get to talk to people from all ove japan each day, so you get to learn about all areas of the country, and get good travel tips about places from students
5.each day is different. you see some students a few times, but most often you get a whole brand new batch of students every day
6. nova attracts lots of age ranges and types of people (eg, shiv grannystudent that loved common, thalib kwali, kanye west and all hip hop!)

it was a good convo indeed, made the evening really nice.
hmmm now i feel all warm and fuzzy. hope every one is having a good time in the snow. its +18 here. BWAHAHAHAH....BWAHAHAHAHHHAAAaaaaaaaaaa..............................

shiv is singing along with the tv. a old stlye japanese singing show is on, and the bastard can read the hirigana. i must go. this is too golden!

jan and shiv
ps we will try and post the pick or the japanese supremisist!

"I'm not crying...i'm just persprirating out my eye!"

2006-11-21T03:45:00.000-08:00

so......
hello lads and lasses! last week was a national holiday. it was my birthday week last week.
p.s shiv just said "this is how we roll, can't test" all the while he was dusting his new lap top with a specially made electrical shammy and using his special blower to remove dust without actually touching his computer.!

so.. back to my birthday week. my birthday was on nov 14th, and when i got to work dom and kim gave me a big brown bag. it was from the 315 yen store. it had a new touque, a pink box, a kettle and a scarf in it. it was a very random gift, but very thoughtful because i needed a new touque!

later on that evening, i though shiv had nothing planned, because by 630 we still hadn't done any thing for my b day. but he came through and he told me we were going on a trip on the subway. we got on the green line (chou line) and got off at osakako station., and to my surprise a HUGE ferris wheel awaited us.

We got on the ferris wheel, and from ground level, it looked big (but not scary). But from 120 Metres in the air, we were both freaking out. We were as high as the suspension bridge that goes across the harbour to get to Kobe. I has sooo scared and so was shiv.

After the ferris wheel we walked around the grounds then looked for something to eat. To our suprise, this area of osaka did not have izakayas (pubs) all over the place, or places with plasic food displays or englsih menus. We were'nt really feeling the area, so we went back to namba area and went to one of my new favorite restaurants (CoCo's)

let me tell you about Co Co;s. its a do it your self curry restaurant chain. you pick yor sauce, then your rice amounts, then your toppings. they have very japanese toppings, so its not out of the ordinary ro see some one with a pork curry, (level 3 hottness) topped with breaded calamari, corn, mushroons and an egg.
weird, but amazingly tasty!!

the next night we went out with friends from the MM center (multimedia). and we went to a 280 yen bar. so converted into CDN. every thing (EVERTHING) is $2.80. beer, all drinks, shish kabobs of chicken heart, gyoza, french fries, spicy chicken gizzards, miso soup, omlettes. everything. so every one ate and drank alot.

highlights of the night (or low lights...)
1. dom showing up in a kilt
2. Dom and josh doing chilli pepper and wasabi shooter. through their noses (a la jackass)
3. all of the rounds of weird food coming in droves
4. dom and josh peircing their hands with toothpicks dont ask
5. walking around downtown osaka at night and stubling into a twilight zone english pub, with a weird freaky south east asian lady ......

it was indeed a fun night. me and shiv went home after we were weirded by the scene in the pig and whistle pub, but others stayed out till the wee hours at some kareoke bar.

the next day we went to kyoto. a city full of "slightly different temples". it was great to take the train there. i felt like i was traveling in a movie across europe on a big adventure. we found a nice taiwanese lady that walked us from the station all the way to the tempe grounds. that was very nice of her because we were quite lost and litterally looked like 3 crazy tourists.

it was wonderful to see greenery. and we went to a huge buddhist temple in this huge park. it was very nice. walked around all day, and then took the train back to osaka and took our bellies to shakeys pizza.

oh shakeys!!
this week the adventure starts with me and shiv traveling to Nara to find the deer and feed them stuff!
luv jan

My legs are so numb from walking toooo much.....

2006-11-10T05:20:00.000-08:00

ello mates. this post will be revamped. but today was such a long day, and my legs are pooped. the day started off real early with jan going to the bank to set up a bank account. Then jan running home because she forgot her Hanko (japanese kanji name stamp), then jan running back to the bank with her Hanko. The to Mcdonalds to meet shiv and pete.
Together, team cool went to meet Mai, a realtor, and saw an apartment. The apt was a 1DK. 1 bedroom, dining room and kitchen apt. Shiv and I are looking for a 1LDK (1bdrm, living room, dining room and kitchen). Pete, our friend from work liked the apt, and i think he will take it.

After apt hunting with Mai, we went off to Osaka jo (osaka castle). and we hiked up all the stairs and looked at all the samarai equipment. Looking at all the exhibits reminded me of this funny phrase Ush said to me and shiv about his temple veiwing time in japan. "1000 slightly differnt temples". each floor was slightly different, but not really. the best part of the castle was the hike to the castle and the top veiwing tower. It was full of hyper japanese junior high kids and the veiw from the top (over the city ) was so impressive.

After osaka jo, we walked to the subway. the past few days shiv and i have gotten out of our namba shell and taken the train and rail to outter lying areas of osaka. and boy is it grand. we went to Umeda last night and bentencho today. the train systen here works like clock work. It is crazy. i will not even attempt to expalin it because it will give me a headache.

it seems thought that there is a network of gaijin houses. or apts that cater to foreigners. they have no key money and allow month to month rent. many of them come furnished too. we found an apt. and its real nice. i will post some pics of it. many of the gaijin houses he have been to are all managed by aussie guys that know each other. well whatever.

also, we passes thorugh this amazing public park on the way to the subway station from osaka jo koen, and if you look through the trees, you see the strangest thing. a settlement of park dwelling homeless people. they are tucked far into the park, beheind thick dense trees, but you can see their bright blue tarps. its a whole community of homeless people living hidden away in the trees. you dont see many if any home less people on the streets, but they are hidden... weirdest thing i have seen in a long time.
the best part of my day though, was getting our caricature done. a guy in osaka jo koen did our portraits and i love it. we look like manga characters. and i love the bad japanese "keep a smile" title. i cant wait to frame it. ps, i like how we are both cross eyed.

came home, made dinner. pooped..
luv jan

watching extreme makeover..Japanese style

2006-11-05T02:43:00.000-08:00

hi every one,
its nov 5th here. this past week has been alot of fun. Shiv and i started work this week. work has been a huge learing curve for both of us. well not so much for shiv because he got 87 on his quiz and i got 67.....
work is good though. we work in an office builing right downtown. i work mostly on the 14th floor. we teach people that sign up with nova how to speak english. we do it online though. so when people sign on to their computer for their 1pm lesson, i may be their online teacher.

today i had a few students that were very advanced in english. One guy i was teaching was a doctor, and he was so fluent in english, that when i asked him what a milestone in fashion history was (in his opinion) he told me

" i think it would have to be when japanese women began to wear pants" i said why is that a milestone
and he said " after the war there was a huge fire in tokyo in a department store. many men were able to get out or jump out of the window in time, but many women died in that fire because in those times women still wore kimonos of traditional dress. from that time it was allowed and socially acceptable for women to wear pants in japan.

ii thought that was a pretty good answer.
other students are so shy, they are even afraid to talk or answer questions, but others love to talk and tell me everything (whethe it is related to the lesson or not.

when i told one of my students that i was from canada. she went nuts!!!the one place in the entire world she wants to go is PEI, to see anne of green gables.
japan is amazing. this week we did orienation and i got off at 3 every day and shiv at 9. now that we are working we both get of at 3 every day.

this thursday friday we are planning to go to osaka jo. i'm so excited.
there must be something wrong, or some thing so right about me and shiv, because with out even trying we keep on finding these AMAZING restaurants. every day. oskak is one big maze of restaurants. there is a reason its refered to as "the kitchen of japan.
we also went to amerika mura, "america villiage" weirdest things we saw
1) african guys on most street corners
2)vintage stores with thse baby yakuza (ganster) jackets in them
3) people dressed like gothic lolitas

people dont dress weird in japan. its just that the country produces the most crazy people and crazy clothes and people have no choice but to buy them.

on another note, japanese tv is crazy. there is this show called "apron of love" and women from all over japan come to the show dressed like 1940's house wives and have to make traditional japanese food. the panel of men judges get too judge their food and rate them. the one with the most points wins. it is pure competition with screaming, yelling and food.

we are now watching a man make over show. also the japanese are super obsessed with being thin without working out. only using gagets. like tummy lazers and skin shakers. the home shopping network is all "brightening, slimming......yada yada"

looked for shoes yesterday. womens shoes come in small/med large and i am neither. i would be an XL. so no shoes for me :(
janet jackson is on a japanese game show.. What? i have to go...
jan

2006-10-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

yesterday was quite a fun day. I met up with some nova people and watched a really cool dance perfomance in namba station. they all looked so happy to have foreigners taking pictures of them. In japan, we are the japanese tourists. there is so much to take pictures of, i felt like one of the hordes of japanese tourists in banff!. i will never make fun of them again. then me and a girl from t-dot (linzi) went to Kurumon market. a huge fresh market by our apartment to pick up some veggies. we haven't had veggies of fruit since last week. Note: japanese veggies are huge a clove of garlic was just a little smaller than my fist. odd!

me and shiv spent the afternoon indoors watching crazy japanese tv. it will madden you if you watch it long enough. people on tv get so excited about every thing. On one show every one was going NUTS over shark fin soup. like,fanatical. then the host brought out a bowl of shark fin soup for every one. and the whole place went mad....for soup? its great to watch.

we have skype. shivs name is osakashiv, so try that.

last night we met up with some other teachers and went to watch a break dancing extravaganza. at namba station. very good, and walked along the lit up arcades till we came across a restaurant with alot of plasic food dispalys out front. super tasty and very reasonable. i had this idea of japan as being very expensive, but its not! will post pics soon.

Happy b day tabs!

Arcades and Okonomyaki

2006-10-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

These are some pics of the last two days. I'll be writing more about these pics later tonight.

Osaka at a first glance

2006-10-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

hi every one. its october the 27th here, but it is october the 26th in edmonton. The past few days have felt like a game to us, walking around seeing the sites. In the morning we have certain tasks to do. For eg. get towels, dish soap and tweezer. For us to complete those tasks, it was alot of fun, alot of searching, and alot of talking slowly with our hands trying to communicate in japanese. it is so weird to be in a place where there is so little english. This is indeed a great adventure for me and shiv because we are really out in the world on our own. It is a great lesson in patience and independence. yesterday i went to the corner store my our house all by myself and got us food for breakfast. It may not seem like a big feat but it was really interesting and hard to communciate. But it was a great experience. Today we did an ever bigger adventure. We had to navigate the osaka sub way and get to the chou ward (city hall type place) to register as aliens ( foreigners in japan). we found a hundred yen store and got some food and clipboards. so much fun making our way around this new land. We are cleaning the apt right now, packing our stuff away and making lunch. OH! by the way we got our 1st encounter with a eastern toilet today. It was in a japanese office building. and it was on the floor. So you squat down and go pee. so nutty, but awkwardly efficient!!!

love jan and shiv!

T Minus just a few more ..

2006-10-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

so its about 1 month till we leave. and we are getting very very excited. this blog stuff is sort off odd. i will try to make it my new hobby.