Iwate Prefecture Post-Earthquake Posters

2011 Iwate - Post-Earthquake Posters, a set on Flickr.

After uploading these photos I came to the realization I don't want to upload any more until after New Years. There's a quality to these posters which demands that they be given a bit of space and time so those who view them can contemplate all that happened. So rather than crowd them into a tiny spot in an almost endless stream of images I'm going to stop, share and let others gaze on these much like I did in the hallway between a shopping plaza and a hotel in Morioka.


PS: While the text on each poster tended to be of the inspirational variety that wasn't the overall impression I had of them. For me there was a strange resilience in the faces where the subjects seemed to exude strength but also a sense of almost apologetic humility. I don't know. What does one feel when photographed in front of the face of such calamity and tragedy?....

The Magic Number...

So when my Amex statement arrived a few days ago I thought I had it figured out as to how I would pay it: I'd go down to the bank or post office and transfer a payment as per the instructions on the bill. It should've been that simple. No. Things didn't turn out that way.

I guess a portent of things to come was the reaction from my office manager on Saturday when I told what I was going to do. Her response was that "What?!" which makes no attempt to hide confusion and skepticism. She had never attempted to do such a transaction. "Too complicated", was her remark. That conversation came back to haunt me today when I got to the banking counter at my local post office.

First off, the clerk at the post office explained that it would be cheaper to do the transfer using the ATM because the service charges are lower than if I do the transaction using my account passbook at the counter. Okay. I have no problem with that. I go to the ATM, pick the "English Guide" option and pick the best looking option: "Remittance". There didn't seem to be anything else fitting the bill for what I wanted. So on my first try I run into a requirement to enter a recipient transfer number. That isn't on the bill. I withdraw, take a seat and ponder my next step.

So I phone American Express. I press '2' for service in English and get a Japanese speaking customer service representative (who I assume can't speak English). I ask for an English speaking rep and she checks for me. "There's no one available to take a call because of call volume", she reports. So, I step up to the plate and try to get the information I need from her whilst carrying on the conversation in Japanese. She provides me with the bank code and bank branch code. I figure I have what I need and I thank her.

So I attempt to do the transaction with the information I've gathered. No luck there. I have too many digits to enter. I try a couple of permutations but give up my station at the ATM once I notice there are others waiting to use it (the small post offices usually only have one ATM). I decide to head off and pay my gas bill. After doing that I head into another post office.

After another failed attempt to make the transfer I walk up to the post office banking counter and ask the clerk what it is I have to do. I show him the information I have and he asks if I'm trying to do an international bank transfer. No. "In that case there's an option on the ATM you an use with your cash card", he explains. Ah, this might be the turn in the right direction. I explain I'm not a local once things start getting complicated. He kindly writes down the text I'm supposed to hunt down on the ATM menu on a piece of paper for the option I need to choose.

Armed with that I return to the scene of my previous defeat at the hands of the ATM. This time I weather the menus in Japanese. Voila! The option I need is there. I navigate my way to the point where I enter the Amex destination account and the amount of my payment. A small alarm bell goes off in my head. Why haven't I been asked to enter my credit card number. No sooner said than done I'm asked to enter my phone number. I duly do that and receive a confirmation screen. Everything seems to be in order. So the magic number that sealed the deal is my phone number? When I think back to the time I called Amex I recall that their system told me they had confirmed my identity based on the phone number I was calling from. Now that is interesting.

So what did I learn today? One, yes, Virginia there may be options on the post office ATMs which don't get shown when the user switches to English. It's either that or the translation becomes misleading and you miss it. I suspect the former. Two, having an IVR system identify customers by their phone numbers is an interesting tactic. They do ask for a PIN so it's not a completely wide open access point to one's accounts. But it is a bit of a surprise when first encountered.

There you have it...the magic number when dealing with Amex Japan.

Let's see now...

Let's see now..., a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

This lesson jumped about a bit. "Tomb", "mummy" and "kingdom" were in the homework assignment I reviewed in class. "Cattle", shrimp and eel were part of the textbook lesson. The part about "cow", "bull" and "cattle" was to clarify something in the textbook. Most ESL students aren't taught right away that female cattle are cows and male cattle are bulls. They're simply taught "cow". That caused a bit of consternation because in this particular lesson the textbook used "cattle". The question of "What is 'cattle'?" inevitably came up...

This is all too weird. A Christmas day blog post based on a photo taken on Dec 7th... >.<

Coming down nice and fluffy

Coming down nice and fluffy a video by dtk_guy on Flickr.

I think I've reached saturation point of taking photos and videos of this kind of snowfall. I'm waiting for the real big dump which takes the concept of snowfall to (literally) higher heights. I could go down to the same corner today (Dec 23rd) and shoot the same video. Nope. Need something a bit more dramatic now.

On a side note: today is the Emperor's birthday so there is a national holiday today. Not that it makes much of a difference in the daily flow of things. I suspect schools are still in session today. If I had to guess what offices would be closed I'd say the post office, city hall, and various branches of the civil service.

More later...

100 servings!

100 servngs!, a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

Yup. I managed to consume 100 servings of wanko soba at the main Azuma-Ya restaurant in Morioka. In case you're wondering about the scale of the photo, those bowls are about the size of a small miso soup bowl. They each contained about a mouthful of soba.

The way wanko soba is consumed is quite the thing. Your place setting has your main bowl for eating soba, a "spittoon" for excess soba "shiru" (sauce), a side order of tuna sashimi, and a number of things you can add to your soba. There are rules to eating: you remove the lid from your main bowl (hang on firmly!) and your waitress drops a serving of soba in it. You eat that and she replenishes it. Repeat the process. After your third serving you're allowed to drain your bowl (I think that was the rule). You can add stuff such as "tororo" (ground yam), ground radish(sic) and mushrooms, a concoction containing beans, wasabi, green onions, bonito flakes or other "condiments". The general trick seems to be not to chew on your soba. Just swallow.

The pace of replenishment is quite brisk. The next serving is in your bowl pretty well the second you finish the previous serving. Just the thought of that makes me feel full. Each time the waitress drops some soba in your bowl she'll say something like "Hai, jyan, jyan" or similar. At some point it becomes a bit maddening as you swallow your soba, take a breath and watch the serving land in your bowl.

The only way to end this cycle of consumption and replenishment is to place the lid back on top of your bowl. Once you've done that then your meal is finished. In a way it's a relief when you throw in the towel and call it quits.

Anyways, for my efforts I was rewarded with a small wooden plaque noted with the date of my accomplishment and the number of servings I had consumed. Everyone gets a printed certificate with the date and number of servings but those who get to the century mark get the wooden plaque. I found out about the wooden plaque when I was at 90 servings and about to call it quits. At around 98 servings I just about heaved. Luckily I was able to quash that impulse and I hung in there for the last two bowls. I certainly didn't regret putting the lid on the bowl at that point in time.

Other things about my trip to Morioka:
1) It's still funny watching people who drive expensive import cars having to get out of their vehicles to walk around and get their parking lot tickets out of the machine mounted on the right side of the parking lot entrance.
2) I wasn't aware that Morioka was the hometown of Yonai Mitsumasa. His life is celebrated in the city hall of notable citizens. One of the other people recognized in the hall is Nitobe Inazo. He is the person whom the Nitobe Garden at UBC in Vancouver is named after. I learned that Nitobe passed away in Victoria, BC. Also he had married an American woman in a Quaker wedding ceremony. He was an exceptional educator and also a diplomat having served as an under-secretary of the League of Nations.
3) Another Individual mentioned a fair bit in Morioka is the late Miyazawa Kenji. The name "Ihatovo", his Esperanto version of the old name for Iwate, "Ihate", pops up in a lot of places. It turns up a on banners promoting tourism for the city and Iwate. I know of Miyazawa from the anime movies "Night on the Galactic Railroad" and "Ihatov Fantasy: Kenji's Spring". The latter is a biography which depicts all of the characters as cats.

My guide for this weekend trip to Morioka was Mr. Ito, a friend of my father. He had met my father when he had visited Vancouver and Victoria about 10 years ago. Victoria has been a sister city with Morioka since 1985. One story Mr. Ito told me had me laughing: Years ago when he worked for the city of Morioka he often went down to Tokyo for various meetings. He and his compatriots always seemed to get a chuckle out of the Yamagata contingent when the meetings were held in the winter. The Yamagata folks would show up wearing their big rubber boots (which usually are calf high if not almost knee high). One winter the Yamagata delegation showed up wearing rather normal dress shoes. When asked where their boots were they replied they had left them stored in coin lockers in the train stations back home.

Anyways, I've written enough for today...

ttfn!

And it keeps coming down...

And it keeps coming down... a video by dtk_guy on Flickr.

This was the scene outside my apartment yesterday afternoon. It started coming down around lunchtime. Michael and I had gone to Kappa Sushi and it had been sunny that morning but overcast and cloudy by the time we sat down. About 10 minutes later I looked out the window and the scene outside was like a blizzard! Needless to say the bike ride back home was entertaining. No spills or falls though.

Anyways, I got to witness the city's road sprinkler system in action. They have pipes set into the main roads with sprinkler heads flush with the road surface. The system serves to keep the snow from accumulating on the streets. Although I still wonder about the danger of the whole darn mess being turned into a massive skating rink.

Most parking lots also have sprinkler systems to clear off the snow with. As for individual households and small businesses: there's always the soaker hose. Yes, those hoses which people in North America use to sprinkle water onto their flower beds are used to keep driveways and sidewalks clear of snow in Yonezawa. I know there are companies advertising driveway and parking spot heating systems but I haven't seen any evidence of any in use so far...

Poor Jenny...

Poor Jenny..., a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

"Jenny" is the character depicted in the flash card with the phrase "put away your book"(sic). I taught at the Yamagata school last week and was quite surprised at the reaction to her I got from a class of four boys aged 8-10. I had them open their text books to a dialogue page which introduced the phrases "How old are you?" and "I'm seven years-old". The artwork depicted a birthday party for Jenny. The boys all reacted with protests like "I hate Jenny!", "I don't like Jenny", etc. I've never had any of the kids I teach at the Yonezawa school react like that so I was a bit befuddled.

Later on I came up with a possible explanation: boys that age don't always get along with girls. I'm guessing that the boys in question look at the "Jenny" character as being just like the girls they see at their regular schools. Thus the dislike for her. There could be other reasons but I can't seem to think of any right now.

There are a couple of positive things I can spin out of that situation: One, the boys obviously know the phrases "I don't like..." and "I hate...". So they certainly are learning English. Two, the people who worked on the "Let's Go" children's text books seem to have succeeded in creating a realistic multi-ethnic cast of characters...I just don't think they ever would have foreseen what I experienced....

All for ¥2082

All for ¥2082, a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

Alright, I did the math and I'm not sure what to make of the result. I bought two steaks today for ¥400 each. I checked the packages and they weigh about 10oz. Using an exchange rate of ¥75 per C$1 I calculated that they cost $8.53/lb or close to $18.77/kg. Checking the label I believe they're rib eye steaks. Having gotten this far I have no idea if that's a good price or not anymore.

Carrying on with the food theme: I was thinking of making a baked dessert for the upcoming office potluck Christmas dinner. Then I remembered I don't have an oven. So I think I'll make chili con carne. Or maybe I should make something which will definitely raise some eyebrows: SPAM musubi. I know of a store in town that sells SPAM. Hmmm...maybe that'll be my contribution. That or a ramen salad. If I'm going to make that I need to bug my sister for her recipe.

One thing I haven't had a chance to do this past week is head over to Yamaya and see if they sell long grain rice. If I get really lucky they might sell basmati rice. I bought some vindaloo curry mix there last month so I figure there's a small chance they do sell long grain rice. But I don't know if I'm desperate enough to use something like Uncle Ben's instant rice if that's all they sell.

One thing I haven't bought much of since I've arrived is bread. The simplest explanation is that I don't have anything to make toast with. I suppose I'll have to invest in a toaster oven sometime or another. I saw that I've inherited a stove top toaster grill pan but Michael told me that Zubeda found out that the gas range has a sensor which detects if what you have sitting on it is overheating. It gives a beeping warning and he says she told him it would then shut itself off. I suppose I could try out the grill pan and see if I have a bit more luck with it. Which leads me to the next problem...trying to find something other than bleached white bread. I've heard you can get bagels so I suppose there is a small chance that one can get brown bread (rye, sourdough, and whole wheat are probably out of the question).

Anyways...enough talk about food for now...