Trying to Keep Warm

It may be the first of March but the nights are still a bit cold.  I overheard someone say that temperatures might dip below zero at night this week. 

Last week wasn't much warmer.  At one point I was sitting in our "satellite" office with the heater/air-con unit going at 28C.  It didn't feel particularly warm in the room but I did notice that the pieces of white chocolate I was munching on were just a touch "sweaty". 

About an hour later I collected my lesson materials for the last class I was going to teach that day.  As I stood up I remembered I had one piece of white chocolate left.  So I grabbed the box and gave it a shake...nothing came out.  I thought to myself, "Hmm...I'm sure there was one more piece left".  So I took the inner tray out of the box.  This particular brand's packaging has the inner tray tucked inside a plastic envelope/wrapper.  I pulled the tray out and saw what had become of my last piece of white chocolate...it had melted.  So perhaps the heater was indeed on high enough....

-*-

This year's snow lantern festival was the 40th edition of the annual event.  The older brother of one of my students was a member of the organizing committee.  He was on a sub-committee responsible for coming up with some type of amusement for kids.  In the past the festival has had things like miniature train rides.  My student had mentioned that they were looking into more ambitious projects this year.  The organizers had floated the idea of a maze built out of snow.  But the lack of snow over Christmas and New Years made them decide to aim for a more modest goal.  I think their next idea was a petting zoo or polar animal exhibit.  They had lined up a deal to rent some penguins from a zoo in Niigata but that fell through.  So in the end they decided to set up a skating rink.

Yonezawa is very much in the "snow country", Yuki-guni, of Japan.   So one would assume that there are plenty of winter sports activities.  In fact, there aren't.  People are just too busy digging themselves out of the snow to bother to go out and play in the stuff.  I suppose they get sick of the sight of the stuff.  The city lacks a large enough body of water which could freeze over well enough to serve as a natural ice skating surface.  And the local ice rink was torn down a number of years ago.  Which to me seems peculiarly odd.  After all, it's not often one hears of a Canadian community without an ice rink or somewhere to skate.

Anyways...when my student told me they were going to set up an skating rink I immediately assumed it would have an ice surface.  So I was a bit bemused when I checked out the festival and found the skating rink...and its plastic board skating surface.  That really just wasn't what I had had in mind....

What the Heck?....

Recently I looked at my iTunes account balance.  It's been untouched for some time.  So I said to myself "What the heck with it" and decided to spend a bit of it on games for my iPhone (one can play a free version of Minesweeper for only so long).  One of my purchases was a game called "Transistor".  Initially I was rather cautious and only played my way through a few initial battles.  Then something clicked and I couldn't stop playing.  It took me a couple of sessions playing until the wee hours of the morning on Monday and Tuesday this week to finish the game.  Unfortunately, the long hours spent awake caught up to me.  The sore throat I got on Sunday, which was the result of belting out Zaz's "Champs-Élysées" a bit too exuberantly at karaoke, turned into an all out cold on Wednesday morning (today).  Symptoms are a sore throat, cough, and runny nose.

Ah...runny nose.  I've had some fun explaining that one to students.  Many of them encounter that in an elementary level text.  Up to that time they've only been introduced to using the verb "to run" for the physical activity of moving rapidly on foot.  It often takes me a few minutes to explain how the verb can be applied to the flow of moving liquid.

Anyways, I found myself in a situation where I need to blow my nose and there wasn't a box of tissues close by.  So I tore off a few sheets of toilet paper.  Whereupon I found myself whiffing a faint strawberry scent.  Yes, our office uses strawberry scented toilet paper with images of the Sanrio character Miffy printed on it.  Yet another "What the heck?" moment.  Who ever would of thought of making strawberry scented toilet paper.  The minor wonders of the world never cease to amaze me.

PS: "Transistor" is a darn good game.  One not only has to employ quick movements to control your character in battle, but you also have a mode of combat called "turn()" where you can lay out a series of attacks and movements to damage and destroy ones opponents.  That aspect of the game caught my fancy.  Some of the opponents are quite challenging and it took a bit of thought to figure out a "method", in an object oriented programming sense of things, to defeat them.  The programming metaphor is appropriate to this game.  The weapons your character has on hand are called "functions" and their names echo a syntax which is similar to that found in computer programming languages.

A Belated Happy New Year

...As in, it's January 23rd already?  Where did the time go?  Nonetheless....

We haven't had much snow this winter.  Like last year, we didn't have a white Xmas.  There was less snow on the ground this year on New Year's eve in comparison to the previous one.  By the next week it had all melted off.  Then we got hit by a big on one January 13th....

We've had a few snow flurries since then but not enough to compensate for the melt which has been gradually going on.  Last night I noticed the snow banks of snow cleared off the streets was less than knee high.  Significantly less than what was there on the 16th....

Last night I was out with a friend and we were talking about the upcoming annual Snow Lantern Festival.   I wondered out loud if there was going to be any snow left by the time of the festival which is usually the first weekend in February.  She said that there were some concerns since this year's festival is the 40th edition.  Not only does the city need a good amount of snow to impress visitors but they have some unique projects in store.  One of them is a snow maze.  I'm guessing it'll be on the scale of the corn field mazes which can be found in North America.  Perhaps it'll match those ones in the height of the walls of the maze but probably not in the area it will cover...if there's enough snow to go around.

This morning I looked outside to discover a pleasant surprise.  We had had a decent amount of snow fall last night.  Almost a case of "Ask and ye shall receive".  Hopefully this will keep up until February....

Post script:  When I logged onto Blogger today I was required to go through an ID verification process.  It involved receiving a text message.  A cute way for Google to collect ones phone number by forcing you to hand it over.

A Week Before Christmas

It was a peculiar situation, probably the first time I've encountered it in my life: I was in a large supermarket where there were virtually no potatoes on sale.  All they had on sale were two bags, with six potatoes each, of locally grown spuds...and they weren't even labelled as "jyagaimo" - the Japanese name for "potato".  I guess I'll have to wander down to the grocery store on the corner tomorrow....

- * -

Expenses spiraled a bit out of control the last few months.  I purchased a used guitar on Halloween.  This year we were advised that our company wasn't going to be holding Christmas parties.  They were to be advertised as "Bonen-kai" - year-end parties.  That was fine.  The next point didn't go over so well with our school - the teachers and staff had to provide some form of entertainment.  We were told that the teachers up in Yamagata city were going to perform some songs accompanied by guitar.  That didn't fly well with the crew at our school.  One fellow has stage fright, another can't play any musical instruments or carry a tune, and yours truly hadn't played a guitar in at least 30 years.  Nonetheless, we had to do something.  Our manager offered to rummage up a loaner guitar from a friend.  "Okay", I said, "I'll give it a go".  "Play Clapton's 'Tears in Heaven'", was the next line from our manager.  I think I said "Maybe" to that.  A couple of weeks later when we reconvened to discuss our bill of entertainment, Mr. Clapton's song was ditched in exchange for much simpler material.  After five weeks of practice we were able to put on credible performances of "Proud Mary", "Diana", and "Country Roads".  Mr. Stage Fright delivered karaoke renditions of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Names" and the Eagle's "Desperado"...after consuming a considerable volume of alcoholic beverages to calm his nerves.

The other big expense came up mid-November.  I took my car in to have the snow tires mounted.  The mechanic started the work and then brought one of the tires into the waiting area of the gas station where I was having a coffee.  There was screw wedged into the tire.  He pulled it out and showed me a 1.5cm long screw.  Through the course of the following conversation I found out that the tires were 8 years old based on a year of manufacture stamped on the tire walls.  Time for a new set....paid for on a credit card.

-*-

In late November I noticed that there was a car occupying the parking spot next to mine in the building parking area.  It had been open since my neighbour moved out about two years ago.  I took heed of that and started to park my car a bit closer to the centre of my slot.

A week or so later there was a knock on my door one evening.  I was a bit puzzled as I wasn't expecting any parcel deliveries.  Once I opened my door I was greeted by a fellow who introduced himself as the owner of the car parked next to mine.  At first I thought he was going to complain about a lack of space between our cars but such wasn't the case.  He wasn't the least bit upset looking and he gave me a small gift which indicated that he was a new resident in the building.  I was a bit surprised as this is the first time I've been on receiving end of this custom since the time I moved into this building.

About that car....

The car in the above photo has sat in that same location for as long as I've been living in Yonezawa.  Essentially it's an abandoned vehicle.  But I couldn't suss out why it hadn't been towed away.  Finally, a month or two ago, I found out.

The story, according to a friend of mine, is that it belongs to a fellow who used to own a very large plot of land on the east side of Yonezawa station.  As time passed he subdivided his land and sold off the parcels piece by piece.  Eventually he was left with a tiny sliver of land occupying a corner next to an intersection.  That's where he parked his car.

The rest of the story is that the fellow no longer lives in Yonezawa.  I've glanced at the licence plates on the car and they're from Nagano prefecture (or city).  So that part of the story sounds like it's true.  I also heard he's e a bit advanced in age and doesn't travel around much either.  So, he probably doesn't have any reason to be back in Yonezawa again.  So his old car has remained in Yonezawa sitting on his last piece of real estate here.  Thus we have the last piece of the puzzle.

A Rude Awakening...Of a Sort.

This morning I was woken up by a chorus of chain saws (I found out from a friend later that there doesn't seem to be Japanese specific name for the tool - it's just a "che-in-sa-uh").  After listening to the racket for a while I got up and opened the shoji slide doors to take a look at what was going on.  The sight wasn't a pleasing one.  Workers were busy cutting down the trees in the lot next door.  After a while the sound of the chain saws and trees being felled became a bit disturbing so I went out for lunch. 

At the cafe I asked about the Japanese name for a chain saw.  That led on to their purpose this morning.  I was told the lot is being cleared so that a new apartment building can be built.  The purpose of the Shinto ceremony which woke me up late last month thus became apparent; the priest was unconsecrating the little shrine in the corner of the lot. 

The buildings which occupied the lot housed a restaurant which had been founded in the 10th year of the Meiji era or 1877.  The buildings were of a much more recent vintage as the original structures would have burned down in the 1910s when a pair of massive fires consumed the centre of the city.  I'd hazard a guess that the business closed down as much as 20 years ago though the buildings were used occasionally as late as this past summer.  My friend's remark was that it's a bit sad to see it being torn down.

Then I asked him what one calls a Shinto priest in Japanese (the answer is "kannushi"/ 神主 ) and that led onto a question of what is the difference between "bokushi" (牧師) and "shinpu" (神父).   I couldn't come up with an authoritative answer to that one.  I pointed out that the kanji for shinpu suggested a relationship to the title of "Father" used by the Catholic Church.  By that time Minako, the woman taking care of the cafe today, had joined the conversation and it went off on tangent: the meaning of "ho-ankan" (保安官) in English and what position of authority that would equate to in Japan.  That prompted me to check online and the word I pulled out of the hat was "sheriff".

Trying to explain "sheriff" was a bit of a handful for me.  I pointed out that sheriffs were public figures responsible for enforcing the law before the days of police forces.  I also pointed out their frequent appearances in westerns and cowboy movies.  That tipped off my friend and he mentioned the title of a millennial western movie, "Young Guns".  So we talked a bit about the rule of the law in the Wild West.  On top of that was talk about various titles used by the public for members of Japanese police officers and whether or not their usage is correct in Japanese language subtitles for American movies. 

Anyways, the conversation was a lot longer than last night's conversation about a vegetable called "takana".  Incidentally, that name is a local version.  I don't remember the proper Japanese name for it.  Though I suspect the vegetable in question is kale.  At which point its name would be "ryoku kanran"...I think.

"Post War Blues" and "What's Going On?"

The above two are titles to songs.  The former is by Dan Magnan.  If I recall correctly the first line is "Let's start a war for the kids...".  The latter probably doesn't need an introduction. But, yes, indeed it is the title of the late Marvin Gaye's 1971 hit song.  The latter was playing on my iPhone when I left the office this evening.  I thought of the other as I walked out to the car.  They seem like such a fitting denouement to the day's main event; the US presidential election.

I only spoke with one person today about the US election.  That was a student who started on the subject when I had mistakenly reached for my iPhone during a break in a lesson.  She guessed correctly that I wanted to check the results.  When she asked me who I thought was going to win the election, I matter of factually replied the winner probably was going to be Trump.  She was genuinely shocked when she heard that.  She wondered out loud in Japanese, "I wonder what will happen".  Without hesitation I stated that the TPP agreement was likely doomed.  Same for the Paris Agreement on the environment.  The only silver lining she could find to the cloud was the value of the US dollar.  I made a sound like a rapidly deflating balloon and agreed it might be a good time to scoop up some US dollars.  She chuckled and said she was probably going to do so.  And that was more or less the end of conversation as we had reached the end of the time slot for her lesson.  I gave her a hint on what tomorrow's lesson was going to be on and that was all....


PS:  I taught a lesson today that focused on the poem "In Flanders Fields".  It was an interesting experience.  I played a bit of a CBC news story about Lt. Col. McCrae.  Portions of the poem were read in the video clip.  They helped him get an idea of how to read the poem.  He did relatively well with that task.  But he was puzzled by the word "ye".  I told him of its less poetic counterpart and all was well. 

Oh, yes, I remembered to pin a poppy on my suit jacket today.....