The Dragon Next Door

Well, actually it's a crane.  But when I woke up and looked out my window one morning, the top of it definitely looked like a dragon's head.  This photo doesn't quite capture the image but it'll have to do for now....

Anyways, construction has started on the new ten story apartment building which will be built next door.  It's going to take 18 months for it to be completed.  I guess I can look forward to lot more shade in the future.

Since the property was denuded of trees last fall, there are no cicadas this year to serenade us.  For a short while there was a small colony of Japanese tree frogs in some puddles next door.  Or perhaps they were toads.  Either way, the creatures let their mating calls loose in the wee hours of the morning.  They were quite loud...to the point where they could just barely keep a person awake.  But they're gone this week.  More equipment and material has been moved onto the property and some bulldozer work was done also.  So I guess all the amphibians have made good their escape.

I've seen the architect's drawings of the new building and it doesn't look like there will be any green space on the property once construction is completed.  It'll just be a concrete tower with everything else around it paved to serve as parking spaces.  So the chances of hearing any animal or insect sounds from next door in the future seem quite minimal....

Where was I?

This year has been an odd one; two trips back to Vancouver under less than happy circumstances (one for a funeral for a close relative and another to pay a possibly last visit to another ailing relative) and each visit I stayed the roughly same amount of time, five days.  I arrived on a Thursday each time and flew back to Japan on the following Monday.  When I booked time off for the second trip no one checked if I actually had days off to use.  Turns out I didn't have any paid days off left so they put down as unpaid days off which I'll make up with workdays during the Obon break.

Not having any vacation days off could've been extremely embarrassing if I had requested July 18th off.  I had agreed to purchase a spare ticket a friend had to an X Japan concert on the 17th.  There was no chance the concert would finish prior to 8:38 PM, the departure time of the last Yamagata Shinkansen train from Tokyo station.  So I was going to stay overnight any ways.  As it turns out, I managed to return to town with time to spare prior to my first class.  Though my original work schedule would've seen me trying to catch the very first Yamagata Shinkansen train...something which would've been extremely difficult if I had booked a hotel room in the Shin Yokohama area.  Nonetheless, fate turned in my favour and I was able to get back home in a relaxed manner.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

In this case the answer is "They've faded or wilted away".....

Last Tuesday I was working at a company up north of Yamagata city.  I returned in the early evening on a Tsubasa, Yamagata Shinkansen, express train.  Somewhere south of Kaminoyama, the train passed a rather striking scene: a considerable stretch of trees choked by bright violet coloured wisteria bloom.  I was a bit surprised to see that sight as it was the first time I had ever noticed it during my almost six years of residence in Yamagata prefecture.  Unfortunately my reflexes weren't quick enough, and the train was travelling a bit faster than a local train, so I wasn't able to get a photograph of the scene.

The following week I returned to Yamagata city.  On the way I thought I'd be able to see the flowers again, possibly on my return trip.  Then I realized that I'd be heading back to Yonezawa later in the evening and it would be dark.  So I shifted from my seat on the left side of the Shinkansen cabin and across to the right side.

Alas, the wisteria bloom had faded and wilted away.  I spotted a few dull grey coloured remnants of the previous week's bright display.  I snapped a photo of the wisteria plants I could make out against the green facade of the woods.  It'll be up to the imagination of those who view that sad, dull photo to recreate the previous week's scene....

A Short Post

Last night a friend and I went to see "La La Land".  It's only playing for a brief run here where I live...about 10 days.  I suppose anyone who really wanted to see it has already done so.  Two of my students saw it a month and half ago.  One went to Sendai ("That's the only place where it's playing", she said).  Another saw it it Yamagata.  Interestingly enough, she saw it only a few days after the first student.  Not sure what was going on there.

After the movie was over, I asked my friend if she had enjoyed it.  She said she liked it...but mentioned that musicals are probably a hard sell in Japan.  "A lot of people just don't understand why characters in musicals have to sing about what's happening in the story", she said.  I don't know if that was the first time I had heard that comment but I could see where it was coming from.

Today when I mentioned I had seen "La La Land" to an acquaintance at lunchtime, she went spouted off exactly, almost verbatim, the observation my friend had made last night.  The coincidence certainly caught me off guard.  Then she mentioned how she was a bit put off when she saw "Frozen", which was titled "Anna and the Snow Queen" in Japanese, and found out that it had singing in it too.  I casually offered the observation "When's the last time you saw a Disney cartoon without singing in it?".  She stopped for a moment and said "Hmm, good point".....

-*-

Life has been up and down and up recently.  Things were fine during Golden Week but I caught a cold at the tail end of that.  It took about two weeks to shake it off...just in time to take my mom and sister around while they were in town for a weekend.  The weather was hot then...both a blessing and a curse.  Vancouverites are not prepared to 30 degree weather in late May.  But the sights are much nicer in sunny weather.....

Someone I Know Had a Dream...

I dropped in at a bar I sometimes visit a couple of nights ago.  The purpose of the visit was to unwind a bit but also to apologize for the behaviour of one member of our party when we last visited the bar on Sunday night.  "Not to worry" was more or less the response I got from the bar's owner.

At some point or another the bar's owner, Yasu-chan is what I usually call him, asked me about something.  I didn't quite catch what he said and when he repeated it, I didn't quite comprehend.  He did a quick search on his smartphone and pulled up a Youtube recording of something.  He played it for me.  I couldn't quite decipher the kanji but the sound was rather distressing.  Then he explained what it was; it's the alarm sound to alert the population of a missile attack.  I've attached a link to what was probably the Youtube recording my aquaintance pulled up and played for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkc9iQdbbwk.

The gist of him bringing up the topic was the dream he had had that morning.  He was out with his girlfriend for a walk in a park when his smartphone went off with that alarm.  As it finished playing he looked up to the sky and said, "Oh look!  There's a missile".  That was when he awoke.

The rest of the conversation went on to topics such as whether or not Japan had an active defense against incoming missiles, whether combat aircraft from a US carrier stationed in the Sea of Japan would be able to counter a missile attack, and conjecture on how to intercept and shoot down a missile.  There really wasn't any real conclusion to those discussions other than all we can do was hope for the best if we ever hear that dreadful sound....

Gambling Drivers and Drivers Who Gamble

Last night as I was barrelling down the road a car pulled onto the road ahead of me.  There might of been 15m of open space between my car and the vehicle in front of me.  Given that I was travelling in a 50kmh zone, that open space vanished quickly.  I blew my horn to alert the other driver but they were oblivious to the incoming danger.  By the time they started to accelerate, I was about a metre off their back bumper.

The place of business they had pulled out of was a pachinko and slot machine parlour.  As things would have it, the place where they turned off the road was at a slot machine parlour.  Yes, I was on the tail of a gambler drifting from one gambling establishment to another...which was in line with how they gambled on pulling into a small gap between vehicles travelling at full speed.

The above isn't my first incident of annoyance with people driving to pachinko or slot machine establishments.  It may be just me but they seemed extremely focused on where their going and pay a little less attention to the traffic around them than they ought to.  Another classic example, they'll be driving along the road 10kmh below the speed limit until they read their destination...start their turn into the parking lot and then turn on their turn signal.  Actually, that is quite a common occurrence regardless of the drivers' destinations....

Not Quite "Omiyage".....

The Monday before I left on my short trip back to Canada, I mentioned to Minako, the manager of the cafe where I was having lunch that day, my intentions.  She quickly asked me if I could bring back some maple syrup...and then back-tracked a bit by musing that it might be expensive.  I mentioned I had purchased a couple of 500ml bottles of the maple syrup for about ¥1000 each on my previous trip.  "Oh!  Then can you get some for me?", she asked.  "I'll pay you back", she added as some kind of assurance.  A week after my return, she had in her hands a bottle of President's Choice brand maple syrup which ended up display on the cafe's counter.

On my previous trip I had brought back similar bottles of maple syrup.  When my mother and I went shopping for it this time, I didn't have any luck finding it.  As it turned out, the bottles were on the bottom shelf of that particular section at the Shopper's Drug Mart store I was shopping in.  My mother asked a store clerk about the product and he pointed out its location to us.

Later on we were at Walmart.  The prices were lower but the packaging wasn't as attractive.  Sure, it was a couple of dollars cheaper but the aesthetics of a bottle with a stopper are a lot better than that of a tin can of maple syrup.  In my books, the humble can wasn't going to cut it for an item I was going to haul back to Japan from Canada.

"Omiyage", as mentioned in the title of this post, is the term for the gifts one buys for the folks back home when one goes on a trip.  (I pointed out in a class this week that the word "souvenir", unlike "omiyage", can refer to things one buys for oneself...though souvenirs can also be gifts for others.  Yes, my students thought that was a bit puzzling because no one had pointed out that distinction to them previously.)  Anyways, in this particular case, since I was reimbursed for the cost of the item then it ceased to be "omiyage".  It's now just maple syrup in a particular cafe's stockpile of ingredients...which I've been told tastes very good according to Setsuko, an acquaintance who also is a regular customer at the cafe, who was the first person to taste it.  (^.-)