Back in Niigata City...

I went to Niigata city on Sunday and stayed there for two nights. Met up with a friend who lives and works there. I splurged a bit and stayed at a Dormy Inn. Most of the hotels in that chain have nice onsen (hot spring) baths. In this particular one the men's bathing area is on the top floor (10th floor) and the women's is on the 2nd. Thus the men's bathing area has an open air bath but not the women's one.

First night there we had a bite to eat at an izakaya (Japanese tapas bar) which I picked because they had "nodogoro", a local fish specialty, on their menu.  The fish gets its name from its almost black gills.  Following that we went to a craft beer bar. They had one weird one from the Shonan (Kamakura to Enoshima) area down in Kanagawa prefecture. It was a bright emerald blue. Didn't taste like beer at all. It was more like Kool-Aid.  That definitely won't be a beer I'll be look out for in the future.  After that we walked around and popped into a wine bar. I said "Let's pop in here and get a drink so I can use the loo". Three glasses of wine later we were still in the place.  We should've ordered a bottle of wine.  The woman running the place used to work at another pub which my friend used to frequent. They closed up during the winter.  Apparently their landlord had wanted to renovate the building but changed their mind at the last minute.  The pub owner told the landlord he had already sold all his furniture, fixtures, and equipment was there was no way he could stay open. 

The next day I went on a trek in the pouring rain. Visited Hakusan Shrine (build in the 16th century), Gokoku Shrine (built in 1944/45), the old Saito family summer residence (the somewhat large garden was closed because of rain), and the Niigata City Museum (also known as Minato Pia). I think I walked about 18km to cover all that.

Bandai Bridge, Niigata City, on a rainy Monday

We were going to have dinner at a Thai place but it was closed and the place that featured Okinawan food was full. Ended up at a yakitori place. After that we went to a "snack" (karaoke and snacks) bar and finally ended up at Bar 37, which is one of my friend's usual haunts. One of the customers remembered me from my visit to Niigata last year. The next morning I stuck my nose in the Niigata Manga and Anime Museum. Didn't have time for the Evangelion themed Japanese sword collection exhibit.

I travelled to Niigata city this time by train. I didn't want to deal with parking for a two night stay. Took local trains on the way there. Took an express train from Niigata to Sakamachi on the way back. Very comfy. Similar experience to riding a shinkansen train but obviously lower speeds. The train from Sakamachi to Yonezawa was just one car. The line isn't electrified so it was a diesel engine train.

It's what...!

Yes, it's August.  But it doesn't quite feel like a typical August.  It was hot on Monday but yesterday (Tuesday) a big thunderstorm rolled in and just hung about.  It dumped quite a bit of rain on this region.  Mostly in the form of squalls that lasted for about half an hour or so.  The heavy rainfall led to flooding warnings being sent out several times in the day.  At one time an evacuation warning was in place for a hamlet up in the Kuriko Pass area.  That's the pass leading from Yonezawa to Fukushima city.  I presume the danger passed as I didn't see an evacuation order.  Right...in case one is wondering, these warnings are sent out by local authorities to all mobile phone devices in the region.  Of course this means that residents on trips to other areas in Japan will receive the warnings, to the alarm of the locals around them.  Such was the case for a student who was in Saitama when the March 11th earthquake struck: she was on a commuter train and her cell phone was the only one to receive a warning of the earthquake and go off with a loud audible klaxon.

Off on a complete tangent...an acquaintance proudly announced on a social media site that he had received a couple of "two-four"s (my words) of "Space Beer"(sic).  It's beer brewed using barley grown in space.  I don't recall which company made the beer (it's one of the big four - Asahi, Kirin, Suntory, and Sapporo).  Needless to say, the beer is not on sale in stores.  There couldn't possibly be enough of it to permit that.  It's only available by mail order.  While such a product has a high novelty factor, I can't imagine it'll taste all that much different from a usual Japanese pilsner style brew.  Which is a bit of a shame....

Welcome Back, Summer!

The weather through late June and early July was classic Japanese rainy season weather...rainy days with bits of clear sky and mostly overcast conditions.  Temperatures weren't too high and the humidity wasn't too bad.  Then came this past weekend.

Saturday was still a bit on the dull side.  Clear in the morning and overcast in the afternoon.  Sunday was overcast in the morning and it cleared up in the afternoon.  Then "It" went off.  That klaxon sound that announces the arrival of summer.  The cry of a cicada.  The particular individual insect let loose on Sunday afternoon with a high decibel racket that could've raised the dead.  He continued for about a minute and went silent.  The next day, he had a lot more of his kind accompanying him.

For me, the sound of late spring is the sound of frogs coming from flooded rice paddies.  I'm not 100% sure which variety though.  I suspect they're Japanese tree frogs.  Frogs aren't the only creatures to be found around rice paddies.  I've also seen herons standing in flooded rice paddies once the plants have grown a bit.  I thought the birds were likely hunting for frogs.  But it turns out frogs aren't the only occupants of rice paddies.

Another occupant of rice paddies is a fish known as medaka.  It's also known as the Japanese rice fish or Japanese killifish.  I was first made aware of this fish by one of my students.  It was in her first attempt to use the word "cannibal".  She wanted to tell me that she had had two fish but ended up with one because one got eaten by its tank mate.  I asked her what kind of fish she had and she replied "Medaka".  She didn't know if it had an English name.  A quick search on the Internet turned up the names mentioned earlier.

Carrying on with the rice paddy theme, here is a photograph I took of this year's rice paddy art display just on the outskirts of the Onogawa Hot Springs hamlet.  This is the eleventh year they've been doing this in these parts.  The subjects this year are Sanada Nobushige (more popularly known as Yukimura) and Uesugi Kagekatsu.  My understanding is that they were allied, prior to the Battle of Sekigahara, with Ishida Mitsunari.  I can only hazard a guess that their images were concealing frogs and fish at the time I took this photo two weeks ago.

Nothing Much Ado

Apologies for not posting here for a while.  Been bothered by a sore throat for ages.  It blossomed into an all out cold at the start of this month.  Hasn't completely loosened its grip either.

Anyways....  Occasionally I come up with things which I think would make good material for a post here...only to have it escape my memory quickly.  Right now I'm just a bit worn out.  Spent most of today working on a script for a role playing exercise.  The situation it covers is a meeting between some IT department folks and their project client representatives.  Hardly thrilling stuff one supposes.  Yet I've managed to spew out some lively banter.  Not sure if the account manager will be happy with it.  Hopefully it'll go over well.  The humour might not go over well though.  I have one character bravely saying he could write down the requirements for a project on a beer coaster in a matter of minutes.  Another catty character then asks "Is that before or after you've drank the beer that was on the coaster?".  I don't know.  I just wanted to shake things up a bit.  Otherwise the dialogue sounded a bit stiff.  After all, I can't add in all the colourful profanity and other insane expressions I've had the pleasure of listening to in my previous profession.

Actually, the little business situation dialogues I've been busy coming up with for my lessons have been quite fun to write.  It's always a challenge to come up with something realistic sounding in a field one knows little of...or remembers little of!  I suppose I've been relatively successful.  I had one student read a dialogue in class and he remarked "This is so realistic!  It's just like our company.".  Unfortunately, that dialogue took place in a fictional company where one would be inclined to question the competence of the employees.  Hardly the kind of stuff I want to hear a student describe as realistic.

Other than that...can't get the song "Funiculì Funiculà" out of my head tonight.  I tackled it tonight during a drink and karaoke session at one of my regular drinking spots.  The inspiration for doing that...an AMV featuring clips from one of the shows in the "Girls und Panzer" franchise.  I had stumbled across it this past weekend.  Don't go looking for it...trust me....

Lazy Monday Morning

Last week was a typical work week but there was an element of post holiday "blahs".  The previous week was Golden Week, the week where four statutory holidays get crammed into a span five to six days.  This year the holidays were mid week.  At our company that meant that there were work days popping up in the middle of what could have been a continuous 10 day period away from work.  One co-worker was a touch annoyed with that.  But I think we got off better than some of our students.  I asked in one class "How was your Golden Week?" and a student replied "I worked...".

I've been keeping myself somewhat occupied for the past month or so.  Read a number of books, upped the frequency of my visits to the gym, and kept plugging away at assembling model ships.  The latest one to reach completion is the one in the foreground of the photo below.  It's a little more than 10cm in length...if that.  I built it "OOB" - out of the box - in modeller's lingo.  No after market parts were added to the kit.  It was a bit of a challenge to build since the hull was originally sagging at the stern.  After my first round of warming up the hull in hot water and reshaping it, the bow was bent upward.  So the process was repeated.  In the end I managed to get it reasonably flat.

A friend asked me what do I do with these models.  I told him I eventually take them back to Canada.  He asked my why didn't I sell them.  My curt answer was "What's the point of that?".  It more or less meant that I didn't think there would be any buyers and furthermore that's the last thing I would think of doing when I assemble them.  I guess I'll be leaving the question of how to dispose of my collection to someone else....

Alright, who just washed their car?

This past Monday morning was sunny.  I did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry in the early spring light.  The temperature didn't feel too cool but there was a brisk breeze blowing.  I figured my clothes would dry, be it a not as soon as on a calm spring day but eventually.

Following that I hauled the summer tires down from my apartment veranda and into my car.  Drove over to the local service station and asked to have my tires changed.  Also asked them to wash the car.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.

As I was having lunch at Cafe ARB, someone piped up it had been snowing hard a while ago.  Must of been while I was sitting in the service station with my back to the window.  My immediate response was "I can do without that!".  Nonetheless, as I walked back to my apartment I could see snow flakes.  Snow flakes...yes, in April.  Not like on April Fool's Day back in 2013.  No, it was the 11th of April.

By mid afternoon the snow was coming down steadily.  My clothes were getting wetter rather than drier.  So I hauled them in and hung them on the clothes rack in my dining room.

When I went out to get groceries after 6pm the situation hadn't improved.  No, the weather was decidedly like early December.  The air had cooled off significantly and the snow was coming down quite hard.  On my way out from the supermarket I took the following photograph with my iPhone.

The next day I joked in several classes that I had tempted fate too much by having my tires swapped AND getting the car washed.  I think I set up the joke well because all my students got a chuckle out of it....

When Things Go Awry....

A friend of mine came over to Tokyo, daughter and husband in tow, from Canada several weeks ago.  We made arrangements to meet up on Sunday the 20th.  Concurrently, a co-worker was down in Tokyo on vacation.  Before he had departed we made plans to drop in on a mutual acquaintance who is now living in Tokyo.  Since this was all arranged using LINE there was no element of surprise.  Yuko, our mutual acquaintance, was told ahead of time we were planning to go to the cafe/bar where she works.  I took the time to take screenshots from the Apple Map application to show my co-worker where exactly in Shinjuku to wait for me.

So, as I arrived at Tokyo station on Saturday night I sent a LINE message to my co-worker.  His response was "F***, I'm in Chiba.  I forgot what day it is.".  Okay.  That definitely wasn't the response I was expecting.  I sent a query asking if he was going to start heading back to Tokyo.  No response.  I said to myself, "The heck with him" and made my deliberate way to the Burger King in the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku.  I sent a LINE message to my co-worker advising him that the Whopper I had just inhaled was good.  "Boy, you're fast" was his response.  Which basically told me that he hadn't budged an inch off the bar stool he was sitting on in Chiba.  After I had checked in at the capsule hotel I had made a reservation at, I headed off to Yotsuya San-cho-me on my own.  I met up with Yuko who was a bit surprised to see me without my co-worker in tow.  Needless to say she was less than impressed with his performance when I told her what he was up to.

I spent about a day and half taking my friend and her daughter around a number of spots in Tokyo.  Her husband came down with a cold so he was mostly bedridden for two days, Sunday the 20th and Monday the 21st.  Sunday afternoon was spent shopping in the area just east of Shinjuku station.  The crowds weren't too bad so it wasn't an exhausting experience.  We checked on her husband around 5pm and then headed out for dinner.  I couldn't find the place I had in mind so we settled on a yakitori restaurant.

We covered a lot more ground the next day: Harajuku (specifically the first few blocks of Takeshita Dori), Meiji Jingu, Roppongi (for the express purpose of going to a Sushizanmai restaurant a friend of mine frequents), and Odaiba.  We purchased day passes to ride the Yurikamome line and used it enough to get our money's worth hopping on and off a couple of Yurikamome line stations..  Didn't do any shopping in Odaiba but we checked out the beach side park, the life size Gundam robot, and the Toyota centre next to Venus Fort.  They have a new program for the Toyota ride simulator so we checked that out.  My friend's daughter, who just turned 12, thought the ride was the highlight of the day....

-*- 

Postscript:  One of the shops I checked out on Sunday morning, before my friend arrived in Tokyo from Kawaguchi-ko (next to Mt. Fuji), was Kinokuniya Books.  It goes without saying that my wallet became a touch lighter after my visit there.  I picked up a copy of a somewhat thick magazine whose current issue is focused on manga-ka Eguchi Hisashi.  When I got to the floor where they sell foreign language books and magazines I more or less just wandered around.  Then I got to the section where they have their selection of novels.  I don't know why but I remembered then reading a review of Yann Martel's latest novel.  But I couldn't remember the title of the book.  I found several books by Martel though.  I ended up buying two...but I can't remember their titles right away as I had the store clerk make book covers for my purchases....