Another Weekend in Toga

I went camping again this weekend. Well, I guess some people consider it camping, I'd rather say that I spent the night in a tent. The rest was pretty cushy, including a fridge to store our food and beverages, a sound system (OK, an iPod with speakers, but music nonetheless). and running water. We stayed in a popular camping spot and we rented all the equipment and facilities for the night, all we had to pack was our food and a change of clothes.

My friend Kei set the weekend up for about 15 people, including 2 former JET participants who started JET the same year I did. Amber has just left the JET Programme and is now studying Japanese in Mie-ken. And Brian was a former CIR who left 2 years ago, but is now back in Toyama teaching at the exact same NOVA school that I used to work at!

It was a typical weekend outdoors - frisbee, BBQ, and lots of beer. We managed to get a campfire going later in the evening, which was much appreciated on the cool last-day-of-September weather.

Sunday morning we packed up, had a huge yakisoba meal and then went to the onsen to wash up and soak before heading back to Toyama.

Thanks for the invite Kei, I hope we can do it again next year!

Scary Request

In some of my upcoming elementary school lessons I have to explain and describe Halloween to my students.

The best way to do this is through pictures!

So I need your help!!!

Please send me photos that you have of the following:

Jack-o-lanterns

Costumes (for children)

Crafts

Games/Actvities (i.e. Bobbing for Apples)

Trick or Treating

Parties (for children)

Food

and anything else you can think of!!



Please and thank you very muchly!!!

send to linea.napier@gmail.com

Ribs

Last night I dreamed that I was at an ALL YOU CAN EAT ribs festival. We all sat under a big white tent where they kept the ribs (which were Fred Flintstone sized) loaded on those big folding tables used at rental halls. They had all kinds which were slathered in juicy, greasy sauces.

$33.99 / hour

That's what I dreamed Jimmy was getting paid to work at Tim Horton's.

I really want it to be true for his sake.

I also dreamed he had facial hair.

Care to analyze?

安心マップ

Today instead of teaching classes in the morning, I went out with my students and the other teachers as they mapped their neighborhoods, taking pictures and interviewing people about the possible 'danger' spots they could encounter on their way to and from school.

The students were grouped according to the area they lived in. Then, with a teacher and parent volunteers, they headed out with a map, a digital camera and pen & paper to record areas of concern that they found. My group had an area near the school. We wandered around the side roads and alleyways noting where a stranger could lurk and possibly jump out at students. I thought it was also going to be about dangerous places where students could get hurt, but it was just about places where suspicious individuals could hide without students seeing them.

We spent 3 hours outside, stopping for short breaks in the neighborhood parks where my students showed their aptitude for drawing Anpanman and Sponge Bob.

After we had covered the required area and interviewed the required 3 people, we went pack to the school where the teachers printed out the photos for the students to put on their own large scale, hand drawn map which will be pieced together into one big map of the city.

The only negative part of the day was when the other teacher I was with stopped twice for cigarette breaks, right in front of the students...NEVER would that happen in Canada.

A Rollercoaster Weekend (click here)

It started at 11:30 Friday night.

Mihoko and I jumped in her Mazda and headed for Nagoya.





We drove all night -6 hours to be exact. We parked in front of the gates to Nagashima Spaland (click) and waited for the parking lot to open at 8:00. We were the fourth car in line! Mihoko pointed out a huge rollercoaster standing ominously in the park -the STEEL DRAGON towering above all the other rollercoasters at 318 ft / 98 m tall!! She said that it had been closed for a few years due to an accident and she didn't know when it would be open again...hm.

After sleeping for all of 30 minutes in front of the gates we started to hear banging and clanging... The guy in the car behind us was fixing his engine, and the van behind him was cooking breakfast! No more sleep for us.








Once the gates to the parking lot opened we had to wait for the gates to the amusment park to open at 9:00. We were pretty sleepy but excited to finally have escaped Toyama for a couple of days, we downed some tea and got ready to ride! Once in the park we headed straight to the second largest rollercoaster in the park -the White Cyclone which is 139 ft / 43 m tall and the 9th largest WOODEN rollercoaster in the world. It was crazy!!! I was totally freaked out and couldn't stop thinking that the wood was going to fly apart at any minute. And that's was just the beginning.

The White Cyclone














On the way to our second rollercoaster, we noticed that the Steel Dragon had cars going up. We thought maybe they were just testing it. But when we took a closer look we saw that all the cars were filled with people! It was open again! We made a bee line for the entrance and before we knew it we were screaming our way down the first drop!

The Steel Dragon













We would ride the Steel Dragon (click for video) again later in the day, after testing
Shoot the Chute (click for video), the Space Shuttle, the Viking Ship, the Ferris Wheel and a few other rides. We stopped once for brunch and once for a coffee break...we were having so much fun. Now, some of you are thinking to yourselves, "Yeah, right. Linea rode more than one rollercoaster in a day. Impossible." I too thought I was not going to be able to spend a whole day in an amusement park -riding. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that did it for me, but I had a great time and only felt sick once I got hungry -and that was quickly remedied with some tasty fried rice for brunch! (I felt more ill in the car ride through the mountains than I did on the rollercoasters.)

Unforunately the rides had to come to an end and we said goodbye to the amusement park and headed to the attached outlet mall where we shopped for a few hours before going to Mihoko's cousin's house to spend the night.




























Sunday we had a BBQ with Mihoko's cousin's family and friends and then we met up with Kate, a former Kurobe ALT who is now living in Nagoya. She took us to a great little Chinese tea house/cafe and we caught up on the latest gossip. By this time it was past 4 and we still had a 6 hour drive ahead of us. We made it out of Nagoya city around 5:30 and were home in Nyuzen by 11:30.




















An exhausting but extremely fun weekend.

the whole veiw -click

Are there elevators in Canada??

That's what one of my first graders asked me today during our introductory Q&A time...

CUTE!!!

I also got:

What bugs do you like?
What bugs do you hate?
Do you eat raw bugs in Canada?
Do you like snakes?
What are some famous animals in Canada?
What's your favorite color?
What color don't you like?
Why don't you like purple?
How many pets do you have?
Why don' t you have pets?
How many people in your family?
Do you have any famous foods in Canada?
How tall are you?
Do you have any friends?
What character do you like?
What's your favorite cake?

Inquiring minds wanted to know!

Holy Typhoon!! Holy Mountain.

Japan is notorious for enumerating itself. It started in 1643 when scholar Hayashi Razan listed 'The Three Views of Japan". Since then there have be various other
'Top 3" lists and recently I've learned that there is a list of the 100 most famous roads in Japan.

Well, as of this past weekend I have completed a hat trick of the 3 Famous/Sacred/Holy Moutains of Japan. I climbed Mt. Fuji 4 years ago (in a typhoon), I've climbed Mt. Tate (pronounced ta-tay) and now I've been to the to of Mt. Haku (or Hakusan as it's called here). This time, I and 7 others narrowly averted another typhoon episode on a holy mountain (my ame-ona powers can be annoying...).

In two teams of four, we started out for Ishikawa prefecture Saturday evening hoping to make camp, get up early and conquer Holy Mountain #3 on Sunday. We arrived at our destination- in the rain - to a closed campsite. We took one look at the ryokan (Japanese style inn) nearby, had Chika-chan negotiate a price we couldn't resist, and before we knew it we were snug in our sleeping bags in a nicely heated tatami room.

When we woke up in the morning we had to catch a bus to the trailhead which was still farther up the mountain. We were geared up for at least one night on the mountain, but we knew our plans could easily change with the impending typhoon scheduled to hit around noon on Monday.


















We met some hikers who were heading down and they warned us that tenting at the top was not recommended. Apparently the typhoon was coming faster than first expected.

We made it to the emergency shelter and decided to drop most of our gear off there, head to the summit and then come back for our gear and head back down to the trail head.
















It was great to drop all that weight for the last couple of hours up. We stopped for lunch just before the quick 40 minute sprint to the peak where we took some photos, prayed at the shrine, and then headed down again. It had been a beautiful day (the typical calm before the storm) but the wind was picking up and we certainly didn’t want to be clinging to a rock somewhere when the typhoon blew over.









The climb up was tough, hot at the beginning with lots of slippery spots and some scrambling. But it was nothing compared to the climb down on those same slippery spots and scrambling down. Not long after we left the emergency shelter with our gear, we heard a helicopter overhead.

It was circling Hakusan and telling people to get off the mountain! We paused long enough to get a couple of photos then kept moving so that they’d know we were heading in the right direction -down.








By this time the wind was strong enough to shake us around a bit. We were happy to finally get off the exposed ridge and out of it’s way!

We made it back to the bus stop/shelter around 6:00 p.m., where two of our team mates had already arrived. We had missed the last bus down, so they had negotiated with the guy at the shelter to allow us to stay there for the night. It was a large community room with 3 tatami style benches and 3 wooden benches.

Needless to say, we were tired and hungry. Owen was in charge of dinner and he had all the goods for tom yum soup with thai curry and rice. And to top it all off, we shared a bottle of red wine. Dessert was chocolate and Bailey’s. We were really roughing it!














By the time we were in our sleeping bags the typhoon was on it’s way –about 12 hours early! It hit hard in the middle of the night and kept the big sliding doors rattling nonstop. Some of us didn’t get much sleep and before we knew it it was morning and the mountain patrol was banging on the door asking us when we’d be ready to take the bus down!

We packed up, and said goodbye and thanks to my now favorite of the 3 Holy Mountains. It was just challenging enough, with great weather for the climb, sufficient facilities and astounding views.

My team was great and I would climb with them again any day! Thanks for another weekend of wonderful memories!

Not much to say

Well, work is keeping me busy, and tired...I don't have much energy at the moment and I'm hoping that changes soon 'cause I've got a whole year of this!! The consolation is that I have great people to work with and the students are so cute I just want to eat them for lunch! Speaking of lunch, I had a carb overload today at Maezawa (my little school). Spagetti AND 2 slices of bread is a little much. I don't know how the kids eat all of it, I can hardly finish mine.

I went to a car show on the weekend, got to be a staff memeber, you can see my pics on my VW blog. It was fun, but we had a ton of rain on Sunday that kind of put a damper on the day (pardon the pun). I didn't win any awards this time (haha, surprise surprise - I didn't even wash my car before the show). But I got to greet the entrants and present awards during the day.

Nothing of huge significance happening on this side of the world...summer is officially over...there's finally a male heir to the throne again...the Sept Sumo tourney is on, but I won't get a chance to go as all my weekends are booked this month. Speaking of being booked...I've put the down payment on my tickets home for Christmas. That's right, I'm going to be home for the holidays for the first time in 5 years...crazy. So the countdown is officially on. Less than 100 days until I'm home!

Amy Brings Fun Wherever She Goes

Here are some vids from the game center fun:

Crazy Ball Fun (click to view)



Watch out for Dinosaurs!! (clickity click)

Cake

In our happy little Niikawa family we love to celebrate birthdays! And if you read mine or Kirsten's blog regularly, you have probably come to realize that Birthday Cakes have become a integral part of the celebrations. We still occasionally splurge on a store-bought cake (but they're obscenely expensive) so the real fun has come by trying to create the most suitable cake for the birthday boy or girl.
The latest birthday was Amy-Chan's and we got the opportunity to 'surprise' her on her way through Toyama on the BEE Ride. Chika-chan and I both made cakes we thought she would appreciate...


The face says it all!




















They both LOOKED great, but Chika's included her favorite ingredient:



See the resemblance?









Have a safe trip Amy-chan!!!

Surviving my first week.

I've got one more day to go in my first full week as an elementary English teacher. So far so good - including school lunch! The strangest thing I've had so far is a battered slice of ham with 2 slices of bread...that also included milk and veggie salad and stew. Not bad at all.

This week has been non-stop introductions. Each new class I visit (I have 24 in all) gets to listen to me say my name and where I'm from, and then it's a free-for-all Q&A time where I answer questions like, "How old are you?", "What's your favorite color?", and "Are you married?". It's fun every time as the kids all react differently to my answers. Then each of the students get to introduce themselves to me! They say their name and what they like and then we shake hands (some of them don't know how to shake hands yet...) Some of the kids are super confident and others freak out! And they're all sooooooo cute!

Today has been my busiest day so far - I teach all 6 classes on Thursdays. It was a challenge getting through 4 classes before lunch, but with the help if great homeroom teachers and a fabulous classroom aid (who's fully bilingual) the classes were a ton of fun.

Tomorrow's Friday, the last of my self introductions and the first of my lunchtime talks over the school intercom...yeah, the principal at Chuo Elementary has asked me to do a short 2 or 3 minute blurb on the differences between Canada and Japan each week! Nice, idea, but he wants me to do it in English AND Japanese -sheesh, these people are going to make me speak their language whether I like it or not...JUST KIDDING, it's a great way to get me to practice the language I should already have a handle on, but don't.


In other news, Amy's has come and gone through the now rainy Toyama Prefecture. She had another BEE RIDE charity dinner in Toyama city last night with the half of the group that has come down the Japan Sea side (the other half is riding through Tokyo). It was a great time, and the last time we'll see her for a looooong time. Good luck Amy-chan. Keep up the cell phone updates! We miss you already.

I missed my cousin Dana's wedding on the weekend. Congratulations Dana, my parents said they had a great time. Wish I could have been there.

This weekend is the VW Event. Can't wait. Gotta get through tomorrow first though...

9:30, I'm beat, time for bed!

First Day of School

For those who know me well, you know that the first day of school rates up there as one of my favorite days of the year. There haven't been very many years out of my life where I haven't had a first day of school. I know deep down somewhere that becoming a teacher was a way of ensuring I will always have a first day of school to look forward to.

Last Friday was no exception. I had to make a small speech at the opening ceremony at Chuo Elementary School. This is my BIG school -you're going to have to try to keep track now, because I have 3 schools that I will be teaching at. KazzA coached me through my speech on Thursday night so that I'd be ready Firday morning to make a good first impression to 500+ elementary school students. Thanks Kazz, I think I did OK!!

After that, I went back to the staff room, where I tried to look busy (with nothing to do). You see, there aren't any classes on the first day of school. Instead the students had an intro class with their homeroom teachers and then they practiced for sports day!

And the highlight of the day was eating the school lunch! All students get a school lunch made and delivered to their classrooms (or at Mikkachi Elementary School, in the cafeteria) and the staff eats it too. It's a well balanced meal consisting of some kind of meat, starch, veggie and dairy product. On Friday it was rice, stew, 2 sausages and a noodle salad -oh, and of course, milk! It was tastey, but much more than I'm used to eating for lunch! The teachers made a big deal of it, since they knew it was my first time. They thankfully restrained from commenting on my chopstick skills, but did make sure that I know that I have to pay for this lunch service. It's not free. It's a whopping 270yen per meal (that's about $2.60 CDN). A pretty good deal, and it saves me from having to my my own lunch everyday! And if ever don't like the lunch I can always go to grocery store that stands across the street! Yay.

Tomorrow will by my first teaching day. Thanks to everyone who's sent me words of encouragement, they were definitely appreciated! I'll be teaching grade 2 tomorrow -seems a lot more scary than teaching grade 11 at the moment...

More Pics from Mike's Visit

A Quick Rant

Everyone who know me knows that I'm in love with this country. But that doesn't mean that I like EVERYTHING about it.

There are 3 particular things that rile me up:

SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES (trains, restaurants, etc.)

CHILDREN NOT PLACED IN CHILD SAFETY SEATS (I see this on a daily basis, it's ludicrous)

and

RUNNING RED LIGHTS -especially big trucks. This is the reason for the rant...

I live along a main road called Route 8. It's the alternative to the expressway (which you have to pay for) and so it's always packed with big trucks. There is a intersection with signal lights near my apartment which I have to go through on a daily basis. I'm not sure why it seems worse than others, but I see more trucks run red lights at this particular intersection than any other. 2 years ago there was a terrible accident and due to a vehicle running a red light, a truck smashed into the house that sits on one of the corners of the intersection. Yikes!!! And even though police cars sit at this intersection on a regular basis, it has not prevented people from running the red.

So, tonight I was coming home from studying and was approaching this particular light on the road perpendicular to Route 8. I was a few meters from the stop line and saw the light turn yellow for the people along Rt8. I saw a big truck drive through. I then watched the light turn red for the people along Rt8. I saw a big truck drive through. Of course the light then turned green for me. I saw a big truck drive through. ARGH!!! If I had actually proceeded when the light turned green for me I would have been squished like a bug!

The Rain Room at the Nizayama Forest Art Museum

There is an old hydro-electric station up towards the mountains about a 15 minute drive from where I live. There are three buildings on the compound that have been converted into a tea room, an exhibition hall and an art gallery. There is also a small tower you can climb to get a great view of Nyuzen as it spills out to the Japan sea.

The largest building is the gallery, where local artists use the huge warehouse space to display work that wouldn't fit a conventional sized display room. I found out about it through friends here in Nyuzen and first visited it when one of the students in my English converstation class had an show there.

When Mike was here we decided to check out the latest exhibition. I had seen an ad for it on TV and thought I'd show him that we're cultured out here in the boonies of Japan. I think he was impressed.

Check out the link:

遠藤利克展 Trieb-振動 (Rain Room)

It's called 遠藤利克展 Trieb-振動 (Rain Room) and you can actually walk through the rain! They have rubber boots and umbrellas for those who require them, but we were allowed to walk through in just our flip flops and play in the rain!

For me, the sound was what was most impressive. Water is my favorite sound. Trickling water, gushing water, the sound of bubbles, or that splooshing sound you get when you enter water -hand, head or whole body.

There was also a small tank set up in the loft of the warehouse. At first it just looks like a big ugly tank of water with a plastic pipe at the bottom pumping H20 into it. But then you notice something very strange...you can see the water flowing up to the top of the tank, making ripples at the surface...but there are no bubbles!! The illusion is that the top is open (you can't actually see into the top of the tank from a standing position), but actually there is a piece of glass on top which prevents the water from bubbling up, so instead it creates a rippling effect at the 'surface' which is directed inward. Very cool.


Check it out if you've got the time, then go for tea/coffee and cake in the tea room!

I would post photos, but we weren't allowed to take any while we were there, so you have to scroll down the linked page and take a look for yourself. There is also a map of how to get there and a photo gallery of past exhibits.

A busy busy week.

It started on Monday. I picked up Adam, Dan and Paul in Uozu and we headed to Minami High School for a 3 day English camp in the mountains. It's not as outdoorsy as it sounds. English camps are held by schools to give their students opportunities to interact with native English speakers outside of the classroom. Some of the camps are only a day long, but Minami High School hosts 2 one and a half day camps. The first day and a half is for the first grade students (grade 10). The second half of the first day and the 3rd day is for the 2nd grade students (grade 11).
ALTs from other schools (that'd be me) are invited to participate and plan fun, interesting, unique lessons and/or activities to present to small groups of students over the course of the camp. This year we had a range of activites from juggling to dancing to a Clue game using the ALTs as the characters. I taught the students how to play cards in English, there was a scavenger hunt, commercial making and improv story telling. A great variety for the students.
In the evening the students got together with the ALTs and had a BBQ, then it was off to bed -well at least for the teachers...the students, like any other group of teenagers stayed up all night. So you can imagine how successful the first class in the morning was...
This is my fourth Minami Engish High School Camp! This particular high school has been designated a SEL (Super Engish Language) School. That means that most of the students want to study English and international studies at a higher level than what is offered at regular high schools. The students at MHS are very enthusiastic about English and the lessons are always fun to teach. A lot of the students return for a second year at the camp and I love seeing their progress over the 2 years. I hope to do it again next year!



This is Shunsuke, a second year student whom I taught last year.


Immediately after finishing the camp and dropping the boys off in Uozu I went straight to Kurobe station to pick up Mike who came to visit for the remainder of the week! We had a great visit and managed to cram shopping, an Okinawan concert, an art exhibit, a beach BBQ, a trip to Takayama and lots of good good food into just 3 days. He brought me chocolate and shoes, needless to say I was willing to take him anywhere and do anything while he was here!!!

click here for video

English Camp

I'm off to English Camp until Wednesday!

HAPPY B-DAY JOHNNY P!!

Saturday was my John's b-day. Not my brother Johhny P, but my neighbor Johnny P!
We celebrated the occasion in royal fashion. First we dressed in Yukatta (summer kimono) and had dinner at the best restaurant in the city: Sakura Sweets.



Then, by the order of Princess Chika, we invited the local townspeople to join us for a fireworks show down by the sea. And a very fine show it was. The grand finale was a 3 song medley: The Mission Impossible Theme, Amazing Grace (as sung by Charlotte Church), and the William Tell Overture!


click here to get a taste of the musical version
here too

To end the night we went back to Nyuzen's very own 'Koshi' - a local drinking establishment that provides us with endless entertainment on any given night. If it's not the wacky bartenders with stuffed reindeer and money hats, then it's the patrons who bring their 6 and 10 year old daughters and let them dance with the wacky foreigners (that'd be us).

Princess Chika even made a special cake for the birthday boy, made with a secret ingredient...NATTO!! It's become a tradition among us isolated country folk to make cakes for each other with obscure ingredients in an attempt to get the best 'SHOCK-U' value (and keep ourselves entertained). Natto, in one word, is 'gross'. It looks terrible and smells even worse (and now that I'll be eating school lunches, I'll have the pleasure of consuming this super heathly food once in a while, joy oh joy). ANYWAY, like I said, Princess Cheeky was going for shock value (and I'm sure she was secretly hoping for gag value too). So when she brought the cake out and it looked like and ordinary cheesecake, we had to endure the song and the cutting and the handing out of pieces before we could get the reaction we were anticipating. And the reaction was....

"MMMM!!! IT'S GOOD!"

dang.

will post photos when blogger stops being retarded...