Surviving Superstition

This is a salesman at the ceramics festival we went to.  One of thousands, he was, but Mandy will likely tell you more about that later.

What has been particularly interesting to residents of the lower Aichi Prefecture, where we live, over the past couple of weeks, is a massive pending earthquake.  Don't worry though because it was supposed to have happened at dawn yesterday.  

The story goes that a famous fortune teller, who is supposed to have foreseen 9/11 as well as another massive earthquake, 'saw' that an earthquake of 9.1 would strike Okazaki city, just 20 minutes away from Hekinan, on Saturday morning.  He became concerned for the residents and sent a letter to the municipal office, warning the mayor of this event.  Soon word spread over the area and we heard about it last week.  It was strange because nobody seemed to be panicking or moving away, but some people did buy extra earthquake insurance.  Makes you think...

We didn't really believe the hype, but in quiet moments, if i allowed myself to think about it, i wondered whether we would actually survive the weekend.  Because you just never do know, earthquake or not, right?  

Anyway, not to be too morbid, but it is always a good thing for me to remember that i am mortal.  Surprisingly easy to forget.  

We didn't tell folks back home about this due to the worry factor.  But realistically, earthquakes happen here all the time, every two or three days, but they are so small as to be barely detectable.  The earth is groaning in Japan, literally.  

Mandy's cooking some delicious-smelling english muffin pizzas.  Time to eat soon.  But ya, we are happy to be alive and that our apartment is standing strong.  We get to move in on Tuesday!  Yay for apartments of our own! 

Tonight we're having a farewell party for some guys that have finished their one-year contracts at ACC.  It's sad in a way, because we're just getting to know them and they're really quite nice.  Our arrival here, and their departure, signals a kind of switch for ACC.  The pack of foreign teachers before us were a little more lively about the nightlife.  I'm pretty sure that Mandy will resist any post-10pm bedtime, and i'm happy for that because i tend to be a night owl and then sleep in late.  it's a routine i'm happy to shift backward a few hours per day to more-so match hers.  However, once in a while i like to staying out late.  Jody G. and I used to do that from time to time, hacky-sacking on the streets and meeting interesting folks on warm summer nights in Saskatoon.  It's really great if you can still manage to get up at a decent hour and spend the day trying to function normally while being really tired.  Fun times.  I'll have to drag Mandy out once in a while to see some local J-pop.  

Yesterday we met a nice Japanese man who was selling ceramics that he and his junior high students made.  He was really interesting because he had heard of Bruce Cockburn, a Canadian folk musician.  Mandy bought a little bird sculpture from him for cheep!

The t-shirt slogans here are hilarious!  They are mostly in english, but i don't think anyone has the faintest idea what they might mean.  We saw a girl yesterday wearing a shirt that said, 

AM I

A

SPECIAL "GIRL"

FOR YOU?

I had a few questions about that one, but mostly I was wondering what a "GIRL" is.

Some of the slogans just make no sense at all.  One guy had a shirt that said, 

LET'S ALL DRINK THE JUICE

BY EVERYONE

Welcome to Japan

Mrs. Mandy and i have arrived at our temporary destination and are (we guess) over the jet-lag.  It wasn't actually very debilitating at all.  We found ourselves wide awake at 5:30am the first couple of mornings, but now we can happily sleep until 8 if we want to.  

We were issued bicycles to use during our stay here, so that's a bonus.  Every bicycle in Hekinan is exactly the same, so you have to memorize rust spots or kick stand style, or serial number if you want to find it in a crowded bike-park.  Mandy said she will tie a ribbon on her bike.  I thought that was a good idea.

We are into our work schedules already, but as observers.  Next week we will finally move into our new digs and begin work for real.  Actually, i have a problem calling it "work".  We have it pretty easy, teaching our mother tongue.  Our foreseeable challenges will be

A) to go slowly enough, and B) to make it fun.  The poor students go to school seven days a week and usually they are tired and over-stressed.   

We were quite lucky to witness a geisha girl performance one night.  She is from Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan.  It was performed for a crowd of beer-swilling small town folk who very much enjoyed the show.  What a collision of ancient and modern. That's a common thought of mine here.  You have the slow, quiet, "Zen" traditions of ancient Japan, and then there's the chaos of crowded subways, department stores and over-stimulating video arcades.  Everybody's playing games on their phones all the time, or texting, or whatever.  We have to get phones too.  

Within a 10 minute bike ride from our apartment ("man-shon" in Japanese--not the most fitting word to appropriate into Japanese to refer to tiny, crowded quarters) is a Home Expo (a mini Home Depot), a batting cage, several restaurants of all types, a few 

supermarkets (these usually include upstairs department stores, dollar stores and video arcades), electronics stores, a library with a few shelves of books we can read, a train station and the Hekinan ACC office. 

Mandy has been offered a fork on a couple of occasions, but she's getting the hang of these things.  

ACC has around eight schools in the district.  Mandy and i each work at three of them, but never on the same day as each other.  We can bike to two of them, and i'll be driving to the one in Kariya, which is about 30 minutes by car.  The school has two servile econo-boxes that staff can use to get to work, and Mr. Adachi (the boss) even lets his teachers use the cars on weekend outings sometimes.  

This is a public toilet.  Not all of them are like this, but it sure is a nice treat 

when you sit down and the seat is oh-so-warm.  Notice the spray pressure is at half.  ...you gotta work your way up to full pressure. 

                                                                              

More to come!