hello again
if you read my last post you know i was a bit stressed about the move, I'm on day two now, My host father is one of the funniest men I've ever met, my host mother is super kind, and my host grandmother is like the cutest 88 year old alive and makes everything funny, she comes from a part of japan that became Russia after the second world war, it really really interesting to hear her talk about it, and having to move over here. older folk have a lot to offer in terms of stories. I showed them a picture book of the Canadian Rocky mountains and they were just like dumbfounded and spent like 15 minutes looking at each individual photo and talking about it. also the futon is the most comfortable thing I've ever slept on in my life, maybe next time i have a chance I'll explore the area, but I'm busy for now tomorrow they're talking me to baseball (they told me they had a ticket for me just before I told them "I hate watching baseball" so it was very good that I hadn't had a chance to say it. then the day after I'm off on another trip! I'm going to Shiretoko, there are two peninsulas at the top of Hokkaido, I went to the most northerly one last time, this time its the other one where all the ainu are living and the territory issues are so great, I'll get into it when I get back and have learned something about it. thanks always for reading.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
i hate baseball
hey there,
I'm at my new house, I have a very small room with no bed, just straw mat floors and a fold up futon, also no dresser or drawers or anything, its a bit crazy, they're nice though and our flat is on the 6th floor, but school, friends, everything i know is an hour away by subway.
2 months to go.
stay tuned .
I'm at my new house, I have a very small room with no bed, just straw mat floors and a fold up futon, also no dresser or drawers or anything, its a bit crazy, they're nice though and our flat is on the 6th floor, but school, friends, everything i know is an hour away by subway.
2 months to go.
stay tuned .
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
filler blog
hey guys,
I was biking home today and thinking hey you can probably read my whole blog in an hour, thats not very long for a whole year of living, so maybe i'll write more often.
last weekend i went to a small town called Naganuma for and international festival, it was pretty
cool the whole town shows up every year and i had my own table that said Canada and of course i was the only Canadian (like always) and I spoke to like the whole town and stamped their passports and autographed their shirts, then me and jono from Australia lead like dancing for the children and then we made mochi, which is where i smash a huge mortar/hammer into a huge carved out stump full of rice and the crowd cheers and then it turns into just like gum and they add sugar and flavoured powdery stuff and its so good when its fresh. we had like all we could eat at an izakaya and we homestayed in a huge mansion, I forgot houses could be big.
Back in sapporo Its getting really hot and green and I have rugby practice everyday, the cherry blossoms came for a week and they were just as nice as everyone said they'd be, ill put some pics up. so they do only last for about a week then they fall and blow around everywhere in the wind like its pink snow going in circles even outside our classroom on the 5th floor. then the trees are all leaves instead of flowers,
i ran my bike into a car today.
i change host families in 11 days and i dont want to at all.
i go home in 2 months and a few days
a huge motorcycle gang just sped by across the river woawoawoa
that seems like long and short at the same time, its gonna be weird and scary and I have this weird adopted accent and I say blatantly australian/new zealandish things all the time.
oh i havent got the cherry blossom pictures off my host families camera yet so here are some other older ones.
the international night pictures a re courtesy of my exchange student friends.
I was biking home today and thinking hey you can probably read my whole blog in an hour, thats not very long for a whole year of living, so maybe i'll write more often.
last weekend i went to a small town called Naganuma for and international festival, it was pretty
cool the whole town shows up every year and i had my own table that said Canada and of course i was the only Canadian (like always) and I spoke to like the whole town and stamped their passports and autographed their shirts, then me and jono from Australia lead like dancing for the children and then we made mochi, which is where i smash a huge mortar/hammer into a huge carved out stump full of rice and the crowd cheers and then it turns into just like gum and they add sugar and flavoured powdery stuff and its so good when its fresh. we had like all we could eat at an izakaya and we homestayed in a huge mansion, I forgot houses could be big.
Back in sapporo Its getting really hot and green and I have rugby practice everyday, the cherry blossoms came for a week and they were just as nice as everyone said they'd be, ill put some pics up. so they do only last for about a week then they fall and blow around everywhere in the wind like its pink snow going in circles even outside our classroom on the 5th floor. then the trees are all leaves instead of flowers,
i ran my bike into a car today.
i change host families in 11 days and i dont want to at all.
i go home in 2 months and a few days
a huge motorcycle gang just sped by across the river woawoawoa
that seems like long and short at the same time, its gonna be weird and scary and I have this weird adopted accent and I say blatantly australian/new zealandish things all the time.
oh i havent got the cherry blossom pictures off my host families camera yet so here are some other older ones.
the international night pictures a re courtesy of my exchange student friends.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
golden week, camping, and being blessed,
well, it hasn't been nearly as long as it usually is between my posts but what the hell, I'm not even here that much longer.
Guess what week it is? that's right, it's golden week, an entire week off school timed perfectly with when the cherry blossoms arrive, and they're everywhere believe me; outside my bedroom outside my classroom, and all up and down the streets.
For three days me, my two australian cohi, and Mikki-san piled in a van and drove up the northern peninsula of Hokkaido, to Wakkanai.
Wakkanai is the town at the very most northern Point in Japan, I stood on the monument there and I got a shell from there, but it broke. Wakkanai is Ainu language for something, but Japanese for I don't know is "wakaranai" which when said quickly or informally is "wakaanai" so there were many jokes and genuine misunderstandings regarding things like where are you going for golden week? wakkanai. whats the next town we'll hit? wakkanai. what is the first place we will see tomorrow? wakkanai. Anyway you get it. It was a really weird place to be and a really cool place to camp, first there was nothing but farms, then there was nothing but wilderness, abandoned homesteads and things destroyed by the wind. It was pretty crazy, the wind I mean, I was worried the tent was going to be lifted up and thrown into the lake sometime at night. The wind off the sea of Okhotsk is pretty serious.
We went canoeing and fishing but the wind was so harsh and the rivers were muddy with the massive amounts of newly melted snow that we didn't catch anything, but we saw a lot of weird roadside stuff, including: a museum of bear attacks recreated in wax, and a bunch of Ainu artifacts and stuffed endangered species, a couple of museums like that, a condemned lookout tower up on top of a huge hill were we could see for miles, a couple of different towers, a great wall of china made to show friendship between japan and china, a bunch of famous lighthouses and shipwreck sites, space telescopes, war memorials, and just any place awesome looking enough to stop the car and climb around. The sea was so cold, like Siberia cold (which is kinda where we were) but we went for a swim anyway almost died and did some harbour fishing and went to a hot spring and this guy tried to practice his English on me by talking about fishing but I was answering him in Japanese and he got pretty flustered and just stomped out of the sauna without saying anything after a while. the lake we camped next to was a holy place to the Ainu people (the Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido and northern japan, they were very different culturally and genetically from the Japanese...) The name of the lake translated from Ainu to Japanese to English was just "god lake" and apparently the lake itself was a god to them or had a god living at the bottom of it, but there was nothing there then but that killer wind and us 4 in a tent.
Going into the wild with Mikki-san is always really cool, its like I am the karate kid and he is the fisherman version of Mr. Miyagi. He knows a lot about history and local lore, and a lot about doing something for the love of it, and always being grateful for the gift that is human life and recognizing how small you are in the great scheme of things.
He got friendlier with the Australians to a point that I'm sure he will want to take them on the kind of adventures he took me on after I'm gone, and I was really proud/weirded out to watch them sit in the tent and try their best to talk Japanese with him, it was like looking in a mirror/time machine that takes you back a year and makes you australian.
So we didn't catch any fish, (mikki san did catch one massive trout) but we saw everything there is to be seen, touristy or secret, and we had a good time doing it.
Today My host mother took me to the Hokkaido Jingu, which is like the head Shinto temple for the whole island, and she paid a lot of money to have a host of priests and...like the Japanese equivalent of nuns pray for me to have good luck in future studies and to do well in life, they chanted and played drumes and did a dance and shook a couple different things over my head, and then I made an offering of a pine branch and it was all really pretty to watch but didn't make any sense to me and I couldn't understand the singsongy language they used, but I was honoured and grateful to my host mother for doing something like that for me. In the waiting area before it was my turn someone had been having a wedding, then someone having their newborn blessed, then a pregnant couple having their unborn blessed, then a woman having her Canadian exchange student blessed.
One more day of golden week! I have a Japanese lesson then the family is having a barbecue because we live in the like best cherry blossom viewing location in the whole city.
oh also, I found a new Swedish exchange student, she's living like 300 meters from me on another program, so we will hang out I guess.
keep reading!
end of Japan.
Australian getting excited over being at the 45th parallel.
P.S. you'll never believe it but on the last day we stopped to look at seals out on the rocks and I dropped my camera, it looks ok on the outside but its not turning on, I'll read my warantee over and see what can be done, but I may have to start some kind of "alex needs a new camera" charity fund I have my Film SLR camera but I need to buy a light meter for it and it will be hard to get pics from it onto this blog. I'll keep you posted!
Guess what week it is? that's right, it's golden week, an entire week off school timed perfectly with when the cherry blossoms arrive, and they're everywhere believe me; outside my bedroom outside my classroom, and all up and down the streets.
For three days me, my two australian cohi, and Mikki-san piled in a van and drove up the northern peninsula of Hokkaido, to Wakkanai.
Wakkanai is the town at the very most northern Point in Japan, I stood on the monument there and I got a shell from there, but it broke. Wakkanai is Ainu language for something, but Japanese for I don't know is "wakaranai" which when said quickly or informally is "wakaanai" so there were many jokes and genuine misunderstandings regarding things like where are you going for golden week? wakkanai. whats the next town we'll hit? wakkanai. what is the first place we will see tomorrow? wakkanai. Anyway you get it. It was a really weird place to be and a really cool place to camp, first there was nothing but farms, then there was nothing but wilderness, abandoned homesteads and things destroyed by the wind. It was pretty crazy, the wind I mean, I was worried the tent was going to be lifted up and thrown into the lake sometime at night. The wind off the sea of Okhotsk is pretty serious.
We went canoeing and fishing but the wind was so harsh and the rivers were muddy with the massive amounts of newly melted snow that we didn't catch anything, but we saw a lot of weird roadside stuff, including: a museum of bear attacks recreated in wax, and a bunch of Ainu artifacts and stuffed endangered species, a couple of museums like that, a condemned lookout tower up on top of a huge hill were we could see for miles, a couple of different towers, a great wall of china made to show friendship between japan and china, a bunch of famous lighthouses and shipwreck sites, space telescopes, war memorials, and just any place awesome looking enough to stop the car and climb around. The sea was so cold, like Siberia cold (which is kinda where we were) but we went for a swim anyway almost died and did some harbour fishing and went to a hot spring and this guy tried to practice his English on me by talking about fishing but I was answering him in Japanese and he got pretty flustered and just stomped out of the sauna without saying anything after a while. the lake we camped next to was a holy place to the Ainu people (the Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido and northern japan, they were very different culturally and genetically from the Japanese...) The name of the lake translated from Ainu to Japanese to English was just "god lake" and apparently the lake itself was a god to them or had a god living at the bottom of it, but there was nothing there then but that killer wind and us 4 in a tent.
Going into the wild with Mikki-san is always really cool, its like I am the karate kid and he is the fisherman version of Mr. Miyagi. He knows a lot about history and local lore, and a lot about doing something for the love of it, and always being grateful for the gift that is human life and recognizing how small you are in the great scheme of things.
He got friendlier with the Australians to a point that I'm sure he will want to take them on the kind of adventures he took me on after I'm gone, and I was really proud/weirded out to watch them sit in the tent and try their best to talk Japanese with him, it was like looking in a mirror/time machine that takes you back a year and makes you australian.
So we didn't catch any fish, (mikki san did catch one massive trout) but we saw everything there is to be seen, touristy or secret, and we had a good time doing it.
Today My host mother took me to the Hokkaido Jingu, which is like the head Shinto temple for the whole island, and she paid a lot of money to have a host of priests and...like the Japanese equivalent of nuns pray for me to have good luck in future studies and to do well in life, they chanted and played drumes and did a dance and shook a couple different things over my head, and then I made an offering of a pine branch and it was all really pretty to watch but didn't make any sense to me and I couldn't understand the singsongy language they used, but I was honoured and grateful to my host mother for doing something like that for me. In the waiting area before it was my turn someone had been having a wedding, then someone having their newborn blessed, then a pregnant couple having their unborn blessed, then a woman having her Canadian exchange student blessed.
One more day of golden week! I have a Japanese lesson then the family is having a barbecue because we live in the like best cherry blossom viewing location in the whole city.
oh also, I found a new Swedish exchange student, she's living like 300 meters from me on another program, so we will hang out I guess.
keep reading!
onsen towels are all the rage.
so many deer.
end of Japan.
Australian getting excited over being at the 45th parallel.
space viewing.
leatherback caught in a fishing net in the 70's.
none of us had the guts to go up this thing when we saw all the panels missing.
P.S. you'll never believe it but on the last day we stopped to look at seals out on the rocks and I dropped my camera, it looks ok on the outside but its not turning on, I'll read my warantee over and see what can be done, but I may have to start some kind of "alex needs a new camera" charity fund I have my Film SLR camera but I need to buy a light meter for it and it will be hard to get pics from it onto this blog. I'll keep you posted!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
lately
hey you.
I haven't got any specific awesome trip or event to write about, but its been a while and you deserve to be filled in.
Spring is here, the rivers rushing and the waterfall outside my bedroom is louder than ever, things are green and i should expect every tree in the park outside my window to be bright pink with cherry blossoms by about next week, this is something the japanese really really love, the rest of Japan already had their blossoms a long time ago though, ha.
oh hey I'm going camping! for three days, me my favourite rotarian and the two australians will be roughing it, fly fishing and bobber fishing on the way up from sapporo to wakkanai! the highest most northern peninsula in Japan and the closest to Russia you can get! It will be cold up there, there will be nothing there but bears and mountains! I'm very excited to see something new, and to do something adventurous. I tell people I'm going to wakkanai and they say "why? youre crazy." but then again they say that to most of my ideas!
Oh, and last weekend i went out to Yuni, one of my australians towns, his host family is so nice and they are caterers and he is very lucky to have such good food and good people and a small friendly community. We did some serious exploring there, that was an adventure too.
and before that weekend i had yet another adventure, ski season was over, but we drove farther north where you could still ski and had a great day of spring skiing, we took the chairlift to the top, and then for the hell of it hiked another couple hundred vertical metres to the actual summit, the view was fantastic and it was cool because the kid i had taught to ski was with me and he was good enough to go up there and get down just fine, it was a great end to a great season.
we have a new Australian-Japanese kid at school, and a new sri lankan girl as well. My friends from class have a band and their show impressed me, I will be going to an exchange student confrence and doing a sleepover in some random japanese families house in the host town, its to get the townsfolk exposed to foreigners or something, i dunno probably a speech involved.
3 more months guys!
I haven't got any specific awesome trip or event to write about, but its been a while and you deserve to be filled in.
Spring is here, the rivers rushing and the waterfall outside my bedroom is louder than ever, things are green and i should expect every tree in the park outside my window to be bright pink with cherry blossoms by about next week, this is something the japanese really really love, the rest of Japan already had their blossoms a long time ago though, ha.
oh hey I'm going camping! for three days, me my favourite rotarian and the two australians will be roughing it, fly fishing and bobber fishing on the way up from sapporo to wakkanai! the highest most northern peninsula in Japan and the closest to Russia you can get! It will be cold up there, there will be nothing there but bears and mountains! I'm very excited to see something new, and to do something adventurous. I tell people I'm going to wakkanai and they say "why? youre crazy." but then again they say that to most of my ideas!
Oh, and last weekend i went out to Yuni, one of my australians towns, his host family is so nice and they are caterers and he is very lucky to have such good food and good people and a small friendly community. We did some serious exploring there, that was an adventure too.
and before that weekend i had yet another adventure, ski season was over, but we drove farther north where you could still ski and had a great day of spring skiing, we took the chairlift to the top, and then for the hell of it hiked another couple hundred vertical metres to the actual summit, the view was fantastic and it was cool because the kid i had taught to ski was with me and he was good enough to go up there and get down just fine, it was a great end to a great season.
we have a new Australian-Japanese kid at school, and a new sri lankan girl as well. My friends from class have a band and their show impressed me, I will be going to an exchange student confrence and doing a sleepover in some random japanese families house in the host town, its to get the townsfolk exposed to foreigners or something, i dunno probably a speech involved.
3 more months guys!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
north korea launches, alex goes to yuni, yuni comes to alex.
hello faithful readers,
well, as I'm sure at least some of you know, North Korea launched a multi-staged rocket over my head today.
North Korea said several weeks ago they planned to launch a satellite for their space program, and in 1998 they used a similar story to test their ability to launch a nuke, so people suspected a similar thing this time naturally. Japan also claimed it would shoot down whatever was launched regardless of what was inside. So I and every other exchange student and every other person who cares about political stability in Asia was living for several weeks with the small possibility of impending nuclear death, or even worse, having to go home because of political instability. One friend actually did go home, but he's rich enough to go home for a stint and come back.
It was an interesting time to be in Japan, all though not the funnest. My host family laughed at me for being scared and told me this kind of thing comes form north Korea about once a year, but I talked in depth with people who were very worried. so there was a satellite in the rocket, not a nuke to be tested, everything's gravy, but it still shows how well, fast and far N Korea can launch something like that, and that's what they wanted to show off, personally I think a space program can wait until you feed your countries starving masses. In fact I think space programs should be international.
, but we won't get into that. All I can say I'm glad its over.
Here's an article from today, sorry I never told anyone, especially you mum I didn't want you to woooorry,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30035197/page/2/
On a lighter note, last weekend Me and and the Australian, went to Yuni, a small farming town like 2 hours out of Sapporo by train, Yuni is where the other Australian lives and our Japanese friend who will go to Australia on our program after I go home. We had a really fun time, he said we were definitely the most foreigners that had been in Yuni at one time, ever. It was a nice change from the city in terms of atmosphere and scenery, but also in terms of people, people all new the Australian so they weren't so terrified of us and very interested and excited to talk to us, especially when they found I could speak Japanese. It was really cool to see life on a farm, and live on a farmhouse, and stay out late in the wilderness.
Then yesterday and today, the Australian from Yuni came to my house overnight, the train ride is beautiful but expensive enough that he can't come into the city that often and wanted to make the most of his time so he showed up early in the morning and came to the rotary meeting with me, where I gave a speech about him and my trip to his town, which I made up on the spot.
We spent the day on what Australian aboriginals call "walk about" which is where you walk about and don't have any particular place you're going. It is traditionally done as a manhood rights thing in ancient aboriginal tribes, but It can also be done by international exchange students in Downtown Sapporo. The results were as follows; furthering the clarity of the map of this city that is burned behind my eyelids, finding and abandoned restaurant in the middle of the city, using stealth to get on the rooftops of several buildings for city skyline viewing, mountain viewing, sunset viewing and the like, all very cool things I've been wanting to do but never had a willing partner before. This is a great place for urban exploration, but you didn't hear it from me.
I'll put a few pictures up, please excuse my spring break beard.
Here's on from my balcony outside my bedroom, the view is this good now, but you should see it in summer or in autumn, I've seen both,
well, as I'm sure at least some of you know, North Korea launched a multi-staged rocket over my head today.
North Korea said several weeks ago they planned to launch a satellite for their space program, and in 1998 they used a similar story to test their ability to launch a nuke, so people suspected a similar thing this time naturally. Japan also claimed it would shoot down whatever was launched regardless of what was inside. So I and every other exchange student and every other person who cares about political stability in Asia was living for several weeks with the small possibility of impending nuclear death, or even worse, having to go home because of political instability. One friend actually did go home, but he's rich enough to go home for a stint and come back.
It was an interesting time to be in Japan, all though not the funnest. My host family laughed at me for being scared and told me this kind of thing comes form north Korea about once a year, but I talked in depth with people who were very worried. so there was a satellite in the rocket, not a nuke to be tested, everything's gravy, but it still shows how well, fast and far N Korea can launch something like that, and that's what they wanted to show off, personally I think a space program can wait until you feed your countries starving masses. In fact I think space programs should be international.
, but we won't get into that. All I can say I'm glad its over.
Here's an article from today, sorry I never told anyone, especially you mum I didn't want you to woooorry,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30035197/page/2/
On a lighter note, last weekend Me and and the Australian, went to Yuni, a small farming town like 2 hours out of Sapporo by train, Yuni is where the other Australian lives and our Japanese friend who will go to Australia on our program after I go home. We had a really fun time, he said we were definitely the most foreigners that had been in Yuni at one time, ever. It was a nice change from the city in terms of atmosphere and scenery, but also in terms of people, people all new the Australian so they weren't so terrified of us and very interested and excited to talk to us, especially when they found I could speak Japanese. It was really cool to see life on a farm, and live on a farmhouse, and stay out late in the wilderness.
Then yesterday and today, the Australian from Yuni came to my house overnight, the train ride is beautiful but expensive enough that he can't come into the city that often and wanted to make the most of his time so he showed up early in the morning and came to the rotary meeting with me, where I gave a speech about him and my trip to his town, which I made up on the spot.
We spent the day on what Australian aboriginals call "walk about" which is where you walk about and don't have any particular place you're going. It is traditionally done as a manhood rights thing in ancient aboriginal tribes, but It can also be done by international exchange students in Downtown Sapporo. The results were as follows; furthering the clarity of the map of this city that is burned behind my eyelids, finding and abandoned restaurant in the middle of the city, using stealth to get on the rooftops of several buildings for city skyline viewing, mountain viewing, sunset viewing and the like, all very cool things I've been wanting to do but never had a willing partner before. This is a great place for urban exploration, but you didn't hear it from me.
I'll put a few pictures up, please excuse my spring break beard.
Here's on from my balcony outside my bedroom, the view is this good now, but you should see it in summer or in autumn, I've seen both,
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
bollo
Today my best (although I have several best) friend, and the person I spent the more time with than anyone, left for university. He was at my school on the 3 year rigby scholaship, he originated from a Fijian village, from a house with no electricity. He came to Japan and couldn't speak Japanese or english, he is now fluent in both.
He's gone off to a University about an hour form here on a full ride rugby scholarship, taking a degree in design and playing for the team, but he should make the national "All Japan" team next year or within his time at University. He can throw a spear like anything, I've seen it.
He taught me a lot about Japan and how to live here. I'll see him again but he'll be busy, and I wont be able to show up any hour of the day and talk with him anymore.
also who else will i use my fijian insults on.
