Memoirs of a Gaijin

Korean TV commercials

2008-06-27T00:02:00.008+09:00

Hey. It's been 3 months since I updated. It has been a while, and I've been quite busy. I have a few stories to tell you all, but right now, what's important is for me to tell you about the awesomeness of Korean TV commercials.

Some commercials are pretty straightforward. It's easy to get. Others however, I don't know what the hell is going on or I'm deeply touched by the aesthetics and overall feeling of the commercial, then I get a Korean to translate them for me and then it's ruined.

Obvious commercials:
Obvious 1
Obvious 1.5
If you don't understand it 100%, be sure to see the Tell Me Music video in the link to the left. It was shown around Christmas. If you can't understand what product they're pushing, then stop taking whatever drugs you're on, they're seriously fucking you up.

Obvious 2
I don't want to ruin the surprise of soju, but I doubt any of you will ever come to Korea and be graced with soju. It's hard liquor. The kind of high quality stuff that the Japanese thought was unfit for consumption, so they only used it for cleaning weapons. Oh! And it's Korea's national drink. If you go into a restaurant, you're expected to buy soju. The woman in the commercial is Lee Hyori. She is my new celebrity crush.

I stole an advertising poster of her in a druken stupor. The whole night I would yell to people (in Korean of course) "It's Lee Hyori". I would get laughs from younger people and looks of hatred from older people (by that I mean the taxi cab drivers).

Obvious 3
Dunkin Donuts commercial. Not sure what they're saying, but it's obvious to know what they're selling.

Somewhat intriguing/awesome commercials that can get ruined:
Special 1
It's not the exact commercial that they show on Korean TV. This one has more information and less of the beautiful crying woman. I found out what the commercial was about by finding this on youtube. Only semi-ruined. If someone can tell me the name of the song, in the background, let me know. I will anticipate a post from someone and state that I am very well aware it's a French song.

Special 2- commercial that I can't find on youtube.
I will describe: Two Koreans, a young Korean man (YKM) and a beautiful young Korean woman (henceforth BYKW) in their early to mid twenties. They're outside at night and they're both facing a campfire that's slowing burning out with the sound of crickets in the background. There are a lot of stars in the sky and trees around them.

YKM looks shy and says something, he obviously has a crush on her.
BYKW say a very short response with a confused look on her face.
YKM looks embarrased, lost for words, says a response, almost expecting to be turned down and laughed at.
BYKW turns to him and smiles (absolutely gorgeous smile) and says something very very short, 3 words.

They both start laughing and they start getting closer to snuggle. Cue beautiful music. Sufficient to say, visually it's very touching.

Here's the explanation I got for the dialog and a bit from what I can understand. It's not exact, but enough to have pissed me off.
YKM: Do you believe love can be ("split" or "shared", not sure which one)?
BYKW: what?
YKM: It's just that (I can't make out the rest, and the Korean person was vague on the rest)
BYKW: It doesn't matter (or "I disagree", not sure which one), we have a BC card that we can share!

BC card is a credit card. Moral: the key to getting a woman is to give her access to your credit card...

Special 3
I hate this commercial with the passion of 1000 suns. It's a jeans commercial. What is she screaming you ask?

Lyrics (as far as I can tell):
It's very good.
It's being good.
It's good, It's good, it's good, it's good.
(this line is something, I only understand "bang bang")
It's good.
IT'S GOOD!
(next line in English)
Move and move, bang bang.

The jeans company is called bang bang. Imagine hearing this commercial once every 10 minutes you watch tv. Now you understand my pain.

That's it for now. I'm certain I'm missing some, but I'll add more later.

BONUS!
I almost forgot to put up some links to some awesome Korean music videos.

Won Ji Eun - Adios. Korean hip-hop. I think my friend JF said it best when he said: "It's hard to be afraid of these guys, they look like they should be engineers". Well everyone, here in Korea, nothing is more badass than an electrical engineer.
Epik High - One. The first time I saw this video, I was confused that this is acceptable in socially ultra-conservative, riot prone Korea. I haven't heard of any objections.
Wondergirls - So Hot. A student is teaching me the dance. Saturday is the big night when I get to show my moves to Korean women.

EDIT!
I found this video on youtube. Yes, it's a commercial by Lee Hyori. Have fun watching it.

The jimjilbang

2008-03-31T12:48:00.003+09:00

I went out last weekend with some friends. We had a normal Saturday night near Hungik University, which is my favorite drinking spot. After drinking, we decided to stay in a jimjilbang.

I've been avoiding going to jimjilbangs. They are probably one of the biggest differences between Western and Korean cultures. Every Westerner goes to one eventually, but the first experience is always very awkward.

It's a bathhouse, and people usually go there after a night of drinking and spend the night there. There's a men's only floor, a women's only floor, and communal areas. The communal areas will have everything: Saunas, restaurants, and a huge heated floor where people go and sleep on during the night. Usually people will go to a jimjilbang after drinking and get up in the morning and head home.

The men and women's only section is a bathhouse, a shower and a steam room. Everyone's walking around butt naked. So imagine if you will, walking into a room at 6 am with a friend barefoot and seeing naked men in a changeroom sleeping naked. You're handed some clothes to wear and a locker key. To get to your locker, you have to walk over naked men. There's also one man who might be masturbating and another one who puts his thumb in his foreskin.

My friend fell asleep somewhere, and I couldn't find him, so I fell asleep somewhere else and we met up the next morning. We hit up a Sauna, and then hit up Seoul. I don't think we'll ever talk about the place again, although we'll probably both go to a jimjilbang again separately.

The next morning we went around Seoul and saw a palace. Right now isn't the best time to go, but it will be nice soon enough I'm sure. While walking about Seoul we got to see some people dancing in green. The Korean girl that was with us told us about the election that's taking place next week.

So we were lucky to see people campaigning for the Korean equivalent of the House of Commons (or Congress for those Americans out there). Rather than say what they wanted to do, they were trying to gardener votes with happy pictures and people giving thumbs up and dancing. I just had to laugh and wondered if we do anything quite as entertaining to a foreigner during elections.

I just thought that learning about a candidate's policies with singing and dancing was like learning about the Bible from this game. (I'm a big fan of Noah and Jesus)

I'm heading out to Japan in a few days for a short visit. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone in Japan and having real sushi. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T12:48:00.003+09:00

Hey, it's Easter right now, so I want to wish you all a Happy Easter.

This is a warning post to anyone who wants to live abroad

This is a post not so much about culture shock, but more about being away from friends and family. I was fine for Thanksgiving, we had a party in a park in Japan. My birthday and Christmas were good too. I hung out with friends and Christmas day I ate some food at another friend's house. (On a side note, usually my birthday is overshadowed by Christmas, so hanging out with friends on my birthday was awesome) However this easter, nothing was planned. It also occurred that I haven't been home in 6 months and hadn't heard any familiar voices from back home in quite a while.

I won't go into much more details, but it involved me freaking out, having to run to an PC bang (a room where you have time on a computer), looking up phone numbers of friends and family online, putting their phone numbers in my phone and then going back to the bar and trying to call as many people in Canada as I could. I only managed to speak to one person, because I had problems with my phone, but speaking to someone from Canada made all the difference.

When you're surrounded by people, 90% of whom you can't speak to, and another 9.5% of them have foreign accents, it kind of strikes a cord that you're really far away from home.

It would have happened in Japan, Korean, Finland or any other country. I was drinking at the time, but the alcohol wasn't the biggest factor. In fact, I don't think it was a factor at all. I think a freak out of this kind happens to most people, probably everyone and for some reason I thought I was immune to it.

Now I'm going to lighten up the mood. This is a video from an American comedy troupe. They look Korean, so they're probably Korean American. What makes the video especially funny is the accent. I thought they were exaggerated when I watched it, then I went out for dinner with a Korean and I couldn't help but laugh because he actually spoke like this. It is a fairly accurate depiction of the Korean accent. It's alright to laugh. They're swearing in Korean. The accent is very Korean.

Have fun on easter!

EDIT: Watching the video again, I've come to decide that the one with a hat on looks Korean, the other one doesn't so much...

More updates from Korea

2008-03-20T11:59:00.002+09:00

Korea is alright. Spring is arriving, there's no snow anymore, but now I've been introduced to something quite exciting about Korea. It's called yellow dust here, but wikipedia is nice enough to call it Asian dust. It's basically sand from northern China and Kazakhstan that's picked up and blown around in Asia. It also has pollution, viruses and bacteria! So it's been breathed in by people in Asia, hooray!

I haven't seen it yet, but yesterday was suppose to have some in the air. It occurs every 5 days or so, for the next two months. I'm contemplating buying a ps3 to pass the time... they're cheaper in Korea and the games are in English and Japanese.

On other good news: I can finally speak a bit of Korean. Enough to do simple tasks, make full sentences and I can only get better at the language. I'm also reading Korean fairly quickly.

And for all of you, more K-pop! This is Jewelry (a remake, but with lyrics in Korean and English mixed!), this is Girl's generation and another video by them. And for kicks, a romance song.

I'm a big nerd, so I loved the second Girl's Generation video for one reason, and one reason alone: Princess Leia buns.

I'm heading back to Japan for a visit soon. I'm looking forward to see some cherry blossoms and some friends.

Kissing you all my love,

Paul

Panmunjeom Madness!

2008-03-08T00:01:00.003+09:00

A weeks ago, I was lucky enough to meet up with friends who were visited from Japan. I meet up with them on Sunday night. We went drinking in Seoul, went for Galbi (the greatest food ever!) and drank some more. We went to a wonderful bar where the guy's washroom had a door, 3 walls, and a shower curtain as a fourth wall. Beyond the shower curtain was the streets. So if you were to push back the shower curtain, you would see the road. You could also hear people talking while peeing.

There was also a moment where I drank too much and started dancing in the middle of the bar. "Paul being drunk and dancing isn't anything new" you might say, until you realize I'm talking about this dance.

I also met up with them two days later to go to Panmunjeom. It's basically the place where North and South Korean officials meet. You know, that famous stretch where there are North Koreans with binoculars looking into the South getting ready to shot at any moment and South Koreans in Taekwondo stance at all times in case any North Koreans rush the border. I actually crossed the border into North Korea while in the building where the two sides meet.

There were 6 English speakers, myself, three friends and a Dutch couple, and the rest of the bus and the entire other bus were Japanese tourists. This was my first contact with Japanese people since I left Japan. I just have to say that they completely rock. I miss Japanese people a lot, but I will continue making the best of the situation and take advantage of being in Korea.

After seeing the room where the two sides meet, we were brought to a tour to see into North Korea. We were talking about a tour on the other side of us, and I did the error of pointing. Evidentially, pointing is one of those things that can get you shot at Panmunjeom. From the front, it looks like I could be holding a pistol. The tour guide started yelling at me, because she was afraid of getting shot at or something. I also scarred some Japanese girls, who got scarred when the tour guide started yelling. I turned to them, said "sumimasen", to which they looked absolutely suprised, turned to each other and kept on saying "sumimasen" to each other and giggled.

We saw some other places along the DMZ, and we even saw propaganda village. For those of you who don't know, it's a fully built village where the North Koreans blast propaganda very loudly. No one actually lived there. But unfortunately, they stopped doing that in 1992, and people actually live there now.

We then did a second tour, the one where we explore the tunnels that were dug under south Korea in the 70's, 20 years after the ceasefire between the countries. Evidentially the North Koreans were looking for coal, and happened to be going towards Seoul. Oh, there's also the technicality that where they were blasting, there was no coal, it was all granite... There was granite painted black too to make it look like coal.

We also got to see into North Korea. It wasn't the best day, we didn't see the massive Kim Il Sung statue. We also saw the train station in the DMZ. It has the same sign as other subway stations, with a sign indicating that it will continue to Pyongyang.

So that's my fun I had in Panmunjeom. I went out that night with my friends from Japan. We went from bar to bar and I crashed at the hostel. I said goodbye to my friends as they left for Japan, and I went to work.

I drank so much the night before that I wasn't speaking loud in class. My students were actually quiet that day. They knew I was in pain. And the next day was what makes teaching in Asia hilarious: My ten year old students made fun of me for getting too drunk the night before.

Shanghai

2008-02-19T12:15:00.004+09:00

(Actually published March 7th, 2008)

Hey everyone. It's been a while, but I do have something to tell you all about. A month ago I was in Shanghai for Chinese New Years. I went with my friends from Japan Laurence and Lindsay. We arrived in China on February 6th (New Year's Eve) and returned to Korea on the 10th.

The flight was uneventful, and we had some directions to get the hostel. We took the bus, and I got my first introduction to China. On the bus, no one spoke English except for the woman who was selling tickets. There was an old man singing in a Chinese language, and it was actually quite interesting. His pitch kept on changing, which makes sense given that the Chinese languages are tonal, but it was very different to hear it.

Driving into Shanghai, I was surprised to see that the city itself is actually quite green. There's a lot of green space and it was impressive.

Once we got closer to downtown Shanghai, there were fireworks going off. It was still night, so I didn't get a good look at Shanghai at that point. We eventually got to the train station, and took the subway to our hostel.

Shanghai has an awesome subway system. It's fast, cheap and not crowded (by Asian city standards). We got a little lost looking for the hostel, but found it eventually.

We met some people at the hostel, and wanted to look for a bar. Unfortunately, everything near our hostel was closed and there were no taxi cabs in sight. We walked around for a while looking for a place to eat and drink. Meanwhile, fireworks were going off everywhere, non-stop. We stopped by a street vendor, and bought some fireworks from them.

We walked around for a long time, and then we met up with two Dutch guys and an American that were staying at our hostel. They were learning Mandarin in Beijing and could communicate with some people, which was a huge help. We went from bar to bar in Shanghai. Fireworks were still going off constantly in the background.

We ended up going to a bar called Babyface, and arrived at midnight. When we arrived, the bouncers started to get people away from the entrance of the dance club. They were setting off fireworks in probably the largest display of fireworks I've ever seen. It went off for 5 minutes. There were, of course, other fireworks going off nearby.

Inside was fun. We kept on buying full vodka bottles, and I met a Japanese guy and started using my Japanese skills on him. He was a nice guy, and I gave him my Japanese cell phone number. When we left the bar at 4 am, there were still fireworks. That night we got up several times to the sound of fireworks. That is to say, there were a lot of fireworks.

The next day we hit up downtown Shanghai. It was fun. The first thing to note about Shanghai is that it's so futuristic it will make Japan look like a third world country. We also went in a tunnel that went under the river in Shanghai. It was really trippy. Worth doing, even though it was a complete rip off.

We went to bed early that second day because we had big plans for the third day. We went to a river village. Basically, it's a traditional Chinese village. It's described as China's Venice. It was really beautiful. It has boats with people paddling it themselves and some Chinese buildings. It was quite the tourist trap, but the best shop was far from the tourist shops. It was a tiny house with a woman painting inside. She had beautiful pictures posted on the wall. I took a look around and decided to buy something. I now have authentic Chinese art, and it's awesome.

We went back home and drank in our hostel that night. Played some drinking games and learned probably the greatest new rules for Kings. You will all have to wait until you play with me before you learned the awesomeness of the new rules (Viking is my favorite).

So the next day, our last full day in Shanghai, we hit up places around Shanghai. We saw a part called Old Town, which was fantastic. It was packed, and once again, a tourist trap, but it had Chinese lanterns overhead and beautiful architecture. We walked around, and I bought my very own Mao clock! That's right everyone, my very own made in China clock. Now, this may come as a surprise to a lot of you, but it's actually a piece of shit. I would never have equated made in China with cheap crap! It doesn't even keep time accurately.

While leaving Old Town, we got lost. We wound up in a poor part of Shanghai and it was interesting to walk around there. Houses looked really bad on the outside, but one thing I noticed was that there was air conditioning units in some of the windows... definetely a stranger sight of China.

We then went to Qibao. The place was awesome! It was another ancient part of Shanghai. There were small shops, it was packed, and we ate weird Chinese food. Everything was packed. Not so much of a touristy spot, although there were still shops here and there. Definitely worth seeing if you're in Shanghai.

Our last night, we went drinking again. I made a new friend from Hong Kong, and got his e-mail address, so I might drop him a line when I go to visit. The next morning, I got up early and saw a Chinese Buddhist temple. It's been interesting to see how different they are in Japan, Korea and China. I think the Chinese temples were the most beautiful.

We left China later that day. Shanghai was awesome. A nice city, with nice people, cheap food, and gorgeous women. Definitely worth a visit at least once, and definitely a good place to live (if you can live under a dictatorship that suppresses speech).

Meeting up with the Japan crew

2008-01-14T00:03:00.000+09:00

It has been almost two months that I've been in Korea, which means that I've been in Korea as long as I've been in Japan. I will write a post soon about the differences between Japan and Korea for all of you who were curious.

Last night, I got to see the people who came with me to Korea from Japan. We met in Seoul and went for a fun night of drinking and dancing. It started off with meeting up with one friend in a part of town called Gangnam. We went to a bookstore, met a nice Vancouver woman and talked about traveling in Japan. She told us about a casino where they only let in foreigners, and they feed you and give you free alcohol. It sounds like a perfect way to spend a day.

Afterwards we went to meet up with our other friends. From there we went to a nice bar that was really chill. It was probably the best pub/bar I've been in. We then went to another area that's near the universities in Seoul.

First we hit up a bar that was a dance club at the same time. Very loud music, packed , but it had a nice mix of Koreans and foreigners. Most places have far too many Koreans or too many foreigners.

After a few drinks, one guy and I decided to introduce ourselves to some people. So we found 3 foreign girls. We started talking to them, and the conversation went a little like this:

Me: Hey, where are you from?
Girls: She's from Latvia and we're from Germany.
Me (in German): Pleasure to meet you, what brings you to Korea?
Girls (English): Our parents work here. We go to school here.
Me: High school or university?
Girls: High school.
Me: How old are you girls?
Girls: 17.

At this point, my friend looked at me with confusion, I laughed and walked away. Lesson for today: Rather than ask a girl her age when she's told you that she goes to high school, say goodbye.

After that bar, we went to a bar called M2. This is where the university students go. It's basically like 'Chez Dagobert' in Quebec city, but with Koreans instead of French girls, smaller, and with more people. So we went to the front, because that's what you do at a club. There was a sea of Koreans. It was kind of mesmerizing, but you can't have alcohol if you're at the front. They're quite anal about it. I guess I was just spoiled by sketchy Kingston bars where you could leave your bottle or cup anywhere.

After that, we left to go sleep. I got to sleep on the floor, which was awesome, except I didn't have a pillow.

I need more nights like that in Seoul. It was actually lots of fun.

House on Hooker Hill

2007-12-30T12:49:00.000+09:00

It's been a while since I've written a post, so I'll talk about Korea and last night.

I've met new people, and more people, so that's a good thing. I've seen all of my friends who came here from Japan and gone drinking in Seoul a few times.

Suwon, the city I currently reside in, is a city of 1 million people. There are bars near Suwon station, which is only one stop away from my house. There's a fort built on a hill called Hwaseong which is a 15 minute walk from my house, and is a world heritage spot. The most popular bars are near Suwon station, and in another part of town which has a lot of foreigners.

Seoul's fun. I've been to a few areas, but two areas to drink. These areas are Iteawon and Gangnam. The first is an international place with a lot of GIs, English Teachers, Indians, Africans and any Koreans that want to learn English. It also has a nice place warmly called 'Hooker Hill'.

Gangnam is fun, it's also fairly international, but caters more to Koreans. There are bars, restaurants, and it's a good time. I've only been once, but I do plan on going again soon.

And now for a story. My friend Laurence and I wanted to do a night out on the town, meet some people, have a good time. We went from bar to bar in Itaewon, and didn't find any Koreas to talk to. Unfortunately, we went mostly into empty bars. We then went to the Canadian bar, drank a few, and asked some people to tell us of a few places in Itaewon to go to. They gave us the name of a few places, so we went to see them. One of the places was a bar on the top of hooker hill.

As Laurence and I were walking up hooker hill, there were tiny buildings, no bigger than maybe 3 rooms. There were women looking into the street by opening their doors just a bit. When an unsuspecting person, in this case myself and my friend Laurence, would walk by, they would grab the guy and try and drag them into the hut. While being dragged in, a nice American girl was yelling out "herpes, gonnorhea, STD central" just in case we didn't know.

I didn't go inside one of the huts, but I got to see it while the stubborn Korean prostitute tried to drag me in. There's a main room, and there were four women (including the ones trying to drag us in). They were dressed up... well like prostitutes. The place had two rooms that I saw, and I didn't see them that well, but there was a big velvet couch in one of them.

We went to the top, got sketched out, and decided to go back down the hill. We got accosted by the same group of women, and fought them off. She then said something in Korean which I'm sure wasn't flattering.

And that's a story of my adventure in Seoul.

A post, from Korea

2007-12-10T23:09:00.000+09:00

So it has come to my attention that I haven't been posting enough messages from Korea. I've been here for about three weeks, and I've been to Seoul a few times, and I've gone out once in a while.

I got lucky enough to see some foreigners and they were a fun bunch. I'll see them later I'm sure, and they seem nice enough. So more foreigners is always good. I was also lucky enough to have nice co-workers. The boss is good some people got better deals in Korea, but there are far more people who got a lot worse. A LOT WORSE.

There haven't been any big adventures yet. Winter's coming, so it's less likely that there will be big adventures.

So, three weeks later, I can say that Korea's fun, but I miss Japan. A lot.

Korea

2007-11-29T12:38:00.000+09:00

So I arrived in Korea almost two weeks ago, and I thought it was worth writing about my experiences so far.

Let me start by saying that Korea is very very different from Japan. The biggest difference is the drivers. In Japan, everyone follows every traffic law, in Korea, I cannot tell you how many times I've seen people go through red lights. The police don't stop them, it's a minor offense here in South Korea.

The people are very nice in Korea, but a different kind of nice than in Japan. The Japanese were far more polite and Koreans are more generous. Japanese are very quiet, and don't want to disturb you unless you are visibly in need of help while the Koreans are very verbose and will talk to you if they suspect they can help you.

The cost of living is much cheaper in Korea. I can go into a restaurant and have the biggest meal ever, and it will never cost more than 10 dollars. I can get a good size meal that will fill you up for $3.50. The subway system in Seoul is much cheaper, it's less than 3 dollars to get from Suwon (where I live) to Seoul which is any hour away. In Osaka, it use to cost 3 dollars for a subway trip that was 4 to 6 stops away. Taxi cabs are also very cheap in Korea, but I'll give you more concrete examples later.

Seoul's a fun city. I've had some good meals and seen some cool shops. I'll explore it all more and write about it.

Korea bound

2007-11-06T00:08:00.000+09:00

I'm leaving for Korea on the 14th. I will not have the internet between now and my arrival in Seoul.

So here's one of my last posts from Japan, if not my last.

So I will write about a few things that I have found to love in Japan. The first is J-pop. J-pop rocks.

The Japanese people are lots of fun. The guys will drink with you, and it's awesome, because most Japanese are light weights.

A lot of Japanese women are naive, and extremely sweet. I won't talk about my successes or failure with Japanese women, but I must say that I was, and still am, quite surprised by how awesome they are. I didn't kick myself for not knowing Japanese until I started talking to Japanese women.

Japanese ancient culture is really beautiful. The temples are always a great sight, even if they're not well known.

The food's good here. Very different, but good.

The Cherry Blossom (Sakura) is beautiful. I saw my first one today that only had a few flowers on it, but I still couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of the few flowers it had on its branches.

I have been dreading leaving the country, and it's near. I'm going to take the next few days to explore.

I'll start writing to you guys from Korea. See you in a bit.

Halloween in Osaka

2007-11-01T14:56:00.000+09:00

In Japan, Halloween is usually celebrated the Saturday before Halloween. They don't hand out candy to people, but I did get a piece of candy when I bought beer at a convenience store.

So Saturday was someone's Sayonora party. My friend Kate was heading back to Toronto on the following Monday. We started off drinking at the docks, and didn't realize that tonight was the big Halloween thing. We then started going to a park in American Town (ame-mura), and on our way, realized a lot of Japanese people were dressed up. It was awesome, because they go all out here. My favorite costumes included princess Garnett from FF9, two girls dressed up as white mage and black mage from FF, and a girl in a panda suit, because Panda suits kick ass.

It was absolutely hilarious, I met some Japanese guys (mentioned in the last post) and we were just having fun drinking in the park, enjoying life.

Last night, Halloween, I had a costume. If you don't know, it was Pikachu. Most people don't wear their costumes on Halloween night. On my way to meet friends, I had so many Japanese women wave, watch me walking around, and some would even say "Kawaii" (cute). The younger men would usually smile, or start yelling out "Pikachu!". The funniest reaction by far were the business men and the older women. They would look at me, and look away, but you could tell they were laughing inside. They then kept on walking as if nothing was wrong, that seeing someone dressed up as a popular icon from their culture on any given night was entirely normal. It would be rude to make a deal out of it.

Drinking was pretty uneventful, except that it was the Sayonora party for my housemate, Hugh, and another friend, Dan. Dan drank with us until 5 am, then we had to go home, catch the bus and get on his flight back to the UK. It's really sad seeing everyone leave, even though I've only known them for a short period of time.

You'll all be glad to know however that I got McDonald's breakfast at 5 am, which is probably the after drinking food in the world.

How I've offended Japanese people

2007-10-30T14:16:00.000+09:00

Let me start by saying that I've met a lot of Japanese people, and they're really fun. They always are quite nice, and I've often found myself drinking with people with whom I have no way to communicate with (they didn't speak very well English, and I speak very little Japanese).

One of my favorite events was drinking in a bar with my eigo-jin friends (English people friends), and hearing a lot of Japanese men singing a song in Japanese.

I'm not talking about the standard offensive stuff like blowing your nose, or sticking your chopsticks in the rice. I'll mention three incidents, of which the subway story isn't one of them.

The first, and lesser, incident involved eating in public. It's considered bad form to eat in public, but kind of acceptable, but definitely acceptable for foreigners. It is not acceptable to be walking and eating. I was just standing however, waiting for friends at a common waiting spot, the silver ball (a cool place, but that's a post for another time).

I was talking to a Japanese guy, and his English was pretty good. I was also eating McDonald's, and I had fries. I had two fries drop on the ground. He stopped talking to me, and stared at the fries on the ground for a few seconds, and wasn't talking. He looked at me and my friends as if a little hurt. I then picked it up, and threw it in the trash. He seemed relieved after that, but didn't say anything about it.

I've noticed that there's no trash anywhere, not even cigarette buds anywhere... Japan's really clean.

The second incident involved a few guys I met that same night. They spoke very little English. It was actually a funny incident, and we'd cheers to everything, scream words in Japanese and English, and then cheers again. I learned a lot of Japanese that night, but I forgot it all as I was drinking a bit... I mean a lot...

I was looking for a Halloween costume, and I had two choices, I could go with the one (which will be revealed soon), or GOJIRA!!! (known in English as Godzilla)

I asked my new friends where I could get a Gojira costume. The first guy I talked to was confused, then a second guy came, and I repeated that I was looking for a Gojira costume. The second guy looked shocked, said something in Japanese to the first guy, then they both started saying "no" again and again.

Here is an excerpt of Wikipedia's article about Godzilla: "Godzilla represented the fears of many Japanese of a repetition of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Oups... I'm in a culture where the mere mention of nuclear weapons is taboo.

Well I found a Gojira mask yesterday, but by that point I had already purchased my costume... Think Japanese... Think video games... think electric mouse/bunny...

Korea bound

2007-10-25T21:04:00.000+09:00

Hey everyone, in case you haven't heard, I accepted a position in Korea. I have one interview with a company in Japan tomorrow, but I doubt I'll get the job, and I doubt I'll accept if offered.

So the main advantage of Korea is that the cost of living will be cheap. I will be making the same amount of money, but because the company's paying for my flight there, my apartment and half my medical insurance, I'll make money. Basically I'll have enough to support a family of 4 comfortably in Korea.

I leave Japan on November 14th. I'm still staying in my apartment because I won't receive any other form of compensation from my current company. Today was the second date for the delayed wages to come in, and now it's all coming on the 29th... so to translate: never.

Now for my awesome subway story. To send out my resume and information for the new job, I went to the subway to get to my destination. I had just walked down the stairs and there was a subway, so I ran to the nearest door and got in just as the doors were closing.

There weren't many seats around, so I stood up. I looked around and saw a lot of people staring at me. Keep in mind that in Japan, staring at foreigners isn't uncommon. You go anywhere, there's at least one Japanese person that will stare at you. It's like they can't believe their eyes that there's a foreigner in their country. It's funny when I'm in a good mood, extremely annoying when I'm in a bad mood. What seemed strange this time however was the number of people staring at me.

An old Japanese man suddenly walks up to me, and stands beside me. He doesn't say anything, and I don't think much about it. He gets off at the first stop.

Between the first and second stop, I still notice people staring at me, including a group of school girls. One even had her mouth wide open in disbelief... like I said, it's not uncommon to be stared at, but this time it was different.

At the second stop, I realized why they were staring. I was standing right beside the door, and I looked down on the ground and saw a big pink square that said something in Japanese, then in English: "Women only car".

I stared in disbelief for a moment, and then started looking around the cart to see if this was true. All I saw were women. The old guy who stood next to me did so because he wanted to be beside another guy. The doors closed, and I noticed on the subway door a little sign that says "Women only", then started blushing. The school girls started laughing.

The next stop I exited the subway and went to the next car.

A day in Nara

2007-10-21T21:00:00.000+09:00

So I decided that exploring Japan was a good thing to do while I'm still around.

Today I went to Nara. It's just 40 minutes away by train and costs 540 yen. It's a nice tourist spot with a lot of temples and shrines, but best of all it has 1000 deer walking around the city.

The first place we went to was just a path with trees on both sides. We just kept on walking and there were lanterns on each side of us. I read that there are over 3000 lanterns, and they are lit in early February and mid August. There are tiny shrines along the way, and it's just interesting to see how everything's built. At the entrance, there are many deer, but they don't go further into the path.

The deer will come up to you and eat cookies that you can buy anywhere, and then they bow. Yes, that's right, the deer bow. A video will be put up as soon as I can get it to work. They're all over the place, and they're actually quite dirty, but it's still awesome to see deer bow.

There's nice Shinto shrines, but the big attraction is a temple that contains a giant Buddha statue. The statue may not appear to be big in the picture, but in reality it's 15 meters high.

At the end of the night, we climbed a mountain and watched the sun set. It was quite beautiful. After that however, we called it a day and returned home.

They're going to Kyoto tomorrow, but I have a job interview at 2 pm for teaching English in Korea. I will have to go to Kyoto after that or maybe on Tuesday.

Nova's finished

2007-10-19T18:19:00.000+09:00

So it's October 19th, payday was the 15th, and I haven't see any money. The higher ups are saying that we'll get paid on the 26th, but I don't care.

I'm not going into work until I get paid, and because the job search isn't going well, it appears I'll be coming back home to Canada soon. 5000 foreign language instructors are effectively unemployed, about 3000 of which are English instructors. I am of the last 200 people to have arrived at the company (of all languages, the last 120 of English instructors).

I'm sorry this blog wasn't the fun blog that you and I expected. Shit happens.

My last hope is this one interview I had earlier this week, and maybe Korea. If you want a play by play of what happened, read these articles:

The rent situation
More rent fun
News about the pay
What started getting me worried
What pissed me off
More news about Nova

So, to summarize, there's a cash influx, but that's enough to pay 700 of their 5000 teachers. They had to delay the payment of the teachers, which was planned for the 19th. Then someone got arrested. He was a key figure in the cash influx. It turns out that has some shady contacts and embezzles money for organized crime. The president is nowhere to be found, and there's a couple million dollars in missing shares. The companies buying into Nova may be dummy corporations that are also shady. The president assures us (through a memo) that all is well, and we should be patient.

Once again, I apologize for the negative post, it sucks, but this whole situation is fucked.

Happy 1 month anniversary

2007-10-12T20:52:00.000+09:00

Hey everyone, so I've been in Japan a month today. It's been filled with some ups and downs, and hopefully I'll get paid on Monday which will mean plenty of ups.

I've seen some really cool places and met some amazing people. Stay tuned to find out if I'll be home soon (when the company goes bankrupt) or if I'll be home less soon (when the company gets liquidated).

Thanksgiving and a little more

2007-10-11T22:03:00.000+09:00

I will begin by telling the tale of Thanksgiving.

Canadians make up a large part of the employees at Nova. There may be more Aussies, but I would contest that claim. So, because it was thanksgiving weekend last week, I decided with another Canadian that it would be awesome to have a thanksgiving. At first it was going to be dinner thing, but those are hard to pull in Japanese mini-apartments. There's also no turkey in the whole of Japan.

After much deliberation, we decided that a snack potluck would be a better idea, but we still had a problem with actually having people in one spot. The good bars are expensive, and the cheap bars wouldn't keep us together. Then it hit us: drinking in public is legal. Drinking in a park is legal!

Canadian thanksgiving was held in a park near my work. We met at a central location, and then went to the park. We invited everyone, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis, Australians, English and Scots. Most Brits didn't believe that there was actually a thing called Canadian thanksgiving. They thought we were joking. They were pretty surprised to see we were serious.

During the party, hung out, which then turned into a game of tag around a jungle gym, which then turned into huge circle where everyone talked, which turned into all the Canadians (and one Aussie oddly enough)singing the national anthem, then high-fiveing everyone thanking them for showing up.

Lessons learned: playing tag while drunk is dangerous... I ripped a pair of pants and was bleeding quite a bit. I'm a fun drunk. The Brits think I'm an alcoholic, but laugh about it anyways. Getting drunk in a park is very legitimate in Japan.

Speaking about legitimate and parks in Japan, a few friends and I saw a girl and a boy make themselves a makeshift bed, then put a cover over themselves. I will infer that they were having sex in a public park. So, another lesson, sex in public is fine.

Public urination in Japan: fine, people are so polite here, they pretend not to see you.

Public defecation in Japan: also fine. Once again, polite, to the extreme.

Blowing your nose in public: horrible. You're going to hell if you do that in front of someone. Blowing your nose in public, that's disgusting!

The company's going to be alright

2007-10-10T21:41:00.000+09:00

Good and bad news. Basically it means I'll get paid as long as there's a company. The bad is that the company will probably only exist for another 2 or 3 months.

Stuff you didn't want to know about Japan, and didn't ask

2007-10-06T19:15:00.000+09:00

Hey everyone, so seeing that I'm still in Japan, I thought I'd write this up. So here's a list of questions that you all are dying to ask me, but haven't!

Q: How big is your apartment?
A: Not big, quite small. The stories of small Japanese apartments have been exaggerated however. The apartment is about what you'd get in Toronto, but ever so slightly smaller.

Q: What's the cost of living like?
A: Once again, not as bad as people make it out to be. I've spent 65000 yen in 1 month for food, drinking three or four times a week, and two out of town trips. I still have to pay rent for this apartment, which will be half of everything I pay, but this apartment is overpriced, hence why I'm looking at other apartments in town.

Q: What's Japanese TV like?
A: It's cool. I saw this one show where they do what's called human tetris. There's a wall that advances towards someone with a cut-out of a person, and the person has to make themselves a certain shape to avoid being pushed into a pool of water.

Other awesome shows include a woman dressed up a devil outfit teaching a girl Spanish. She was summoned by the girl of course. My housemate told me he once saw a show where they were teaching English for the abused wife. How to make excuses for bruises and such... yeah...

Q: What's the food like?
A: McDonald's isn't as greasy. There's a 100 yen menu, so it's the perfect place after for having food after the bar. My favorite 100 yen item so far is the McPork.

Q: Seriously, how's the food?
A: Awesome. I have been having mystery dishes. I eat something, don't how what it is, but have fun eating it anyways. So far, I've had Tocuyaki. It's balls with a creamy sauce with pieces of squid. It's disgusting. I don't like squid.

I do however like chicken cartillage. That's right everyone, they also eat the skin, the tail and the beak.

More to come later.

A job offer!

2007-10-03T18:00:00.000+09:00

I found an offer of employment in my mailbox today, so everything's alright. Here's exactly what was written on the hand written letter.

"We seeks Western Wowen For XXX Rated Video. Under 30. Must A Photo..."

The rest was contact info. I don't know what a Wowen is, but I'm sure I'm one! And I'm also not going to pass the contact info because I need this job, and I don't want you stealing it!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

2007-09-29T18:46:00.000+09:00

Il Buono
So I went to Kyoto again and had an excellent time. I saw my first geisha, but she was indoors and it was very brief. We also saw the Silver Pavilion which is a beautiful place. I met some cool people in Kyoto and went drinking with them that night. All in all it was a typical night in Japan. At least what a night in Japan should be.

Il Bruto
My company's in bad shape. What they don't mention is that the Japanese staff haven't been paid for this month. Also, people are getting evicted from their apartments. Nova sublets the apartments to their instructors, overcharges them, and we're pretty sure that that money's going towards people's pay. I have read reports from people who said that they left in August and still haven't gotten paid for their last month of employment. There's an announcement on October 5th, so we'll see what that brings us.

Il Cattivo
I've applied to a few jobs in Osaka, and I've even started applying to jobs in Canada. I've got an offer to teach in Taiwan, but the visa would take several weeks to process. South Korea wants teachers bad, but I suspect that would take several weeks as well. Because of the possibility of returning to Canada soon, I have started to sing "I'll be home for Christmas" to myself.

The worst is hearing people at work. A lot of the instructors have quit, and there seems to be less and less people working at Nova everyday. Right now I show up to be able to pay off the money I still owe Nova, but if there aren't any prospects, I just might go traveling soon and explore the world. So I'll keep you all updated, and maybe I'll see you all sooner than any of us would have imagined.

Teaching, Karaoke, and Getting Lost. These things are the pillars of life in Japan.

2007-09-21T19:10:00.000+09:00

I'll start with Teaching.

I've been trained in the art of teleconference teaching. I am now an official English teacher. I know how to read English, make funny gestures, get people to read aloud and correct people when they're wrong. Great examples of typical mistakes that Japanese people make are "I go to shopping", "I wasn't gone to Tokyo" and "I have dog".

It's much harder to teach the beginner types. Their accent is usually quite thick, with r and l's switched, and with plenty of words left out, not just a word here and there. They're usually the ones that give you blank stares, but respond best to thumbs up. Whenever a student makes a mistake, you have to say 'almost' or 'not quite', but never outright 'no'. From speaking to various people who have been in Japan for a long time, the word 'no' means a lot more than simply "that isn't true in this case" and can sometimes mean "you aren't right, and never will be". 'yes' also has an extended meaning, the most important one being "I understand".

My first full day of work is tomorrow, I will be given a test to see if I understood the training session and what I've forgotten.

As for fun adventures, everyone will be glad to know that I've gone drinking in Osaka. Something I was surprised to learn is just how much the Japanese love to drink. I cannot emphasize this point enough. Like they love their drinks like the Irish love their drinks, if not more. But here's the awesome thing: There is no taboo with getting drunk. Not only that, but people actually look away if there's public urination going on, it's just impolite to look at people while they're urinating in the streets. It's also impolite to say or look at the people who are passed out on benches and may or may not have soiled themselves.

The second time I went drinking with people from another NOVA branch, we wound up at a karaoke bar. Our group was separated into 2 groups. I had befriended a British guy named Andrew, and him and I would sing loudly at every song even though we were clearly horrible. I had also met a few other people, including some Canadians and Australians. For those of you who don't know, I was very excited to meet Aussies. I haven't really met any actual Aussies yet.

So my group consisted of myself, Andrew, a Canadian girl named Sandy, and about 5 or 6 Americans. We had all you can drink, for a flat rate of 1800 yen. They kept on bringing us drinks, and we kept on pounding them down.

As the night wore on, and I started losing my voice, I went into the other booth which contained the Aussies, a few British people and some Canadians. Now that was a fun booth. We got up on our seats, kept on bringing in whiskey, and pounded them down like there was no tomorrow. I will state for the record, that I was proud of my fellow Canadians in their abilities to drink, have fun and not make asses of themselves. I will also state for the record that the Aussies were with us, shot for shot, singing every song along with us, and just general kick assedness. I was impressed, whereas the British for the most part weren't drinking at the end of the night and the Americans couldn't help but pass out on the table, break glasses and insist they're fine, only to fall on the table again.

Getting lost can be lots of fun, or it can be a frightening experience when you're in a foreign culture whose language you don't know. Here's my story about getting lost in Japan:

Last night I went to a bar after work. I had been to the bar before, but I always went with the guys I live with. They would lead the way, and I would be in awe of all the little shops to the left and right of me. Getting a sense of direction in a country in which you're illiterate is actually much more difficult to get around than a country in which you're not. I left my apartment to go to the bar at 9:45 pm. I got lost on the way, ended up at some strip clubs by mistake, but eventually found myself at the large crab described in the directions given to me. I looked for the bar in relation to the huge crab for a very long time before I just said to myself 'forget it' and started tracing my steps to go back home. This whole thing had probably taken me an hour.

For the next 2 hours or so, I would be wandering Japan, unable to ask them how to get to where I lived, because I couldn't remember my address. I was thirsty, hungry and tired for the whole time. I still don't know where I was, and today I was walking around Osaka and saw somethings that I saw last night, and it hurts to realize that the whole time, I was never further away from home than 5-10 minutes. But here's why my sanity was melting away: I wound up at the crab 3 times that night. That's right, I would get incredibly lost, and somehow, as if space itself was warped, I was back at the giant crab. Not only that, but I got to see the male prostitutes, a yakuza and was solicited for sex twice by a female prostitute (I think, she was speaking Japanese, but seemed desperate). Incredibly however, at about 1 am, I found the bar. After hours of searching for either the bar, or my house, I found the bar while looking for my house. I went upstairs, and walked into the bar. The people were very nice, saw me come in looking tired, and one waiter led me to a table of white people. It wasn't my friends... my friends had left earlier because they started work at 7. And as if by a miracle, I knew the way home and got in at 1:15, which included a stop in a convenience store near my home where I got a Strawberry Sundae. I deserved it more than I've ever deserved Ice Cream before.

You may ask: How did I get so lost? What prevented me from meeting up with my friends?
I was at the wrong giant crab.

I love last minutes adventures.

2007-09-15T18:52:00.000+09:00

So I was eating breakfast in my pajamas this morning when I heard a knock at the door. It was the girl who lives downstairs who has just moved in. She asked me if I would like to go to Kyoto with her today. She knew how to get there, and she heard it was nice, and just wanted to go with someone. For those of you who don't know, I love spontaneity.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan before the Edo period, when the city of Edo, currently named Tokyo, became the captial. It is considered to be the cultural heart of Japan with plenty of shrines and attractions. It takes approximately 45 minutes to get from downtown Osaka to downtown Kyoto.

So we went to Kyoto by taking a subway then a train. I'm going to talk about the price to do things, because some people are curious. 100 yen is 0.96 dollars. The subway and train were about 800 yen. The subway system is actually really cool. There are tunnels and stores underground, and you buy tickets. For a certain price, you walk in, a machine punches your card, and when you leave the station, it takes your card, provided you paid enough. There's a police officer or security guard that stands beside the machine in case you're trying to mess with the system. They're actually really nice, and could see that the girl and I were clearly lost. They showed us around, and we eventually found ourselves at Kyoto.

We had a tour book with all sorts of places to go visit. There are far too many shrines and temples to see in a single day, and it was difficult to decide which was the one to go to. We went to the closest shrine, walked the 10 blocks or so, and saw a bit of Kyoto.

People live in small wooden houses. The outside looked worn down, but the inside must be better. We also ran into a few Buddhist shrines along the way. Explored a bit, but we kept on going to the closest shrine.

This shrine was the Toji Temple. It's a 5 story Pagoda, the tallest in Japan, with some temples with statues. It cost 500 yen to enter, and it was beautiful. There was a pond, and nice trees. the pagoda itself was the least impressive part. The statues were really cool and people were praying to them. I haven't seen anything quite like them. Unfortunately, due to Japanese laws, we could not take pictures of the statues.

We then went on to explore more temples around the pagoda, then walked back to Kyoto station. We noticed that they did tours, but those tours cost anywhere from 2100 yen to 9000 yen. We then saw that they had bus routes to various locations, and a day pass available for 1000 yen. By now, it was 1 pm, and we said that it was nice to know that, but today wasn't a good day to buy a day pass. We tried to look at something else to do, possibly indoors because with humidity, it felt like it was a mid to high-30 C. We boarded a random bus, to go to a shrine we didn't really notice on our maps of places to go. The Kiyomizu-dera Temple . Here's an excerpt from the description: "For over 1,000 years, pilgrims have climbed the slope to pray to the temple's 11-headed Kannon image and drink from its sacred spring"

So we thought it would be interesting. The Kyoto bus was crowded, and you paid on your way out. When we arrived, we didn't know quite where to go, but decided to follow Japanese people who left the bus. We kept on going up and up a hill, with tiny shops on each side. They were selling jewels, kimonos and fans. It was interesting to see all the different things that Kyoto had to offer.

When we reached the top, and looked down, we could see all of Kyoto with trees in the foreground and mountains in the background. The temple was beautiful, and before we went in, we saw some people preparing for something. We didn't know what it was then, and to be frank, I still don't know, but it was one of the most awesome things ever. There were people dressed up, playing instruments and some people holding a dragon. We thought it was awesome and then went into the temple, 300 yen admition. There were lavishly decorated 3 story pagodas and some shrines with beautiful statues. There was also purification water, where water was coming out of a dragon's head and people would wash their hands. We then saw the dragon again, and the people were making the dragon do movements. It was almost as if the dragon were a living thing.

We explored the grounds more, and took plenty of pictures. They will be up on facebook soon. We returned to Osaka afterwards very happy with our day, and tired. My recommendation to anyone going to Kyoto is to skip Toji temple and go to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. Also, to bring plenty of liquids. I'll be in Kyoto again I'm sure. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Golden Pavilion.

The first few days

2007-09-14T15:37:00.000+09:00

Let me start by saying that I was crazy to believe that I had somehow beat Jet Lag, that I had found the miracle cure, staying up 36 hours straight. I was wrong. It's currently 3:30 pm, and I've been up since about 2 am. I want to sleep now... because, I'm tired.

Also, please feel free to tell me that my writing's horrible. Leave a comment, say something like "Paul, you never explained what you had to register for in the last post", or "speak English please". Believe it or not, I might actually come back from Japan with worse English than when I left, so this is your chance to make fun of me, and help me!

Osaka's really cool. I haven't gone drinking yet, and I've met the girls that live upstairs and the ones that live downstairs. I briefly met some people at the airport, but they were British, and not the Monty Python kind. They were probably tired, I'll see them on Monday when I start working. My favorites moments include the lady who kept on staring at me, and the man who delivered my luggage who laughed at me when I said Ariagato.

So the apartment's really small. Everything's small here! Lightbulbs, cars, people, all tiny! There are however exceptions to every rule. In this case, the beer cans are huge. 500 mL, but for some reason, they don't have bottles for their beer, at least none I've seen so far. The grocery stores are pretty cool. They're basically exactly like the grocery stores here, everything you need on a regular basis is on opposite ends of the store so you have to go through the whole store to get what you want. The instructions on how to make stuff is all in Japanese, so I buy all the food based on whether it's pre-made, or whether it's got some cute animal speaking and doing each step with a pretty picture. Today I had curry, which had a lot of writing for how to make it, but a picture with boiling water, the curry pouch in the water, with a Koala bear saying "(japanese stuff) 3 - 5 (more japanese stuff)". 5 minutes, and I had the most awesome pre-packaged curry sauce ever.

I had to register as a Gai-jin today, which means foreigner. I walked into city hall, and there was a huge board with all the services that City hall provides. There was an old Japanese man who looked at me, then pointed to number 25, foreigner services. I thanked him, but was a little hurt. Supposedly, I don't look Japanese. It was cool, so now I can open a bank account and get a cell phone.

The other thing I'll talk about in this post are the beds. Now everyone, can you guess why it is that the Kanji symbol for floor in Chinese is the Japanese symbol for sleep? That's right, I sleep on a very thin mattress with sheets on it which is in turn on some tatami mats (which is a nice way to say wood). It's actually comfortable, except the pillow. The pillow's filled with like beans or rice. It's incredibly uncomfortable. My room also has no windows, which isn't helping the jetlag thing. Over the next two days, I plan on buying an alarm clock, some more groceries, maybe go to a bar and restaurant.

Japan's awesome, and it may seem like I'm angry or insulted, but I'm not. Tune in next time at the same bat-Time and the same bat-Channel.

A quicky before I run out and register.

2007-09-14T10:43:00.000+09:00

I went to the grocery store last night and saw the most amazing thing: Colt Whiskey. That's right, haven't had enough of Colt's fantastic Malt Liquor? Well they make Whiskey too, and guess what! It's cheap!

More to come soon.

There's no place like home

2007-09-12T20:07:00.000+09:00

36 hours with only catnaps, a few cups of coffee, 24 hours of sunlight, and long long plane rides... but I'm in my new home.

My last day in Canada was spent packing and setting up my parents computers. I also went for a check-up and some shots, bloodwork, the usual annual checkup stuff. So that day was boring, nothing to know about it except that I stayed up all night until I was packed. My dad and I left home at 3:30 am to catch the 7:15 plane.

So I was one of the first 4 or so people to arrive at Pearson. We hung out, talked, had fun. More and more people joined. It was a good group, and I'm sad to see us all go to different cities. A handful stayed in Osaka, a few went to Kyoto and Kobe which are close. We weren't sitting together on the plane, we mostly hung out at the airports because we had a lot of time at each one. The highlight however was meeting the British Asian guy who told us stories about having been an English teacher in Japan. He said he couldn't stand it, and the only way he could do it is by getting absolutely pissed on his time off. He was an inspiration to me. His stories were just about how drunk he got and how the Japanese women run after foreign guys. He was hilarious, said Tokyo kind of sucks and Osaka's the best city in Japan. He also recommended not passing out on the streets. If that isn't sound advice, I don't know what is.

The plane ride to San Francisco was alright. It was only 5 hours followed by 3 hours of time to kill in the San Francisco airport. Then there was the really fun flight, the one that's 12 hours, over the pacific, with nothing to see but water.

The plane was enormous, every seat had a tv at the back of someone else's seat so you could watch the movies (spiderman 3, the ex and Fantastic Four: Flight of the Silver Surfer) or tract the where the plane was thanks to GPS, as well as indicate the altitude (11000 meters most of the flight), velocity (about 950 km/h max), distance travelled so far and distanced left (5800 km in all). I wondered if I was dead, and the plane ride was purgatory, or even hell (given enough time). One thing that occured to me during the flight is that since we were going from east to west, we were following the sun, so basically, I saw the sun from 6 am in Toronto to 7:30 pm Osaka time, which comes to 24.5 hours of sunlight. It wasn't a big deal, it was just funny to go from Tuesday to Wednesday without a night between. It's like one long tuesday, then all of the sudden it's Wednesday night, and I'm getting ready to sleep, and it'll be Thursday! For those of you in Toronto, you're all probably not even up for start your Wednesday.

One amazing thing about the United flight from San Francisco to Osaka is that the alcohol is provided with the flight! If only I knew that during the flight... unfortunately I heard about it after the fact.

There was however one kickass part of the flight, landing. After a few hours of sea, and the GPS tracker showing we were close to the coast and close to land, we looked out the window and saw the tip of mountains peaking through the clouds. It was really pretty, and I wish I didn't have four people between myself and the window. We landed at 4 pm, and after customs and all that bs, we got out of the airport at 6:30. We were met by Nova employees and told which bus to take until the end of the line.

There wasn't a big shock coming off the plane. I've been to Markham and Richmond Hill, so I've been around Asian people, it isn't anything new. Let's not also forget I did my degree in Computing. That's there's japanese everywhere that I can't read isn't bothering me. Everyone around me speaking Japanese is not a big deal. I have not suffered any kind of shock, I've only been extremely gleeful at the opportunity to explore a new country and culture. Mind you, the company has been holding our hand since we arrived.

From the airport we took a bus to the station near which I'll be living. I met another Nova employee who showed me how to get to my apartment with a map. We walked to the apartment, but got a little lost along the way. We found our way, because I live in a semi-sketchy one-way alley. The apartment's like a motel, the doors lead to outside, and there are stairs to the fifth floor. I'm beside a Hotel, but that's beside a busy street, and across from a Shinto Shrine with a big ass dragon. I plan on exploring it more tomorrow.

Japanese TV is nowhere nearly as entertaining as SpikeTV and youTube make it out to be. Plus because my IP is originating in Japan, some webpages have been loading up in Japanese. Just small things I didn't think about. I'm told that work is actually walking distance, which rocks because when I applied they said it would take less than an hour of train and bus.

So I'm just getting ready to sleep, and unpack. It's been good times. More updates to come.

(almost) All Packed and Ready to Go

2007-09-11T10:43:00.001+09:00

Hi there everybody,

So I leave early tomorrow morning, September the 11th. I figure it's probably the safest day to fly seeing that security's going to be really tight.

I have gotten my visa, I have medical insurance, and plane tickets. The final price for the plane tickets was 900 dollars with a stop off in San Francisco. Unfortunately I won't have a day to goof off there, which would have rocked, but I'll just have to do the ~15 hour flight from San Francisco to Osaka right away.

I've met some of the people who are going on the same day, and it'll be interesting to see what we're going to be doing on a plane. I know my address yet, and contacted the two guys I will be living with. They seem nice, one guy's been in Osaka since April and answered all my questions, the other one arrive two weeks ago, so when I contacted him he had just arrived.

Once I arrive in Osaka, I will receive my 'hanko', which is my name etched into wood so that I can open up a bank account in Osaka. Then I have to register at City Hall so that I can do anything, including getting a cell phone, borrowing a library book or renting a movie. My friend Martin was nice enough to pass me his Japanese cell phone because they're only good in Japan. (Thanks Martin, it's definitely appreciated)

I'll have 5 days of discovering Japan before training, and I expect to get lost every which way. I'll let you all know what's going on once I get connection to the internet. I still have to finish packing (nine and a half hours before departure), but I've got most of my stuff together and ready to go.

I'll post again in Nippon.

My first blog entry

2007-07-12T01:13:00.000+09:00

Hey Everyone, I'm still working on this blog. It's a work in progress and will be good eventually. For now, just wait, and the formal beginning of this blog will be sometime in August, shortly before I leave.

For those of you who don't know, I'm leaving on August 28th and will be away for a year.

Edit: The date of departure has been pushed back to September 11th.