camels and bics

some thoughts and facts on being a non-smoker....

• my teeth are actually whiter! (even john said so)
• i don't get out of breath after work when i climb 4 flights of stairs out of the subway tunnel and ride my bike home
• i want to go swimming, walking, or jogging often!
• food tastes good, drinks taste good, flowers smell fantastic, john smells bad (hee hee, just kidding)
• i smell nice (most of the time)
• i don't think about smoking every day, less every week
• i don't claw my purse for cigarettes after work or movies or non-smoking friends' houses

although i haven't written in quite some time, there is no need to worry. japan is as strange as ever.

just a few days ago while browsing through a fashion magazine on my lunch break, i saw a six page spread (yes, that's 12 pages) on sub-bags.
in case you don't know (i certainly didn't) a sub-bag is a second purse that a woman might carry for several reasons. first of all, she's paid a lot of money for her louis vuitton, coach, tod's, pinky and diane or gucci bag and the thought of not carrying it makes her sad. secondly, her designer purse is most likely too small to carry everything a girl needs for a day of shopping. lastly, she wasn't sure that the brand she chose was the right choice.
a sub bag solves all these problems. she has twice the carrying capacity, she can always carry her first choice, and she can buy a second, third or fourth purse if she wants and then she never will have bought the wrong brand!
this is no joke. according to the article the sub-bag should not be as expensive as your primary bag. it should also be carried farther away from your body (e.g. primary on your shoulder, sub-bag in your hand). it should also be fairly plain compared to the primary bag(kind of, i mean, we are talking about japan here).
i guess i'll have to go shopping again. damn, it's hard to live here.

one of the country's three big cell phone providers, docomo, has just released a new phone for women.
it comes in colors like powder pink, lavendar, baby blue, and such, with decals of rhinestones and disney characters. The phone comes with a convenient 'camouflage' tone. a lady can set her push-button-activated 'camouflage' setting to sound like a regular ring and use it to conveniently excuse herself from unwanted or uncomfortable situations.
the best part is that she can enter data from her menstrual cycle and the phone will predict her future cycles. she can even program it to notify her during her most fertile times of the month. speculation is that this convenience was inspired by the increasing age of first time mothers, falling birth rates and fears of a shrinking japanese population.

nagasaki

as a birthday surprise, johnny boy took me to nagasaki last 'weekend' with our friends gareth and aiko. we left thursday morning and came home friday night. it is an incredibly beautiful city situated in a fjord that runs north to south. the harbor is at the southern end of the city where the river widens to meet the sea.


unfortunately, thursday was one of the coldest, wettest and windiest days we have had so far this rainy season. in the japanese tradition, we were dedicated tourists and didn't stray from our sightseeing plan. we bought new umbrellas and set out. approximately every 90 minutes, we visited the nearest kissaten (cafe) to drink hot coffee or tea and dry out.


we spent most of thursday in the southern part of the city near the harbor. we visited what is now called glover park. historically it was the foreigners' settlement, but also included some government and financial institutions as well. nagasaki was one of the first japanese ports to open to foreigners as far back as the 1500's. it was home to portugese, dutch, chinese and other nationalities of travelers and merchants. becuase of the strong economy founded in trade, the foreigners' settlement also attracted japanese aristocrats and politicians.

glover was a scottish merchant who arrived in the 1800's, married a japanese woman, and who became exceptionally successful. they rebuilt parts of and perfected the foreigner's settlement. they landscaped beautiful gardens covering the mountainside and surrounding the homes and guesthouses. the architecture is beautiful, combining western floorplans and building facades with the elaborate tiled roofs and eaves of japan. from almost any porch, patio or veranda in glover park, one can look out over the harbor below and to the right, north to the southern end of the city.

fortunately glover park is situated far enough south and lengthwise to the northern center that it received minimal damage from the atomic bomb dropped in 1945.

we spent friday - which graced us with beautiful weather - visiting the sites and memorials of the atomic bomb at the city's center in the northern end of the fjord. although it was not the most cheery of birthday activities, i think that everyone should see these things for themselves. there aren't words to describe it, and i won't do it injustice by pecking at my keyboard. i will say that i felt ashamed to be american. i will also say that it was pretty incredible seeing classes of school children playing in the park at the bomb's hypocenter under blue skies waiting to enter the museum on class trips.

after the hypocenter park and the museum, we bought bentos (lunch boxes) and walked up to peace park and ate in the shade. this park contains sculptures embodying world peace donated from countries around the world. it too sits high on a mountainside and provides a commanding view of the city - this part completely rebuilt since august of 1945.

c45: Jobs and Duties

five days a week our lives here are separated into eight sessions of imaginative role play. the idea of teaching English through conversation and need based language is very effective if students are willing to do their homework and study grammar at home. need based language, or survival language puts a priority on daily tasks and politeness rather than continuous present tense versus simple present, for example. we don't focus on why students should say, "Could you please help me?" rather than "You help me?" it is not part of the company's curriculum to explain the technicalities of modal verbs to low level students, just to teach them as pattern sentences -- just as we teach our children.

that said, there are seven levels of skill in the company's program. students in the first level may not even know how to read English and they usually have little or no knowledge of English vocabulary. students in the highest levels can communicate in everyday conversation with some confidence and have little trouble understanding native speakers in most situations. each level of text consists of 50 situational topics. these often include ordering in a restaurant, traveling needs, requesting home repairs, inviting someone out, and asking about weekends. so 5 days a week, 8 lessons a day, 7 levels of text, 50 lessons per level, about 5o weeks of teaching to date. you do the numbers. that means that if we were able to do a different lesson for each consecutive class we would be repeating lessons about every eight weeks. after 50 weeks of teaching we would have done every lesson almost six times by now.

not bad. however, as you can imagine, things are not so evenly distributed. most students are midlevel students placed in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th levels. studying English here is a hobby and like most hobbies, interest wanes. new students buy set packages of lessons for set prices. they are enthusiastic and attend class regularly. they usually advance one or two levels and then hit a learning rut, their package expires and they don't renew. so we start again with new students. so you can guess how repetitive teaching the mid-level lessons is for us. anyway, as i began, five days a week our lives are divided into 8 lessons of role play in simple English.

this has affected us deeply. for most situations in our free time we are now able to categorize the language used into a nova lesson. i try to ignore it, but it's difficult. when my sister amanda called before her visit this past winter, she asked what the weather was like and what clothes she should bring (c26:Asking About the Weather). when we have dinner with gareth and aiko we sometimes talk about the differences of living in Japan, England and America (f36:Cultural Differences). i talk to friends and family about living here on the phone and through email (d01:Living Abroad).

see? so following is a text-conversation john and i had with our mobile phones yesterday. john had to go to a music studio after work to book time to record some friends. . .
john: .....not excited about finding the studio in the rain.
natalie: don't worry, i'm sure you'll find it easily. even if you do get lost, you'll get to see some new places. (e24:Talking About Worries)
john: i guess i can always try getting basic directions. (c17:Basic Directions)
natalie: what are you doing after that? do you want to go out for dinner? (c38: Invitations)
john: actually, i think i have other plans. (d14:Making and Canceling Plans)
natalie: but i wanted to try something new tonight. (c13:Suggesting Food)
john: ahh, regrets . . . (e42:Talking About Regrets)
natalie: huh? what do you regret? how are you feeling? (f41:Talking About Feelings)
john: i wish i hadn't agreed to find the studio. i would be able to eat dinner earlier. (e42: Talking About Regrets)
john: on a serious note, i want to buy a fan this weekend. (b39:Buying Electronic Items)
natalie: cool, i want to look for an i-pod. then i want to get some new pillows and house plants. (b39:Buying Electronic Items and c05:Home Furnishings)

there you have it. the manifestation of teaching english as a second language . . .

an upcoming event

as next month will be my last 20-something birthday, i am making a birthday wish list. i figure this will be my last chance to make one and not seem a complete brat. you may disagree, but i'm doing it anyway. here goes. . .

• a good english dictionary (i need this more than you can imagine these days)
• a detroit tigers ball cap or small t-shirt (preferably dark blue with just the orange logo),or a simple michigan t-shirt
• pictures (of you, dear friends and family, and your houses and streets and pets and gardens and american lives)

that's it. sorry if it's annoying. if i should get them, i promise to share the dictionary and pictures with johnny.

yufuin

the weather is so nice in spring here. it's been cooler and rainier than last year, but the sun is as bright as ever.
we had a lovely day last weekend in yufuin with gareth and aiko. we got to meet aiko's parents and her younger sister. we took a bus to the small mountain town of yufuin and met her family there as they only live an hour away and drove there themselves.

yufuin is famous for its hot springs, or onsen. it's quite small and dominated by the peak of yufudake which looms over the town. there are loads of cute little shops, bakeries, restaurants and japanese style inns, ryokan. we walked around the town and shops and ate the locally famous 'puffy' flavoured cake in a small park. there we watched senior citizens play a heated game of j-syle croquet. nice. afterwards, we had lunch at a tempura restaurant which was absolutely delicious. throwing caution to the wind (bird flu that is) we had toriten, or tempura chicken for lunch.

afterwards, we were tired from walking and full from lunch so we headed to a ryokan that sits above the town up the side of yufudake. instead of the 16,000yen we could have paid to stay there, we each paid 600yen for a bath in the onsens. the group onsens are divided for men and women. so john went off with gareth and aiko's dad and us ladies headed to the girls' bath.

i haven't really described an onsen yet (i think) so i will try to do it justice. . .

the first room of an onsen is like a luxurious locker room. it is usually furnished with long counters of sinks, mirrors, and vanity seats. the opposing wall has a series of shelves with wicker baskets for storage. most onsens provide the guests with hairdryers, lotions, oils and creams for after the bath. the next room is a series of showers with detachable heads located at about shoulder height. there is a small wooden stool to sit on at each shower head and a shallow wooden bucket to pour water over yourself. there are shampoos, conditioners and body washes provided at each seat. it is important to clean yourself and your hair thoroughly before entering the bath as it is a shared bath.

the next room is the bath itself. i say 'room' but that is not accurate. although there is a partial ceiling over one side of the bath the greater part is open and surrounded only by a fence. the bath is usually about the size of a small pond and most often designed in an irregular shape to emulate nature. it is surrounded by typical japanese gardenening with neatly groomed shrubs, plants, flowers and rocks.

the bath is shallow, the water is only about thigh deep. the bath is lined with large rocks at different heights so you can sit in varying depths or out of the water all together. the onsen water is tapped from the depths of japan's old volcanic mountains and constantly flows into the bath. it spills over the sides to drain to maintain fresh water and an even depth.

the water is hot, really hot. it is infused naturally with various minerals. each town boasts its unique mix of minerals as especially healing for stress, beautiful skin, respiratory wellness, etc. the best way to take a bath is to spend about 30 minutes climbing in and out of the water. after the first five minutes you're body temperature rises and you can climb out onto the rocks and enjoy the fresh air. this is especially nice in the winter with snow falling.

the onsen we enjoyed in yufuin held a commanding view of yufudake. there were trees of all kinds ascending the mountain in various stages of bloom and new spring growth. it was a perfect spring day with clear skies and a constant cool breeze. perfect.

taking a bath with complete strangers may seem strange and in fact the first time one feels quite self concious strolling around nude. aiko said it well when she said, "you must think this custom is strange: 'nice to meet you. let's take a bath together.'" when you look at it that way it is a bit strange, i suppose. it's especially strange when you can't soften the awkwardness with small talk because you are trying to speak in a second language. hah.

hanami

well, it's almost been a year since we left home. the 14th of this month will mark our anniversary of moving to japan. wow. time goes so quickly. it's hard to believe that we have really been here this long.
john's sister suni and her boyfriend todd stayed with us for two weeks and just left on thursday the 6th. it was a wonderful visit. we took a short trip to busan, korea together as well as a day trip to nakagawa onsen. we spent most of our time visiting and wandering around our fair city.

the cherry blossoms are in full bloom now and they truly are beautiful. we haven't attended any sakura hanami (cherry blossom viewings), but have en joyed the blooms on our own terms. the hanami parties are surprisingly digusting. loads of people set out for the parks at night with giant blue tarps for picnic blankets. they set up generators to light up the trees like crime scenes and bring out charcoal grills and huge coolers. some even bring karaoke machines. the noise itself is so overbearing you can't relax. the salary men attend after work so they are still in their suits. they get so drunk that most of them skirt the edges of the picnics stumbling in dangerous zigzagged paths. like loaded guns waved by drunken men they puke without warning in whatever direction they might be facing. you can't walk by and look up at the blossoms unless you don't mind stepping in vomit.

it's a far cry from the tourist books featuring beautiful young couples in kimonos eating sashimi and sipping sake. so as i said, we've been enjoying the blossoms on our own terms - walks in the parks in the afternoons.