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Living Out Of A Suitcase
Miscellaneous
Christmas Dinner
Dec 26th, 2009
Instead of doing the KFC thing (a strange Japanese Christmas traditional meal), or buying a pre-cooked glazed leg from the supermarket, I went on the hunt for a whole bird yesterday. I searched a couple places and finally found some 3-4 pound birds for sale under Sendai Station.
Get Fit Or Die Trying, Part 2
Dec 9th, 2009
As anyone that is on my Facebook can see, I’ve been running a lot lately. There’s a great park just minutes from our place so I don’t have to deal with traffic and exhaust and all that other crap. Anyways, here’s the playlist I run to. I don’t even know when I made it, but it’s been sitting on the iPod for a while. I gotta update it though… any suggestions?
What’s been happening…
Oct 8th, 2009
Hi everyone, been a long time since I’ve posted anything, eh?
Since we moved to Sendai in April, Kyoko and I have done a lot, yet we haven’t really been anywhere. When I lived in Furukawa we were trying to get the heck out of there almost every weekend so I had many opportunities to explore. Right now I’m still exploring Sendai, which is an amazing city to live in!
I just picked up a used Nikon D40 DSLR camera, so I should have some pictures of this city, and my place in it, in the Autumn months ahead.
Until then, you can check out a different website project I started recently — trying to be a baseball writer. Since I live just a 10 minute walk from one of Japan’s professional baseball teams, I’ve gotten back into baseball in a huge way. Japanese baseball, anyways. By the end of the season we will have gone to well over 20 games! There are precious few websites covering Japanese baseball in English, so I thought I’d try my hand at some writing. The good thing is that there’s always something to write about. The bad thing is that it may get repetitive after 80 or 90 games. There’s no clear goal for this project. It’s a hobby and an exercise in writing. Who knows though, perhaps this will lead me down a different path in the future. Anyways, if you’d like a glimpse into the world of Nippon Pro Baseball, be my guest and check it out.
http://theeaglesblog.com
I hope everyone is doing well, and doing their best to enjoy life.
Andrew
Side Project
Jun 12th, 2009
Last month I started a “social networking experiment”. I’d been using Twitter for over a year now, but never really got into it until a few months ago. Personally, I think the key to enjoying Twitter is to find your niche, and follow people who share that common bond. I finally figured out mine: foreigners who live in Japan. I started following them, reading their great websites, and quickly realized that there is a great online community for English speakers living in Japan. Perhaps inspired by what they were doing, I came up with a way that I could get in the game and take an active part in the community as well.
The concept was based on the cassette/CD swaps of the 80’s and 90’s. I actually participated in a CD swap back in university, but by then I think it’s time had passed (thanks Napster!). Instead of mailing a CD to someone though, we would be mailing a bottle of sake to each other! Sake production can be very regional; most breweries do not widely distribute their wares throughout the country. Sake is also experiencing a decline in popularity, battling beer, whiskey, and shochu (a Korean liquor) at the bars and izakayas (Japanese-style restaurants). There is however, a growing movement to restore sake to its previous glory as it gains popularity overseas. We’re talking real, high-quality sake that’s meant to be drank chilled, not piping-hot like you’ll get at your Chinese-run sushi restaurant on Robson Street.
So I made a simple website and posted a couple messages on Twitter to see if anyone was interested in joining this experiment. Our first event is wrapping up as we speak; we had 6 people join from varying parts of Japan. I sent off 2 bottles of sake, one to Tokyo and one to Shizuoka. I received 2 bottles as well, one from Tokyo and one from Toyama. Pretty cool to say the least.
I just opened up registration for our second event, and upgraded the website to accommodate reviews, links, and so on. The word is slowly getting out despite minimal advertising. It’s a great way to try sake from different parts of the country that you would otherwise have no opportunity to sample. You don’t have to be a sake expert to join, in fact it’s a great way to learn about nihonshu (sake)!
Check out the site and see what has transpired so far. There are a couple reviews up already, and links to some great food and sake websites.
Kanpai!
Jailbreak ‘09
Apr 22nd, 2009
Been almost a month since the last post! What can I say, with moving to Sendai, starting work in a new office, and exploring and enjoying this great city there hasn’t been much time to sit down and crank out a decent post or two. Got a few lined up in the hopper though, including Japanese pro baseball games, a tour of the new apartment, and briefly singing for a Japanese hardcore thrash band the other night!
In the meantime, here’s a video that I took from my recently Jailbroken iPhone. Now I can do some live streaming video from my cellphone, which is pretty cool despite the poor quality of the video. Don’t worry about the time zone difference though, you can always check out the archives on the Qik website. More about the iPhone Jailbreak later too!
A Great Game
Mar 24th, 2009
By now everyone should know that Japan has won the 2nd World Baseball Classic, in a thrilling extra-inning game against South Korea. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet I was able to watch live on my laptop. I was lucky enough to have my first students of the day be baseball fans who had been following the tournament religiously, so we watched the game together, mixing in some important baseball terms with our regular lesson.
I had a couple of 3-year olds for my next lesson, who probably wouldn’t be able to understand the finer points and nuances of the double switch or the suicide squeeze, so into the classroom we went. Japan, who was leading in the 8th inning when I left, must’ve sensed that I wasn’t watching anymore so they let Korea tie up the game to take it into extra innings.
After the lesson the parents, kids, my co-workers and I all watched Ichiro win the game for the Samurai. He’d been playing like steaming dog poo the whole tournament but he redeemed himself today, going 4 for 6 with the game winning RBIs. Needless to say every conversation for the rest of the day centered around the ball game.
One person in particular who impressed me during the tournament was phenom pitcher Yu Darvish, not so much for his actions but his words. In an era where Japanese players are being lured to MLB by big dollars and fame and glory, this half-Iranian 22 year old has stated that he will never play in America. The reason? He wants the children who idolize him to know that Japan pro baseball is important, and worth playing (and staying) for. It’s also reported that he’s heavily into charity work, particularly helping children.
Before I knew any of this I thought of him as just another empty, vapid, Japanese celebrity. Not to generalize too much, but there’s a lot of substance lacking in modern Japanese culture today. The same can be said of any country, but I live in Japan so my experience here is only what I have to draw upon. An idol to boys and a sex symbol to women, you can add me as a new fan.
Korea played great throughout the tournament too, and they should be congratulated for their effort. They have the best names for players too, like Dong and Bong. It’s like Cheech & Chong. I’ll go watch “Dong and Bong go to Yakiniku” when it comes out next year.
I can’t wait to experience Japanese baseball this summer in Sendai. Today’s starting pitcher, Hisashi Iwakuma, is the star pitcher for the Rakuten Eagles. He had a scintillating record of 21-4 with a 1.74 ERA last season, winning the Pacific League MVP. We’re going to live within 2 minutes of the stadium, and I hope to catch at least 10 games this year.
Here’s a recap of the game, courtesy of The World Wide Leader, ESPN.
[Banner photo edited from NYTimes.com]
When Nature Calls
Feb 19th, 2009
At least it wasn’t a squatter toilet. I tried to negotiate one of those on a considerably bumpy train once, with almost disastrous results… This slideshow is from a relatively new local train, no better or worse than the ones you’ll find on most commercial airplanes.
A Day At The Hospital
Feb 18th, 2009
Took another day off work, this time to go to the hospital. I’d been sick since last week and had been avoiding going there. To me, especially in Japan, visiting the hospital is a last resort measure only.
The health care system is very different than in Canada. Local medical clinics and family doctors are the exception rather than the rule. To put it into perspective, think of this situation. You are sick. Headaches, chest pains, nausea, whatever. You go to the emergency room. There are already about 200 people there, waiting. Most of them are elderly. You have to wait 3 hours or so before you get your 5 minutes with a doctor. But you actually have two problems, head pain and chest pain, for example. So you gotta wait another hour or two to see another doctor about your other ailment. Then you gotta wait another 30 minutes or so to pay. After doing this a few times last year one can see why I was so reluctant to go again.
Maybe it’s just where I live, in this backwards podunk town. Hopefully the system works better in Sendai.
Can’t Stomach It
Feb 12th, 2009
Who wants to ride the sushi train? I'll take the next one...
Picked up a mild case of food poisoning this weekend. I’m almost positive it wasn’t from the Oyster Festival, as Kyoko and I shared all the food we bought. It might have been from the take-out sushi we ordered on Monday. She and I have pretty different tastes when it comes to sushi. Kyoko likes hotate (scallop), negitoro (fatty tuna belly), and uni (sea urchin), while I gravitate towards shime sabe (pickled mackeral), ebi-ten maki (shrimp tempura rolls), and salmon. I thin
k it was the mackeral that did it. Luckily there was no vomiting, but I had to take Tuesday off work (today, Wednesday, is a national holiday), and I think I’ve spent more time sitting on the toilet these past few days than I’ve spent all year. Still not eating much, but I’m drinking lots of water, Pocari Sweat, and Aquarius, and the grumblings in my tummy have subsided.
Hopefully I can keep my strength up today at work, because tomorrow I’m off to Tokyo for 4 days to party with Eric Olson, of all people!
Coke = The Decline of Japanese Civilization?
Feb 11th, 2009
After getting back from the Oyster Festival last Sunday, we stopped by the supermarket in the train station to pick up some food for dinner. While strolling the aisles, I stumbled upon something that I had never seen before in Japan: a 2-litre bottle of pop!
Until now I’d only seen 1.5L bottles of pop. It remains to be seen if the 2L bottles are here to stay, or if they’re just another “flavour of the week” commodity.
If they are here to stay though, it may be a reflection of the “fattening” of Japan. Fattening, you say? Of course, if you live here you can easily argue that almost everyone is healthy skinny or at least average by western standards. However, I think that as Western culture continues to invade and displace almost all traditional Japanese values (home, family, employment, entertainment, etc.), and as daily life continues to spiral out of control (longer working hours, smaller wages, tinier apartments) this Japanese “life of convenience” may irreversibly change the Japanese condition. This country has some serious challenges it must face over the next 40-50 years, and it ain’t just about a bottle of Coke.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope it’s just the food poisoning talking.
***
Some website housekeeping. Added a slideshow listing down the right side of the site, and fixed each slideshow page’s width. Added a calendar widget to the bottom of the page.
I’ve also ran across a few interesting blogs from a couple people living in and around Sendai. They both do some things on their sites that I’ve always been meaning to do; nothing crazy, but just document the little things that make Japan so different than home. Reading their sites over the past week or so has inspired me to start showing my friends around the world just what I see on a daily basis living in Japan. Check them out when you have some free time.
Sixmats.com
InSendai.wordpress.com
SendaiPhotoBlog.blogspot.com
Another Reason Why NOVA Went Bankrupt
Feb 2nd, 2009
They didn’t have great television commercials like this! (Ah who am I kidding, they were gonna go down no matter what.)
I was doing some spring cleaning this evening, and came across the series of internal memos lies that were sent to all the branches by Monkeybridge and his lapdog Kozai. Brought back some fine memories to be certain. Perhaps the most redeeming facet to working there was that all of us were treated as equals, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or colour. All of us were equally worthless in management’s eyes!
If I get around to it I’ll scan the memos, for old times’ sake…