The Weather 2

Well, the latest from Nagoya is my trip to climb Mt. Fuji has been cancelled. Sad. The REASON for the cancellation is pretty funny: there are not one, but TWO typhoons heading for Japan. Yes, my mountain-climbing expedition has been called on account of hurricanes. I bet Sir Edmund Hillary never had this problem. =)

So instead of heading towards Tokyo, I'll be heading to the World Expo 2005 about 25 minutes away. The Expo has been the topic of many conversations with students all summer long; and I've been wanting to go, but haven't had a chance. So hopefully the rain will hold off for a bit tomorrow, so I can see all the latest in Japanese technology, and maybe even foreign pavilions as well!

Sweet, more pics on the way!

Peace,
thom

PS - Anyone know of a good photo hosting site? I'm hoping to be able to put up a bunch of photos, and as cool as Blogger is, it's not the best for large amounts of photos. But here's one anyway, just to tide you over. =)

The Weather

Hey all,

Well, I think I'm going to sleep well tonight: according to the thermometer on my alarm clock (yes, that IS weird) it's finally below 80 degrees F. For about the first time in over a month. And even before 2am! It's been a long hot spell: over 30C/88F every day for the past 25 days! But it looks like that is going to end soon. Probably because we have two typhoons (i.e. hurricanes) on the way.

And because of these impending typhoons, my trip to climb Mt. Fuji on Tuesday is almost certainly cancelled. I'm pretty bummed about this; I was to go with some good mates, and the "climbing season" for Fuji is only July and August. So unless I stay beyond the end of my one-year contract, it doesn't look like I'm going to able to climb Mt. Fuji. Boo.

The rain has started already: I left my window open Friday night in order to get the nice cool breeze in my room, and woke up Saturday morning to rain blowing through the window onto my face. Oh, what a wake-up. And on a Saturday too. Brilliant.

Hope your weekend was a blast; I'll update again soon.

Gifu Rock City

Spent another good day off, considering the fact I got up three hours after I originally intended to. “What’s the first thing you did this morning?” asks the internet survey, Well I turned off my alarm, magnanimously gave myself another 15 minutes, and went back to sleep.

When I finally got up at 10, I threw in a load of laundry, made some peanut butter toast, forgot to call Kasey AGAIN, and grabbed my Lonely Planet to decide whether today would be Gifu or the beach. Gifu won, mostly because it has trees, and I’ve been meaning to go there since I got here. So I packed up my backpack with the Lonely Planet, a bottle of ice, my CD player, and Don Delillo’s “Underworld” to read. By 1:30pm I was on the train to Gifu.

I arrived around 2pm, got some maps from Visitor Information, went to Mr. Donuts to plan my trip and an iced coffee, walked out of the train station, and immediately walked 20 minutes in the wrong direction. Usually my sense of direction is impeccable, but apparently I failed to notice that the sun was on my right, which is not a good thing when you want to head northeast. I noticed my mistake when I realized that the mountain with the castle on top was behind me; and started back the way I came. But that little snafu gave me a chance to get in the wandering mood, and to finally get the sun in the right position.

Gifu is a wonderful city, about the size of Syracuse (population-wise), and very peaceful and friendly. By which I mean the locals don’t just stare at you, they say konnichi wa too. It’s famous for paper lanterns, sweets (candy), and cormorant fishing. Oh, and a castle that sits on top of a mountain that once guarded the area during the unification period, too.

So I walked towards Mount Kinka and the Castle, partially because I really wanted to see the city and partially because I still can’t read Japanese well enough to figure out whether or not there was a bus I could take to get there. But that ended up being okay: I got to see some really cool shops, get some great shots of the mountains, a beautiful set of shrines set back in a canyon, and Japan’s largest lacquered Buddha statue. I wandered more than walked the approximately 3 kilometers to Gifu Park, where the cable car to the top of Mt. Kinka starts, often stops made the trip take around 3 hours.

I chilled out in Gifu Park for a while, taking pictures, soaking in the tranquility of some beautifully cultured gardens and ponds, and soaking out more sweat than one person could possibly produce in a summer (Japan is such an amazing country, but for goodness sake, how can people live here?!?). But it was so nice to be able to sit in an actually green park, and just revel in natural beauty and peace. The sky started looking pretty grey after a while, so I went off to find the cable car to the top.

My round-trip pass on the “Ropeway” set me back 1050 yen (about $10), but I figured it would be worth not having to walk all the way up the mountain and then back down again an hour later. While I waited for the next car, the rain decided to stop holding off. And holding back, apparently: it poured to rival the flood for about fifteen minutes, thundered both on the roof and in the sky, and made me wonder if, by chance, anyone there knew a good way to get back to the station without getting washed away. But we still took the cable car up the mountain on schedule, through the rain, mist, wind, and air. While it only took about 3 minutes to get to the top, we ascended at better than a 45 degree angle, so it was quite a hike. And it was pouring and blowing, so an exciting hike. After getting to the top, I was treated to a complimentary umbrella to use while walking…on the top of the mountain in a thunderstorm; but it’s the thought that counts, right? The top of the mountain was amazing; the path literally followed the ridge between peaks, with steep drops on both sides – the military advantages of this place were definitely clear. You’d have to fight your way up a steep slope, through thick forest, to get to the castle and your foes. But right then I had two foes of my own, the rain and gravity, which really wanted me to fall flat on my face or fall face-first of the mountain. I managed to avoid both. I got to the actual Castle relatively dry and still in one piece, and paid the additional 200 yen ($2) to get inside. Since the original castle has been destroyed several times in “it’s” 800-year history, the inside isn’t quite the “medieval castle” that you’d expect; it’s actually a museum, with different artifacts from the various ages through which is stood. There’s also an observation deck around the top level, good for shooting arrows at advancing enemies or for watching the sky over Gifu get darker and rain clouds swoop in below you. I got some good shots of Gifu and the surrounding areas/mountains, but the few shots of the cable cars going up and down didn’t manage to turn out. The fact that I was being buffeted by wind at the time of taking may have something to do with it.

I stuck around on top of the castle long enough to attempt to take those photos, and then decided to head back towards to city and home. I got to the cable car “dock” (for lack of a better term) just in time to see the “attendant” (again, for lack of a better term) put up a sign outside the “stall” (you get it). I tried to ask, with a mixture of Japanese, English, and sign language, when the next car would be descending. He replied – in perfect Japanese – what I think was “There aren’t any more cars going down. There’s a thunder storm coming, and it’s being shut down.” Which was a wise move on their part, except for one thing: I’m still on TOP of the mountain. He is too. What’s the plan here? So I asked, in my multi-lingual format, if there is some sort of path down the mountain; to which he replied (I think), “Yes, follow that path there.” So I did.

Problem number two: it was now 6:30, the sun was setting, and it’s darkly cloudy. I was going to have to walk down I-don’t-know-how-far for I-don’t-know-how-long to get to I-don’t-know-where. Cool. More adventure. That could kill me. So I started down the path as quickly and safely as possible, thankful that at least I didn’t have to walk up the path. Eventually I got to a sign that indicated that, not only was I on the right path, but that I was about half-way down. So, armed with this promising bit of information, I continued heading down the mountain, still hoping to get to some sort of civilization before I had to resort to using my half-dead flashlight which is still stuck in my backpack – product of a moment of unknowing forethought. [Note to self: pick up AAA batteries on the way home from work tomorrow.]

I managed to make it all the way back down the mountain without becoming another victim, and also managed to find my way back to the street I’d come in on. I decided that I’d let bygones be bygones and not go back and ask for a 500Y refund on the unused half of my ticket, and instead just head back towards the station. The walk was quicker on the way back; partially because I actually knew where I was going, and partially because it was going to rain any second and I really didn’t want to get any wetter than I already was.

It did start raining on the way back, but only gently at first; holding out the heavier stuff until I was actually in the city and there were canopies to walk under. I got back to the station, bought some green tea and a ticket, and sat on the platform waiting for my train to come. While sitting there, getting my CD player out of my backpack, I discovered that the bottle of ice/water had melted quite a bit, and had sweated down into the bottom on the bag – and into my new copy of “Underworld”. Double dog damn. But I resorted everything out before the train arrived, and it’s doing quite well now, despite some pretty vicious war-wounds on the top, near the end of the book. Oh well.

So I got back to Nagoya, hardly had to wait for a subway at all, got home, turned down a party invitation from a friend, took a shower, made some dinner, and just about collapsed. I’m shattered. I’m going to bed. The good news is, it’s cooler tonight than it’s been in about forever; which is still…82 degrees F. Go figure; it’s all relative here. =)

G’night all,
Thom

PS - Pictures forthcoming - still need to download 'em!

PPS - Oh yeah, and I had TOEIC/TOEFL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) training yesterday. Training was a joke; I didn't get it, and I wouldn't repeat it even if I had.

Earthquake

Hey all,

My mother informed me that "now would be a good time for a 'I'm-okay-the-earthquake-in-Sendai-was-well-north-of-me' post", so here it is: The earthquake today, which measured over 6 on the Richter scale, was centered off the coast near Sendai, and I've suffered no ill effects. There was also, as far as I know, no tsunamis reported after the quake. Sendai is located north of Tokyo, which is, in turn, located north of Nagoya; for some idea of distance, it takes about an hour and a half to get to Tokyo by Shinkansen, i.e. bullet train. And Sendai is north of there.

One of my roommates reported feeling a minor tremble this morning around the time of the quake, but personally I think he's just full of it, and was joking around.

Sendai, as some of you know, was actually the city that I was originally thinking of going to, and was my second choice on my application for Nova. Fortunately, the need for Nova teachers in Nagoya was much greater (and still is), so I was placed here. Though I WOULD like to go visit Sendai at some point, maybe in the "off season"... =)

All of the teachers I've talked to, who have been here longer than 8 months have been through some level of earthquake; the vast majority have been "Oh, so that's my Japanese earthquake. Cool" experiences. No big deal; life goes on. Though my students tell me that Nagoya is overdue for a little seismic shakin'...

On another note, I might go surfing next week! G'night!

-thom

The coolest thing about Japan...

…is definitely not the cicadas.

For a city with so little green space, Nagoya sure has a lot of animal life. And by “animal life,” I mean “cicadas.” It seems that every day, when I wake up, I wake up to the cheerful chirp of about a gazillion of these buggers.

Cicadas, for those less entomologically-inclined, are large, green insects that look like someone forgot to tell to follow the dinosaurs into extinction. Sometimes you can find their empty carapaces clinging to tree trunks or park benches or very slow dogs like some troupe of clawed amber alien émigrés who have all decided to give up the ghost together. Sometimes you can see the adult stage buzzing through the air like some discombobulated prehistoric bomber; a two-inch reptilian-looking bumblebee.

An interesting thing to note is – as I learned after much research during my formative years (read, “I was a dork”) – the cicada population peaks every seven years. Apparently it takes cicadas thirteen to seventeen years to mature from egg to adult, at which point they return to the sky in search of some insectoid lovin’, then lay their eggs, and die. And apparently I picked the summer when Japanese cicadas, commemorating an exceptionally “productive” year some thousands of generations back, give the local population an all-out audio barrage.

Now, usually a cicada buzzing harkens me back to my childhood, with images of running through fields and lazy summer afternoons with Kool-Aid and backyard swimming pools. Not these cicadas. These cicadas buzz like a fleet of delivery trucks with cold engines make on a Minneapolis morning in mid-December when the temperature is hovering around “sub-arctic”.

Which is disturbing enough without the fact that I don’t get the feel of Minneapolis-morning-in-mid-December cool air to accompany the squeal. What I do get with the roaring cold-engine squeal is about 75 tons of hot, stale, humid air – the maximum amount that my bedroom can contain without exploding – pressing down on me and making me sweat more sweat than my body can possibly hold. Oh yeah, and it’s now 5:30am, the sun is shining directly into my eyes through the curtains, and temperature is pushing 90. I wake up more tired than I was the night before. And glued to my pillow with drool. Yum.

I know I should stop being so whiny; after all, I’m living in a foreign country, surrounded by new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, adventures. I’m meeting all sorts of new people from all walks of life and most of the English-speaking nations in the world. I’ve grabbed onto an opportunity that few get the chance to take.

But please, please, for the love of all things good, understand: I’ve had six hours of sleep in the past two and a half days, and I just want these things to die. In a good way. Maybe I'll go start a fight club...

I’m done now.
kthanxbye.