Blogging: The epitomy of ego

Who are blogs for anyways. Answer me that.
Anyways, I write this for you. You who is reading this. But anyways, I write this mainly for my friends at home, whom I think want to hear updates on what Im doing in this country. But maybe they don:t want to hear. In which case, why do I bother? Why do I bother other than the fact that I have no classes for 2 week blocks around test time and am stuck at a desk with Japanese study books and a computer. well, thats your answer. Or maybe its my answer. Maybe I write this for me so that I can convince myself that my time in Japan is actually happening and I can validate it by uploading data. Who am I other than the data that surrounds me? Maybe thats why I'm here, to give myself more data.
I wrote a letter to Abby today and thought I would post part of it here for well...in honesty, simply because I think its interesting and this is a blog and thats what you do on blogs. you fill in the gaps.
"Its mountain vegetable collecting time in Japan. It is sad because none of the younger generations seem to go out an collect mountain vegetables like their parents. I can see this slow paradigm shift just by looking at a cross section of generations. I wonder when the day will come that no-one knows which mountain vegetables to pick anymore. After reading "Omnivore's Dilemna" (and before reading it too) I feel this dissattachment from the food we eat is increasingly imminent in Japan where packaged food is ridiculously widespread and few people have time to cook meals for themselves let alone gather it. (exempt from this are the Obachans and housewifes and farmers who are the ones still gathering the mountain veggies.) Japan is becoming, and I hate to say this cliche of westernization, so I wont, I will simply say, it is becoming a faster society. A society of convinience. I hate to generalize and to make broad statements based on a few scattered examples I have seen in my limited world of Nagai, Japan, so if you are reading, take this at face value. Back to the generational cross-section. Of all the Japanese people I know, the ones I know the least about on the inside are the students. Sometimes I get the occasional personal divulgence from them, but I always feel like something is hidden. There is something that I cant quite seem to get. Perhaps it is because I am an outsider to their culture. Its hard to really know what goes on in the Japanese student's mind. It seems very similar to the American student's mind yet there is this certain element of innocence and naivete attached to it that is lacking in the American students' mind. There also appears to be an incredible sense of conformity to social norms and groupthink. I went to the table tennis match on saturday and when our team lost, many of the girls were crying. One girl was crying especially hard because her game was very close and she felt as though she had lost it for the whole team. She is actually one of my favorite table tennis friends (although not the best student) she always talks to me at practice. I gave them all hugs and comforted them but there wasn:t much I could say or do other than that. It was at that time that I really felt more like a teacher than a friend. I had not played with them, I didn:t share their pain in loosing. There are so many moments at this job where I feel like one of the students. It was curious to have a teacherly moment that all Japanese teachers experience daily in their roles as teachers/caregivers/parents to these students. These students that they see almost more than the actual parents see the students.
So Ive kind of deviated from the original letter I wrote to Abby and have gone off on multiple tangents. But I:m just going to end this on a tangent of the tangents. In conclusion: American and Japanese students should pick more mountain vegetables.

miyagi camping trip

abbriviated version of our camping trip in Miyagi ken. Pictures to come.
Started off with a samurai battle reenactment by the banks of the river. It was a lot of waiting around for a little bit of action. Some foreigners got to be Samurai too. Their glorifiying moment was crossing the river in full armor to go to battle the opposing samurai. But now that I know how much waiting around in the blazing sun that that requires, I don't think I will be doing it next year. I did however manage to cross the big river 3 times later that day in my underwear.
Near our camping spot there was a beautiful river with crystal clear waters, chock full of swimming holes and waterfalls, a million times nicer than the Patuxent. but it gave me good memories of home. When we were hiking it was raining a little and the water was so cold that we couldn't swim in it really. I hope to go back there and hang out in the clear river someday soon! Our second night of camping we were happily drinking beers and plum wine and sake, singing along to Jeff and his guitar. Then Jeff plays this demonic death song on his guitar that comes out of nowhere. (It was pretty funny for a death song). After that we go to sing yellow submarine. Despite the massive winds that are going on and the rain around us, we are under a covered area with tables and a cooking fire so things are manageable. Then the wind tarp blows off posts of the covered area and we see our behemoth tent blown over on its side. It was as if Jeff summoned the wrath of the gods with his death song. Craziness ensued for the next hour. Everyone sobered up quickly. And the random jeep that conintually passed our campsite with its headlights didn't reeapear for the next hour. We were like ants in an army trying to dissasemble and reassemble tents. protect everything from the crazy wind. We moved our tents to a grassy area below the toilets. safe at last. 1:30am. Then the weird guy with the jeep starts shining his lights at us. What the hell. How creepy. Jeff and I go over to investigate. The sky is dark with brilliantly lit stars and gray clouds. There is no rain but the wind is still wrapping itself around everything in its path. We approach the jeep. "sumimasen" we call out. But the man in the jeep doesn't answer. It is very weird and odd. I got one of those uncomfortable, this-could-be-dangerous feelings which I rarely ever get in this country. We stand there for 4 minutes calling out to him and shining our light towards his truck and on ourselves. No answer. He drunkinly stumbles out. "mutter mutter mutter, I like my car, mutter mutter mutter" what?! He apparantly lives in the house but decided to hang out in the car parked in the driveway and watch some gaijin entertainment for the night. He was confused. I couldn't sleep for most of the night with the winds howling and creepy drunk man on the prowl. but when I finally did fall asleep, I woke up early the next morning anyways. I saw our drunken friend and he said he had been drinking since 4 am that morning. Which would have meant that he had gone to bed for 2 hours, then woke up at 4 and started drinking again. What?! Anyways, the next day was glorious and beautiful. The wind had pushed away every cloud in sight. We had a nice involved slow food brunch of eggs, fruits, hot coco, tea, yogurt, granola, coffee, juice, ancient salad, onions and tomatos, and fired toasted bread. Delicious and perfect. Later that day we played some fun American touch football. It was weird to play football after being so used to rugby. All the Brittish people were still in rugby mode too. Dorie, was the star of the game. For her first time playing, she scored 2 goals and did really well!

Sakura!

I just went to the wierdest Yoga class of my life!!!! The teacher warned me that this would be different then Yoga I was used to. Then she told me it was Hatha yoga so I thought "oh, ok, I can do that, I did Hatha yoga back home". However, whatever we did was not Hatha yoga. You know how Japan just takes everything and Japanizes it (for example: Katakana, Christmas, Spaghetti, Pizza, Hip hop, bread, Valentines day)well, this was definately Japanized Yoga. The teacher yelled through the entire one minute of savasana. Savasana was done during the middle of the class rather than at the end And at the end we had partners that we gave some very strange somewhat uncomfortable massages too. The teacher choose me to be her partner since I was new and pretty soon she was jumping on the backs of my thighs. Then there was confusion and I ended up pathetically trying to follow her instructions to give a tiny japanese man a massage. He was trying to tell me what to do but his face was down and he was speaking Japanese so I didn't understand anything. Anyways. That was my day. Oh yea, and at work I was left in the teachers room all alone so I hopped out the window onto the balcony and I got caught by the gardener. He asked me why I didn't use the door and I told him to keep it a secret. I love being strange!

Here are some pictures of human chess and stuff