Of Rice and Zen I'm going to Japan tomorrow... shit the bed Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 6315

Articles from Of Rice and Zen

Day 603: Nova President goes missing. Abe resigns. 2007-09-12 01:19:00 You need a train ride outta here. You finish a podcast about the fact the Nova President has gone missing. You sit and reflect for a moment on the fact that the Japan adventure could be all over any day now. The job, the podcast, the lifestyle, the friends, the company are all set to become a beautiful memory. You glance at the TV and see that the Prime Minister has just resigned.You feel like the Japan you know is crumbling rapidly before your eyes. You look for something to hold on to. A coffee and a cigarette will do for now. You click the upload button and hope someone else out there is feeling it too. You need a yellow brick road.Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, Japan, Japanese, Japanese summer, JET, job, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, Abe resigns, Nova President Missing, nihon, Nova, photoblog, photographs, photos, pikki, podcast, teach english, teach in japa ... President

Day 602: Nova's future in question 2007-09-11 09:35:00 The Nova news is stacking up so fast that it needs the urgency of a podcast to catch the world up fast enough. Unfortunately, you're currently stranded in the purgatory that is Omihachiman and your microphone is pining for it's owner in Kyoto. You plan to go and be reunited with it shortly, but for now you have to content yourself with old-fashioned blog-inating. Today's batch of rumours mascarading as news is fascinating and about as reassuring as a sperm bank *slash* tartare-sauce producing plant during a national tartare shortage.It seems to be semi-confirmed from several semi-reputable sources that Nova's President Monkeybridge is missing in action. And all the boys will tell you that two semis is sometimes more important than one solid. According to the ESL newsletter no-one has been able to contact Mr Sa(ru)hashi since the 26th of August. The plot thickens.As do the students, under Nova's new lesson plan. Nova requested a Block Trainer (regional bigwig) to join a stri ...

Day 602: Save tonight 2007-09-10 20:23:00 An ex-student called Shigenori, aka Shigs aka Shiggy aka Shiga-shiga-shiga-shiga-shiga-Shiganoooori aka The Tweaker, has become a great friend to you and your gang. He's twitchy and edgy like he's tweaking on coffee all the time. He's tall and built like a westerner but his movements are nervous like a stalked squirrel. He has a floppy fringe that waves around when he talks in his flutter-cut way. He has a tendency towards over-kindness. He wouldn't just give you his jacket, he'd slice himself open stuff you in his warm, womb-like belly like a Taun-taun with a side parting. He's a dapper dresser. He speaks stammering broken English. He never uses one word when 30,000 would suffice. He's a young professor at a nearby University. He speaks Japanese at lightning speed. Recently we've turned him into a party beast. Like Trinidadian Harry before him, he never used to touch a drop of alcohol. Now he's a dyed in the wool alcoholic and a hilarious drunk.Give a Japanese ...

Day 602:The end of summer 2007-09-10 20:06:00 Miya Jima Ghost DanceOn a hot summer's night you were walking in Miya-jima near Hiroshima and found this ghostly dance taking place. You have come to associated the creep and the sinister with summer. The Japanese say ghost stories were told to keep people cool in the days before aircon. Apparently they don't just chill your soul. The summer is a prolonged torment. The number of JR jamming train jumpers in Shiga rose dramatically this summer. The rest of us endure it together because we know one day this summer's gonna end.Here in Japan the weather is reknowned for changing pretty drastically. Well this year has been no exception. If you live in Kansai you might well have been able to peg yesterday as THE DAY the summer ended. Imagine you're on a train to Shiga. You change at Yasu to get a rapid train to Omihachiman. As the doors and open and you step out of the air-condition carriage into the evening you brace yourself for the sticky wall of hot funk that's gonna h ...

Day 601: Going, going, gone? 2007-09-10 09:25:00 You're feeling uneasy. Like when your girlfriend encourages you to go to boys night. Your eikaiwa/conversation school/chain school/close-to-station-English-teaching-company has been nice to you. First your shift swap was accepted so you could go to Guam in October for your birthday. Then your holiday was granted for late October so you could show could show your friend Matt the sights and sounds of Japan when he visits from Blighty. Then your manager asked you if you would like a schedule change. You requested all earlies. Today you received them. You have your evenings back. Like real people.Something's up here. Why are they being so... nice?You make some calls and find out some harrowing 'facts'. These 'facts' are the hot news from the Nova gossip grapevine and thus will probably be proved to be absolute bollocks in a few days. But the fact that gossip is unreliable has never been a reason not to pass it on as if it was etched in stone. The truth is available elsew ...

Day 601: Bic Camera Kyoto 2007-09-10 01:40:00 For S's post bye-bye party drinks in Yamashina Momojiro's you order her an ice-cream and receive a monstrosity. It's a huge loaf of bread, hollowed out and filled with ice-cream. And the ice-cream is filled with CROUTONS. More than half of the ice-cream you are eating with chopsticks is bread. It's so fucked up to you and so natural to S. The Japanese cook like they once saw a picture of a standard international dish but had to guess what the ingredients were.Is that a wafer?Looks like a radish to me.It's never a radish, it's probably some squid.Okay, throw some seafood in it, then slather it in mayo. That'll look about right.What's mayo? I don't know, just mix this shit together until you get something off-white. Ganbatte kudasai.But none of this stuff is white.I SAID GANBATTE!!!!111STDThis kind of izakaya based mirth-making is rarer nowdays. An increasing amount of your free time is being spent on activities that you hope will have a bearing on your future. You stud ...

Day 600: Not done yet 2007-09-10 01:25:00 Japan still surprises you every day. There's a freaky, freaky doll shop in Kyoto. Every one of these dolls wants to tear out your eyeballs and eat your soul on toast. The shop's shut, but that isn't what stops you from going in - it's the freaky, freaky dolls that do that.You try to take a picture of a full size mannequin with half its skin missing but you can't get one to come out. After playing with the camera settings for a while one of the figures moves and you nearly pee yourself. Okay, a little bit comes out.Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, barbecue, big camera, big camera kyoto, chain school, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, face training, gadgets, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, hayao miyazaki, HD video camera, hiroshima, izakaya, Japan, Japanese, japanese cooking, Japanese food, Japanese summer, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, mac, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, nihon, Nova, photoblog, photographs, photos, pikki, podcast, powerbook, shiga, shopping, shrine, t ...

Day 599: Fried gold 2007-09-10 01:07:00 You ask a girl in Starbucks if you can take her photo. She has no idea what her t-shirt says.Technorati Tags: aeon, ALT, baka gaijin, chain school, drunk, eigo no sensei, English teacher, engrish, face training, gaijin, gaijin memoirs, ganbatte, geos, izakaya, Japan, Japanese, Japanese food, JET, Kansai, Kyoto, memoirs of a gaijin, meta, Misasagi, nihon, nintendo DS, Nova, photos, pikki, podcast, shiga, shrine, teach english, teach in japan, teacher, teaching English, temple, Yamashina ...

Day 597: AT or not AT? That is the question... 2007-09-07 11:27:00 When there's a desperate experience deficit at your chain school you may find management eyes that previously looked at you as a parasite suddenly turn to you for favours. There's a taco shortage and you're a Mexican chef. You've counted 13 teachers who are leaving or have left in the last couple of months. Lucky for some. When your friends leave it's like they were granted parole. You feel pleased for them, but you try not to talk about the sting of being left behind. Their anus is out of the firing line, yours is still fair game. This week you had a huge party to say goodbye in Kusatsu Shidax's 'party room'. It started as a party to say goodbye to your girlfriend, the first lady of Nova, but ended up a bye-bye for the 4 other tag along staff who are leaving to get married and never work again. A bye-bye for just one person is so last year.There is no beaming smile on earth like a Japanese girl who used to work for an eikaiwa but has now found a sap to pay for her meal ...

Day 595: Another wave of newbies 2007-09-07 11:07:00 ASo, Clinton. Where are you from? In fact we've only got 5 minutes before the next lesson and I haven't slept well for months so I'm gonna skip the foreplay and just get stuck in here, why did you sign up to come here and work for this evil empire? Have you not read any of the headlines about how the people hate this company and the newspapers wanna see it die and we haven't had any sales opportunities for weeks?ClintonI'm gonna honest with you, not many reports along those lines have really reached The States. I don't really understand the extent of the situation yet. In fact I don't understand any of the crap people are talking in this room. You all seem to be speaking a strange, new language that's not English or Japanese.AYeah I'm sorry. The lack of sleep, boredom and frustration send us a bit... fruit loopy. We talk a lot of bollocks and take the piss outta people a lot to vent and break up the monotony.ClintonYeah, I was starting to get that impression. And like ...

Day 594: Nova closes Yamashina, Ishiyama and Kyoto Eki Mae 2007-09-06 04:30:00 It's your day off so you chill out in your girlfriend's jikka in Omihachiman. You watch Die Hard 2 again. You laugh off the imminent danger of an approaching typhoon and cycle to Starbux to drink coffee and do web geek things on your Powerbook. You edit photos, you blog, you design logos. You smile and try to ignore the waves from the hick schoolgirls outside who rarely see a foreign face. Just the fax, ma'am, just the fax. You have found that drinking coffee makes you happy, optimistic, positive. That's a beautiful thing called addiction.After a few hours doing this you feel great and speculate about how it would be to do this for a living and not be doing the job you're doing. You decide to spend the next few years at your chain school quietly working at your job and saving. Training. Learning. Designing. Preparing for the future. Your phone buzzes on the chessboard table and you open a shiny new email from Triniadian Harry."u heard they r closing yama ishiayama & ...

Day 593: Bourne's identity 2007-09-04 20:44:00 Bourne(ARRIVING BACK IN THE OFFICE AFTER CLASS AND SLAMMING HIS FILES ON THE DESK)Guess what THAT class did at the weekend!ARelaxed at home, watched TV, slept?BourneAnd during the week off of Obon Festival?ARelaxed at home, watched TV, slept.BourneBut if they had a week off they would...?AGo to Canada?BourneAustralia!AEwwww, close.BourneFavourite TV show?AVariety show.BourneFavourite actor?AJohnny DeppBourneFavourte food?AJapanese food.BourneMost interesting experience?ASlept for 16 hours.BourneCountries visited?AAmerica and Hawaii.BourneHobbies?AGo to shoppingBourneAnd?ASleepingBourneBingoAThat's nothing. I asked Chihiro what she would do if the world was ending in 24 hours and she said she'd spend all her money playing pachinko.BourneTouching isn't it? She has a family and friends too. But you know, when in Japan you've got to accept these things aren't strange, you just haven't let go of your expectation and geographical values yet.AOk Yoda. Don't worry, I can't judge to ...

Day 592: The girlfriend denial habit 2007-08-29 22:13:00 AHow's it going Akiko? Are you settling in ok?AkikoI'm fine thanks. It's just a lot busier than I was expecting.AYeah you're telling me. I've gotta do all my flirting in 5 minute bursts.AkikoHaha, you're so funny.AYes. Yes I am. So where are you from?AkikoI live in Ostu. I'm a student, I'm just working here in my part time for some spare cash and to use my English.AWhich is amazing by the way, let me guess you lived abroad for a few months?AkikoYes, how did you know?AThe only people in chain schools who speak comprehensible English have lived abroad. They also tend to have more character. I'm gonna guess Canada?AkikoPing-pong! What do you mean more character?AWell, you ask the average student what they would do if they won the lottery and they say, "what is lottery?" And then you say "Lotto6" and they say, "huuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeerrrrrr". And then you repeat the question and they go silent for a few minutes. Then you ask it again and they say "I will buy a house". An ...

Day 582: Hiroshima and Miya Jima Phlogsplosion 2007-08-22 00:30:00 Of Rice and Zen recently took a brief weekend break to Hiroshima and nearby Miya Jima with the missus and her family. Brace yourselves for the return home photo avalanche!The RyokanWhen you stay in Miya Jima you'll probably find yourself staying in a Ryokan or traditional Japanese inn. Nowadays they are more like large hotel complexes with tatami rooms, traditional kaiseki ryori (multi-course meals) and an onsen (hot bath) downstairs. You find the yukata in your room and are ushered to a small room where a single hot waitress brings you round after round of tomato mousse and raw/barbequed fish.You grin at the waitress, she giggles back. You look down realise your yukata tying skills are weak and she was probably laughing at the 'nip slip' action you have going on.Kaiseki RyoriKaiseki Ryori amounts to eight rounds of raw fish head with the occasional side dish of tempura fish to cleanse the palatte and allow you to truly appreciate the rockingness of raw fish head.Incidentally, th ...

Day 581: Billy's Boot Camp geto shita - MOTIVATION UP! 2007-08-21 21:13:00 So Billy "Shoots" Blanks and his revolutionary "move in time to the music" excercise cash grab, hehe sorry we mean 'DVD selection' is officially more popular in Japan than the iPhone. That in a supposedly gadget obsessed nation. You might remember Billy as the American Football player who blew his brains out at the beginning of the Tony Scott/Bruce Willis quip-fest The Last Boyscout. He's no Mr Motivator, but for a 51 year old he's ripped to the tits. Becoming motivated in Japan is referred to with a loud "MOTIVATION UPPU!" (my motivation has increased!) The iPhone/Billy's Boot Camp survey reflects the truth much more closely; Japan is far more obsessed with its own reflection than with Apple's revolutionary designs. So yesterday you did a Marcus Brody and instead of getting lost in your own museum you decided to try to blend in, BLEND IN, by doing the entire first disc of Billy's Boot Camp. The expression "motivation up" has been shortened to "MOCHI UPPU" or simply "MOCH ...