Perogies

With the departure of the Stony Plain delegation last month (which as I am writing this seems like just yesterday) I was left in possession of a good recipe for perogies. I am in constant need of recipes - not for my own narrow cravings - but because I like to repay the kindness I have received with originality. Pasta has been a good stand-by in the past, but ingredients of which can be hard to find; good flavorful tomatoes, decent noodles, pesto, mushrooms. I have also tried the route of casseroles; the ingredients for which are easier to find. However, there is a complete lack of large ovens in Japan (like we have in Canada) that makes cooking a casserole all but impossible. Now I have turned to preogies. The main ingredients of which - potatoes and flour - are widely available. Sour cream is a bit scarce in Shikaoi but is carried in all the large supermarkets in Obihiro. Now it seems the only scarcity I am facing is one of counter-space. I spent the better of two hours last night making just the handful you seen in the image. The dough will need improvement before my perogies make their Shikaoi debut but I nailed the stuffing if I do say so.

Good-Bye Kevin.

Kevin left Shikaoi for good this morning and as I write this should be boarding a plane to Tokyo where he and Jessica will be staying during the next couple of weeks while touring southern Japan. He has also planned an extensive China and Korea trip; which one might as well do since you are in the area. He won't be fully back in the States until mid-October.

Had a little bit of a song train wreak today. In the course of studying basic shapes with the grade one's we attempted a new song. The words - though repeated many times - were too hard to hear and sung too fast. Even I had trouble with words just teaching it to them. So that song was abandoned for today. I don't know if we'll come back to it. I can see the benefit if we stick with it but I don't know if it's worth the effort. It's a really tough song. It doesn't really flow at all. It was probably never easy to begin with to write a children's ESL song about triangles and rectangles and whatnot.

I am also working on a creaky body after trying to bend my knee in an unnatural fashion while running backwards in the gym. It was a play related accident so no one is really to blame, but I do wish my mom or grandma were around to nurse me back to health. I think my best course of action is to have ice cream for dinner.

I have had a good reception of last week's post about Japanese news and received several emails. While the uproar over paper shredders has yet to subsided - still taking a sizable chunk of the evening news discussing what should be done - I would like to this opportunity to expand on my comments about writer Masako Bando's habit of throwing unwanted kittens off a cliff.

I have not seen a link to a full English translation but several pieces of it have appeared in English on various internet news sites frequented by foreigners. Bando is an extremely popular novelist in Japan. So popular, in fact - that in a long tradition of other writers - has moved away from Japan to escape from Japan's sometimes predatory media. Currently she lives somewhere in Tahiti, which is governed under French law. It should also be established before moving on that she loves cats and owns several. In the essay, published last week in one of Japan's main national newspapers (Asahi Shinbun), she illustrates some very bad logic even if you don't morally judge her actions. If you happen to love animals and morally judge her, you will probably think she uses extremely twisted logic.

The crux of her article begins by stating that she feels it is her social/moral/spiritual responsibility to let her female cats procreate when in heat - which she considers essential to life - thus she has left them unsterilized. Following this route, of course, one ends up with a lot of kittens. She writes that because she has such a strong sense of social responsibility as a pet owner - she knows that she can't have extreme numbers of cats around - she has decided to take steps that are quite depraved in my opinion to remedy the problem. Now, besides the fact that if one thinks letting female cats procreate is essential to their nature, it has to follow that one consider motherhood also essential to the female cat's nature. Using her own logic, if you feel a social responsibility toward pets this would naturally lead you to have them sterilized in the first place. Her essay has ignited a normally passive and apathetic demographic to endlessly discuss the matter on blogs and forums which is why I bring it to your attention here.

Pictures

Yesterday was beautiful and I felt I just had to do something outside. I went to Memuro and watched Shikaoi Sho Gakko's baseball game. Very seriously, Shikaoi Sho won. Afterward there was time to have a picnic with the players in the shade.

The Week that Has Been:

While all the news I present today is true; it is not meant to reflect poorly on Japanese society as a whole. Actually I meant it to mean opposite; the mere lack of crime - let alone the lack violent crime - means that, in my opinion, the only crime that does in fact bubble to the surface is extremely strange in nature. It is a great comfort to me in this respect. Lastly, it maybe helpful to remember that all this news is generated from a country much smaller than Alberta but with many many times the population.

The lead story for last night's evening news that keeps going:
Paper shredders! Yes, injuries from paper shredders are on the rise in Japan. Almost seven injuries in a decade. Society grinds to a halt. Government panels convene. Politicians make speeches. Opinion polls studied. New policies made. Paper shredders blamed for any and everything.

Other news stories:
- Junior high school student confesses he torched home because he didn't want to study.
- Poacher gets shot.
- Award winning writer states in essay that she throws unwanted kittens off cliff-tops. (This happened outside of Japan, but it's still one of Japan's own.)
- Wild man on river bank injures two with knife.
- Red light runners as usual.
- Another wrong suspect jailed for too long.
- Precisely 4,200 pears stolen from Oita prefecture.

And the classic:
All the elements are as present; A good girl, a bad girl who may have been good but went bad, J-cop detectives covering the tips from all angles, some oxygen, a mask, a department store, and - lastly - an umbrella. In a bizarre story from Shinjuku (in Tokyo). A customer recently tried an oxygen machine at a department store's health equipment section. 20 minutes later she returned to the salesperson asking to see the manager saying she did not feel good, only to turn around and stab said salesperson in the eye with the tip of her umbrella before fleeing the scene.

"Bob Dylan says modern music is worthless"

Just look at that headline. That is the same headline I read yesterday on drudgereport.com. I was a bit taken a back because I really like Bob Dylan's music. I was surprised that someone of his caliber would be slagging modern music, especially considering there's so much good music in the world at the moment. One need not look far for quality music considering the availability of live shows and the possibility of making professional sounding albums on a laptop. I am glad I clicked the link and read the story because the headline is somewhat misleading. Upon reading the article it becomes clear that Dylan's real gruff is with the sound quality, not the performances. He states that his album sounds better played in the studio. From the article:

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them... There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

I take an interest in this topic because, one, I think there's plenty of great music in the world. You'd have to live under a rock not to be hit with the stuff while simply walking down the street. Two, I have had a long time interest in high-end stereo equipment. One of the most fascinating aspects to the hobby, in my opinion, is that year after year technology closes the gap been the ultimate high-end of high-end gear and what I can actually afford. With surprisingly little knowledge of the industry great bargains can easily be found. Dylan has been an artist that has consistently supported high-resolution formats (with re-releases of his albums). My own theory of this is that because of Dylan's particular vocal style, it not clearly legible on, for example, cd's played on a car stereo or on an iPod through cheap headphones. I am aware that a large portion of the modern music we hear is compressed, which can mean any number of things; generally it's accepted that modern EQ's are completely whacked (instead of perfectly flat) and the extreme high and low frequencies are truncated. I guess what Dylan is saying is that if you aren't hearing the whole sonic performance - you're not hearing him either.

Live music will always rein supreme. Sitting outside, under the sky, listening to tunes will always be magical. But what if the artist dies, will those performances just be lost to history? Furthermore, I have found great attraction in the ability to hear a song in its utmost natural state on demand. There will always be a demend for the ability to hear the whole sonic picture in it's purest form and with it a demand for high performance equippment - even in the face of the popularity of the iPod - because such characteristics do not result from the education of the listener but from the same roots that make listening to live music so engrossing and magical. I hate change as much as the next person, but I have become adverse to all statements regarding the decline of civilization - even sonic civilizations - as we know it.

Softball

Some technical difficulties kept this post from being put up earlier. Last night, playing for the Town Office team softball, I took some picture of us at bat. It was good weather; a bit cooler, but definitely not the rain we are getting at the moment. The play for this tournament is slightly more serious (though, it should be well noted, not serious enough to stop a keg of draft beer from being brought into our dugout). I am on what is unflatteringly, but truthfully, called the "B-team," which means if things are starting to get close, I get kicked off the field. This is exactly what happened last night when I was removed from left field. Yes, I couldn't even handle that historically slack position. This is what you get when you grow up in a hockey obsessed country; one's softball skills never develop. I wasn't too upset though, seeing as how well our team dugout was equipped. Our next game, the final, rained out today, has been re-scheduled for Monday night. I don't know who we are playing, last night, however, it was the Mayor's team. I also had the good fortune yesterday to again have supper with the Usui's outside under their homemade yoking gazebo. Kazeteru and I had a very interesting discussion about Yokohama, a city of several million, part of Tokyo's metropolitan sprawl. Often overlooked by everyone as just more Tokyo (but with a huge industrial port and navy base), I have had the opposite experience recently, hearing nothing but good things about what Yokohama has to offer. Class today was very good, with my students again displaying their boundless creativity.

Elaboration of Yesterday's Image.

The image I posted yesterday of me riding a miniature train at Matsumoto-san's struck me as - in general - representitive of my time here. Here's me, all dressed up, looking cool, riding a miniature train around a garden. Perhaps I really like contradictions raised by the image. Japan, on any giving day, is full of both deep philosophical contradictions, such as squaring away Japan's traditional past and ultra-modern future, and just plain logical contradictions that don't compute in my head but work well and naturally within the Japanese psyche. Secondly, it strongly represents the environs of Shikaoi. If one does end up dressing up in Shikaoi, it can be normally assumed, unlike Tokyo or Osaka, that you will be doing something exciting and unexpected, not simply ordering a shrimp cocktail at a restaurant. To bring this point further, there is rarely a reason to ever get dressed up in Shikaoi (my kids lurk everywhere). Lastly, it should become clear from looking at the photo that I do really bizarre things on a daily basis - with gusto! I normally attribute this to teaching kids, which, if done successfully, causes one check their self-respect and sanity at the door.

First Day Back in Front of the Students

This morning was my first day back in front of my students after Summer vacation's end. Many students were in school last week but there were no English classes because of certain other pre-established commiments. I had my grade one's and two's today. Nothing particularly special happened except I think most of the kids seemed to have forgotten all their English words - but I am not concerned. I explained my trip to Sapporo, Fukushima-ken, and Tokyo to them and showed them the kendama I bought at Tokyu Hands in Shibuya. I asked them if they had any questions about my trip but they all seemed more interested in my Kendama; where did I learn to use it? Can I do such-and-such a trick? I wasn't expecting the lesson to go that direction but it was still funny. We were learning jobs with the grade two's and I had flashcard of a guy behind a desk. The kids had a lot of trouble figuring out what the card represented. ("Office worker" was written on the card but that is far above for their level.) Their answers (in Japanese) ranged from student to librarian to professor, a couple of students became fixated on the idea that he was just studying and repeated that several times to the teacher's amusement. I wasn't sure where this brainstorming session was going so I had to put them back on track.

Also, this is my final baseball update; Hokkaido lost 4-3. They gave a Herculean effort in the second last inning but Tokyo's pitching was just too solid. I only watched the last three innings. All of the office watched in silence. There is a very interesting tradition that goes back some fifty years that the losing team's players always return with a little of Hanshin stadium's "hallowed" dirt. I had read about it before but seeing the tradition in practice this week, I must say, the students take a lot of dirt. I thought maybe it was just a pocketful or something but they all had large specially made velvet dirt bags with fancy embroidery. No kidding. Just let that image sink in for a bit.

Epic Baseball

I haven't put up too many pictures lately so in an attempt to rectify this I offer some silly pictures from today. On Friday, the prospects to do anything on Saturday night looked slim. Normally I would have been fine with that, especially during the winter months. But this is summer and I had really wanted to do something while the weather was still warm. Shikaoi is much like New York in that something always bubbles to the top. I was invited to one of the Usui's legendary yakiniku parties last night. Kazeteru was home from Fukoka university for summer vacation. At the party, I promised Matsumoto-san that Kazeteru and I would go and see his big-boy toy hobby Sunday morning. Matsumoto is a carpenter by trade and simply looking around his house and garden one can quickly see he's quite handy. He loves trains too. Together he has created a battery-powered rideable train in his (small Japanese) yard. I felt the whole thing was a bit surreal but fun. I especially enjoyed driving the train by myself, being careful not to take Matsumoto-san's (very precious) train off the track around a bend. I have included images of Matsumoto-san's ingenious turning wheel and also the view from the train going over a bridge in the garden.





The big news today was the history making baseball played between Hokkaido and Tokyo at the Koushien, the National High School Baseball Championship. After 3 hours and 45 minutes - in a final game that stretched 15 innings - the two teams battled to a 1-1 tie. I had arranged to watch the game at the Usui's house and we were all desperate for Hokkaido to win. Both teams were perfectly matched. The pitching was epic with both young pitchers embodying was the Japanese call "the fighting spirit". The players looked exhausted and the crowd started to looked droopy but some of the fastest pitches of the game came in the very last inning. When the Tokyo pitcher threw a 147 km/h strike I could hear on the TV the crowd's stunned amazement. The game ended after a 15 inning maximum rule was invoked. The officials announced a rematch for tomorrow at 1:00 PM. The worry of not being able to stand another entire game like today's without my heart giving out is tempered slightly by the fact that tomorrow is Monday and I have work. However, I'm certain it will be on every TV within reach. If it is another game like today's, it should be a great game.