Snow, Malt Vinegar & Kendo, Oh My!

Hello One and Everyone.

Sorry its been a while. Ive been busy shoveling. As you can clearly see we have snow and lots of it. I play in it sometimes. Sometimes it plays in me. Here's a picture of the garage next to mine. Everyone has a garage and I am no exception. Except, they arent really garages...more like big places to put stuff. Cars wont fit in them but bikes do, as well as huge card board boxes that I don't know what to do with except build a huge awesome fort. Which I may or may not have done already. As you can see the snow is like some frozen Adam, reaching his strechy fingers across the void of space to touch the powerful fingers of God, so rooted and strong. At least that's what I thought of, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, when I saw this. Is that weird? You'd think this thing would break under its own weight, like Tokyo or New York or the Internet. But nope. Its still there, still hanging on. Snow continues to fall and form amazing "fantasy Disney ride at the north pole" type of shapes and structures. You know what I mean. Everything looks like it was made for the set of the movie Elf, or perhaps this movie .

Another given when living in town is the blizzards. Like this one. The flash makes it look a lot worse than it actually is. Ahhh!!! Raging storm! Better take off my gloves and take a picture. The only time the snow really gets to me is when I get caught in a stupid white out and I cant even see my own hands in front of my face. I had to cross my street once in the middle of one of those. After waiting for about 3 or 4 minutes for it to "die down", I decided just to cross because I was almost home and I was freezing cold. I think I actually had ice on my face. I figured too that cars would probably be going slower than I was walking, so THEY should watch out for ME. Luckily I didn't have to test me dumb theory. After I got back inside I resolved not to do that again.

Speaking of being inside, I thought you might like to see a picture of my fireplace ooops I mean stove. Its quite nice and right now I am using to thaw meat. Its too cold to thaw anything anywhere else in the house, so I made it a little pillow and told it to sit quietly. It did its job quite nicely and I had an excellent dinner of meat. I think I might have eaten noodles too or something. Its hard to say. I get asked quite often if I make my own meals at home. When I respond with a hearty "Hai!" I get strange looks as people refuse to believe that I can cook anything. They are actually probably right, because often times my idea of "cooking" is pushing buttons on a device that emits light in a spectrum that I cant really see. Then the light causes some molecules to get all excited. When that happens its means its ok to eat whatever it was that went in. I then take it out of said machine and put it in my stomach. People have told me this means I am getting calories, nutriants and vitamins that are otherwise absent in things like pocky, which I regularly consume. I do however cook sometimes and in this case I made a yummy creation of meat, noodles, soy sauce, onions, gyoza and beer. The beer though I didn't mix together with everything else until after I drank it.







moving on....

Kendo has been going very very well. I tested for the rank of "ikyu" and passed my test, so I now have an ikyu rank. Ikyu is the rank right before "black-belt". In kendo you obviously don't wear belts. Actually you don't wear any sign of rank at all, which I really like. Everyone treats everyone the same: bash with bamboo weapon. Repeat. The picture below is my ikyu rank "shyojou" (certificate). Just yesterday I got a smaller certificate that said my rank was sanctioned with the Kendo Federation of Hokkaido, which is a prefectual chapter of the National Kendo Federation of Japan. So that's cools. The test itself was stressful, mostly because it was in a format of practice I had never done before. Always in practice and using the shorthand (or completely different) names for things. For example in class they might call for a "men" (head) strike whereas in the test its "oshyomennioitte" (head). In class they say "ashinipponoshiro" (two steps back) whereas in the test its "aiyumiashigopponsagatenioiite" (two steps back)....So yeah. That was ridiculously incomprehensible. I got told on Monday I was testing on Saturday. Luckily we had practice on Thursday and Friday, so I had ample time to get ready. Memorizing all the new Japanese though was difficult. I didn't want to mess up for the test.

On Saturday we all got changed. There was about 30 kendo students there for the test. The whole highschool team came to cheer us on, which was really cool. My sensei came around and wrote huge chalk numbers on our "tare" (lower-body armor) denoting our place in line. I got lucky 13. Yay. We then went up in groups of three in front of the judges. We did the strikes which one of the instructors called out in the order he chose. It wasn't really random but it might have well as been because I was paying attention so hard. After drilling we had one session of trading strikes with the full armor on and then two sessions of sparing. Everything was scored. I have no idea how I did, other than "not failing". I was really exhausted from my test as I am sure you can see I am about to fall over. However, standing up in front of my class, receiving my diploma was one of the greatest feelings of accomplishment I've ever had. I will never forget it.

And now, more pictures.

Karen and I at the end of a long ski day. She's the JET in Rumoi, the town an hour south of me. She rocks on the snowboard, and goes faster than I do most times.

Sunset at the mountain.

In Japan, Ski school is even more embarrassing.

We are up to our necks in snow. Ha ha, get it?
(poor little ororon!)

I wrote this poem using magnets that my mom and dad gave me for Christmas. I was contemplating the essence of humanity as well as pining after unrequited love. This is all I could come up with. I particularly like the adjective "saucy". This kit of magnets by the way is the Shakespeare version. Its not every day you see "Methinks".

Yummy!

We had a food eating contest for prizes. I am trying to swallow crackers. I was already trying as hard as I could. This was after I had drank a whole glass of malt vinegar, which was the single worst thing I have ever tasted. I drank the whole glass in one chug. They asked me later how I did that, and simply said "college". I don't think they got the joke though, and now I am sure everyone at my board of education office thinks I drank bottles of vinegar in college. The malt vinegar (malt!) went strait into my stomach and instantly caused pain and turmoil. As Ulysses of old was beset on either side of his craft by Scylla and Charybdis, so was my stomach in the midst of the maelstrom. The malt vinegar (malt I say!) was quickly rejected by my poising-phobic self and began to re-surface. I refused to vomit, which of course made it worse. The smell and taste of it invaded my senses until it was all but unbearable. I then ate everything I could see, to stifle the urge to die. Then I had to go eat crackers, and that's when that picture was taken.




And with that pleasant though, I retire.
Peace.

Gmail Easter Egg

I just found a little "easter egg" in Gmail. They incoporated RSS feeds in the top of the tabs and called it "Web Clips". Well, you can set them to show whatever you want, or just turn them off. I have mine set to show me only Google News. Well, it seems regardless of settings, if you click on "Spam" you will get webclips of various SPAM recepies. Also if you click on your trash, you will get various unique was to Recycle things. Pretty goofy but still cool.

As reported in the Daily Yomuri Newspaper

So I was reading through my numerous past issues of the newspaper, and last Sundays edition there is on the front page (bottom fold) a really cool picture of a couple. They are walking through Tokyo with the imperial palace in the background amid quite a lot of snow. Its quite a picture-esque landscape and a beautiful photograph.

I thought "oh, id like to read this"

First Sentence:

"Central Tokyo experianced the first snowfall
snowfall this season, with one person dead
and at least 160 injured and air and train
services disrupted...authorities said"


Oh awesome. Except the exact opposite.

I think snow kills and injures more people in Japan than any other country I know of.

First day of school

Hello...

So today is the first day of school and I have....no classes! The kids are on some weird testings scheme and this week, on the days that I am in middle school, the classes I have to teach have tests. Next week, when they dont have tests, the OTHER classes that i teach have tests, and I can only assume that means I dont have class.

I made some lessons today and since then ive
1) eaten Lunch
2) wrote emails to Ginna
3) read slashdot
4) stared at pictures of the iMac
5) typed up this amazingly boring entry.

I hurt my knee jumping off a kicker at kamui ski-links. Its a bit jacked and tonight at kendo I will probably just sit and watch. I want to go to at least show my support but if I participate it might exaserbate the problem.

It was very cold walking to school today. I am supposed to be shoveling my entry way so after I hung up the skypphone with Ginna I left a bit early to shovel the snow in the entrance. Turns out there wasnt anything to shovel, but I made a show of it so it looked like I did something. It was so cold this morning walking down to school...it was 0 degrees Fahrenheit...like over -17 Celsius. My gloves are really good but they arent that good and my hands were ice cubes after walking for half an hour down the hill. I need to get some more wintery mits!

Also my knee is jacked. I usally walk fast to get a good pace and heat-up, but today i was GimpMaster2000 as I limped alone the frozen streets.....hmmmm. Thats an amazing begining to a novel!

A Novel
by Jesse Black

Chapter 1

As i limped along the frozen streets.....

Ok thats all I got for now but gosh thats good. Step aside, Dan Brown. You and your Mona Lisa are going down.

Hahaha, that rymed too. Maybe I should instead be a famous poet.

A Poem
By Jesse Black

Verse 1

Dan brown
is going down
going down
to china town.

The End.

Whew. I am so good at this writing stuff. Whats next?


I have this Grand Illusion (i like grand illusions) that once I get a shiny new computer, my life will be 100% better, and everything that is wrong with it will magically become beatuiful. Is this true? Probably not. Do I care? Not in the least.


Ok, Picture time!
(pictures not yet posted)

I have a love/hate relationship with kanji

I finally learned how to write my address in Japanese, with proper stroke order. Before i was just kinda winging in. but now ive got it nailed. more later.

out.

Ive got some catching up to do...

Hello!

First id like to say that I really love engrish. if you dont know what engrish is then go here. It exists all over the world, but I think that Japan does it best. Its not so much the fact that the english is wrong. That wouldnt be so funny if it said "how are you?" "Oh, I'm good". Its not even the spelling, which I am terrible at. Rather its the idosyncratic way that we all create language and then filter it through translation, that beautiful things come out, like this notebook that I just bought.

Its just pure genius. I couldnt even come up with a better way to explain the vitures of lined writing even if I wanted to. I will now fire off some sweet letters in nice arrangements. I cant wait.

So my computer has been acting up quite a bit. Below was a post all about my "o" key. Well, besides that, this is the screen that I often see. Its big and its blue. I think that the blue screen of death should have an awesome metal song written about it by Molly Hatchet. That would rock.
Usually the computer just reboots by itself, as if it say "gosh i am really tired I think I am going to just give up". But sometimes, on rare occasions, when I am lucky, I get this wonderful screen. Its the blue screen of death. And until I get one of these I am going to just have to live with it. What where they thinking when they released 98 anyways?






So ive been thinking about computers and I was walking around Bic Camera in Sapporo and I saw this. I want it, I want it very badly. What can be cooler than a computer that is also a Transformer?!?!? but its almost $120 for the case alone, and I cant even take that case back to America. so I want it but its just too impractical. Too bad. it will live in my memory forever.

They were having a sale in the same shopping area as Bic Camera where I saw the sweet transformers town case. Its called "White Sale". I thought about standing under it and putting a price tag on me, but I dont think anyone would have gotten the joke. I thought it was pretty funny though and what you cant tell from the picture is that that banner is HUGE. maybe 30 by 30 feet? so its a huge sale of whiteness. Its so white its not even funny. I mean it cant even jump its such a white sale. And forget about basketball or rapping. The white sale for sure cant do any of that!


Well, thats about all for now. Here are some more pictures for your enjoyment. See ya later!
(oh yeah btw I went skiing and it was awesome. you need to go here and watch the sweet flash intro for the website of the place we went skiing at. Its awesome.

My Budokan, where I have Kendo. Its burried in snow.


Part of a cool kite that was on display


Another kite that i liked


Some fish, drying in the noon-time sun. Yummy!



Teuri & Yagashiri Island, hunkered down for the winter.

Bye!

The best answer

Ive always wondering where the argument lies between the hacker and the "off-the-shelfer" This guy on slashdot I think articulated it best. I couldnt say it anybetter:

"I was wondering how long it would take somebody to ask this question. (Two minutes after the story was posted, big suprise.) The answer is that economics is irrelevent.

Every time we get a story of the form 'I hacked A to run on B' or 'I hacked C to do E', somebody always asks whether it wouldn't be more cost effective to buy something off-the-shelf. The answer is almost always 'yes'. Even if the hacker is saving money on hardware, he's expending a lot of his well-paid time. But that just doesn't matter.

A good hack is pretty much an end in itself. It might satisfy the hacker's curiousity, or improve his professional skills. Or it might add some minor functionality that the hacker's geeky priorities can't live without. But these are all secondary goals. The big goal is a sense of accomplishment, of having done something special. Asking a hacker why he doesn't just buy an off-the-shelf solution is like asking a Marathon running why he doesn't just call a cab."

Or like asking a climber why he or she doesnt just walk up the back ;)


http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/16/150239&from=rss

What happens when you break your "O" key?

You put in back on very very carefully.

Especially when you are already missing the "P"key. Which in that case youd have to aim for TWO little rubber nubins and that makes typing all but impossible.

I opened up a window in NOTEPAD, that sorry excuse for an word processor that comes with windows. Its like they decided to stop developing it after windows 3.1 came out. I mean, it doesnt even support commands like "ctrl+A". It cant even word-wrap. And yet I use it all the time.

Anwayways I opended it up and then tried to put my key back on. using a headlamp and a mini-screw driver, I was able to get three of the four legs back on . Here is what notepad looked like when I was done:

oncoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiioeooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooo once I went over the open oooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooloooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo000000000000000
0000000iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii900000000000000oiiii
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000ooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooholy poop i kind I did it.


notice, if you will, that I didnt press the "L" key but once the whole time. Also "K" is suspiciously absent as well. It seems that "I" was the biggest random choice, if that makes any sense.

ok, Im gonna wait up a little longer for Santa Clause, and then im go to sleep.



wait, you mean its not christmas?

BostonHerald.com - Technology News: Gates highlights Windows Vista program

BostonHerald.com - Technology News: Gates highlights Windows Vista program

You can read the whole thing if you want. Its not that interesting. What is funny is what Bill said about Google...

""I hear they’re coming out with a robot that will cook hamburgers, too. Let’s spread that rumor - there’s nothing they can’t do," Gates said in jest. "

...Now there are two robots I want. That one, and the
Roboraptor

I love it when...

...I am sitting at my desk at 9:25 in the morning and I get a call saying "your class starts at 9:30, where are you?".

Makes me feel like a terrible person and a horrible teacher. Somehow I pulled this one off, but honestly this whole paradigm of "Lets not tell Jesse anything about whats actually going on" is really starting to bug me.

I mean honestly, all I ask for is a list of things saying "be here, do this, this is why, this is for how long. thanks"

And its not for lack of trying.
Admitidly at first I didnt communicate well. Now I at least know what questions to ask.
Yet things like this still keep happening.

let me explain.

Before I left for vacation my Boss handed me my "rough sketch" (its actually the only sketch) of my schedule for the next three months. I said Thank You and sat back down. Good thing I read it right away because I noticed three days in January that had Kanji I didnt recognize. I went back to him and was like "what is this?" He looked at it and said something like "you are teaching people at the community center". Ok, I thought. So I asked who and what am I teaching. He had no idea.

The next day another guy came to the BOE and asked me if I wanted to teach these lessons. Note that this was AFTER I was assigned to teach said lessons. I said yes but I asked again who and what am I teaching. He said I was teaching kids english.

If you are a teacher then you know how useless this answer is. How old are the kids? how many? what level? for how long? is there a break? are they expecting a game/project/culture lesson? who am I working with?
I asked him most of these questions and he said he would get back to me. In the meantime I was handed a sheet in Japanese, which i cant read. I forgot about the sheet and I never heard from him again.

(just so you know, email is apparently not a form of commnication here in Japan. In my whole tenure thus far, I have recived a grand total of zero emails regarding my job.)

I left for America and then came back and this morning I get a call reminding me that I have to teach my lesson at 9:30. So I get a ride down to the community center and then get escorted to my class. All the kids are already there with their books open and waiting. It was awesome, except the exact opposite. I ask the community center administrator whose taking picture of me in action, "so when do I go until"?

"11:30" he says.

Oh, great. two hours.

I have enough experiance now that I can fill up a standard 50 minute class block on-the-fly and make it fun. but two hours is over my head. So I make a weak comment that I need to get my bag, cause it has stuff in it I need. I walk across the hall to the office and start rummaging through my backpack. Ive got cards with pictures and names of types of weather, ive got 4 sets of Alphabet flash cards, an inflatable globe and ive got about 83 cents in america money. Excellent. I am saved.

The money were the prizes and the games were many. Telephone game, mini-english conversation, card-slapping game, alphabet pronounciation practice, self-introductions, throw-the-globe-around-the-room-and-ask-questions, learn to write your name....yay.

It went by faster than I had imagined and in the end I was saved by my trusty backpack. But I must say it was the worst feeling walking from the classroom to the office, praying to God that I had brought something in my backpack that I could use. Otherwise it would have been one of those Crash & Burn days, and I hate those days.

So, I guess the lesson is something like always be prepared, but I never liked the boy scouts and I would much rather point fingers and place blame on the people whose job it is to tell me what I am supposed to do. If I had known what the enviroment was and the times and all, I could have done a whole mini-unit on something really cool that these kids who are volunteering their winter break time to come and study english would have loved.

Oh well.

Live and learn.

I guess I just need to be annoying and keep asking questions until I know for sure what is going on. That seems like a simple enough idea. I dont know whats wrong with me.

Ok so now I am very tired.
Going to bed.
night all.

Back in Sapporo

Is vacation over so quickly?

It seemed like it just started. I am tired and at an internet cafe and my brain cant stop thinking about a million things, 999,999 of which are things about a girl that I love that I am very far away from right now.

Flying into foreign cities are fun, unless you have no one to greet you and you left everyone behind. Then they become the most cold, lonely place in the world.

I need some time to crash and recover and get back in touch with being by myself again. I had it down so well, but after being with your friends and loved ones, you have to mentaly start all over again and thats a challenege.

So if you want to call me, id love to hear your voice!

Ill be home tonight.

Bye people,
Jesse