An Old Friend

I also visited an old friend while we were in Japan. This visit wasn't quite as painful as the last one...

Mount Fuji from Lake Ashi

From the top of a nearby hill

And a final one of Fuji as the sun begins to set

I've written about our trip in more detail below. I suspect Meg will add to it in the upcoming days.

This is the Most Productive I've Been All Day

Well we’re back from our second winter vacation. Though we’re not really back doing very much as both Meg and I are sitting in our offices all day without any classes to teach. The next term starts next week and they’re starting to figure out what we’ll be doing. We’ve both asked our co-teachers what we should be doing this week and we’ve both been told to “prepare”. Of course when we ask what grades we’ll be teaching or when, we’re told that it hasn’t been decided yet and they’ll let us know March 2^nd (also known as the first day of school). And so as Meg tries to prepare for the unknown I sit here writing a blog. It’s probably the most productive I’ve been all day. It’s now 3:20 here and so far today I’ve read numerous articles online in Canadian, Japanese, American and Korean newspapers, browsed some online discussion forums for teacher’s working in Korea, gone for lunch and talked with my brother on Skype. Tomorrow I think I’ll start to assemble some of the photos I took last week in Japan.

Speaking of Japan, we had an amazing trip. It was really nice to show Meg what I thought we were getting ourselves into in Korea. She got to see why I talk about it in such glowing terms all the time. How overly friendly most people are, how beautiful the landscape is and how many cultural treasures they have. I think in a lot of ways we both enjoyed the trip more than our visit to Angkor Wat. I’ll leave it to Meg describe her feelings in more details, but I think if we find ourselves with another free week or even a long weekend we might go back.

It’s hard to say what part of the trip I enjoyed the most. We spent the first 5 days hoping from one national treasure and world heritage site to the next. Then after a couple of days in the Tokyo we headed up north to there area I lived back in 2003/2004. While it was nice to show Meg all the places I frequented and the locations many of my stories about Japan took place, it was also a little sad. I really loved the town of Ishinomaki and I think of it fondly. I really enjoyed my time there and loved all my students. Ever since we decided to come and live in Korea I’ve been a little bit excited about visiting Japan and seeing Ishinomaki again. Now that we’ve done that I’m a little bit sad not knowing if I’ll ever go back. And if I do, I’m not sure how much of the city I knew will still be there. The movie theatre I frequented is already gone. . . and the department store beside my school where I ate most of my lunches on work days, did all my grocery shopping, and bought most of my Japanese presents is closing next month. The 100 Yen store (dollar store) where I got all my teaching supplies, candy for my kids classes, dishes and even a frying pan was already packed into boxes. I don’t know what I would have done if it had closed up while I was living there. The number of times I raced over there during a break to grab some dice, toy hammers, balls or trinkets for a game I was planning to use with my kids classes might be too high to count.

I was lucky to have lived in the city at a time where it was optimistic and saw a bright future. They had just finished a new Japanese Cartoon museum and were hoping to draw in tourists with it. While I was there they put up statues of Japanese Anime characters all over town to help promote it and to guide people from the train station to the museum. They even painted the roof of the station with anime characters and redid the town maps with them too. Now things don’t seem so happy. Many of the stores looked like they had closed and with the movie theatre gone and the department store closing, I have a feeling if I ever do visit again my school might be gone as well. The town likely won’t be at all as I remember it. It makes me a little sad. I’m just glad that I got a chance to show it to Meg now. Hopefully, if I ever do make it back it’ll surprise me.

P.S. The photos are of me standing on the hill in Ishinomaki that overlooks the Pacific Ocean (which you can kind of make out behind me. In the spring all those trees are cherry blossoms and it looks spectacular). The other one is at the Ishinomaki train station with the Masked Rider. The creator of the Masked Rider and other famous Japanese characters (like the Power Rangers) was born in Ishinomaki.

And We're Off Once Again

School was back in session this week for both Meg and I. Last week, I had two days of classes (if you can call watching Ice Age in Korean and English class) before a three day Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) holiday. Meg and I both struggled through classes this week as students couldn't care less about school. After 5 weeks off they come back for 7 days (5 in Meg's school) to end the term. The next two weeks are Spring Break. It is a very strange schedule here.

Anyways, while Meg was talking to her co-teacher about planning for the new year, her co-teacher told her that maybe she could have a day off next week during the holiday. And so her teacher went and asked the principal about Meg getting a day off. The principal decided that Meg didn't need to come in at all over the two weeks, however Meg's co-teacher didn't like that idea and after some discussion, Meg got next week off (mostly because our friend Kevin has the week off and after asking my co-teacher about it he told me I didn't have to come in either). So the mad scramble began. We now had 9 days of nothing ahead of us. We looked around online as quick as we could and found semi-reasonable tickets to Japan and so we are off once again. We leave tomorrow. I'm not sure I have ever bought plane tickets closer to my actual departure date then this.

We fly into Hiroshima around noon and will spend a day and a half there before heading up to Himeji Castle (the largest in Japan) on our way to Kyoto. We'll do a day in Kyoto and Nara (the two ancient capitals) then stop at Hakone National Park (where Mt. Fuji is) as we travel into Tokyo. I don't think we'll spend much more than half a day in Tokyo (it isn't my favourite place in the world) and I'm anxious to have plenty of time in Sendai and my old hometown of Ishinomaki. It'll be a pretty crazy 8 days, but I think it will be a lot of fun. I'm off to Seoul tonight to pick-up our Japan Rail passes which will let us travel the country with ease and for a great deal cheaper. We'll basically be going from one end of the main island to the other along the Bullet Train. I've done most of this the trip twice before so it shouldn't be too difficult, and the last 3 days will be quite familiar for me as I spent 14 months living in that area. We're both really excited. It'll be quite a month and a half for us. Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea and Japan. I think we could really get used to this. Of course, this will most likely be the last interesting trip we take for quite awhile.

I doubt we'll be writing much over the next 10 days or so (though it isn't like we've written particularly much over the past month anyway). We hope everyone back home is enjoying the winter weather that we've been missing here. It'd be nice if the snow stayed on the ground longer than a day or so.

Ac-cen-tu-ate the Positive

I sometimes have a hard time sleeping on Sunday nights. In fact, I sometimes have a hard time relaxing on Sunday evenings, because I dread what Monday will bring. Last week was New Year’s holiday and my school was only open on Monday and Tuesday, but no students were present. My coworker had talked with the Vice Principal on the previous Friday, and they told me I didn’t need to come in either of those days. I wouldn’t have had any work to do if I had.

But this morning, my coworker told me that I had misunderstood, that I really should have been at work. After a few minutes of venting to Paul over Instant Messenger, we figured out the problem. On Monday, the English teacher from the High School next door came to my school to ask me for lunch. Likely, they were embarrassed that she was asking for me and I wasn’t there.

It seems like every time we write on our blog, we have another story to tell like this one. Every night we have new stories for each other, and we save the best for telling the folks at home. Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing here, and I know some of you do, too. So, I’ve decided to write about the things we enjoy about our life here.

First of all, we’ve saved more money in five months here than we could have saved in five years living in North America, For those of you who know what it’s like to be in debt or to be ‘just starting out’ this means a lot. Secondly, the experience of working in a foreign country is quite a nice thing on a resume these days, for any job or any kind of school. And, we have the opportunity to travel, which we wouldn’t have from North America.

These are the top three reasons we always cite in reckoning with our time here. But there are more reasons. If we were in North America – either in Canada or in the States, we would have the paperwork and the waiting for work visas and family visas. There are a lot of hoops for both of us to jump through for citizenship or even just a green card. With both governments, the process is easier after being married for two years.

As much as we complain about things, our life here is pretty nice. After work, we’re free to pursue all the leisure activities we could want: I’ve read plenty of books, practice piano, go to the gym, etc. We have friends nearby that we see often for social events, and we have a lot of time to spend together. Our life moves by at a rather relaxed pace, which we certainly won’t experience in a few years. It’ll be nice to have this time to look back on as the first few years of our marriage.