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.