Thanking Kuni

One week ago today, I met Kuni through the most random circumstances. What I originally thought would turn out to be a terrible day, actually transformed into a fabulous day. Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to not only meet a new friend, but also appreciate the kindness of a complete stranger.

So, to return Kuni's favour, I thought it would be appropriate to take him out for drinks. We exchanged emails and decided to meet last night at our closest subway station. His girlfriend, Nao, and his friend, Tatsu (who can speak English as well), also came along. Tatsu is an ER doctor and hopes to go to America someday. When Kuni and I were talking by email, he asked if Tatsu could come along because he's interested in finding an English tutor. They were all thrilled to meet Scott too and Nao (who couldn't speak English), kept saying Scott was handsome. Kuni and Tatsu were the translators for most of the evening and were also trying to teach us some Kansai dialect, which is very different from traditional Japanese. I'm sure it was entertaining for them to hear us speak Japanese slang! They kept telling us that we were "rabu rabu," which basically means hot couple! KAWAII!

The five of us walked to a yakitori (grilled chicken BBQ) restaurant and enjoyed some drinks and laughs before heading back home. We all had a fabulous time and are already planning to meet again in the New Year! Kuni and Tatsu even offered to help us arrange our trip to Tokyo in January!

Can you believe Kuni and Tatsu are 32 years old? They look so young!

Until next time,

Jo & Scott

What a Bike Day!

On the topic of Jo's story about her bike... I thought I'd tell everyone how great it is to be a foreigner here... and how ridiculous the people on bikes here are and their general disregard for any type of rules.

As I was on my way to work, I decided to bike to Tennoji, which is about 10 minutes away by bike and hop on the train instead of taking the subway to work... it's 100 yen cheaper and saves me about 10 minutes... plus I'm charging ECC that 100yen so I'm 2 bucks richer at the end of the day! (yahhh!) Anywho, I'm making great time and get into a busier part of the city and have to start my sweet weaving, when I'm right beside and about to pass an old lady on her bike, she decides to turn right... without looking. This is of course when my ride went awry... pretty big collision, I tried to stop in time when I saw what was happening, but it didn't really work and I ended up crashing right into her. Thinking to myself, I obviously can't ask if she's okay since she can't understand me and really if she took the effort of moving her head, this wouldn't have happened. She was obviously thinking the same thing and started to give me the cat glare (think of the biggest glare you've recieved and then square it's intensity) when I decide to give her a taste of her own medicine, give her a sweet gaij glare of my own and take off as she's rubbing her hand that I hit... I felt bad, but really it was her fault... and she bent my basket!

Well, see ya later!

Scott & Jo

P.S. Apparently Jo's had some sweet cat/gaij glare-offs on the train. I think she has a 2-1 record. Good for her!

Kuni Saves the Day

It’s pretty ridiculous witnessing a thirty-something man trying to choke back tears right in front of you. What’s even worse is when full-fledged tears start rolling down his face in between gasps for air. This is what happened at work last Saturday. I was testing his English ability and I guess he just cracked under the pressure (geez, am I that intimidating?). It was a pretty awkward situation and I walked away at the end of the day thinking, “Wow, I’m glad I’ll never be caught crying in public and embarrassing myself.”

I guess I spoke too soon.

Today, I woke up bright and early and everything seemed like a normal Wednesday—I got up at 7:30, made some breakfast, showered, and got ready to go tutor one of my students. After I arrived at the subway station, I parked my bike against the outside wall of the building (like I have been doing for two weeks and like everyone else does). As you may already know from our previous blogs, absolutely EVERYONE has a bike here, which means there is a lack of space for bicycle parking. Apparently, you’re not technically supposed to park your bike outside the subway (for who knows what reason), but regardless, everyone still does.

In Japan, everyone hates the “bike police.” They are people employed by the ward offices (municipal government) and their job consists solely of taking bikes that are parked outside the subway and other illegal areas. There are about two days a month where they do a mass exodus of bikes—and today was my lucky day.

At about 10:30, I waltzed out of subway, Starbucks latte in hand. What could be better? Coffee and a sunny morning—a perfect combination. The station walls looked a little vacant as I turned the corner and as I approached the spot where I had parked my bike, I started panicking inside. One of the bike dudes (clad in a green and yellow getup) was patrolling the area looking as cocky as ever. He was eyeing me. I started to scan the parking sections nearby, but still no bike. So finally, I went up to the guy and asked where my bike was in broken Japanese. Just as I had suspected, he didn’t speak an inkling of English and replied in a long-winded Japanese sentence that was just too far over my head. What’s more, he proceeded to laugh. He probably thought it was funny that a gaijin didn’t know the complex rules about parking bikes. Or maybe he was just happy he could use/abuse his “bike police” power.

At this point, I was panicking. I had heard stories about bikes being taken away for good, with no warning or reason. Normally, when you park in an illegal spot, you get one warning. They put a red tag on your bike saying something like “you better move it or else...” I hadn’t received one in previous days, so I wasn’t worried. Anyway, the bike guy confirmed it was gone. As for where—I had no freaking clue.

So to tie this all in with my little preface, I started crying in public as hundreds of salarymen whizzed past me. The bike snatcher continued to look at me as if to say “I’ve done my job.” Naturally, I was upset and confused. I didn’t understand this bicycle snatching part of Japanese culture in the least. But I was about to.

A random passer-by approached me and started speaking in broken, but comprehendible English. I was semi-relieved. He explained that I had to call a number (that was on a piece of paper taped to the ground where the bike had been). He called it for me and started mumbling some words in Japanese. After he got off the phone, he told me where to go to pick up the bike and I pulled out my subway map to make sure I was going in the right direction. I guess he felt bad for the state I was in and he offered to come with me. I told him he didn’t have to and I could find my way, but he insisted.

We walked to another nearby subway line and began our journey to the Southern-most part of Osaka. He explained that they keep all the snatched bikes in an industrial area near Nanko Port. Although our encounter was extremely random, we chatted on the way to get the bike. He explained that he was studying for the TOEIC test (English proficiency test) and I guess he loved getting some conversation practise. I briefly thought about the dangers of venturing off with a complete stranger before we left, but it never seemed like a big problem. For some reason, I felt completely safe and at ease. His random act of kindness overshadowed everything. In the middle of the whole situation, I phoned Scott and told him what was going on. Basically, I was pressed for time and needed to get my bike back before work. When we got to our stop, we finally introduced ourselves. I had been so wrapped up in this whirlwind of unanticipated fury that I had completely forgotten. Kuni, he told me.

When Kuni and I arrived at the bike place, I had to go in and fill out a form to get my bike back. Thankfully, Kuni did the talking and sorted everything out for me. Then, I ventured though an enormous enclosed parking lot full of confiscated bicycles with a man who worked there. And of course, consistent with Japanese style, they were all arranged and sorted by the date and time which they were taken. I was relieved when I saw my bike amongst a crowd of others and unlocked it before wheeling it to the gate.

The not-so-great thing about having your bike confiscated is the fine that accompanies it. 2500 yen later, Kuni and I left. On our ride to Nanko, we had discussed shipping the bike back by taxi, but the taxi driver refused to squeeze the granny-style ride into his trunk. So, there was only one other option. We both rode the bike back to our home station, Japanese-style. This meant I had to ride on the back sideways (picture riding a horse with both legs on one side) and he pedalled. Although it might seem awkward, it wasn’t...we chatted the whole way home and tried to dodge the police on the way (riding like that is illegal and two fines in one day would just be too much). I felt sorry for him though, as he was probably getting a really good workout. After all, I’m nowhere near the size of a Japanese girl. Haha.

About forty minutes later when we got back to the station, I figured I should return his act of kindness in some way, so we exchanged emails and I told him I wanted to take him and his girlfriend out for drinks and introduce them to Scott. Needless to say, he was pretty interested in meeting a gaijin guy!

I honestly don’t think I’ve experienced anything more random in Japan, but it worked out for the best and I got my “gaij” ride back in time for work. It’s amazing what a random act of kindness can do and how much it made me realize that the world is not as bad as we sometimes make it out to be. And hey, I made a really cool Japanese friend too.

On a completely unrelated note, Scott and I made our second trip to Kyoto on Sunday. We visited two temples that Laura and Colin recommended to us—Kiyomizu and Kinkakuji (also known as the Golden Temple). Yes, these places do exsist! I don’t think words can come close to describing their beauty, so pictures will have to do for now!

Talk to you later! Miss you!

Jo & Scott

A J-Haircut

So, if you've been checking out pics on Facebook or some here, you'd have noticed my hair was getting absolutely ridiculous... I was a little worried my wings were gonna let me fly around Osaka with a big enough updraft. At first I was loving it, then it just started getting out of hand. So yesterday, I decided to go get a haircut.

Luckily there's a nice enough looking place right beside where I was working yesterday, so I showed up early and went in. There was an English-speaking hairdresser there... but of course, I didn't get her. I got someone who knew what "shorter," "longer" and "scinnors" also known as scissors meant. So after looking through ridiculous amounts of Japanese Men's Haircut magazines, we found something that resembled what I was going for... so the English hairdresser came over and I told her what I wanted, she told my hairdresser and she went at it like a pro...

Unfortunately, I guess she didn't know what "longer in the front" meant in Japanese either... I'm pretty sure I resemble Sonic the Hedgehog minus the blue and speed of course.

Before.... mad wings!













After... Where's my pal, Tails?!?










P.S. I'm not as tired and baggy-eyed as that pic shows I am... just an AM pic

Cheers!!

Scott & Jo

This blog has no title because Joanna refused a good title for it

Hello Everyone!

This blog is to tell you about some unfortunate stories I've come across about women here.

The first tale is about a woman I met during an FTL at Umeda (a major part of Osaka). She started off the lesson quite fine. We were having some good conversation and what not; then I asked her how she's been recently and she figured that knowing me for five minutes meant she could tell me her life story... WOW! For the past ten years, she's been (fairly) confined to her house--not travelling anywhere, not going too far away and not doing too much. You must be thinking "Wow, what a husband she must have," but unfortunately you're wrong. She had two cats... CATS! But about a year ago, the first one passed away, after being chronically ill and her desperate attempts to keep it living. She was pretty broken up about the first death, but quite recently (about two months ago), her second, and of course, favourite cat died. To tell the truth, after what she was telling me, I'm surprised she didn't try to bring it back to life in some weird underground biology experiment... It had strokes, illnesses, broken limbs and all the fun stuff, but has miraculously kept on ticking (with her help). Before it died, she had to give it daily injections, feed it special food and CONSTANTLY care for it... This woman is pure commitment. The good side of the story is that she's going on a vacation with her husband! Yay!

The second story is worse. I met a woman recently at a school about an hour away in Wakayama, doing an FTL (of course). She was telling me the same kind of thing--about how she doesn't go on many holidays or trips anymore because she has a dog, which we talked about for a bit. Then we started talking about holidays. In Japan, there's Valentine's Day, where women give men gifts and a month later, White Day, where men give women gifts. She went on to tell me that she gets her husband chocolate every year, but he gives her nothing... so, I awkwardly changed the subject to birthdays. She told me that every year she gets her husband something nice and I asked her what she would like to get for a gift on her birthday and she replied, "A cake." She continued to tell me that every year, her husband forgets her birthday... every year! But here's the kicker--their dog gets cake on his birthday... She laughed it off and I realized that the lesson was over and I had less awkward and happier places to be. Poor lady.

Tonight, Jo and I decided to go for a bike ride after I got home from work for some fresh air and exercise. It was pretty late out--10:30ish. After about 15 minutes, we decided to go through some back streets and stumbled on what we later found out to be Osaka's largest Red Light District, also known as Tobita. We, of course, investigated. The first street we went down had older ladies sitting on chairs with another older lady behind them on a sexy-looking mattress. We went down a few more streets and (luckily for the horny men of Osaka) saw a lot more variety. There was quite an array of women, some looking like they were in their 20s, 30s and (sadly) late teens. Lots of costumes too. While biking through the area, we came across a fairly busy part, where a group of 20-something men told us "Merry Christmas," which was nice of them. Haha. There was also a bunch of salarymen wandering through the streets (except for the first one, which was empty).

After we got home, we did some research and found out that the old woman sitting in the chair in every shop is called the "mamasan," who is pretty much the pimp. You bargain with her for the service and she makes the ultimate decision and sometimes refuses business.
Even though prostitution is technically illegal here, with the shabby force they call police in Japan and many loopholes, nothing is done and it continues to thrive. The industry has expanded so much that there are apparently many non-Japanese prostitutues employed in Japan.

And, to finish this lovely blog, I had a man tell me today that he wished he could divorce his wife, become Muslim and marry four women... he was a Buddhist priest. Sometimes I feel more like a marriage counselor than an English teacher.

Cheers,
Scott & Jo

Osaka's Ready for Christmas

Hello from Osaka!

We hope all is well as you prepare for the holiday season ahead. Walking around Osaka has really made me miss home recently. There are Christmas decorations and strings of shimmering lights everywhere I turn it seems and I can’t help but think of home and everything that reminds me of this festive occasion. On the other hand, I’m glad I don’t have to be outside in the cold, wet slush. How much snow is there right now anyway? It’s about 10-15 degrees during the days in Osaka and the temperature drops quite a bit at night. I’ve been talking to some of my students about what kind of weather to expect in the months ahead and apparently, the temperature never drops below zero—which means, no snow and no ice. I’m thrilled about that!

Speaking of things that remind me of Christmas, believe it or not, there are clementines in Japan! But here, they are called “mikans” and they’re very delicious. Like Canada, mikans are sold only during the Christmas season and people can even grow them indoors here. One of my new private students is an elderly man who likes gardening and at one of our meetings, he brought me a basket of mikans from his garden. I have quite a few private students right now—five—and I’m really enjoying the challenges of teaching one-on-one. My students right now range from elementary level to extremely advanced. One of my other new students is a doctor who plans on travelling to the US to do gastrointestinal work and wants to improve his conversational skills. At first, I was a little nervous when he said he wanted help learning medical terminology in English, but when I started talking about ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and asked how common it is in Japan, he seemed genuinely blown away. I think I’ll be learning a lot from him about what it’s like to work in the health care field in Japan.

On Saturday night, Scott, Marcus, and I decided to do something other than karaoke and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to check out a club (since we haven’t been to one yet). After talking to a few co-workers, we decided to go to a club called “Pure” in Shinsaibashi area. We all had a great time and met some really cool people too. A group of Japanese girls even got me dancing with them on the stage. Haha.

Sunday wasn’t too eventful for us. We decided to take it easy since we’ve been doing some mad sightseeing lately. Scott wanted to go to Den-Den Town, which is an electronics district in Nipponbashi area and is overflowing with shops offering all sorts of electronic goods. We biked into Tennoji (which is about ten minutes from our place) and ate lunch at a really nice market-style European cafe and then headed over the Nipponbashi. Scott was in heaven the entire time we were there—looking at every type of electronic good you could imagine. Den-Den Town for Scott is definitely equivalent to Rinku Town for me! Anyway, we were searching for a cheap phone because we’ve decided to get internet hooked up and if you get a land line, it’s apparently a much faster connection. Sitting on the balcony in the cold to steal wireless signals isn’t quite cutting it anymore. If you can believe it, we had trouble finding a simple phone in what seemed to be the electronics hub of the world. Although there were several cell phone shops, home appliance shops, antique shops, used clothing shops, stereo shops, and porn shops, we couldn’t find a cheap phone. Lucky for us, we eventually wandered down a side street that led us to the phone of our dreams and purchased it for 2000 yen.

On the way back to our bikes, we stopped at a really cool shop that sold new, but mostly old game systems like N64, Sega Genesis, Game Cube, Game Boys, and even the original Nintendo. They also had rows upon rows of games that were re-packaged and extremely over-priced. While I was looking for my favourite N64 game, Mario Party, I came across a small package containing some Q-Tips. I thought it was so RANDOM that I took a picture. What’s even funnier is that there was a price tag on them for 399 yen. There are some weird things for sale in Japan, that’s for sure.

Today’s my day off and I biked into work with Scott. We had a nice little Starbucks date and then I decided to check out a department store called Loft. I don’t know why it’s called a department store when it’s absolutely packed with women’s beauty supplies. I started looking around and after an hour had passed, I left the store. The reason it took me so long was because so many of the products were absolutely ridiculous. Japanese women, I found out, are obsessed with white complexions and the cosmetics companies make several whitening creams for the face and body. What’s even crazier is the instruments they use to narrow their noses (kind of like a nose plug) and electric massage-type contraptions to make a crease in the eye. There were also several cellulite rollers and warming creams that promised to “thin legs and hips to attract to guy’s attention.” Haha. No joke, that is actually what the English portion of the tube said. I guess in a way, the women here are no different from the women in North America—always striving to look or feel better about themselves and, consequently, often fall prey to the latest marketing tactics.

I've also included this picture of some people riding their "charinkos" (slang term for bicycle) on a main street near our apartment. Mothers often carry their children in baskets on the front and/or back of their bicycle (and don't wear helmets...eek) and friends often hitch a ride by standing or sitting on the back.

Well, I’m going to test my Japanese cooking skills and make some “okonomiyaki” for dinner! It’s a famous Osakan food, but I doubt mine will be as tasty as the authentic ones sold on the street corner. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Bye for now!

Jo & Scott