Some Photos

The past few weeks have been good - the JALT conference, a couple of staff meetings, and some great dinner parties with friends and co-workers.

Also - some fun taking photos. People photos is not my forte, so you won't see any here:-)


A Buddha statue at Arigatayama in Gotemba:



And this is the Tokino Sumika hotel at night (taken with slow shutter speed):

For Everything, A Season

That little saying holds especially true for Japan – more true, perhaps, than in Western society. Japanese are very much aware of the passing seasons and the immanence of things. Style, food, activities, festivities, and new beginnings –they are all determined by the season. The spring and autumn equinox, in fact, are both so significant a day as to have been declared national holidays. The autumn equinox was on September 23, and so a full month has passed and October is now reaching its maximum autumnal glory – the days are much shorter and cooler, the rice has been harvested, and even here in mild Susono the leaves are changing colour.

One of the most obvious markers of the changing seasons is, oddly enough, the supermarket. Japanese food is mild and flavorful, and its true art can be found in the presentation and, of course, seasonality. Therefore, as summer turns to autumn, our local supermarket changes its food displays (yes, we display food here!). Gone are the luscious melons, sliced and set out to temp us; here are the kaki (Japanese Persimmons) and the matsutake mushrooms.

We are enjoying autumn, and appreciating all it has to offer while it is here. We, too, understand that before long, autumn will be a memory replaced by the colder months of winter.

Are you off your Blogger?

No, we are not off our blog, though the infrequent posting may indicate such. Just preoccupied!

We've got a lot of blogging topics ready to go, but for today, at least, I'd like to share a little humour - a video clip showing a Japanese couple, supposedly discussing the restaurant business overseas. Definitely worth a look, so just click here to watch or download the video (1.6 mb). (thanks, Lyn, for the clip! And if enyone knows the origin or who I can credit, please let me know).

A List of Things...

Ok - so I wrote a short post about some of the things that I occasionally missed from Montreal. But actually, the list of things that both of us will miss when (if?) we leave Japan is much longer; this is a good thing - we both really love our adopted country and the lifestyle we have here.

Things we'll miss:

• Onsen - these are wonderful hot springs where you take long, hot baths (indoors and outdoors) with other people who are also there to relax.
• Japanese baths - even in our apartment, we have a Japanese style bath, which is much more comfortable to us than the Western style. The bath room here does not include the toilet (thank god) and is completely water-proof; to take a bath, we first sit on a little stool and wash, then get in the tub for a clean soak.
• Good service in shops - I cannot even begin to compare. The service here is excellent, always, even if all you are buying is a pack of gum.
• The landscape - the Pacific ocean, Mt. Fuji, and numerous mountain ranges. What else can I say?
• Easy access to beer - not the healthiest thing, but when we are thirsty, beer can be found at 7-Eleven, the supermarket, or a vending machine!
• etc...

Seriously - the list goes on. Even when we go away on a holiday, we begin to talk about getting back home to enjoy those things.

Rainy Sunday

While rain is not usually welcome, we rather enjoyed the enforced relaxation that came with today's weather.

Brian worked on numerous projects (such as packing up my newly sold bikes into boxes!), and I've been learning my way around Adobe Photoshop Elements (much, much more user-friendly than the full Photoshop). Using Elements, I did some fun creative editing (like putting a frog on Brian's shoulder), and I also put together another small web album which includes this photo:




Pop Quiz: Do you know what this is and where it can be found? (Hint: you can see it in context in the album, here).

Sold!

My two auctions ended today. There was some heated bidding just in the last few minutes, and I got more than I hoped to get for an old bike and an old frame - my beautiful Cannondale sold for 82, 000 yen and my Foes went for 20, 500 yen.

Just for a memento, Brian got a screenshot of the Cannondale in its last minute:



I have already sent email to the buyers, and now all that's left is to await payment, and send the packages!

It was good fun being a seller on the auction, and I actually enjoyed the language challenge, though the Q&A, writing and deciphering email, and the sheer excitement of watching the auction has left me pretty tired. So, tonight I will reward my efforts with a nice bottle of Merlot and a gourmet pizza!

BTW - I put some close-ups of the Cannondale on the web for the bidders to get a better look at what they were buying. Click here to check them out yourself.

Yahoo Japan Auction

A few years ago, when E-Bay took the internet auction to a new level in the U.S. and Cananda, Yahoo was making great progress here in Japan, and is now the most popular internet auction.

While we have been buying from the auction for about three years, we had never tried to sell anything. Until now, that is. I finally decided that I could handle the Q&A, etc... in Japanese well enough to take the chance. I put my Cannondale up for auction as well as my old Foes frame, and they have both received bids; the auction will end tomorrow afternoon.

I have to say, I am pretty excited. I haven't really even looked at the Cannondale since I bought my Rig back in August, and the Foes frame has been gathering dust since the derailleur hanger broke and I bought the Santa Cruz Bullit instead, so I started the bidding pretty low, as I would be happy just to sell the things and make more room in the aparment, but the bidding has already gone up!

I think I am selling at the right time; a few years ago, people were still a little reluctant to buy from the auction, so it was a buyers' market; now, everyone wants a deal, and it has become a sellers' market for sure.

If you are interested in following the auction with me, Click here to see my Foes on the auction and here to see my Cannondale!

Better Photos

While I've been busy studying for the Japanese level test (about an hour a day!), I've also decided to start a new project - a photo "course".

I am not a Photographer, just an average photo-taker. However, the more photos I was taking, the more I wanted to learn about what it was that I was doing, and how to do it better. I found an site called Better Photo, which has a lot of tips, tutorials, reviews and links. It also offers a whole series of online courses (for a fee). These courses are just for fun (no certificate or anything), and run for eight weeks. After sifting through all the beginner to upper-beginner courses, I opted to take the one called "The Joy of Digital Photography".

I am currently in week two of this course, and I have already learned to see more clearly. Seriously - even a month ago, I wouldn't have noticed my crooked horizon, or the white plastic bag off to the left of the scene; my eyes would just filter out that stuff. Taking pictures takes time, and you've got to give 100% of your attention to what you are doing, to
be aware of (though not distracted by) everything around you. It's much like life - pay attention, don't rush, see with all your being.

This morning I headed out to complete my first assignment - take a picture of a building or architecture. Naturally, I took Flat Stanley along for the ride (we rode the Rig to the shrine that was my chosen subject). Stanley is keeping a journal of the places he goes and things he learns while he is here, and getting some photos of himself, too, which he is too shy to post on this blog!

But here is a photo of the shrine (kind of):

Flat Stanley Arrives

As I mentioned yesterday, we are having a visitor stay with us for a few weeks. His name is Flat Stanley, and he is visiting as part of Brian's niece's school project. He had a little accident and got flattened by a whiteboard; the upside is, he gets to travel around the world in the mail (or email)!

Here is his photo:






















He is going to get some rest today while we go to work, but he will be with us for a while and we will be busy showing him around Susono and other parts of Japan!

JALT 2005

It is now Monday evening, and all I can say is, "whew!". We had a great, whirl-wind of a weekend, starting on Friday afternoon with the pre-conference workshops at JALT. There, Brian learned about IT (Information Technology) and its applications for teachers and students; I learned about NLP - Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and how one can use its techniques to facilitate classroom interaction. And that was just the beginning.

On Saturday, Sunday and today, we and many of our colleagues participated in various other workshops, speeches, poster sessions, etc... all by teachers and other figures in the ESL industry. Overall, a very good conference, with excellent presentations by Jennifer Bassett, Tim Murphy, and David Nunan - among many many others. I am now inspired and excited to get back into the classroom and try some of these new and wonderful things!

Though I didn't bring my camera, Brian kindly brought his and snapped a few photos:

Steve Brown, JALT president, at the welcoming ceremony:














Our colleague, Dan:


Tracy and Tony, 10th Floor of Granship conference center:


That's about it for now - but be sure to tune in tomorrow as I write about a special visitor from the States who will be coming to spend a few weeks with us.

Away for a few days

It is Friday again, and yet another long weekend here as Monday is a national holiday. However, this will be a weekend, beginning from this afternoon, dedicated to professional development, as we are attending a large conference of language teachers. The annual JALT (Japan Association of Language Teaching) conference is the largest of its kind here in Japan and there will be presentations from prominent figures in the ESL (English as a Second Language) world, such as David Nunan and Michael McCarthy. I am very much looking forward to this conference, which I attend every year, and from which I always learn something new - be it technology in the classroom, or how to use scaffolding to aid in language acquisition. The social aspect is pretty awesome too!

We'll be back on Monday!

Ethereal Quiet of Early Morning

I'm not quite sure why, but for the past week or so, I've been waking up extraordinarily early - between 4 and 4:30 a.m. I wake up fully alert and restless - just have to get out of bed.

There is something special about that early morning time - with Brian still sleeping, the neighbors not yet out and about, as I sit here with only the light of my computer screen, there is something especially MINE about 4 a.m. Watching the sunrise is reassuring, too - it reminds me that today is, after all, another beginning, and I have just gotten a head start.

Still Running

Autumn is pretty much here with shorter days and cooler, drier temperatures. After last week's bout of sickness, I am back in full force this week, and so is Brian. We've been riding every morning, though this morning I ventured out for a run instead while Brian rode.

I started running only a few months ago, and while riding is still my activity of choice, I've decided that I quite like running - very strange, considering how much I used to hate it. A decade ago you couldn't have paid me to run; now, I value the solitute and variety that a run offers. Now if only I can convince Brian to give it a try!

Procrastination

Perhaps necessity isn't, after all, the mother of invention...

The nihongo shiken date is creeping ever nearer, and in my concerted effort to avoid studying for the test, I have accomplished a few other things:

• thoroughly cleaned the apartment, throwing away un-necessary items
• organized computer files
• re-designed the Japan Rider homepage, complete with new photo albums that are Firefox compatible!
• changed servers because our old server was annoying me
• was further annoyed by the new server
• just realized that the feedback form is not working (am blaming it on the server!)

This is, what we call in the business, the "house cleaning" phase of the creativity process, and I suppose that studying kanji does require some creativity!

It is easy to see how the house cleaning phase is beneficial, perhaps essential, to creativity - it is a literal cleaning of the slate. It is much easier to have an uncluttered mind when in uncluttered surroundings. Now that my files are sorted on my PC, Japan Rider has a clean, new look, and my tatami is free of clutter - like an empty page waiting to be written on - I am ready to study for the test, which is scheduled for Sunday, December 4th.