Kindergarten Was A Good Time!

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In kindergarten, life holds a wonderful simplicity. You go to school with your cute little backpack, you play with your new friends of whose last names you are completely ignorant, you learn without even realizing it and without ever having to do any homework, and you are essentially a pretty happy little being floating along through this crazy world.

Such is teaching English in Japan. Life is simple. I go to work less than eight hours a day, and the job is pretty simple, with no homework. I meet new people all over the place, but as I realized while filling in my new daily planner's address book yesterday, I don't know anyone's last name! I'm learning all the time, and not even feeling like I need to work at it because it just happens through experience. I have fun and play and just enjoy the world around me. I'm realizing just how wonderful the simple things are.

In light of these new revelations and in keeping with the kindergarten theme, I'm also going to offer this entry up in picture book style... Enjoy!

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Photos

The Trees are Bald!
To keep the trees from interfering with overhead lines, they cut back all the trees on the street! I think they rotate with streets to do every few years. A little strange.

Unicycling!
This is actually a relatively common mode of transportation for kids here. Everyday is like a circus for me! This little girl was sweet enough to pose for this picture after first hiding from the crazy gaijin girl trying to take her picture through the car window... poor thing.

What a Melon!
I've mentioned the expensive fruit before, but would you believe that there are $40 melons?

A Night Out
Went out for a night in Nagoya a few weeks ago. Among the orders of business, one of the teachers' bands was playing at a small club. This was one of the other bands... Japanese Brit pop... it was actually pretty good!

A Night Out2
This one is AJ's band. They were really good too!

A Night Out3
After the supper, bands, and karaoke, we took in some pita action from a little street vendor who is known for his somewhat Soup Nazi-like reputation. The pitas were great, but even greater was having the Pita Nazi on our side with his little sign to help fend off the overly forward Russian men hovering around us.

Another Great Sign
Cigarettes are $3 a pack here with no disgusting warnings on the packaging. People smoke like friggin chimneys! But they did have this little warning on the front of the ashtray outside the Lawson convenie. Look closely... it's awesome!

Miso Factory Tour
Our next Japanese field trip started with a tour of a miso factory. It was semi interesting, but mostly pretty disgusting. My new vow and advice to all, when traveling and eating new foods, ignorance truly is bliss.

Miso Factory Tour2
Some of the dirty, rusty machinery from the tour. Not sure if I really captured the spider webs in these pictures though. Ugh.

Miso Factory Tour3
Testing the miso... Miso soup - good. Raw miso out of a bucket - not so much. Do you think they meet all health codes?

Miso Factory Tour4
This part was actually pretty cool. To make miso, they have these huge barrels full of the soy beans with rocks on top to compress the beans and measure the rate of compression. The process takes about two or three years. This part was pretty impressive.

Miso Factory Tour5
This was the outside of the building. I've come to realize that what is often perceived to be a very clean country, isn't necessary that. Japan is like me, tidy, but not necessarily clean. As you can see, this building is pretty rusty and it would be a far stretch to call it clean, and many buildings and structures in Japan are like this. But you never see any garbage lying around. I appreciate where their priorities lie.

Nishio Castle
After the miso tour, we headed to the Nishio castle which they say is quite famous. Another thing about the Japanese though, everything is the most famous or the biggest or the oldest. This tour was nice, with very beautiful grounds, but the castle did not even exist there anymore.... I'll admit I was a little confused, but it was pretty and peaceful.

Nishio Castle2
This lady was just cleaning up at the end of a small tea ceremony at the castle's tea house.

Nishio Castle3
The grounds

Nishio Castle4
That's the watch tower up there.

Nishio Castle5
The tea house

Nishio Castle6
The watch tower up close. The little wholes in the wall to the right were all part of the surveying act.

Nishio Castle7
Though I really don't know how much could be surveyed from this standpoint.

A Little Foliage
Sometimes it's just interesting to see the different plants they have on the other side of the world.

A Little Foliage2
The colours of the trees in the schoolyard outside my window. Autumn is pretty nice in these parts.

Comments

[Aubrey]

The Kindergarten Metaphor is too funny and too true!
Thanks for the laugh. I am really jealous that you get to go to kindergarten each day! Enjoy it as much as you can. Man you are a great writer! The photos are wonderful and the fall colors so nice to see again. There is no place I have been that is as beautiful as Kyoto in the fall. Seeing Arte is also a nice memory. I could really use a tuna onigiri! Hope this finds you well.