Matsusaka makes the news

Japan may be a relatively safe country, but often when crimes do happen, they are STRANGE!!
One of the first crimes I heard about after coming to Japan was an old man who got angry at some teenagers who were hanging out outside his house being loud. He came out with a samurai sword and killed a couple of them. Now Matsusaka, the city where I teach once a week and spend alot of my time, has made it into the news for an even stranger crime. Pretty sure these are not my students:)
Edit: The link that was here previously is broken, but it was about a group of high school kids who kidnapped a schoolmate, kept her captive in an apartment, cut off her thumb and cooked it in curry before she managed to escape! Really scary and bizarre!

My new favourite country

Philippines

Please click on the picture above to see the rest of my pics from this trip.

I've gotten a little behind in my blogging, and since my last post I've travelled overseas twice, but I'll start with my most recent trip while it's fresh in my mind. During Golden Week (April 27- May 7) I went on a volunteer trip with 10 other ALTs to the Philippines. We went with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for families who can't afford to buy one. We flew into Manila, arriving late at night, and left early the next morning for Naga city in Bicol, where we would be working and staying. Our first impression of Bicol was the airport, which had been hit by a typhoon (in November?!!) and was still missing part of the roof, among other things.

Wating for us at the airport were our co-ordinator, Leo, and some local volunteers, ready to pile us all into the jeepney, our mode of transportation for the week.

After settling into our cottages, we were off to the local university for an info session. We learned more about the project, and I was saddened to hear that in Bicol, about 70% of the people live below the poverty line. We also visited a finished habitat site where there were people living in the houses, including tons of kids who were ready and eager to pose for pictures

That night, we had a welcome dinner, where we got to know the local volunteers a bit better. We saw our first glimpse of their musical talent, which would entertain us throughout the week.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to a waterfall to go swimming and then some hotsprings to relax. It was a great day:)


We started work on Monday. The houses are made of brick, so our job consisted of carrying bricks, carrying water, sand, and gravel to mix with the cement, mixing cement, laying bricks, filling holes with cement, and digging a hole for the septic tank.

TO BE CONTINUED....

St. Paddy's Day in Ise!!

I wasn't really expecting St. Patrick's Day to be a big thing here, and actually, most Japanese people haven't even heard of it, but apparently there is enough of a foreign population (and Japanese people who are interested in all things foreign) to have quite a few events in celebration. The one closest to me was a parade/party in Ise. The Irish ambassador even came down from Tokyo (he was really cool; later he bought the bar I was in a round of drinks).

I showed up at Ise shrine shortly before the parade was due to start, only to discover that we WERE the parade, not spectators. I was given an "Irish dancer" costume and told I should dance at the front of the parade.

Of course I agreed (the Guiness helped me get in the spirit).

The parade consisited of many drunken foreigners in green/costume walking around Ise.

We also had a troupe of baton twirlers who performed to, well, it sounded more like marching band music than Irish music.

We did have an Irish band as well though, which was what I was dancing to (pretending I knew how to dance like an Irish dancer, which I don't).

This was the laziest parade I've ever seen, let alone been in, and there were very few people watching us, although I do think we turned a few heads of people who didn't know what was happening. After the parade and some food, there was an official party at the cultural centre, where we drank more (guiness on tap!), were taught how to do an Irish folk dance, by cute little Japanese ladies,
and were given Guiness merchandise. It was a really fun celebration:)

MASSIE renunion and USJ!!

For those of you who don't know, there's a program at my uni, Mt A, called the MASSIE program, which brings Japanese students from KGU in Kansai over for 4 months to study english. They get paired up with Mt A students for roommates and conversation partners. During my last summer at Mt A, my roommate Jenna and I each had a MASSIE student, Akemi and Shoko, respectively. I also had one in the fall, Eri. I've kept in touch with all 3, and visited Eri and Akemi in the fall, and this past Saturday there was a reunion in Osaka for all the MASSIE students who were still around. Of my 3, only Akemi could make it, but it was great to see everyone else again and meet new people to reminisce with about Sackville:)

After the reunion, I went back to Akemi's house to stay the night. Her mom had bought a new English translation book in anticipation of my visit, so she was prepared with new hostess phrases. She's such a sweet person, I was really happy to see her again. It was great to see her dad and grandma again too. :) Saturday was Hina Matsuri Day, which is a holiday for girls. As children, parents buy their daughters these extravagant doll sets and set them up every year before March 3 on a set of stairs (usually with a red carpet). These sets start at about $1000, so not exactly Barbie. The sets MUST be taken down by the end of March 3, or the daughter will have a late marriage, which of course, no one in Japan wants (if you aren't married by the time you're 25, you're called "Christmas cake" : no one eats Christmas cake (a Japanese tradition) after Christmas Day b/c it gets stale).

On Sunday, Akemi and I went to Universal Studios Japan (USJ) in Osaka. For some reaon, even though it was a weekend, the park wasn't as crowded as I expected and the longest wait we had was only about an hour. We went on the Spiderman ride (AMAZING!!), Jurassic Park (FANTASTIC!!), Back to the Future (retro 3D??!!!), E.T. (my childhood fave) and Terminator 2 (almost fell asleep). And we shopped of course. It was alot of fun, and such a beautiful day!! I was walking around in a T-shirt (in MARCH!!) and STILL warm! Even when we got soaked on Jurassic Park, it felt like summer b/c we dried off so quickly. I feel like winter didn't even happen this year, right from fall to spring.

My birthday in Japan

I'm a lazy blogger

Ok, back to my trip. So we spent 2 and a half days checking out the temples in Siem Reap. My faves were Ta Prohm,

Bayon

and of course, Angkor Wat.

This was over Xmas eve and Xmas day, so there was even a moment where we sang christmas carols from the top of a hill with a temple on it. I think we were the only english speakers, but some people recognized jingle bells and chimed in. It was great. On the third day, our Osaka friends moved on, and Linh wasn't feeling well, so I was on my own in the temples. Unfortunately, I lost my pass, and while the guard at one temple was nice enough to let me in with Linh's pass, when I tried at a second temple I almost got detained/fined. Luckily I was able to talk my way out of it, although I didn't get to see any more temples. Bummer. We flew back to Ho Chi Minh the same day, and early the next morning we flew to Phu Quoc Island, a little slice of paradise.

On Phu Quoc, we claimed spots on the beach and basically didn't move for 3 days except to swim, eat and get massages ($3/hr!!). It was great. We mets lots of cool people there, including a swedish guy we went for drinks with one night, a group of japanese people there with an ALT, and two couples that we spent the last niht with, one from England and and American couple living in Shanghai.

The last day of our vacation was spent shopping in Ho Chi Minh for everything we had been eyeing the whole trip. Then we began the long journey home. We had a 24 hour stopover in Beijing airport, and since we arrived late and hadn't been able to confirm our day trip to the Great Wall, we were stuck in the airport all day. Finally we got to Nagoya on New Years Day, and when I got back to my apartment later at around 6pm, I slept for a solid 20 hours. I was wiped out. Great trip!!

My Winter Vacation

Well, I've been back for awhile, but pretty busy with class and other, more fun diversions, and as a result am just getting to this now. Even so, it may take a few sessions until I've said all I want to about my trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. In a word, it was amazing. Let me elaborate.
So, as I've said before, I went with my friend Linh, a fellow JET living in Shizuoka. Linh was born in Ho Chi Minh City, but moved to Canada when she was two. Only her immediate family left Vietnam, so she still has many relatives living there, some of whom I had a chance to meet.
We left Japan on December 16th, and during our layover in Beijing that day, we completely changed our plans for the trip. Until then, we had planned on going north, but as we had heard stories of the less than perfect weather there at that time of year, we decided instead to stay south, and include Cambodia in our travels.
We spent the first three days in HCMC, and stayed with Linh's aunt, uncle, and 3 male cousins. The only one I could really talk to was Chad, a couple years younger than me, with pretty good English. I felt kinda bad about not being able to communicate with the rest of the family, especially since they were being so kind to me, so I bowed alot (they don't really bow in Vietnam, but it's what I do here when I can't express my thanks, so I hope the meaning got through). The first day was Linh's uncles birthday, so we took them all out for dinner, and then sang happy birthday to him on stage!

The first couple days we hung around the city, going to markets, hanging out on Backpacker's Road (where all the foreigner's hang out), and had a photoshoot!!
On the third day we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which are tiny tunnels built during the Vietnam war, that stretch from HCMC to Hanoi in the north. We crawled through a 100m section of the tunnels, which was cool, but it was pitch black, small, and stiflingly hot. Our tour guide for this visit was Mr. Binh, a bitter old man who had worked for the Americans during the war, and thus been cast as a traitor and sent to a "re-education camp". He was also just a little prejudiced against Americans (which he called all the foreigners) and their "fat asses". When I came back I learned that Doug had also had Mr. Binh as his guide. On our way to the tunnels, we stopped at a "handicapped handicraft factory", where they tried to take advantage of our consiences to make us pay 4X the price for crafts that we could get at any market in town. Linh and I didn't fall for it, although we did run into another JET that had been in our group from Ottawa, who we hadn't expected to see. It was cool to catch up with her.
We made our way back to HCMC and went to the War Museum with some people we had met on the tour. Mostly just alot of pictures of people affected by Agent Orange, and of other war atrocities. It was incredibly disturbing, and after seeing the reconstructed "Tiger cages" (prison cells used for torture) we'd had enough and left the rest unexplored.
On the fourth day we went to Mui Ne, about 3 hours east, on the coast. Mui Ne is full of beach resorts, and famous for it's sand dunes. We booked a jeep tour, and our driver Kim, took us to a fishing village, where we saw the round boats they use close to shore, a red canyon, where I broke the only pair of sandals I brought :( , and the sand dunes. The white sand dunes were really cool. Just lots of hills of sand. When you're on them, it looks like you're in Egypt. There was a small boy renting out a sled so that you can slide down the steepest hills. It looked a little scary, so we made another tourist do it first, and then we had a go. The hill was really steep and ended in water, but the sand stops you well before you reach the bottom. I actually wished it had been a little scarier. Oh well. We then went to the yellow sand dunes, which were nice too, to see the sunset.
The next day we headed back to the city for the night, and then it was off to Cambodia on a 2 day boat tour along the Mekong River that we had booked. I now know that $22 for 2 days (including hotel and food) may be cheap, but you get what you pay for. We completely missed all the nice sights of the Mekong that you see in pictures (small tributaries with overhanging vegetation), and were herded like sheep from boat to boat to bus to boat, and so on, for an exhausting 2 days. We ended up in many different tour groups, with many different guides, and at some points didn't even have anyone with us who spoke English. Nobody told us what was happening, and when we got to the border, our guide took all of our passports and the money for our visas, and got off the boat. We were all worried that we wouldn't see him again, but he was there at the border when we arrived, thank God.
We got to Phnom Penh at about 6pm, grabbed a quick supper, and jumped in a "taxi" with a couple english teachers from Osaka that we had met. I use the term taxi loosely here. Our driver was a relative of someone who worked at the guest house that we had been dropped off at. He drove like a madman, swerving past any other cars we came across, and completed the 5-6 hour drive to Siem Reap (according to Lonely Planet) in about 4. When we arrived at the guest house we had called ahead to, they told us that they didn't have rooms for us (even though we called ahead), but then they kicked some people out, and we took their rooms. I think the people they kicked out were probably relatives who were staying there for free, and since we could pay, we had priority. They didn't clean the room before letting us in though, and poor Linh's bed smelled like smelly old man. (She even sprayed her sheets with bug spray for a more pleasant scent.)