Japan: Service

Yello Everybody,

Today in my series of posts on small things about Japan, I thought I talk about the quality of customer service over here. Japan has without a doubt in my mind one of the top if not the top service ethics in the entire world, and it's made even more impressive by the fact it's across the country and across the board. In all small shops(as in shops which aren't big multi level stores) the staffmembers(and by this I mean all of them who aren't busy with other customers) will welcome you upon entry to the store, thankyou for any purchases you make and farewell you when you leave the store. If you ask a store employee for help they'll happily give it and be extremely appologetic and arrange for help if they are busy with something else. Employee's also have a genuine enthusiasm and politeness whenever they are dealing with the customers(regardless of the time, i've gone into convenience stores at 3:00am and still had fresh enthusiastic service). The same applies to restaurants and the like despite the fact that tipping is not the custom(oh how shocking the lack of tipping is to american, british and canadians). Even people in generic fast food chains like MacDonalds have genuine enthusiasm(or at least a real appearance of it). All of this is unfortunately quite different from Australia and most other western countries where service is done with sometimes relatively obvious fake enthusiasm and much of the time without even bothering to do that much, it's a truly sad state of affairs and apparently one of the major causes of reverse culture shock on returning home post Japan. The service ethic is so good and so wide spread that on the incredibly rare occasions that it doesn't occur you actually start feeling quite insulted.

The picture today is of a MOS burger store, one of the best japanese fast food chains. It does much better quality and healthier burgers and meals than most fast food chains and does them with fantastic service(a fast food chain where they'll bring the food to your table instead of making you wait standing at the register for a couple of minutes).

Okuchi week ending in a fever

Yello Everybody,

It's my weekly post today. This past week was my regular trip down to Okuchi(I stay there in a hotel for 4 nights). The week went well but was relatively uneventful. Saturday night when I returned however I somehow ended up with a strange fever, breaking out in a cold sweat and tossing and turning all night, by midday sunday I was feeling much better but I would have been lucky to have gotten 2 hours sleep(which unfortunately turned sunday into a day of rest for me. Today I was totally fine and that was lucky because I had a staff meeting. Most of the staff meeting stuff is confidential but I will say that a lot of it revolved around ideas and advice to pass on to new teachers arriving in the area, this is because most of the current teachers stays are ending and also because a few new schools should be opening.

The two images are of a park and large apartment building in Okuchi, and of a building (which is between where I live in suizenji and central kumamoto) and its interesting side which is covered in sureal artwork, its very cool.

Today in my Otaku section I'm going to do a quick rundown on my top 3 anime series for people considering starting anime to watch(by series I refer to a single series anime(26 episodes or less) as opposed to long ongoing anime with multiple series(like Dragonball Z, Astro Boy, Naruto etc.)).

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion - created in the mid 90's it is the most famous and influential anime series of the 90s and possibly ever, It is a full ongoing series with all episodes building on each other(no true stand alone episodes as in many other series), at first glance it looks like just a show with giant robots and monsters, but that is only a small portion, the true heart of the show lies in the characters and their personal development, there's a decent amount of comedy, some romance, some intrigue and some fantastic action sequences. Set in an alternate future where an event called "second impact" in 2000 destroyed antarctica and killed half the worlds population, set in a future city of Tokyo 3 Japan, it centers around shinji ikari(a fairly messed up 14 year old boy), rei ayanami(a very mysterious blue haired 14 year old girl) and asuka langley soryu(a very outgoing outspoken 14 year old girl(who deep down is a messed up or more than shinji)), who are the Pilots of the Evangelion(giant humanoid robot/monsters) and fight against the angels(mysterious giant monster like enemy invaders) to prevent a probably 3rd impact. For a better and fuller explanation check out Evangelion Wikipedia or better yet watch the series. It also had a 2 movie alternate ending Death/Rebirth of which the 1st part Death was a retelling of the series, and the 2nd part rebirth was new material and End of Evangelion which was an entirely new ending(it was fairly surreal). This coming month the 1st of a new 4 series of movies remaking and reending the series will be released. [b]Interesting side note, this series showing on SBS(australian international channel) was what first got me interested in Anime[/b].

2. Martian Successor Nadesico - created after Evangelion in the 90's set far into the future nadesico is a space anime. The primary character is Akito Tenkawa- a cook, anime fan and giant robot pilot. Nadesico is the name of the ship(the first privately owned battleship). The earth had spread out into space and settled mars, but mars was attacked by mysterious robot machines of the Jovians(from Jupiter) and destroyed, earths forces are fighting the jovians but sick of the incompetence of earths forces the internation corporation NERGAL finances and deploys the Nadesico to help retake mars. The ship is crewed by a large bunch of highly excentric and interesting characters(who are all excellent at there job however). The series is for the most part a light enjoyable comedy with some romance thrown in, but that's in there to offset the other parts which deal with the war, peoples deaths and mental trauma. The was also a follow up movie set 5 years later called Nadesico the motion picture, prince of darkness. For more information on the series check out Nadesico Wikipedia.

3. Eureka Seven - after 2 series which are now more than a decade old(and at least a decade old even in the english versions) I thought I would end on a much more recent series. Eureka Seven was created in 2005-06 and released in english towards the end of last year(the first DVD that is). Set in the future on a different planet where Trapar waves(special light particles in the air) allow people to lift(surf with a mechanical board) and fly in the air. It has a nice surfing culture aspect with the music and the appearence, but it also has a military aspect with giant robots(who also lift(air surf)) and an alien aspect with the Coralians(mysterious alien lifeforms entirely different from our own). The series is focus on a 14 year old boy named renton thurston, he's the son of a hero who died and was raised as a mechanic by his grandfather(no mother and an old sister who had dissapeared), he is bored with his life in a small town, his only real interest being the sport of lifting, until one day a very mysterious girl named Eureka and a giant robot called the Nirvash crash into his life, he then leaves home and joins gekko state a bunch of lifting rebels against the central government who are also secretly robot piloting guerilla fighters. It starts of very much as a sort of sporting romance comedy(in a futuristic way), but gains military and darker drama aspects as the series goes along. It's one of a new style of longer series with 50 episodes in total. For more information on the series check out Eureka7 Wiki.

Well that's it for today, i'll do a few regular midweek posts on Japan and maybe another ozzie otaku yonkoma(4 panel manga) this week. This week i'm in Ozu Kikuyo(the furthur of my 2 kumamoto schools, 30 minutes by train +5-10 minutes walking).

Japan: Hanabi

Yello Everybody,

Tody in my series of small things about Japan, i'm going to quickly talk about Hanabi(fireworks, hana = flower, bi = fire). The Japanese people love fireworks, a regular at matsuri(festivals) and events is a fireworks display(large ones in the sky). Large Japanese fireworks are very impressive and quite different from a lot of western ones, they aparently use a round shell instead of a tube like shell and have multiple layer effects. Also very popular are small fireworks(that you can let of yourself), unlike Australia these are easily available for anybody to buy at cheap prices(200-300 yen a pack usually) from convenience stores, 100 yen shops and supermarkets. Also different is the fact that people can and do let them of anywhere and everywhere, just the other day I passed a family letting of a bunch on the street. Normal small fireworks like bees(little ones with wings on them which bus around all over the place) and snakes(small spirals which you light on the ground and then slither around) and pinwheels are common, but you also get minature version of normal large fireworks. Also common are handheld fireworks, long thin tube like ones that shoot out streams of sparks and also traditional Japanese incense style fireworks, these are a type of game they are long and thing and you light thme hanging down like a string, they light up as a single really bright little ball of light and burn upwards, you have to keep your hand and arm still or the ball will fall of extinguishing the firework, groups of people do this together trying to keep theirs going the longest.

That's all for today, I had a strange fever thing last night and barely got any sleep(it's over now though), so i'm going to get some more sleep right now. 2 images today, one of a large firework going of and one of a group of the handheld ones.

Yonkoma no. 1

Yello Everyone,
Today for something completely different i'm going to show you a Yonkoma(4 panel manga) that I made which relates a couple of common Otaku Terms. I'm not very good at art(I truly wish I was though) and I don't have the right computer programs to do a good job, however this is what I've created, It's called Ozzie Otaku. If you like it, hate it, have an idea about it please email me or use my shout box, it took a while to think up and make however I might turn it into a once a week blog thing.



Just try double clicking or right clicking and selecting a view full image option, if you can't read it properly.

I'm going to do a normal small thing about japan post tommorrow.

Obon Week

Yello Everybody,

It's time for my weekly post. This past week was a bit different from the rest because of Obon and to make up for the amount of days worked in summer school, I had all the days barring friday and saturday off as a holiday. Early in the week I did stuff in Kumamoto, cleaning, japanese study and other miscellaneous stuff. Then for a couple of days I went to Fukuoka for a holiday, it was fun and I already wrote about it in an earlier post. Friday was spent at Ozu-Kikuyo one of my 2 Kumamoto schools(30 minutes by train and 10 minutes walk away) and was a replacement day for the saturday last month which was cancelled due to a typhoon. Saturday was spent at Nagamine(not one of my schools) doing a replacement day for one of the other teachers who had taken the day off as a vacation day. Today and Sunday have been days of study, rest and cleaning.

This coming week i'm in Okuchi for my regular business trip so I'll unfortunately be out of contact and as such won't be able to make another post until saturday night.

In my regular otaku corner this week I thought I'd talk about classic big name anime's that most every anime fan will have watched seen or at least know about. The movies of Hayao Miyazaki(who I breifly mentioned in my Fukuoka post) and Studio Gibli are the most celebrated and fantastic anime feature films around, Miyazaki is noteworthy because he has been churning out hit anime films for many decades and the fact that he still does all the animation by hand(no CG unlike almost all other groups). A few of his films have made a splash in western cinema's including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and the most recent Howl's Moving Castle. He is also know for his earlier works of Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Laputa Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso, Kiki's Delivery Service and his biggest most famous film here in Japan is the children's classic Totoro(well worth a look it's a childrens movie but it deals with some fairly adult movies as well as having great animation, characters and some very cute animal/spirit things). He is the walt disney of japanese animation. Another huge name in anime is Osamu Tezuka, and even if you don't recognise the name everyone knows his most famous series and character ASTROBOY, he also created Kimba the white lion and the less internationally known Black Jack. Osamu is also known as another walt disney of japan although he worked in the manga and series area as opposed to Miyazaki in the feature film area. Another massive name is Masamune Shirow(it's a pen name but the one he's know best by) whose most famous works are Ghost in the Shell(which was quite well received in international film markets) and Appleseed(which incidentially is having a 2nd full CG film made based on it). His creations are much more mature in focus and are heavily cyberpunk in nature, Ghost in the Shell was cited by the Kawalski Brothers as one of the main inspirations for the Matrix. The last classic anime i'll mention is Neon Genesis Evangelion, a 26 part series, set in a alternate future world/japan and focusing on in the main part 3 14 year old children(primarily shinji ikari the male of the 3), it has school comedy, romance, espionage intregue, giant mechanoids(called Evangelion), secret organisations and giant alien invaders threatening to destroy the world, however most of the series is actually about what's going on inside the character's minds and is quite psychological in nature. It also spawned a double movie alternate ending and now a 4 part movie. It is the series with the biggest following both in and out of japan, and is in fact aparently going to be made into a live action holywood movie(2009-ish) due in part to huge support by many acting, directing and producing fans. Robin Williams is a huge fan and the inclusion of a model of an Evangelion from the series in the movie One Hour Photo was entirely his doing. Anyway I hope that this has interested some of you and given people who might consider looking into anime a good starting point.

The image today is the Japanese poster for the new Evangelion film(the 1st out of 4 in a remake of the series with 3 as remakes with some extra footage and info and story and the 4th as a completely new ending), It's coming out early next month and i'm definitely going to see it on the big screen.

Japan: Costs

Yello Everybody,

Today in my series on small things about Japan I thought I would talk about general costs of everyday living here in Japan. Many people think of Japan as an expensive country in which to live or visit, however in my opinion it's only actually expensive when compared to other asian countries like China, Malaysia etc. In fact in Japan general expenses are comparable to Australia and the other western countries and in many cases are cheaper.

Drinks- a 500mL bottle of softdrink costs 100 from a supermarket(cold) and 150 from a machine or convenience store, a 1.5L bottle costs 200 from a supermarket and around 300 from a convenience store. Beer(and other alcohol) can be found for as cheap as 200 in convenience stores or vending machines and Draft beer generally costs 400-500 in bars(although you can find cheaper bars with 300 or less beer).

Meals- bento(mass produced meals found in supermarkets and convenience store which can be heated up there in their microwaves, usually mainly rice with some meal and vegetables on the side, pasta's and curry's are also common) cost around 400 and are large enough to fill you up as well as being relatively healthy. Ramen(large bowl of noodles in a soup with vegetables and few slices of meat and often an egg) costs 500 and up in Ramen shops depending on how much meat you want on it. Burger combo's at western shops like Macca's and KFC and Japanese chains like Mos Burger and Lotteria cost around 500 - 600 depending on burger type and size of drink/chips.

Transport- train a 15 minute local train trip costs about 200 and a 30 minute costs about 350, bus a 20 minute trip costs about 200, tram a trip for the full length of the tracks taking about 45 minutes costs only 360. There are train/tram cards which you can buy with a set amount of money on them for 5000 you can get 5600 worth and for 1000 you can get 1100 worth.

Entertainment- books although english language books are imported the costs on paperbacks here in Japan is actually better than Australia(well what it was when I left) a book which would have costed $20 in australia costs around 1200 over here and the same goes for the english translated manga's. DVD's barring special edition sets with extra things like models, T-shirts, super special boxes etc. are pretty much the same as australia ranging from 2000 to 3500 on average(although bargain 1000 can be found). Video Games, Game Machines etc. are cheaper by a fair amount than Australia although this is only for the Japanese Language editions. Movies however are only of the things that is expensive in Japan a movie ticket cost 1800(cinema food popcorn, drinks etc. is australia comparable though), however this does buy you an actual seat number(you don't have to show up early to get a decent seat you can pay, go shopping and return just in time for the movie without having to worry) and I have seen cinema's with budget tickets for 1000(these cinema's were older and didn't allocate seating). CD's are pretty much the same as australia 1000-ish for a small CD(single or 6 track CD) and 3000-ish for an album.

Basically it's quite affordable to live here in Japan, it's just not going to be the insanely cheap lifestyle that you'd experience elsewhere in asia(although Korea's pretty similiar to Japan). please note that all the 1000 and 350's I refer to are in Yen, to convert to Australian(or american/canadian/euro) just remove the last 00 from them for a close approximation. Anyway tommorrow i'll be doing a weekly post together with the usual otaku section, I hope you enjoy'd today's and continue to read my Blog. Today's image is another from Canal City Hakata and is of a rather cool fountain where lots of kids were playing(great spurts of water come up).

Fukuoka Special

Yello Everybody,

I've been back and working for a couple of days now, but I spent 2 nights and about 2 days in Fukuoka. Fukuoka is the main connection city between Kyushu and Central Japan, it's station Hakata is a main shinkansen transfer point and it has a fairly large international airport. Since it was Obon week this week and I had time of I decided to visit, I stayed in a small business style hotel in a japanese room(which I found looking at youth hostel information online) which was near the gardens and fukuoka castle.

I feel quite guilty though, Fukuoka has a lot of cultural things to reccommend it, but since I was on holiday and just wanted to relax, I didn't see many of the sites and instead focused on the modern city life of Fukuoka. It's a massive city and it has almost every shop and product you could want or imagine as well as some nice bars and clubs(tried a few bars, but the clubs were a bit exy(expensive) for my taste). The central shopping district is called Tenjin and ranges from normal shops, to tourist shops and up to expensive designer stores. One thing that particularily caught my eye were a number of high tech japanese watches. Ones which use LEDs and ones which tell the time in a non standard digital and non standard anolog way. Another cool type of watch were the Fossil TM watches which were analog watches with a digital display with unusual animations for the seconds instead of a second hand, particularily cool were the ones which had the numbers in Kanji(rare even in japan) and even one with the numbers fully written in hiragana(never seen or heard of before). One store that I had to visit was Mandarake(part of a chain of anime/manga stores in japan) which is the biggest anime/manga store in all of Kyushu. It was 4 floors, one of normal manga/anime, one of girls manga/anime, one of boys manga/anime and one of models, merchandise and costumes. The very coolest thing I saw there(which was considerably out of my price range) were genuine animation cells they had 10 or so including a couple from Neon Genesis Evangelion(one of the best anime series of all time) and also from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds(a anime classic film, Miyazaki has godlike status here in japan, think of him as a Walt Disney who is still creating and whose films a popular across all age groups), I was sorely tempted but at 300 to 600 dollars a piece, I just couldn't afford it. The cells are the originals painted and used by the animators to make the anime(before CG took over) and are rectangular and rougly the size of the screen on my laptop, very cool.

The other great shopping area in modern Fukuoka is Canal City Hakata, which is a massive shopping building with a manufactored canal built with it(to give it a focal point). The place had everything, cinema's and every other shop imaginable including a massive SEGA arcade, a Pokemon Shop(the craze is ongoing with all of it's original strength here in Japan), a Jump Store(Shonen Jump is the manga magazine which publishes most of the huge ongoing manga's like Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto, they also originally published Dragon Ball), a Disney Store, all the food shops you could think of, including a Wendy's burger shop(large american burger chain) which I have to admit I had lunch at(partly because I'd never had it but i'd seen it in a lot of american shows/movies, partly because it's patties are square shaped(weird huh?) and also because it advertised it's meat as being 100% australian beef). I also gave in and saw my 1st english language film since Pirates of the Carribean earlier this year, Ocean's 13(it was okay having the humor and puzzle elements of the other 2, but it lacked the romantic elements with no real romance story, still it was fun watching and getting the jokes a few seconds before the japanese people reading subtitles did).

The pictures today are one of a high tech watch, looks very retro but cool with muted black metal and blue LEDs, the trick to reading it is the little seperating lines, the single light in the top left indicates a 10 hour block(for 10, 11 and 12:00) the next 9 are used to represent the single hours(for 1-9:00 and 11-12:00), the next 5 represent 10 minute blocks (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 minutes past), and the final 9 represent the number of single minutes(1-9 minutes). It's truly a decimal clock counting everything in 10's. The next is the storefront of Mandarake anime/manga store in Tenjin and the last is the stage at Canal City Hakata, later in the day an american magician did some tricks and illusions.

[b]On an interesting note, this is my 50th blog post, Hoorah! I'm actually going to try for 100 total before leaving at the end of November(and a 101th on my return to Australia), this means keep looking forward to 3 post weeks and i'm thinking about the possibility of doing a special 1 post a day week at some stage.[/b]

A week like and unlike the rest

Yello Everybody,

It's time for my weekly post. This last week was a fairly normal week I was at Kusunoki(the closest of the 2 schools in Kumamoto itself 10 minutes by train and a 10-15 minute walk away). It's only a 4 day week with usually the 5th day being an office or team teach day, however this week saturday was given to me as a day of in leau of the extra days worked for summer school. Despite having some time to relax last weekend I was still feeling quite exhausted from the summer school experience so this was a useful thing. The one other difference was that on Tuesday I had a performance assessment, which is when my supervisor comes, watches and takes notes on my teaching. This after interviewing the Japanese teachers I work with will be turned into a report which will effect my bonus. I feel pretty good about it, it wasn't the easiest day of teaching(IE the students weren't perfect genius angels) but I felt I did well and my supervisor said that I had really improved as a teacher since the last time he had seen me teach.

Anyways the last few days have been days of rest cleaning and a few miscellaneous study and budget related things. However as I mentioned last post this week is Obon and luckily I get the next three days of as well. Tomorrow I'm doing things around Kumamoto but on Wednesday and Thursday night i'm going to be staying in Fukuoka(nearish metropolitan city with lots of culture spots) just as a holiday and sight seeing tour. so i'm planning to go wednesday morning spend most of wednesday there, all of thursday there and return friday morning before some friday afternoon classes(a makeup day from the day the 1st typhoon cancelled), the probability is that the classes will only have a few or possibly no students because this is an irregular day and its during a holiday week, but I still have to teach.

Otaku Corner: Today i'm going to do a brief chat about TCGs or trading card games. TCGs are very popular over here in Japan(although more so in the main island and major cities like Tokyo and Osaka). TCGs are an international thing and in australia I was an avid tournament player of the worlds biggest and longest lasting TCG called Magic: The Gathering(click on link to see wiki explanation. Other well known TCGs include YuGiOh, Pokemon, Duelmasters(by Wizards of the Coast(who make Magic: the Gathering) but for younger players) and VS(based on marvel comic books for the most part). The thing that sets Magic apart from the other TCGs is the fact that it has no corresponding anime/cartoon/comic series and that it's fantasy setting is of a more grown up variety with a more traditional feel(like tolkien etc.), which makes Magic the game many people who start with pokemon etc. move onto if they wish to keep playing later. TCGs attract a similiar group of people as Role Playing(dungeons and dragons) or tabletop games(warhammer and the like which us model armies and dice), however it has the advantage of being more portable than models and more simple than role play and the biggest advantage is the simple fact you can play it with any number of players from 2 up.

Anyway i've got a bit sidetracked but in any case here in Japan TCGs are very popular and as well as enjoying a higher popularity they also enjoy more varience and forms with hundreds of TCGs existing only in Japan. Many of these TCGs are based on japanese anime/manga or role play computer games. A particularily interesting varient exists which allows you to buy cards, make decks and use them to play at arcades on special machines which give 3D game play, I've seen this with a gundam game(gundam is the longest running best known mecha in japan(well not technically mecha but its a show with giant robots piloted by people anyway)) and with a couple of sporting games(soccer and baseball) where you can create a dream team with the cards and then play against other dream teams in a video game version. The games consist of a large flat top where you can arrange the cards(and can read the cards info) and a screen and buttons for the actual game, moving the cards also seems to do things, it was all a bit complicated for me with no understanding of japanese writing and little of the japanese language when I saw it in osaka during my training time.

Today's image due to the fact i've run out of good photo's from my camera and my trips images are getting old, has to do with TCGs, it's a banner image that I use on the magic web forum MTG Salvation where I post under the pseudonym of Machius(which is a name I invented which has links to Machiavelli, and Mach(as is speed) as well as sounding vaguely elvish or greek). It's an amalgam of the images from 4 different magic cards and a the flavor text from one of them.

Japan: Obon Week

Yello Everybody,

Well this coming week is Obon week or Bon Festival. This is a traditional religious holiday week here in Japan. Bon Festival was originally a tradition buddhist ritual to do with honoring the departed spirits of ones ancestors. In current japan though it seems to be all about festivals coupled with family togetherness(especially visiting elderly relatives like grandparents etc.). The actual dates are 13th to the 15th of July.

There is apparently also a traditional Bon Dance to honor the dead done in traditional costumes and to traditional folk music.

The picture for today is of a traditional Bonfire lit on a hill near the Golden pavillion in Kyoto during Bon Festival. I actually saw the site for this on my trip to Kyoto with my parents, when we stopped to have lunch upstairs in a small udon(japanese buckwheat noodles) and coffee shop after visiting the golden pavillion. The Kanji character is Dai which means great, grand or large.

I'll be doing my usually weekly round up post and otaku section tommorrow.

Pictures

Yello Everybody,

As promised i'm going to make up for my last inordinately long imageless post with some pictures. These pictures are a small selection from the massive sampling that had accumulated on my keitai(mobile phone), so please excuse the lower than usual definition.



One of my best friends is named Beck so I took a picture of this, it's a coffee chain here in Japan.






A few images from the trip I took with my parents. 1 of mount fuji through the mountains and clouds, 2 of a Tori gate(red gate found at shrines and 1 is a nice shot of my parents on the boat we took at lake hakone.




A couple of images from tokyo one of the buildings along the street in shinjuku(very popular massive shopping district) in the rain and one of the street near akihabara station complete with women in maid outfits advertising maid cafes.




A couple of images from the recent Kumamoto matsuri(festival), one of a group of women wearing kimono's near a balloon fishing pool and one of the candy filled block of ice that I mentioned.




And to finish up a couple of a march which happened during the matsuri in okuchi when I was there during summer school.

That's all for now, i'm going to be back to regular weekly posts and part weekly posts on the little things about japan from now on.

Summer School: The Epic

Yello Everybody,

Long time no post, I'm very sorry but as i've previously mentioned over the last couple of weeks i've had Summer School teaching. Summer School is a seperate curiculum which runs for 5 days over the Japanese summer holidays(5 days for each school that is). There are 3 levels: A for the really young students(under 5 on average) with their mother/father/grandparent, which is all about learning through play(had a cute teddy bear family theme), B for the mid level students(6-11 average) which is all about learning through investigation(had a mystery detective theme) and C for the high level students(12-14 average) which is all about learning through study. As a native teacher(native english speaking teacher) I teach days 2 and 3 out of the 5 days but the schools stagger the 5 day periods so that the native teachers can teach the day 2 and 3 at 4 different schools.

First up I had a 2 day business trip to Okuchi(usual business trip location) which was fun and they also had a town matsuri(festival) going on at the same time(which i didn't see much of with my schedule), then I returned to Kumamoto for 2 days at my Ozu Kikuyo school(30 minutes by train +10 minute walk) which was also good, then I had a business trip to a school i had never been to in Ibusuki(a see town right down at the bottom of the Kyushu island an hour by express or an hour and a half by normal train furthur than Kagoshima, it's famous for onsen(hot springs) and for hot sand baths(yes hot sand baths) neither of which I got to try with my finances and my schedule however I did stay in a Ryokan(traditional japanese style hotel, with tatami mats, provided asa gohan and gohan(breakfast and dinner) both japanese style(nice if you like it(i quite like it), the ryokan has the feel of being in your own home(or a close relatives) and the couple running the place were very nice and even gave me a lift to the station when I left) anyway Ibusuki went well it had relatively few students but everyone was very good and I had fun, then to finish up I returned to kumamoto and had 2 days at my regular Kusunoki Musashi school(10 minutes by train + 15 minute walk) which went fine barring the fact that on the first day we had a typhoon come through(not as bad as the last one and I think this one past us to the north, but it kicked up a lot of wind and rain), no classes were cancelled but my return train was and I had to catch a taxi home(not to bad only about 20 dollars but still a nuisance). SO there you have it 8 days straight each of which averaging 5 hours continous work(working with kids which I have to say is considerably more tiring than most other occupations(and i've been a earthmoving labourer)), so needless to say by the end i was totally beat. Luckily though i've just had a 3 day weekend to recouperate in.


[b]A huge shout out to my little sister Alyssa who had her 21st birthday on saturday(4th of August), I actually tried to suprise her by calling her home in the morning but left it a bit to late(she had gone out to get a haircut) but luckily I managed to ring and congratulate her at my parents home just before her party(she seemed quite surprised). Anyway congratulations again to a wonderful sister and I wish you all the happiness in the world over the coming year(and those to follow.[/b]

A few people may be wondering what i've done with my 3 day weekend, and the answer is not much, the 1st day apart from calling my sister I just lazed around and the last 2 days I've done some housework and study but generally just relaxed(thanks to which i'm now feeling up to teaching again). The one thing out of the ordinary I did do is going in the next section.

Well my otaku corner is back, this time thanks to the aforementioned special thing that I did, which was on sunday going to see the Naruto Shippuden movie(released saturday) at the films. Naruto as i've previously mentioned is one of the biggest ongoing anime and manga licences in Japan and its story is set in a fantasy world with ninja's and semi magical ninja techniques(for more information check out Naruto Wikipedia). Anyway this being a brand new japanese anime movie in japan it was obviously in full japanese with no subtitles, however thanks to my steadily improving japanese skills, my thorough knowledge of the series and combined with the fact i've watched the anime in subtitled format, I manage to understand the vast majority of the relevant plot line(although missing many of the little jokes).

The basic plot goes like this, A mysterious evil man and his 4 ninja comrades kill the guards and break into a temple releasing a imprisoned demon and awakening a massive army of near unbeatable stone warriors(think chinese terracota warriors), the only person who can stop this is a special priestess and her holy technique, Naruto(the protagonist) together with sakura(main female protagonist), rock lee and neji(two other important characters) are sent to protect her. Neji is put in charge, sakura is the medic, rock lee is the 2nd in command and naruto is the fill in(much to his annoyance). The team of 4 evil ninjas attack the priestesses castle somehow empowered by snake like demons in side of them and using powerful elemental techniques, quickly most of the guards are killed and small squad tries to protect the priestess but all but one dies before naruto shows up followed by the other 3 and they manage to fight of the ninjas for now. Naruto gets upset by the priestesses apparent indifference to all the people who died to protect her and confronts her but is stopped by the other 3, the priestess has a vision of narutos death and her visions have had a 100 percent accuracy making naruto a bit wierd for a while. Naruto, sakura, neji, lee and the remaining guard join together to help the priestess get to a sacred place where she can preform the required ritual. The 4 evil ninjas follow, naruto and lee break of naruto fighting a female ninja who uses water and fire jutsu and lee fighting an earth jutsu user, neji and sakura take the priestess and run. Naruto manages to stop butnot kill the female ninja and Lee after a huge battle where he unleashes his power to the max and the opposing ninja drinks the blood of the demon inside him to transform also manages to win through the use of drunken fist techniques thanks to an alcohic bonbon his sensei gave him for emergencies. Neji sends sakura on ahead and stalls the other 2 ninja one of who uses chakra controlled shuriken and the other turns out to be a puppet copy. The real second ninja catches up to sakura poisons her and kills the apparent priestess. However its revealed that is was actually the guard transformed to look like the priestess. The evil ninjas return to inform of the death of the priestess only to be told that they had failed. Naruto goes on ahead with the priestess, while sakura neji and lee stay back to fight against the evil ninjas. Naruto and the priestess manage to get to the sacred place but its surrounded by stone warriors. Meanwhile the 3 remaining evil ninjas use a lot of chakra searching for the priestess and need to recharge but before they can the leader's chakra is sealed by neji and the other 2 are taken out by sakura and lee. Naruto manages to get the priestess past the warriors using his copies and rasengan techniques and stays at the entrance while she enters. Inside is the place from the vision on narutos death and the evil man who attacks with the warriors but the priestesses magic stops them. The man talks about being the demon who had killed her mother(the former priestess, the priestess had a sad childhood with no parents and with everyone afraid of her power(which made naruto feel closer to her since his is the same)), she goes to the ceremony site and begins but the man/demon breaks through her barrier stopping the ceremony plunging her into darkness and releasing yet more demonic evil. Naruto has done well against the warriors but the sheer numbers have exhausted him and he is about to be killed before Kakashi(his teacher) and many other ninjas show up to help, naruto runs inside after the priestess and shows up just as a massive black/purple energy hydra like demon appears(who had killed him in the vision) he attacks is fast and cool but seems to be about to die however the priestess has given him her protective amulet/bell and he is safe-ish, she starts to go towards heaven and her mother happily thinking she had saved him and changed his future by sacrificing herself, however naruto breaks through to her slaps her out of her self sacrificing way of thought and together they create a massive spiritual rasengan(it looks cool but anyone who has also seen dragonball Z will instantly think that it looks too much like goku's spirit bomb) and destroys the demon also awakening the mountain as a massive volcano. All the other characters barring naruto and the priestess stand watching the volcano and then naruto emerges carrying her on his back. There's also a little joke at the end, which i'll keep a secret.

As if that wasn't cool enough, what made me especially happy was the preview for a new Neon Genesis Evangelion movie(one of the biggest and best series ever, and also the one which made me fall in love with anime in the first place when it screened on SBS in australia(a channel which specializes in international content). They are redoing the entire series as 4 movies, with the first 3 covering the series with only a few changes and some massive improvements in animation(the original was done in the 90s) and the 4th being a new and completely different ending. The 1st is released next month and I'm definitely going to see it unfortunately the rest are going to be over a couple of years and i'm not sure how long it will take to get to australia or america(hopefully i'll be able to find them online though).

On a different note, I felt one of my very few touches of nostalgia for Australia on sunday(I haven't felt homesick at all, probably due to my personality being entirely self reliant), this was triggered by a shopping mall out of the blue playing the song "I come from the land down under", which as i said gave me a feeling of nostalgia although now I come to think about it it was probably more for australian 80s rock than the country itself.

Anyway i'm to tired to hunt down a picture to go with this post, but i'll update it or do a picture heavy post in the next day or 2.

EDIT: Added a picture of mount Kaimon near Ibusuki