Hong Kong'd

well, having had a month to muster up the motivation to write a new entry, i wish i could promise a great story. maybe it's been busy. perhaps i've been lazy. i can't remember, frankly, but i nonetheless apologize for the delay. i've received a few emails accusing me of dropping away. perhaps the autumns of asia have dropped me into oblivion. i meant not to turn incommunicado but i've been unable to help it. sorry.

david and i went on a journey to hong kong in october, and what i found most intriguing about the experience was its similarity to being back at home. lots of english in hong kong. lots of cantonese. everyone is quite friendly and the driving looks treacherous. it's so much like markham it's hard to believe.

but what a time! the bars seem to run all night and we didn't even find lan kwai fong (the incredible hedonistic party district) until the last night i was there. my liver pulses gently in healthy relief.

i'll try to get some pictures up soon. i wrote most of this blog entry earlier this month and saved it as a draft, forgetting to post it. the silence must be broken. expect more regular entries soon.

A Tease

just a quick update to break the silence. expect a real post quite soon. it's been a busy week. my friend vicki has left japan for a long trip around the world for over a year, and i lost all of my worldly possessions during a night in osaka. i paid an arm and a leg to have my locks changed on my apartment only to recover the bag with the key. i got my digital camera back. my friend brit was up from shizuoka after landing in japan the day earlier to begin her year-long stint as an english teacher out there. we had a blast. there are pictures, but you'll have to wait. i've been drinking a lot in the name of hosting a guest, but she's returned to her area now. i hope that she made it. i hope my liver will too. the hanshin tigers won the central league pennant, and the area is ecstatic. japanese baseball rules.

the weekend is here. a real post will be made tomorrow if all goes well.

Happenstance

today was the first time in a long time where i had to work but didn't have any classes to teach. for some of the other teachers here, this happens quite often and we spend the day in the office preparing our lesson materials when this happens. today is the third time in the eight months i have been with the company where i get to do this. usually i'm covering at another teacher's school in lieu of having an office day so the only prep time i get occurs before my lesson. i have learned to get quite creative with this time and usually can conjure up some fun things to do on limited materials. but today i'm here at the office and pre-writing this blog entry instead of preparing. ironic. strangely, considering how renowned the japanese are for being tech-savvy, my laptop is the only computer in the entire office, which is the central hub for about 150 employees. one thing about the business environment in japan that drives me insane is the archaic use of the fax machine for nearly all communications. i'm interested to know how many computers the entire company has across japan, because i imagine they only have a few in the head office if our district office is in any way indicative of the whole. i cringe when i hear the starting whir of the fax machine and wonder if that's what trees would sound like if they could scream in agony.

i can't remember if i told this story in one of my notoriously long group emails, but it deserves a recapitulation. for brevity's sake i'll try to tell it quickly. in april i was invited to an outdoor music festival in osaka by my friend kelley. he was staying at his in-law's place that weekend and would be staying in osaka the night before so we agreed to meet there instead of traveling together as we normally would. i was forced to venture into osaka all alone and try to find the festival. for those of you who don't know, osaka is a metropolis with a population of over 25 million people, and is the third largest city in japan after tokyo and nagoya. i was a little worried i wouldn't be able to find kelley and his wife satomi if i flew solo, assuming i was even able to find the correct location of the festival. fortunately the outdoor venue was right outside of a train station so it wasn't too hard to find, though to my chagrin kelley was nowhere to be found for about an hour's time. in that time, while i was wandering around hopelessly foreign and hopelessly alone, i decided to employ my cell phone in hopes that it would help me track down my friend. just as i was about to write the email explaining my position, i heard a familiar voice that i'd not heard in a long time. i looked up to see an equally familiar face and without thinking i waited for her to pass by me and then called out "jen". she stopped, turned, and the colour drained out of her face. i opened up my hands in disbelief and made the same face back at her. it was jen neales, an old classmate and fellow guelph drama program alumus. we both freaked out. i didn't know that she was in osaka and she had no idea that i was even in japan. remember that this is a country of 126 million people. as i was trying to reenact the face i made when i saw her pass by me for her, i turned and made the same face to vicki hambley and corey liston, who had walked up separately behind me. it was the second time i made the face with geniune shock. i was blown away. it's such a small world.

this weekend i am going to have to cancel my japanese lesson because vicki and jen are having their sayonara party on saturday night. corey's still going to be here, thankfully, but it's sad that vicki and jen are both leaving so soon. it was a stroke of amazing luck that i would bump into them in the middle of osaka and i wish i had more time to hang out with them now that i've found them. but they're heading back to canada and i'll have to wait until i return to see them again.

it's nice to know that i have friends stationed all over the world, as my future traveling adventures will require places to sleep along the way. so get out there. i am still looking for people to be living in south america and africa when i set out. any takers?

Summer Breaks

well, it seems that after a long, long period of incessant humidity and oppressive heat, the world beyond my air-conditioned room is starting to cool off. yesterday the air was said to contain a gentle cool breeze. the rice stalks are heavy with maturation and ready to be harvested. in a way it's a shame, because for many areas it's as much green space as you see and i hate the look of the empty dirt fields interspersed between the apartment high-rises and the run-down stripmalls here in shikama.

my hobby as an amateur runner has suffered greatly from the heat because i've had to change my regimen to avoid the sun, leaving me to run at night. typically this meant starting my run after work at 11pm or later. between stretching and the walking cool-off, i was lucky to hit the showers by 1:30am. last night, however, with the cool night breeze i set out to put myself back on track. there was i time when i was running 12km almost every other day, and i hadn't done a full route for quite some time. but something happened.

i'm now sitting in my apartment in a state of ridiculous pain. based on a brief internet search, i'm pretty sure i've managed to give myself itb, or iliotibial band syndrome. and it hurts. fortunately it doesn't look too serious and i should be able to treat it myself. but it's the first time i have sustained an injury from running and i guess i just tried too hard to jump back into my full route after taking time off. stupid.

well, i won't be jumping around with the kids today. hopefully i can find a way to teach from a stationary position and we can keep the dancing out of it. i suddenly feel 75 years old. i have to teach some of my wildest kids today. wish me luck.

But enough about me...

i'm appalled at the way the american government has dealt with their ongoing disaster. that's not what you want to hear. most of the people reading on this website want to know how my life is going in japan. be assured that life here is both comfortable and adventurous. but i've become so complacent with the taken-for-granted freedom that i have been given that at times i forget about the strife of our american neighbours.

i'll say this, before i turn to partisanship: i am happy that i'm here instead of there, for fear of being imperialistically annexed by the united states. the name of their country has quickly become ironic. never has the u.s. been less united.

how has a single chimp of a leader managed to divide such an otherwise strong nation? god save the united states of america. it won't be long before your radical differences in politics and value systems tear you apart. i pray that civil war on american soil will never happen again. you are ruled by power-hungry idiots with money. they can afford the guns. attempt peaceful protest. avoid violence. don't give them the satisfaction.

your government has manipulated your value systems by acquiring control of the media and subsequently sedating you with it. think for yourself. question authority. never has critical thought been a more important asset in your history. never before have you been so bombarded with such extremist rhetoric. never before have you been so needlessly afraid.

i must pause, however, at this very point. for quite some time, on this side of the world, i have been ready to preach that the fear you have been programmed to arm yourselves with has been unnecessary. but i must refine my stance to let you know that i now feel your fear is misdirected. your fear is valid, though its current target is a scapegoat. fear the decisions your government is making. fear a leader who decides on your behalf that a war should be waged against those who have yet to attack you. fear those who instate laws to remove the people from the diplomatic process. fear those who demonstrate their incompetence to protect you by taking a six week vacation while your poor and disenfranchised drown in the tides of an aforeseen natural disaster. fear those who forget the poor, the black, the historically victimized. fear them because they are the least compassionate of all. but for christ's sake, do something about it. refuse to lose your agency to fear.

i wish i could update this blog with more pictures of me eating sushi, but it just wouldn't be fair. this disaster in new orleans is going to be a turning point for america; i know that right now, as i write all of this, george w. bush is taking this opportunity to mention 9/11 in whatever speeches he is making, but i want you to understand that this is only being done because karl rove believes that a 39% approval rating can be improved.bBoth of these men are criminals.

can you trust any leader who takes a six-week vacation while the citizens of his country are dying, whether they be in a remote country (fighting an unprovoked war) or at home? can you trust anyone who delays in taking action when people of his own country are dying or drowning on their own soil? can you trust a government who will dedicate time and money to impeaching a president with a cigar fetish but not one with the lowest approval rating in American history? can you trust someone who has been wrong time after time, or someone who makes a practice of ruining anything that he touches? can you trust a person who will abandon anything he gets tired of maintaining, whether it be an oil company or a baseball team or a nation? can you support a man who will wage an international war to resolve the unavenged grudge of his father? forget god bless america. somebody please save america. save america from themselves.

for anyone who has read this far, know that i am thinking of you all while i am here and you are all the way over there. i have learnt to appreciate human beings despite how often they let me down. i have learned to treasure the ones i love and pine for the ones who have lost themselves in the name of greed or fear or hatred. i may be far away, but my friends and family live deep within my heart.

remember that while you may know hardships and pain, you may never know the people who are lifelong victims. no matter what the media tells you, know that we are one people, and regardless of how you attained your current state of comfort there are people who are in need and it is your ongoing responsibility to ensure the welfare of everyone.

if there is a god willing to help out this secular era, please do what you can with your divine ability to redirect this tragically misguided human race. what a disgrace we've become.

Before the Glenfiddich sets in...

outside of my apartment, there's one hell of a storm going on.

this is my first experience with a typhoon. apparently, september is typhoon season in japan. they have titled this particular storm "nabi" after the korean word for butterfly. she is my no means graceful. oddly enough, i was en route to work today when i noticed a small butterfly was hitching a ride on the train i was taking to work. i tried desperately to coax the small (albeit immensely beautiful) creature into the palm of my hand so that i could release it outside of the train car before a less compassionate passenger killed it, but it was wise enough to be wary of human contact and resisted my attempts. i had my digital camera with me but it never occurred to me to snap a picture of this timid and delicate insect. i was too caught up in plotting its escape.

half of my classes had been cancelled on account of the impending storm, but they sent me to work nonetheless to teach the classes that they could squeeze in before the typhoon was set to hit himeji. it didn't take a lot of arm-twisting for one of my coworkers to talk me into a celebratory "half-day" drink. after all, we were still getting paid for the classes we were supposed to be teaching by the time we got to the bar. but in the interest of customer safety, we had been set free on the town.

two interesting encounters with proprietors happened this evening. both of these gentlemen run bars in the entertainment district of himeji; one has just opened a sports bar and the other is trying to think of ways to attract more clientele to his hip-hop-style club. i was in a particularly generous mood and felt the overwhelming desire to contribute to their success. upon completion of this entry i will be researching new drink recipes for one man and attempt to unravel new means of advertising for the other. while this may seem like i am working within a conflict of interest, neither man has paid me any money and I would be equally happy to see one or both of them succeed. most of the party animals in himeji make a point of visiting osaka or sannomiya to have a good time, but all it will take is a reconstruction of the entertainment district to turn himeji into a happening place.

the wind whistles and whirrs and percolates under the mock shelter of my porch's cement awning. i gasp and sigh and yawn, all within the span of a few brief moments. the excitement generated by the natural turmoil is both fleeting and renewable. i am comforted by the safety of my apartment, and continuously grateful for the roof over my head. not all of us have been so lucky in the last few weeks, and we must hold the residents of new orleans in our hearts.

turmoil happens continuously; destruction and renewal are part of a natural process that is both irrefutable and unstoppable. but the victims are very real - their suffering great, their plight unexpected, and their homes destroyed. remember the people of iraq, the people of sri lanka and indonesia, the people of china and africa: the children of strife. we are but one people, continuously displaced. our geography reminds us of our differences, though feeble and trite that they are.

when we begin to see each other as one people, only then do the wars we wage wax meaningless and the dream of unity shine feasible.

i'm exhausted. be well. keep safe. listen to bob marley.

Magic / Turmoil

it's a little bit like watching a storm roll across a lake from the safety of a cottage view.

except it seems like everything is happening on a bigger scale these days, and the proverbial cottage is my distance from all of it happening. the storms are bigger; the clouds more conspicuous, gathering suspiciously when they lurk. in japan, we are at the onset of the typhoon season of september, when regular typhoons whip across japan's resilient shorelines and its urban stretchmarks. i was forewarned repeatedly while in canada of the risk of going to a country laden with disaster from below and above, and yet the country has not turned into a terrifying place. right now, global concern rests appropriately on hurricane victims and men and women younger than myself dying for white men in offices. i haven't felt and earthquake here since valentine's day earlier this year. i am told i sleep through the other ones, including the recent sendai one i mentioned already. i received an email from my friend phil today with photographs of a skymonster in calgary. while the earth is certainly trying to tell us something, i think some of us are listening to different translators.

when i was in shizuoka, i learned a card trick and have been practicing it with my students. you'd be surprised at how effective an icebreaker magic can be. i have also discovered that in social situations, alcohol is an effective conductor of awe. intoxicated people are more cynical before a trick and more surprised after it happens, giving (even) the (most amateur) magician an increased sense of accomplishment. more important than anything else, it's a great way to get people to communicate around a language barrier because it is so interactive.

being shy is about losing confidence in our ability to pilot our ongoing situational performance. language is a very real part of our ongoing theatre act of self. the breakdown of a language barrier can be accomplished in using alternate acts of performance to communicate. i think that this even goes as far as entertainment that is cross cultural. my limited japanese and my limited card trick ability prove to be strong allies.

also, last week i attended an open-jam night at a bar in akashi with my friends kelley and scott. it was apparently only for real musicians though, as everyone on-stage was incredibly gifted. sample visuals above.

Ins & Outs

this past week, the return to work was easier than i had anticipated. doing my best to incorporate fun into everything i do, i have deprived myself of sleep over the course of the last two weeks in order to find the time to hang out with the folks i haven't seen in some time. most nights involve the sun coming up before i have time to hide in the den of sleep. i think that seeing the sunrise from the top of mt. fuji has given me a taste for 'morning fire' and my immune system isn't liking it very much.

i faced a 6-day work week last week, and the wednesday involved an epic journey to a small pocket town named wadayama where i got to team teach with tim, my newest colleague. we exchanged magic tricks and teaching tips and the other experiences we encounter under mutual circumstances. his classroom is inadvertantly a wireless hotspot, so he brings his computer to the classroom with him to get internet access. just amazing. it's hard to believe that i went through a month and a half of having this computer without having the internet and so i had seek pockets of connectivity around himeji. anyone else in japan with a wireless internet card can look at this site to find out where restaurants and hotels exist that provide this service for free. it's handy, especially if you're traveling around the country and you'd rather not pay through the nose for internet access if you want to send home an email. i hope that on my pending cross-canada tour i will be able to find the hotspots across our vast nation that will allow me to update a weblog to keep the journey documented.

yesterday at a beach i lost my house key. this created a difficult situation because i had no way of contacting my landlord and wouldn't really know what to say if i did. i discovered the empty key pocket at an hour when my company was unable to help me, so my friend scott graciously offered me shelter at his home last night so that i could call my employer today to sort it out. i have returned and i am safe.

there was a large earthquake in sendai while i was away at fuji. thanks to all of you who heard about it and thought to check in on me. i assure you that i am safe and sound and, like the other eathquakes i have experienced while living here in japan, slept through it. i'm a sound sleeper.

i've decided to post some old pictures that might not have been shared back at the old yahoo! photo post i was using before i set up this blog. that site is still active, but updates are few and far between now that i have a new photo storage site and this website. also, a treat: i'd like to dedicate this following photo to l. ron hubbard and all the scientologists out there. cause hey, cults are hip. it's worth the wait so let this load up:

Fujisan Noborimashita

needless to say, the entire experience took some time to digest. i also simply haven't had time to sit down at the computer and attempt to meticulously recall every pertinent detail of my trip to shizuoka to you, the loyal masses. i apologize for the delay. truly the sheer magnitude of both the event and the mountain itself has made chronicling the adventure quite the daunting task. i would have thought that nothing could be more difficult than the 10 hour climb that i made, but the idea of sitting down and expressing my feelings about it actually seems more challenging. in an attempt to be honest with my memory, i haven't consulted jacob's blog on the ordeal, but if you're interested in his recolllection of the same event, it can be found here. i'm sure that i'm forgetting a lot of things so reading his side of the story will fill in a lot of gaps. i look forward to reading it after i am done with this massive entry-to-be.

i feel i would be committing a grave injustice to my own experience if i simply produced a virtual tour of the climb by way of this blog instead of honouring the memories that made the triumph unique to me in anecdotal events. so forgive me if i refrain from mentioning the details you might be expecting to hear from someone who has just conquered the summit of a world-renowned peak.

last weekend was a nation-wide holiday in japan called obon, a japanese-buddhist festival which is a time that people return to their hometowns to honour their dead ancestors. by its very nature it is a peaceful, reflective time and a time to be with family. i have heard it compared to the mexican observance of "el día de los muertos". this makes traveling anywhere in japan difficult because the transit systems are all bogged down with weary pilgrims. my pilgrimage was quite different, as (to my knowledge) i have no predecessors in japan and could take the weekend as a well-deserved holiday from work.

my journey begins early in the morning on saturday august 13th, my brother shane's birthday. i had stayed up the entire night on friday attempting to finalize my preparations and ensure i had everything packed. the shinkansen trip went off without a hitch and jacob met me in shizuoka. we would climb fuji the following day.

jacob is stationed in fukuroi, a small city in shizuoka prefecture over an hour from the base of mt. fuji. the first night i visited him we took it easy and got started the next morning, well-rested and ready to go. we started the climb from an area known as a "fifth station," an area part way up from the base of the mountain that you can access via bus. some fifth stations place you far enough up the mountain to climb to the summit in about 4 hours. being the healthy young men that we are, jacob and i opted for the longest and most unforgiving climb from gotemba, which is clocked at 7-10 hours in climbing time. we made incredible time the whole way up, but a few times decided we would give ourselves extended rest periods.

forgive the aside, but i should take a moment here to note how small my world really feels. i trained for my current job in nagoya, where my company cycles all the trainees through before sending them off to their job placement. i met a couple of the trainees in the group that followed my group on one of my last days in nagoya. well, when jacob and i were on the bus from gotemba station to the fifth station, the bus stopped for reasons unclear and two other white people got on an otherwise empty bus with us. sure enough, they turned out to be two people who recognized me before i recognized them, from the nagoya training group. their names are cole and tracy, and they were climbing fuji that same day. small world, huh?

at the onset of our ascent, around 5:00pm, an old lady at the first rest station informed us that there were two cute girls climbing ahead of us, and that if we sped up we could surely catch up to them. we thanked her for being thoughtful and we all enjoyed a laugh. the first leg of the climb was really exciting. we couldn't see the peak anywhere in front of us because it was obscured by the clouds. a number of times we located what we believed to be the true top of the mountain only to have something more massive revealed to us beyond it. but we were full of energy and unwavering in our pursuit. dressed in light clothes at the bottom with a full pack of winter gear in our backpacks, we were sweaty messes as we tried to hurry out of the humidity that hovers at low altitudes. there is a soon-to-be famous photo of jacob that i took which shows the stripes of sweat on his shirt where the backpack was.

the early climb was simple enough, mostly soft soil and volcanic gravel. we caught up and surpassed the aforementioned females, who were slow climbers and even if they were to make good company they would have slowed us down to an irreparable pace. we had a mountain to climb here. the sunset was happening behind the mountain fuji looked beautiful and epic in twilight silhouette. we couldn't wait to see what the sunrise was going to be like from the top, which was the main point of the pilgrimage. as light faded, we knew that the bulk of the climb would be done in the pitch black of night and that fact alone offered its own unique challenges you might not normally encounter climbing a mountain. fortunately, there were no sheer sides or cliff faces where we were climbing so we really only faced the peril of exhaustion and the cold. and, of course, we had a flashlight.

we climbed and climbed and climbed. when dusk enveloped us, we estimated that we had passed quite a few people along the way and felt like we were making really good time. we were wary of going too fast, as we knew it would mean an even longer time at the top of the mountain in the cold while we waited for te sun. i remember the exact moment when all of a sudden we felt like we had outclimbed the grip of urban reality. there was a sudden silence. no sounds of technology at all, and the cities below us had shrunk to faintly lit patches across the landscape. to be in japan and not hear traffic or the pulse of metropolis was refreshing to say the least.

we climbed towards the night sky and the clouds began to thin out and revealed a sky of brightly burning stars. living in himeji makes it easy to forget about the billions of stars out there because they are bled out by the cityscape. but here, part way up the epic fuji, we were afforded a view of the constellations and witnessed quite a few shooting stars that made the journey all the more magical. it was all so epic, and i felt like i was a part of some really long, old and important story, attached to a part of japan that was significantly older than the markings of japanese early culture. i have since seen photos of mt. fuji from space and realize just how incredible this mountain must have been throughout the ages. it's like japan's oldest and most significant castle.



a few times during the climb jacob and i heard the sounds of massive explosions happening over the foothills to the east of us and as night fell we would seem huge balls of fire that appeared to be hovering in the distance. at first we had no idea what they were, but were taken by their intensity and confused by the repetition. imagine fireworks going off that don't spread and fade, but rather hover in an incredibly bright yellow glow for 20 seconds at a time. when i finally mustered up the courage to ask another climber in broken japanese, i think he tried to explain that they were like fireworks but a part of the seasonal night festivals happening in the fuji area. we were so far away and yet the intensity of the light was staggering. i snapped a picture or two. shortly after this, we were able to see actual fireworks going off farther in the distance. it's so neat to see something like that from above and far away. they seemed so small and we could only find them on the horizon when they were at their brightest point. we were higher up than the reach of the fireworks, so in essence we were looking down on them. truly spectacular.

while we had made all of the arrangements before climbing to ensure a comfortable and safe journey, we under-packed with regards to food because we were told that there would be food available at the rest stations along the way. this turned into a sham, unfortunately, as we weren't on trail for tourists so when we did find a rest station it was usually just holding an old man and some tired climbers who were willing to pay the extra $55 to sleep for a little while on the way up. we did manage to purchase a $6 cup of coffee, served in an old jar and made with nescafe crystals. again, sham. my advice to anyone thinking of climbing fuji is to pack lots of food, water, and maybe even a thermos of something delicious and hot to enjoy as the night and altitude steal the warmth right from your bones. by the end of the trip, we were labelling mt. fuji as sham-a-yama (yama being japanese for mountain) because of how hungry we were and the way we were gouged by rip-off deals the whole way up and down.

we rested a number of times towards the top, made a few movies with the digital camera and took pictures when the light would allow for it. one particularly humourous movie was done blair witch-style with the flashlight as jacob and i describe the shooting stars.

we reached the summit at around 3:00am. the previous ten hours were really catching up with us, and the top of the mountain was freezing cold and really windy. i found a thermometer attached to a utility shed up there which stated that it was around 2°C. i hadn't brought a toque with me so i had turban-wrapped my scarf around my head to keep warm. sunrise couldn't come fast enough. at one point we were embraced in a man-cuddle beside a tank of kerosene to keep warm while we waited for the sun to rise. there was absolutely nowhere to hide form the cold, as all the buildings that weren't charging a ridiculous amount of money just to keep warm were locked down until morning when an overpriced morning meal could be sold to all of the ragged pilgrims. the sky got really bright in the east around 4:15am, i think, and jacob and i used the new found daylight to find a better vantage point to watch the sunrise on the east corner. it was breathtaking. we somehow managed to regroup with tracy and cole, the two teachers we ran into on the bus ride from gotemba station.

we did it. dekita, as they say in japanese. our pilgrimage complete, we felt like heroes. jacob treated the journey up as a chance to quit smoking for good, like frodo and sam ascending up mount doom to toss in the one ring. i just wanted to see if i could do it, and it was high up on my list of things to do while in japan. so it was finished. great. we were feeling good, though really hungry and sleep deprived. we thought that the descent would be easy, but it turned out to be almost as difficult as the ascent. while gravity was on our side for the return journey, the rocks in the path and the crowds of people made the journey back to the bus stop a 4 hour ordeal. the terrain doesn't really afford you the opportunity to go barrelling down the mountain in a sprint, so you have to be careful to dodge both the rocks and the old ladies as you descend. it also got hotter as we approached the ground, wearing away at our patience and stamina. it sure felt good to get off of that mountain in the end.



and fuji was thus conquered. two 25 year-old guys vs. one big rock. it was a true pilgrimage and i'm glad i did it, though now i see why the japanese have a saying that a wise man climbs fuji once, but only a fool would climb it twice. it takes so much out of you that you really get a sense of your own impermanence and mortality, but you gain such an appreciation for the breadth of your journey and the natural beauty that the earth paints all around us.

Dressed, it Seems, in Blues and Greens

first of all, thank you to all of you who have had to endure my half-assed attempts at describing my current modest abode. i would imagine hearing the words "nice," "enough," and "small" as many times as i have said them in description must really be trying. at long last, i have posted pictures of the "bedroom" corner of the apartment. on the other side of the bookshelf, there is a small kitchen alcove with a hot plate burner and a sink with a water filter that i installed all by myself. the kitchen also consists of a rice cooker, a toaster oven, two microwaves, two fridges, a garbage can and a whole bunch of empty cupboards. living alone makes shopping in japan more expensive than you would realize, so i end up eating out a lot. i know i must spend a fortune on food this way, but i just couldn't stand to see food go bad because i didn't have enough time to eat it. besides, i am told that japan has the highest per-capita restaurant ratio in the world, so i like to get out and try what i can find.

tomorrow i finish a four-day week only to embark on a four-day weekend, one that shall culminate in the ascent of japan's highest peak, mt. fuji. standing at 3,776 m above sea level, the great fujisan will be waiting for me in shizuoka when i go there this weekend to visit my friend jacob and climb the stubborn old thing. this piece of landscape has been an integral part of japanese artwork for over a thousand years. it stands waiting for me, and i expect to conquer it.

i am happy with how this blog is turning out. i regret that i feel no more informed regarding the ongoings of the lives i have left behind back in canada, and hope that you people will make an effort to contact me whenever you find the time (you know who you are).

time now for a mass email to advertise this little website i have put together.

Good-bye, Old Friend

tonight i deal with a concept quite foreign to me by way of luck: grief. i am paused at the loss of a dear friend and family member who fortifies the bridge of my adolescence with her years spent with us as the family pet. this new gift of life was discovered by my 6th grade eyes at the onset of my confusing, pubescent years and she remained an unsurrendering presence until today, the onset of my adult life. i must count myself as one of the more fortunate people i know: i come from a strong and caring family of six and all of us are in good health. the loss of jingles, our family dog, after thirteen years as a staple and contibuting member of the family comes painfully but not without forewarning. her health had been in steady decline, dear thing, for many years now. many of her ailments are found typically in her breed; there were things we anticipated and things that surprised us along the way, but we knew what to expect with her and things were getting difficult. at the end she wasn't eating or drinking, and i would see no other option. i wouldn't have allowed her to suffer.

many of my friends are dealing with loss and its imminence as it gathers around their friends and families in the form of terminal illness coupled with unexpectancy. a close friend of mine kills himself incrementally with cigarettes. one friend's mother suffers a stroke in canada while her daughter is here, overseas. another watches her best friend die of a disease that women never get, but she's dying of it anyway, and there's nothing to be done. so often you can see death coming, but we're no more comfortable with it, and we continue to do what we can to make its presence invisible as best we can. a friend of a friend is watching her entire family, the environment and structure of her youth, die of lung cancer simultaneously. it is horrific. it is relentless. it has yet to arrive.

to lose a pet. it was time for jingles anyway, and there was nothing that we could have done to reverse her condition so she would have only gotten worse. we did everything we could for that little dog, and she reciprocated to the best of her ability. but we knew it was best and for that i feel fortunate. being all the way over here in japan has prevented me from seeing the worst of it. the dog we knew and loved had died long ago and, when she became more of a skeleton without a passion for even life's most primal requirements, we knew she had given up. as a family we had unanimously decided that should should never be made to suffer. that dog was our family's little girl.

there was nothing more important to my adolescent development than having a network of love all around me at all times, so that even when things got arduous and tensions mounted, there were more important things than the present moment. that dog was a constant reminder of the joy we as a family could bring to each other by way of surprise and sincerity. jingles met most of my high school and university girlfriends, was avidly protective of the house and its residents and was quick to spot a fake. i learned not to trust her judgement in her later years, after taking a long time to accept the fact that she was nearly blind and might have been a little bit racist when it came to greeting guests at the door. my father paints her disposition in a more elegant light, claiming that her resistence to be friendly to andrew yap in my younger years was because his presence indicated my departure from the household whenever he would arrive. i still think that she just didn't like asian people. she mellowed out as she got older.

that miniature schnauzer changed my life. while i would never label her a good listener, she would overhear a lot of my youthful ranting without storming out of the room. she didn't complain when i would take her for a walk to have a cigarette back in my super-secretive days, but you could tell that she never approved. she was a good dog. and she loved carrots.

that miniature schnauzer could eat more carrots than any creature i have ever known. her night vision must have been spectacular. she would eat carrots until she was sick, and on more than one occasion i witnessed that dog contemplating reconsuming her carrot binge. we usually tried to call her off of it. she wasn't very good at fetch because she didn't like to share when she was younger, but when the game moved indoors she wouldn't leave you alone. loved the attention, and loved more than anything to have all six of her packmates home and gathered in the same room. christmas. elementary school summer. exam breaks. family emergencies.

that miniature schnauzer would raid the garbages in our house to get gratifying revenge if we left her alone all at once. she really didn't like that. it didn't matter what was in the tissues in the bathroom refuse. she would stir it up nice and well for us to have to pick up when we returned to her. usually by the time we got home she had all but forgotten her outburst of tantrum and her ears would press to her head in that "oh-my-god-what-have-i-done" kind of way. we loved her too much to ever strike her so we had to condition that dog with guilt. if any family knew how, it was ours. she would usually get sent outside and usually just seeing her ears go down was indication to us that she understood and she was sorry for flipping out, like an alcoholic having a moment of clarity or defeat at an intervention.

that miniature schnauzer was conditioned not by foodbell but doorbell. that miniature schnauzer was conditioned to react to the words "biscuit," "carrot," "outside," "walk," "who's that," "daddy's home," and "where's 'so-and-so'?". she could spot another dog out the front window before we could and always whined with a sense of identity conflict, torn between the need to be outside eating garbage and sniffing strangers and the desire to be at home, just another human like the rest of us. that miniature schnauzer would wake my mom up for her breakfast so early. that miniature schnauzer had a pacemaker but, in a way, there was never anything wrong with her heart and i loved her. that miniature schnauzer would run away from home and not look back and we would panic but if we couldn't find her she would always find her way home and bark stubbornly until we opened the front door for her like anyone else. that miniature schnauzer saw us as one of her own, and we will always lovingly see her as one of us.

i'll miss you jingles. i wish i could have been there.