Wednesday, March 28, 2007

What... a WHAT? Park?




About a week ago, I went on a mini-trip to Kyoto. It was here that I went to Arashiyama. Arashiyama is a cute little area in Kyoto where they have a nice little river, a monkey park, a bamboo forest, and some cute little stores. Wait... what? A Monkey Park? What is a Monkey Park? Good question... This is a monkey park... What you are seeing is a shot from after a small hike up a mountain. There`s a little park that...well, I`m not sure ifi ts FOR monkeys or for people but taken over by monkeys. I didn`t think it`d be so weird to see monkeys in person. There are swings, a slide, benches, handrails...everything a regular park would have except the monkeys are all running all over so...I think it`s theirs. Also they were probably there first.Though it appears it`s in a cage, it is actually the opposite. At the top of the mountain there`s a cage where humans sit to be protected from the animals. You can walk outside but you might want a little break from almost stepping on angry monkeys. (At least I think they were angry. All of their faces were so red. Maybe they forgot that SPF30, it was the first really sunny day in a while)
The rest of Kyoto is a beautiful place. It is full of beautiful shrines and temples (over 1000) It`s hard to get more than 5 in in one day though so if you go, go for a few days. One place we went to was Fushimi-Inari where there is an endless row of Torii (these big red gates). Look towards the center of this picture and, its hard to see, but theres this kind of reddish brown line that goes all the way up the mountain to a shrine. That line is all Torii... since it takes two hours to go up the whole thing, we decided to just walk through a little, I got the basic idea.

More to come. The cherry blossoms are blooming now and by next week they should all be bloomed.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

A Case of the Shakes...

I woke up this morning at 9:40. "Why?" you ask? Because there was an earthquake of course! It was probably the least scary natural disaster I've encoutered because it was pretty weak (4.0). However, north of me where it "really struck" it was 7.0 which is pretty pretty heavy. But still, it was a very strange feeling, I woke up and the room was shaking and I thought "WHO IS DOING THAT!!!!" and I was kind of angry, then I realized what was going on and just stared at the shaking light and though "this CAN'T REALLY be an earthquake..." I stared more, after about 30 seconds it was done and I completely passed back out. When I woke up and went out of my room, my host parents were gathered around the TV and said "There was a big earthquake North of here, I can't believe we didn't feel it." "I felt it!" "Hahahaha, no you didn't" "Yes. Yes I did." "No, we would have woken up..." then we had guests over and the first thing they said was "Did you feel the earthquake this morning?" I turned to my host mom and said "IN! YOUR! FACE!!!!!!!" I didn't say that. I mildly though it.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

This is How Japan...

There was a plane about to land in Japan, a regular domestic flight. As they checked the wheels, they realized the front set could not drop. This made a problem. Though the plane was large and safe, there were propellors so if they touched the ground there was sure to be a problem. They decided it best to do the following, put all the wheels down that were possible (all except those in the front of the plane.) Then fly around for two extra hours and wait until all the fuel was gone so they wouldn't blow up. While this was happening, they cleared the whole runway and sprayed it with fire extinguisher foam. The plane landed completely fine. In fact not a single person was injured. The font of the plane dragged on the ground and made nothing more than a few sparks, then the plane stopped and everyone deboarded. Apparently, they did, however, countdown to the landing which would have scared the crap out of me. "ONE MINUTE UNTIL LANDING.... THIRTY SECONDS....FIFTEEN...FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWOOO.... OOOONNNNEEEE." Tell me that's not good preparation...





Of course as always there are pictures to be shown... the Spring Break Trip pictures were just uploaded and are ready to be viewed at ...
http://michaelmalarkey.myphotoalbum.com/

Monday, March 19, 2007

A Short Travel...

-Shinkansen-

On the list of great things I've done with my life, I can add peeing at 186 miles per hour. The Shinkansen (Bullet Train) was our means of transportation to and from Hiroshima and Himeji. It's the fastest, smoothest, and coolest train I've ever ridden on. I think it's the second fastest in the world, I think there's one in China that's faster. BUT it's pretty fast. I didn't even realize how fast we were moving until a non-stop train passed while we were waiting at the station in Himeji. It's dead silent until it's directly in front of you and it scares the crap out of you. It just blows by. Inside its pretty much exactly like an airplane, it's great. Chicago needs a shinkansen train instead of the El, imagine going from south loop to Evanston in like 4 minutes or something. (That was not calculated and was just a random number.)



-Hiroshima-

I saw lots of pictures of Hiroshima and the Atomic Bomb Dome and the peace park. I never would have thought it'd be as powerful as it really was. Our hotel was literally across the street from the atomic bomb dome. The atomic bomb that leveled the entire city went off 490 away from the building and it was the only building in the epicenter of the blow that survived. The building was left as it was after the blow as a memorial and a rememberance of what occured. It's a really beautiful place, but it kind of has this really heavy weight to it. The peace museum was definitely the strongest part. They have tons and tons of artifacts from after the blast that are just terrifying. Like someone was waiting outside of the bank when the bomb went off and the only thing that was left of them was this kind of shadow of them sitting there. They have the actual bank steps with the persons shadow in the museum, it's creepy... I figured it was a good place to see and experience though. I enjoyed it.
Atomic Bomb Dome


-Miyajima-

This could possibly be the most beautiful place in Japan. I can't say I have been everywhere but it's ridiculously beautiful. We took a little ferry out to the island and got off only to be swarmed by people loving deer. These things want food and if they don't get it, they will eat your map or clothes. I got a few butting me with their heads and chewing on my jacket. We bought some little crackers and fed them, it was fun and kind of scary. I never thought I'd be afraid of deers but those guys were aggressive. We went and visited what is considered the most beautiful shrine in all of Japan. It was. It's in the ocean so when the tide is up it is in water, when the tide is down it's on a beach. There was a shinto wedding taking place on it the day we were there and we watched for a little, as did tons and tons of other people. I felt a little awkward standing, so we left. We explored the island a little. We took a cable car up almost to the top the kind of hiked up to the top. There were little red faced monkeys up there. One of them ran over by us and hid then screamed at this lady and scared the crap out of here. It was hilarious. We stayed at the most awesome hotel ever too...



The shrine at lowtide




-Himeji-

Japan's national treasure. It's got a giant giant giant castle that has not been rebuilt. There has been a little bit of fixing up, but it's all done using the same techniques that were used in the times of it being built. It was really beautiful. I was pretty tired from traveling everywhere else that I didn't really get to take it in as much as I wanted, but it was still really cool to see. It's weird as hell to think that people live near a castle. I wish America had castles. They are such a foreign concept to me. It's just so intense saying something like "I live near a castle." A CASTLE. Just think about that. A giant white beautiful Japanese castle. Weeeeeiiiiiiird.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Hounen Matsuri (The Fertility)

Hounen Matsuri...

This is the Fertility Festival in a little suburb of Nagoya Japan. While it turned out too look a lot like a penis worshipping festival, it was slightly different...slightly.

The point of this matsuri is to give good luck to those who are trying to have children or to prevent childhood sickness's to those expecting. I think over the years it's kind of lost some of it's purpose in a few ways. Like...the part where buckets and buckets of free sake (rice wine) is given out to everyone. I don't think pregnant women really NEEED that, though I am sure it lowers peoples standards to the point where more children are concieved.

There is a shrine (Tagata Jinja) where people go to pray for these types of things. There are tons of phallus shaped wood carvings and rocks here to pray on/to.



There is a nice large parade esque march from one shrine that is about a mile away to the Tagata Jinja. From the far one, a giant giant penis shrine is carried. First a priest walks by with salt to put on the part of the penis shrine. Following this, various people run around giving out more free alcohol, then various other shrines and things are brought by. Finally a giant flag is brought by to teach the male anatomy to everyone. (Though, it's probably not the male anatomy people need the lesson on, probably the female Rubik's Cube of an anatomy would have been more productive for everyone...no offense...) Anyway, finally the big guy arrives (I can say guy, because it's a penis.) It's carved out of a tree (Cedar I think.) it's 620 pounds and 96 inches long. It's brought to Tagata Jinja and everyone cheers when it makes it there.



(This is the final stretch... the were spinning it faster earlier but I think they were tired after a mile and 620 pounds.)



After this little show they put on they throw rice cakes off of a raised stage (about 20 feet up). They warned us before hand via a PA system that old people and young children should NOT partake in this. We figured it was kind of a silly little warning that Japan just HAD to say because someone probably got hurt ones and sued. There were buckets and buckets of these big white rice cakes (not dried rice cakes, they looked like balls of dough), guys came out and on the count of three started throwing them into the audience. I reached up to catch one and I'm pretty sure the rice cake stopped, took out a bat, and hit my hand and fingers with them. Because there is no way a rice cake should be that painful to catch. Suddenly it went from cute little balls of dough to realizing they were hard-as-a-rock-rice-hockey-puck-bullets. I tried to take a video of it but it's hard to see what's going on because I was scared for my life and stopped paying attention to the camera and payed attention to what could possibly be the last few seconds of my life. I ended up catching two. This was a horrible idea for a potential musician.




We witnessed some serious casualties as we left the rice cake party. One guy with a broken nose sat with blood all over his hands. (I'm not kidding, they were HARD. AS. ROCKS.)

Anyway... what a weird festival. Of course, for my photographs feel free to visit
http://michaelmalarkey.myphotoalbum.com

I'll be away going to Hiroshima/Miajima/Himeji for the next 3 days... stories to hopefully follow...

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Pulling Through the Grey Area

I frequently have too much on my plate. Especially as far as hobbies and interests go. As soon as I start to make progress on one thing it spawns an interest in something else.

Sometimes it feels like I am downloading 30 at once so everything goes really really really really slow. (How about that for a 21st century analogy.) I was always kind of mediocre at Japanese. I'd have little speed bursts. The same thing happens with guitar. And piano. And electronics stuff. And tech stuff. The most stuff I started learning, the slower each one got at each one. This is the first time when I have kind of "stopped" everything except one. My Japanese has improved a lot...but it works a lot like my Jazz guitar. I can hear things just fine. I know what I want to say. When it comes to forming my own ideas on the spot, I choke...kind of. It's not a horrible fall on my face kind of thing. I can get simple basic stuff out and be fine, but when it comes to doing what i really want to do, I can't do it as well as I'd hope... this sounds likes it getting sad. It's not.

My speaking, the hard part, has gotten a lot better. I think this has to do with my complete immersion in Japan. (Other than my occasional computer uses and secret TV shows that I download from time to time.) I don't have a guitar near me. I have a piano, but no sheet music. I can't really push myself with music or electronics or anything of this sort. I can do what I already know well and tighten that up some, but I can't move forward. My Japanese, however, that seems to be moving ahead juuuuuust fine. I wish there was a land where people only spoke in Jazz. ii-V-I's and alternate changes, piano fingerings, guitar technique, and composition terms. Oh yeah. It's called Music School.

COUNTDOWN To Hiroshima/Miajima/Himeji: 3 days.

Monday, March 12, 2007

That is Soooooo Japanese, Also.

I just had to share this...

on the third floor of Nanzan Daigakku's E-Building (The school I go to) I noticed this by the hallway windows...





As you can see. Incase of a fire, you are supposed to wrap a belt thing around you and jump out the window. This is a perfect example of the brilliant yet strange inventions that Japan has to offer. If this were in America we all know that some couragous college student would try it out when there wasn't a fire and would surely kill himself. His parents would then sue the school for having it... it would just get out of hand. I get sad when I think about that. All the genius live saving inventions we COULD have but alas, we can't have.

Anyway, I think I am gonna try it out this week, wish me luck!!!!!

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Secret Part 4.

Sometimes, when there is a food I really like, I pretend I don`t know what it is so my family will make me taste it `for the first time.`

Re: Sick

Dear Japan

1) Get some soap in your washrooms
2) Get some Towels to dry your hands in the washrooms.
3) Stop giving me acute viral nasopharyngitis.

Other than that, you are all good. Thank you.

-Mike

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Approachable Mr. Me

Yesterday I went to my first English class. I just started teaching with my host mom at their Cram School. Cram School is a second school that Japanese people go to. During the day they have school, then after school they go to ANOTHER school that kind of covers the same stuff to help. It's long though, like 4 or 5 hours long. I only teach one 50 minutes period though. My students are eleven twelve-year-old boys and one girl of the same age. My host mom warned me on the walk over that they are probably going to be really shy and afriad to talk to me since I am good at English and they don't know me. (Japanese tend to be very shy when it comes to speaking English. This is why a lot of them aren't very good at speaking but many tend to be excellent with reading and writing...)

I walked into the little Cram School and my host dad was finishing up teaching his Science class in one of the classrooms. My host mom and I waited outside for him to be finished. The second he opened the door to step out, a door-full of a faces filled the door frame all saying "Hallo!" "How Are You?!?" "Nice to meet you!" "Hey!" I walked in and those kids were just bouncing off the walls with their english. By age 12, they have had no real English experience. They exercised all the English they knew in the first 10 seconds.

I went over the first half of the ABC's which they were already able to recognize but they don't know the English way of pronouncing the letters names. Then we covered some of the words that Japanese borrow from English. "Radio" "Pizza" "Sandwich" "Jacket" and practiced pronounciation. It was quite fun. We then did self introductions. "Hello, my name is Mike. I come from America. I live in Chicago. I am 20 years old. I have 5 people in my family. I like to play music." Then they tried.

When the class ended I was called into the other room with older students who wanted to talk. We did some basic conversation stuff, I drew a map of America and labled chicago. They asked me to draw in the 5 great lakes which I could not do...they currently have a false perception of where Lake Ontario, Eerie and Huron are. I could fill in Chicago and New York just fine though.

No one was afriad of me. No one in this country is. They don't really have a reason to be afraid of me I guess. I am skinny, fuzzy, really white and make strange faces frequently. Although, once a Japanese friend of mine sat in my seat when I got up to walk around at lunch one day and when I got back she said "Are you mad at me because I am in your seat?" "No, not at all, it's fine, I'll just sit here. (at another chair)" "You look mad!" I was smiling and kind of laughing "Why?" "Your eyebrows look mad!" These Malarkey eyebrows sure can be a curse sometimes. For those of you who watch Seinfeld, their is an episode where Uncle Leo gets his eyebrows singed off and Elaine paints on new ones for him and they are pointy and angry looking so everyone always thinks he is really mad and mean...yeah...I'm pretty sure that's me in this country....except only sometimes.

Today when I was standing at a Convenient Store with my friend a group of tennis players from a university just walk up and go "HELLO!" "OH REALLY????" "HI!" "I AM SPEAKING ENGLISH!" "I PLAY TENNIS!" to my friend and I. We had a half english/half japanese conversation...but of all the IES students I seem to get the most people who approach me to try speaking english. I am not sure why, I feel like it's a big practical joke....anyway...

When I got home my host mom told me she was amazed at how laidback American teaching method is. She said she loves it. All I did was steal ideas from how I learned Japanese. I think the Japanese approach tends to be a little serious and "by the book." Casual English isn't widely understood. For instance, one of the most common "slang" phrases in English "What's Up?" is so utterly confusing for many people. To those who don't know what it means, of course it's weird to hear, it has no real meaning other than "what exists above you?" or "What does the word 'up' mean?" depending on how you look at it. You would think that this would be an early lesson since everyone says it to everyone.

Instead of knowing this, they just have a much better understanding of English grammar and a good set of polite english phrases and words. For instance my host mom used the words "Symbiosis" and "Lucrative" the other day. I know what they both mean, however, I can't recall the last time I used either of them. Lucrative, I guess, is a little more commonly used...

Anyway... I'm on Spring break in one week and I am exciiiiiiiiited.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

The Quiet Pain...

Japan is awfully smart when it comes to certain things. I was given a newspaper article, from my father, about the following...

A lot of places don't really like teens loitering so what do they do? They send out this high high frequency that is usually so high, adults can't really hear it. Young people, on the other hand...we can hear it. Loud and clear. I stepped out of a convenient store and I felt this pain in my teeth and I could hear this pitch. I remembered the newspaper article and thought "well...it seemed cool when it was on paper, but this is just stupid." I also learned that a lot of kids use this to their advantage and get cellphone rings that are these frequencies because their teachers can't hear them sending messages in class to each other.

Everyday in class we have to arrange desks into a circle. We just changed rooms from a carpeted room to a room with a hard floor. Let me tell you what the most painful sound ever is... arranging desks into a circle by dragging them. Japanese desks are all very old and heavy and no one reallly wants to lift them, with good reason. This is also another one of those sounds that makes your teeth hurt. This isn't anything that is specific to Japan, but I just thought I'd add it on since it's a new part of my stay here...

In other news, more gooder news...

I have my first part time job (Arubaito) with my host mom. She teaches English, and for some extra money, she does a night class thing for younger kids. I get go in and teach with her. The kids are all 12 years old and have no english learning experience. They know a little, just from hearing it and other random things, but they've never studied it. My host mom says English sounds beautiful when spoken by a native, she especially likes when I talk to my family on the phone.

I personally think English is a really funny sounding language. I even asked my host sister to speak in English jibberish. We all kind of do fake jibberish of other languages, I was curious what we sound like to those who don't know English. We all kind of do funny Spanish or Italian, maybe Chinese stereotypes of what we think languages sound like...though I cannot transcribe what the English Jibberish sounds like, I must say, it is really really hilarious. There was a lot of B's L's and R's and my host sister said that there's a very specific rhythm that stands out when we speak English which I thought was funny.

That's all for now really, nothing else too new is going on.... I'll update more later.

Friday, March 2, 2007

HADAKA MATSURI

First, a brief history of Hadaka Matsuri (The Naked Festival)...

The Matsuri (Festival), I attended, takes place on the 13th of January on the Lunar Calendar which, this year, was on March 2nd. (Other Hadaka Matsuri take place on other days too). It was in Konomiya.

A week before the actual festival, a man is selected at random (Kind of a drawing straws type-o-thang). He then must shave all the hair off of his entire body and lives and prays in the Shrine the festival takes place at. He is the "Man of God" and represents a purified divine character. He eats nothing but rice and water for 3 days before the fesitval takes place. One the day of the festival he will be completely naked.

The day of the festival, a lot a lot a lot of men dressed in white loin clothes go to the shrine with their "team". A team, I understand, can have from 10 people to 200 people from their town/area. The bring a large bamboo tree, or many, bound with colorful cloth. They carry these down the street to the shrine screaming chants and stuff. They do this to have good luck and make their wishes come true. They drink lots and lots of sake at this time. Then they all stand around waiting for the "man of god" to appear. They then attempt to touch him and get good luck. This is very difficult for a few reasons. 1) everyone is drunk. 2) People beat the shit out of each other trying to touch him. 3) there are hundreds and hundreds of almost naked men trying to touch ONE naked man. 4) there are "goons" who try and stop people from touching the naked man. They run around with buckets of cold water and throw them in peoples faces and as i witnessed...hit people in the face with their buckets.

The festival is actually for people who are ages 23 and 42, in shintoism, these are unlucky ages. However, any age can participate.

After about an hour, the naked man makes it to the shrine. (He's been trying to get there for a while...it's kind of his "Finishing line". He will faint many times before making it to the finish line and will be covered in cuts scrapes and will be pretty bloody.

My Experience:

This festival is insane. We got there around 4:00 which is around the time the naked man is released. We were down towards the shrine enterance watching. We saw a lot of teams bring their bamboo to the shrine. There was tons of screaming, coins thrown, and cheering. I thought to myself "I could TOTALLY do this. It looks so fun!" Around 5:00 they set up a new guard/gate about 10 feet away from the gate we were watching from. This is when I started to question whether I could do this or not. The "Goons" showed up and were throwing water in peoples faces. People started to get a little rough. Twenty minutes later the naked man arrived. I actually saw him, which was surprising because he's almost impossible to see. BUT I saw his bald/not-so-happy-face pop up for a second then go back down. I feel like it's one of those things that seems like a good idea...then when he draws his straw and it's the naked man straw, he's like "uh oh. I dont want to!" Then after 3 days of rice and water he's like "DAMMIT. I AM SO FRUSTRATED! WHY DID I DO THIS???" Then when he steps into the street to run to the shrine, he's like "NO. NO. NO. NO. NOT FUN! NOT FUN! I DONT LIKE THISSSSS!!!! WHY AM I NAKED???" Then finally, the next monday at work, he's sitting at his desk, covered in bruises, scabs, and still bald, people are like "So, Craig, what'd you do this weekend?" (everyone giggles) "Why don't you just finish your work, Marcus. I didn't make fun of you when you forgot to finish those time sheets last month!" "yeah but I wasn't naked and bald and..." "just FORGET IT, MARCUS!" Except with Japanese names and in Japanese.

There were a lot of people carried out covered in blood and scrapes and were clearly too drunk to finish participating. There was a lot of punching, elbowing, and hitting going on. I won't lie though, it looked like fun. I would immediately regret doing it, if I were to ever try this festival. When some guys would try and step out of gates to take a break. These old men shrine guards would run out and start kicking them and pushing them and they'd have to go back in. It was hilarious.

Festivals in general here, are really fun. There is a ton of great food, funny people, and just a good vibe. Everyone has fun, except for the naked man. Today (and yesterday actually) was Hina Matsuri which is the girls festival. NOTHING like Naked Men's fest. There are just these really beautiful dolls put out in homes and at places. There is a lot of good festival food too. I had some last night. There's these little shoots of bamboo filled with jello stuff, it was goooood.

Over all, I love this place. As always, feel free to leave comments.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Fuzz...

Today while walking to lunch with my friend Matt, we came across a very interesting difference in Japan and America. The "crazy people" in Japan all seem to devote themselves to jobs. This might be an illusion since maybe we don't see all of them. However, riding the trains, there are frequently people who just stand at the doors and anounce the train stops out loud to everyone. They don't work for the train company, they just kind of harmlessly stand around screaming out train stop names. There's a guy who goes to the same corner every day and is a crossing guard. For hours. It's not his "real job" but it seems that to him, it's his job. Some people just sit on the train platform with a watch and check to see if the trains come ontime or not. They aren't harmful, but I frequently see these people who have "jobs" that they aren't assigned, they just feel some obligation to do them. It's almost backwards... The people that seem to be out killing and brutally murdering people are stressed school students and business men. The people doing jobs for the community...are the "crazy people." Just an interesting little thing I noticed.

I am currently watching a commercial on TV for an air conditioner that has a sensor on it so it knows where you are in the room and blows air towards you... wow.

I get to watch a lot of TV here. 1) it's really funny and entertaining. 2) It's great listening practice. 3) The first thing my family does when they get home from anything is turn on TV. If we're sitting down for dinner and the TV is off, they turn it on, and actually move it so they can see it better. One day the TV broke and they had to take it in to get fixed. Dinner that night was so awkward that night because there wasn't TV going in the background. We don't have cable or anything so we don't have many channels, maybe 9. It seems the only types of shows they have on...ever...are News, Dramas, Game Shows, Food Shows, or Food Game Shows. My favorite game shows are the following...

1) People get guest chefs to make them the most expensive menu they can make. The contestants order the food not knowing the price. Each person gets to eat their meal then guess how much it costs. The person farthest off has to pay the whole bill in the end. Meals are usually between about 80 and 200 dollars and there are usually about 6 or7 contestants so you could imagine the bill.

2) There are two teams of 5 and they are asked questions with 5 letter answers. They each are at a booth and can't see each other and have to write one letter of the answer. For instance... A question could be "What instrument does Herbie Hancock Play" The first person writes "P" the second write "I" third "A" fourth "N" fifth "O". Except the words are harder and they change language sometimes. Sometimes they are in english, japanese, kanji... you get the idea. It's really entertaining.

3) Two teams of two people, there's a comedian and a guest famous person. The comedians ask the other teams guest questions that require words borrowed from english or other languages as answers and if the other person uses one of them, they lose. Like "Whats your favorite kind of juice?" if they say "Apple Juice" they'd lose points because the Japanese word for "Apple juice" sounds like "Ahpooroo (Apple) joosoo (Juice)". Another fun show. They have random interludes of food too.

Then of course, there are a ton of random shows with people having to guess what the Kanji readings are and things like that. Let's not forget the late night ones where people have to do ridiculous things like wear raw meat on their heads and put their head inside a cage of alligators...but I don't tune into those TOO often. There are also tons of cooking competition shows with celebrity guest judges, those are fun too, especially all the dessert competitions. They are kind of masters of dessert here...though the Malarkey's could give them a run for their money maybe.

Naked Man Festival... 18 hours!