The Wheel

I'm trying to survive without spending any more money until payday (by choice, not circumstances), so dinner tonight was essentially stuff I had lying around:

Chestnuts. I boiled them in dashi broth and added cumin - is that creative?
A piece of wheat bread with spreadable margarine on top. Yum!
Seaweed vinegar salad. I still don't have the vinegar mixture right. Guess I'll have to try again!
1.5 scrambled eggs (I ate the other half yesterday). They have dashi, soy, and sugar in them. Tres yummy.
1 fish cake with vegetables inside. My favorite!
Roasted bell peppers. (sesame oil and salt)
Pudding.

I think I'd be in the running for a random dinner award, if there was one.

Expect more on the subject of wonderful Japanese food later.

Man, some of the questions the Japanese teachers come up with totally have me stumped. I know the answers, and can express them in a very roundabout way in English. But damned if I know how to expain it to somebody who was not brought up speaking the language. I mean, can YOU explain the difference between

"ensuring continuous diversity" and "ensuring continuing diversity"

without using concepts that only exist in the English language? I can't.

Continuing diveristy means continuing from now into the future. Continuous diveristy doesn't include the "from now" implication. But, it does contain the implication that diversity is continuous across some sort of other boundary or difference, like borders, or societies, or even time.

... the Japanese conception of time is different. There is no future tense. Add to that a weak understanding of continuous, no knowledge or little use of the word implication, and a hard time explaining non-concrete boundaries like societal ones, and... how would you do it? I think I failed :P

Of course, this was preceeded by the question:

Is it ok to compare "ensuring continuing diversity" and "conserving different species", because one phrase is gerund, verb, noun and the other is gerund, adjective, noun?

... some days, I just don't know where to begin.

Dear Everyone,

I am truly sorry for the lack of updates. But now that summer vacation is over for the students, I've been much busier. I feel like I haven't been to my home school in weeks (ok, 5 days, but still!). I finally have a routine of sorts, and am settling down to teach. It's harder than I expected.( Collapse )

PS: I'm not sure an entry like this is interesting.

Well, I think it's safe to say that I have finally settled into a sort of routine here in Japan. I've got all my major utilities and everything I really need except a checking account. I'll get one eventually. Just think - it only takes two months to get everything you need here! That's really how it is in Japan, though. You don't realize how much American society is based on instant gratification until you live somewhere else. However, there is one area in which the Japanese are as fast, if not faster, than Americans. It's food - whether it's going in, or coming out.

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For those of you who would like a pictoral record of my experience, I now have pictures posted at my photobucket account.

Click here to look at my pictures of Japan

Countdown to internet: 1.5 weeks

This Sunday was our school's annual culture festival. The students have basically been researching, building sets, and planning routines to bring other cultures into the school. School spirit abounded, and it was really amazing to see what the kids could do with a little time and a few tools. Here's a flash slideshow:

No, really. The heat here in Nagasaki killed me.

For those of you who don't know, I'm in Japan as an ALT and currently without regular internet. Expect changes to both the internet part and the lj soon. I have to document my experience, of course! The actual job starts monday morning. Wish me luck! 

I now know the answer to the deep question of fate posed by the movie 10 Things I Hate About You.

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and I think you can be underwhelmed, but you can be, just like, whelmed?"

Today's word of the day is Whelm:

Definition: To overturn a concave object (boat, bowl, etc.) to cover something with it (= to whelve); to bury under earth, snow, or water; to engulf in a devastating manner, e.g. a flood, storm, avalanche.

Frito Lay is pathetic.

Recently, I bought a bag of NEW! Wild White Nacho Doritos. Not because I'm a closet corn chip addict, but because it looked interesting. Maybe that's asking a bit much from a potato chip, but all I wanted was a flavor I hadn't tasted before. Is that so hard?! I am not a gourmet. There are plenty of things in this world I have never tasted. I would certainly expect a fine powder that was created by sucking the water out of half a dozen plants and adding a bunch of man-made chemicals that probably cause cancer, and then blown over not quite cooked Doritos in a factory, to be on that list. Hey, I like to live on the wild side. I obviously expect my potato chip flavors to be extreme. Even if I don't want the little potato chip orgasm fairy to dance on my tongue at the taste of this NEW! flavor, I'm obviously still too harsh a critic.

Wild White Nacho Doritos are 1/2 Cool Ranch flavor and 1/2 Nacho Cheese flavor, mixed together in an effort to satisfy us poor, poor consumers. I buy Doritos less than once a month, and I still knew on the first chip.

So Wild!

So new.

Anyone want to guess what the other new flavor, "Smokin' Cheddar BBQ", tastes like?

I am NOT going to Japan next year.

You know, it probably means something that I'm not horribly upset. I should quit looking back. Time to look forward.

PS: 1506 Food tonight per Gwynn, even though not checked for dates according to someone else.