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新住所 (近日販売開始)

http://danoff.org/leftinfront

Hier je suis mange ainsi que mon grands-parents.

Grandma and Grandpa with baby me.
私の祖父母と私。
Mes grands-parents et moi.

Last night I had dinner with mom’s parents Grandma and Grandpa Barrow. It was the first time I’ve seen them in over a year.

Met at their new apartment. They recently moved out of their picturesque house in Evanston to 1440 Sheridan in Wilmette. I saw the place once last fall before I left, but it was completely vacant of furniture then.

Grandma gave me the grand tour when I arrived, and seeing the paintings, pictures, chandeliers and other knick-knacks brought along made the place feel like the resurrected version of their dead home. Similar to what the disciples likely felt when they saw the resurrected Jesus,

“Hey, that dude looks familiar.”
“Yes, Peter it’s me Jesus.”
“Whoa, of course it is, but you look a little different somehow.”
“Yes, Peter I died and have now risen again in a form inspired, but different from my original, akin to the Barrow’s new apartment in Wilmette.”

After the tour, we sat down and had drinks. Grandpa whipped up a “dirty” martini for me. We discussed my past year and coming one, as well as catching up on how the other Barrow progeny have been spending their time. Apparently one has shot above 6’2” feet now, while another studied bartending over the summer and another is making this stupid, selfish trip to teach in China and avoid the real world and responsibility for yet another year.

Ed’s note, that last “one” was not the opinion of my Grandparents.

Dinner was at the North Shore’s closest equivalent to an Italian bistro [more aesthetics than the food, but nobody's perfect] Convito Italiano. We discussed many important topics, most of which were lost in the aftermath of the gin mixed with the present of the Pinot, but some which stuck were the stories of their childhood, which I shall now relate.

Once upon an innocent time in a village known as Oak Park [aka fairyland], Patsy and Charles were born.

Unbeknownest to our hero and heroine, the adults of the world had gotten themselves mixed up into something called the “Great Depression.”

Since there was not much money to go around, Patsy’s family passed their days playing cards from morning tilll night. This suited the future mathematician just fine. From time to time she also visited the lake at “No Man’s Land” which oddly enough was next to where she’d later live.

This era was also the birth of moving pictures. For a quarter a piece Charles and Patsy’s families were able to see movies taking them through time to places all over the world – many spots which the couple would later visit as adults.

They made it to high school in a period when folks were worried about big ideas like “war,” which meant nobody was thinking about those “teens.” The word “teenager” didn’t even exist. There was no bother to them and they enjoyed being ignored. It gave them time to jitterbug, chase fair haired girls at school dances and scandalously ride in Buzzy’s convertible over a golf course.

… to be continued.

永平寺にぼくはざぜんにする。

Saturday and Sunday I went to Eiheiji Temple.

Dana was kind enough to take absurdly good photos and share them with the world.

Dana’s Photos from Last Weekend

Written the morning of July 16th.

Friday night I left judo early to pick up Afia who was coming North from Iwamizawa at the train station. As I was at home gathering myself together before leaving I realized I had no gas in my car. I made a mad dash to the gas station, only to unsurprisingly discover all of Hamatonbetsu’s options were closed.

I drove close to investigate for sure and saw that one had the lights still on in the office. With a hint of gaijin smash I drove up and looked into the window with a desperate look in my face. One kind hearted gentleman came out and even though the gas station was clearly done, walked in to get the key to re-start a pump for me.

Saturday morning we went to see the Northern most point, then drove back for the Team Hibeki Taiko concert that evening at the Beer Party to raise money for the Park Golf course.

James and Inoue were kind enough to drive in from Toyotomi as well, and adding that to Chris’s friends Rob & Tim from Ebetsu and Hamaton was rocking foreigner style. Rob started one of the best ni-ji-kai’s I’ve ever attended off well by singing a Japanese song.

The following morning was the Lake Kutcharo festival, which turned out to be Hamaton’s biggest annual event. Everyone from teachers to students to drinking buddies to after school play club friends to the Japanese Self-Defense Force turned out. Afia and I had an incredible day sampling local delicacies, taking our picture with the kamen riders, watching my students brass band concert and running on logs floating in water,

Walking around with a beautiful girl next to me people were strangely far more interested in talking with me.

Birthday Flowers

Written this morning.

On my birthday night, I received 3 to 4 bouquets of flowers. Given my mother was visiting at the time, the flowers stems were cut and they were placed into some glass containers I had sitting around the house. Were I alone, they instead would of been placed on a table and left there unattended for at least a week or two.

As it turned out, when my mother did leave, they stayed in those bottles from March 18th to April 18th to May to June and past July 18th. I was surprised the flowers remained in bloom and beauty for a few weeks, but clearly 4 months is stretching things.

In any event, they were likely to be left as welcome gifts for my successor, were it not for the intervention of two angels from who came north to save me from myself.

Clare and Dana not only tossed the flowers, they scrubbed down my counter with bleach [they found it funny when I mentioned I never would've thought to clean with bleach], did all my dishes [Dana asked if the bowl I used to cook oatmeal last week was vomit] and bled [Clare cut herself on a cracked cup that I should have thrown out months ago] to save me from myself. I tried asking telling them it was alright, but Clare insisted it was fine and that they were enjoying themselves.

Well, ladies from the bottom of my heart and from my successor’s as well, thank you.

きのぼくはうそたんのいちごたべて。　おいしいよ！

Yesterday I devoured a pack of infants.

It started a few weeks back when I blogged about white babies.

Then on the day before today I after teaching at Usotan Elementary I had a craving for some sweets. I was considering stopping at Seico Mart to pick up some koala’s, but when I saw the toddlers for sale I knew I had to stop.

As I walked up to the stand the woman who was tilling the fields took off here gloves and came over to help me. Conversation started off about the weather, then like the minx many Japanese girls secretly are she asked

“nan-si mimaska?” – how old do I look?

I joked about how women’s ages are dangerous.

She didn’t find that funny.

Undeterred, I tried to figure out the most flattering guess. Couldn’t go too low, or then she’d think I was just being an ass. Couldn’t go too high or then I’d definitely be an ass. Looking her over, best choice seemed to be

“roku-ju si” – 60 years old.

“arigato” She said with smile, before selling me two packs of tykes that made me happy I passed on the koala sucklings.

after the feast.

soap miffy

Last night following a Taiko practice and a mostly Hokkadio dinner, I hopped on the “danger bike” for a ride to pick up some bananas. At 10:50 in the evening, choices in Hamaton are limited to one of the two SeicoMart’s. The one open till midnight is closer to me so that’s where I headed.

When I walked in I noticed what appeared to be a new younger looking female employee behind the counter. “New” [as in I have not seen them before] and “younger” are a pair of words I have not used too many times this year in Hamaton to describe females. Naturally, I headed over to say hello.

To my surprise I discovered it was Cherry!

Her name is cherry in Japanese, and when she came to my eikaiwa class with her mother about a month or so ago, she introduced herself as Cherry – quite funny, especially considering her English level is equivalent to a good junior high school 3rd year’s level.

I was excited and we got to chatting, though I quickly remembered a story from another friend [Myumi] who recently started working at the other SeicoMart in town. Around midnight the Sunday we drove back from Hakodate Alex strolled in on his way home. He wanted to chat – as he always does – but Myumi revelaed subsequently to Chris and I that while she likes Alex, that night she was quite busy and couldn’t really talk.

Observing Cherry was busy scanning some things herself, I didn’t want to press the issue, especially because she was a new employee. An older employee was around and observed the two of us chatting. I felt kind of bad, as the older lady is my favorite SeicoMart employee to banter with. Usually our conversations center around what I’m buying and whether or not she is “genki?” but we both smile and do a good job of making personal what could be a mindnumbing, human-less repetetive transaction.

Yet, no offense to her, if Cherry had been working there this whole year odds are I never would’ve talked much at all to the older woman.

In any event, I thought could observe the older woman was a little put off by Cherry and I chatting, especially [probably] because some of it was in English so she couldn’t understand.

Hoping to make amends with my older friend, I tried chatting with both as Cherry checked me out.

The older lady asked as she inevitably does when I buy bananas,

“Asa gohan?” [breakfast?]

I said yes, then we got into if I only eat that for breakfast?

“to oatomeal” [and oatmeal]

The older woman had never heard of oatmeal – many Japanese have not – but Cherry knew about it – bad move putting them at odds again – yet the older cat kept coming, asking if I ever ate rice in the morning?

“toki doki” [sometimes]

I tried to explain that I only eat it if I made it the night before, because rice

“demo, rice wa long time … long jikan, 40 pun” [demo - but, and I'm pretty sure I mixed Japanese and English to say long time. pun is minutes]

Whereas,

“oatomeal … san pun”

I’m not quite sure why but this got both of them laughing, so I left the store feeling good that I’d put things right.

It is also cool, that despite my poor attendance they have let me play in 2 or 3 of their games. The first couple I fared quite poorly shooting under 10% and turning the ball over constantly, but by my final game I was 100% from the field [1 for 1] with a rebound or two and no turnovers. They respected me enough to give me just under a minute’s worth of playing time at the close of a game we lost by almost 40.

So I have enjoyed my time there and met some alright people. I am probably not going to be able to make the next two Sunday practices before I leave so I wanted to go for the last time.

Around 6:45 Chris called to see if I wanted to grab a quick dinner, as he was making progress cleaning his home and prepping for departure. I considered it, but pushed it back unless practice was cancelled. As I got ready to go I realized my basketball shoes are in a locker at work. Despite it being my last chance I was feeling somewhat ambivalent about practice because I was tired, had drank already Sunday and had been putting off cleaning/packign all weekend … but I decided to check out practice anyway.

Got there around 19:15, and was not disappointed to discover no one was there. I placed a couple of calls to baller friends – one of whom was in Sapporo playing in a tournament, and the other didn’t pick up – and then felt like I’d tried hard enough. A few minutes later one dude showed up, but we talked and each sort of decided it wasn’t gonna happen that night. He mentioned something about a girl being there, but I think she’s the girl whom I asked to hang out with sometime and since then she hasn’t really talked to me [partially because i've since discovered she has a boyfriend with a Tiger tattoo - he was one of the dudes I chilled with yesterday] so I passed. Deep down I knew I didn’t really want to practice that night, it was more a sense of obligation than anything and the way things worked out with me somewhat trying and having people not be there worked out perfectly.

Basketball was off, but soft tennis was very much happening. I considered going to soft tennis as it was my last chance, friends were there and I’d previously said maybe; also considered meeting Chris for dinner how many more chances will we have? … ultimately went home and started cleaning.

Was it the right move? I don’t know, but one thing is I’m not going to be able to do everything I want to do before I leave so passing on soft tennis sunday night could allow me to do something else later because I invested a few hours in packing/prepping.

今朝僕は幼稚園の運動会にいて。こどもたちかわいい！　すぎいはへいろごはんたべていしょうゆっことあきらとほなみ。　おいしよ！　どうもありがと！

Yesterday after I finished my blog post I had intentions of cleaning my home and beginning to prepare for my departure. The former I haven’t done properly this entire experience and the latter I should have at least begun a few weeks ago.

Before I got going; however, I received a phone call from Alex checking to see if I still intended on coming to that night’s BBQ in Sarufutsu. I was, but and assumed it would be starting around 19:00 or so, giving me a few hours to clean. Turned out it was starting at 16:00. Given we finished our conversation at roughly 15:00 I barely had time to get ready and pick up my car which I’d left next to Yakko the previous night. Japan has a zero tolerance driving policy [an excellent idea in my opinion].

I have become somewhat notorious for leaving my modes of transportation around Hamatonbetsu. I regularly leave my car near bars on nights out, and two Tuesdays ago I rode my bike to yakitori junko to enjoy drinks with a friend. Afterwards she offered to drive me home, and I accepted. I didn’t make it back to junko for about a week and when I did Master did not greet me with his usual “genki?” [how are you?] but informed me my bike was still on the premises in a tone that was far from pleased.

So Saturday after hanging up with Alex I walked to get my car, I actually passed Master on the way. Given I’d finally removed my bike from his property we were back to our usual simple, pleasant conversation. Got my car, took a quick shower at home, picked up Chris, filled up with gas and started the drive North.

Around 16:30 Alex met us in a friend’s car and we drove to the BBQ. It was hosted by the same couple who hosts Alex’s weekly eikaiwa class: Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe. Mrs. W speaks excellent English as did two of the other women who were present. Mr. W is uninterested in English, but is a great guy. We had a good rapport going back and forth. He’d make fun of me in Japanese I didn’t understand such as answering my question about the trash system by telling me to take all the BBQ’s trash home with me, and in return I addressed him the entire evening as “Shacho-San” which roughly translates to Mr. Boss Man.

The rest of the conversation was about half and half English and Japanese. Discussion centered around the term “Gaijin Smash” which Alex, Chris and I had only recently learned and which Alex had taught the Japanese ladies that week at eikaiwa. Basically it means a foreigner aware of Japanese customs willfully breaking them, and then playing dumb. Urban Dictionary defines it as:

To art of getting away with [being impolite] in Japan and being an ignorant obnoxious foreigner by simply pulling a gaijin smash on their Japanese asses when the shit hits the fan

“I was supposed to give up my priority seat on the train to that old bag but I totally gaijin smashed her ass and acted like I didn’t know what the fuck she was bitching at me about”

“I was too cheap and lazy to buy a subway ticket so with JR pass in hand I gaijin smashed my way through the gate before the electric doors could close and then when the guy came running after me and told me I had to buy a ticket I acted like I thought the JR pass covered everything”

Ed’s Note – Words in brackets are mine.

The ladies informed us the Japanese regularly “smash” eachother.

Another good English topic was the use of “fuck” as an adjective as in “this food is really fucking good.” Given Alex leads a fairly racy eikaiwa class the ladies were already familiar with most of “fuck’s” other meanings. Good students that they are they quickly grasped the concept and then put it into practice.

At one point when I was offered my 10th course of food, I turned it down saying “chou onaka-ipaii desu” [I'm very full] one of the students translated it into English as

“fucking full”

That’s a phrase I’ve never heard before, but which works and I love. I look forward to using that in the states.

We also got some good laughs out of my Japanese-English turning “tabetai” [I want to eat. If you add tai to verbs it means “want” as in nomutai - I want to drink. Thank you Makino for teaching me that] into “I want to taberu.” Readers you may not find that very funny, but yesterday 6 beers deep it was a hoot.

The food was delectable with the highlights being sweet potatoes wrapped in wet newspaper and aluminum foil cooked under the grill directly on the coals, grilled onigiri slathered in soba sauce and fresh mushrooms also wrapped in foil with garlic and butter.

Lowlight of the party was Chris, Alex and I singing the “Star Spangled Banner” and making countless mistakes. Thankfully Chris brought fireworks to distract folks.

After stuffing ourselves many, many times over we headed inside for a few more drinks. Alex, Chris and I departed the scene around 9, not because it was boring or dying, but because we had one more stop that evening – our friend James’s place. Given time is running short here we figured it would be out last chance to get to his town Toyotomi.

We arrived around 10:30 with 2 tall-boy 6 packs in hand. Usually we would head out but for certain reasons that would mean leaving someone behind, so we spent the evening’s duration at James’s home playing video games. Mr. Bozeman is uber-otaku [otaku is Japanese for geek] with a DS, PSP, Wii, PS3 and X-Box 360 at his disposal. Spent the next few hours knocking back beers, playing as a monkey driving on a motorcycle, fighting a buddhist monk, trapped inside a psychedlic geometry box and stealing cars. Following a discussion where Alex and I could not agree to disagree over what video games to play next we ended the night watching F F.

Woke up a few hours later to drive back to Hamaton to attend the kindergarten’s undounkai [sports festival]. It was fun as all of them have been, giving me a chance to see my students in action, meet their parents and chat with teachers and town officials.

These children are quite small, so I surprised to observe they had memorized not one or two dances like the junior high school students, but at least 5. One was a modern interpretive piece where the students linked arms together to make things like a bridge, ebi-fry [tonkatsu style fried shrimp ... I don't know why in Japanese they call it ebi-fry], and “special ebi fry” which had two students instead of 3. From what my friends and I could deduce, the  difference between regular and special appeared to be the size of the shrimp. The other was “Yosakoi 2009” which I was delighted to observe as I missed my chance to watch the Yosakoi dances last month in Sapporo.

I started watching from my usual spot in the VIP tent but was later offered to sit with Japanese Taiko friends: Yuko, Akira and Myumi. After the event, that same people invited me to their house for lunch. It was a wonderful time where I got to make puzzles with their kindergarten aged daughter, watch her video that teaches her important things like how to brush your teeth, hold chopsticks and wipe your bottom after using the toilet, as well as an American YouTube video the wife had found via  a Japanese blog, and look at the couple’s wedding pictures. It was fascinating to see that over the course of their wedding night they changed outfits at least 4 times, going from Kimono’s to Western wedding wear, to slightly more relaxed Western formal wear.

From left to right – Myumi, Akira, Honamia and Yukko. Thanks for the delicious lunch Yukko.

Yuko has her own blog, which you should visit …

Click here to view her blog, and here to read it translated into English by Google.

After I was drive home I looked forward to finally having some time to work on that whole cleaning/packing thing. Stopped by the grocery store on the way home where I had a delightful run-in with Marie Theresa a Philipino married to a local Japanese man who speaks incredible English. When we first saw eachother she had a bewildered look on her face and asked

“Why are you here?”

She was surprised to hear I cooked once in a while, though I think less surprised to see that instead of food I bough coffee and a chocolate treat.

Got in my car to drive home with every intention of being responsible, when I stumbled upon this scene …

They called to me from my car. I almost kept driving, but thought better of it. Walked over to say hello. Was offered a beer, initially tuned it down, but then thought better of it. To be fair after all chilling with good people, sipping beers and grilling on one of the first beautiful sunny days in Hamaton this year is basically exactly what I wanted to be doing.

Managed to use a break in conversation after my second one to excuse myself and give myself just enough time to pen this entry before I go to my last basketball practice tongiht. As for cleaning and what not …

NOTES

One thing that came to me during lunch was that I kind of wish I’d spent more time being otaku this year and exploring Japanese anime, manga, models and video games. Those all things I came being really interested in and still am. I wouldn’t go back and change things about this year, but I also wouldn’t of minded a few Fridays instead of going out to swill beers and sing bad songs I’d sat at home and played some video games I can’t get anywhere else in the world or made a Gundam model.

Photo by Danny Choo. CCASA Licensed.