The Best Zombie Show You’ll See This Year

To fresh eyes, Japanese television appears to be about 80% food shows and 20% watching celebrities watch videos. Over time, the percentages improve as you discover the hidden treasures of Japanese TV, including some pretty decent detective/crime shows and, of course, the comedy. In the latter category, a YouTube channel called Funny Japan has done the English speaking world a great favor by subtitling the best 13 minutes of comedy you’ll see in any language.

The show sets it up nicely. Children have been practicing for the zombie apocalypse and their mom asks Knight Scoop (the show) to give them the real test. The accommodating zombie gives a written warning before showing up and falls prey to their carefully set traps, including Tabasco sauce and packing tape. Well worth the watch - and a possible parenting strategy for all of us with kids to encourage them to cooperate more.

The Pull of Japan

Try as I might, I can’t quite leave Japan behind. Spending the lion’s share of my 20s in the Northern reaches of Japan has all but guaranteed that I will always long for those “halcyon days of my youth”. There is no doubt that a lot of my time in Japan was central to shaping me into an adult, something my driver’s license assures me I am. So maybe it is to be expected that I still feel the pull of Japan - or more specifically Aomori - despite now having a career, a home and a family all rooted here in Canada. That said, I worry that the call of Japan may just be a siren’s song.

Memory is a faulty and often outright false mechanism in even the best of minds, but it’s all we got. I remember the unbelievable pink of the cherry blossoms along kanchogaidori, the main street running past city hall in Towada. I remember biking down towards what was then Towadako Machi and seeing the freshly planted rice fields quilted across the landscape, butting right against the feet of mountains. I remember walking the Oirase Gorge paths under trees dense with leaves and every surface being covered in mosses, like a forest ripped from deep time.

Many of my best memories are like that. A bit of alone time in what has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. What memory tends to omit is that these moments were necessary for me. They were the times when I could drop all the different characters I played in Japan and just enjoy the moment. Many of these moments were in the early years of my stay, before I was able to get beyond some of the interpersonal layers and genuinely connect with a small number of people. But that took years. Years.

That’s not to say there weren’t great moments despite the distance most Japanese people kept. I remember finishing teaching a class and walking away from the school vibrating with the energy the kids throw at you when you are absolutely killing your delivery, feeling like I wouldn’t sleep for days. There were also too many acts of kindness to list, part of an overall desire to make sure the latest long-term guest in town enjoyed his time. Some were anonymous, like the bags of vegetables, rice and even apples I would find on my porch. Others were obvious like the time the local brewery stayed open with staff on hand so I could take a visiting friend there well after they were supposed to have closed for the night.

To be clear, I wouldn’t trade my time in Japan for anything, and not just because that is where I met my wife. It shaped me like few experiences did before or since. Going there, I started with the disadvantages of being illiterate and barely verbal, essentially the mind of an adult with the communication skills of a toddler. Building up to where I could function as an adult in Japanese is still one of my proudest achievements, even though I never achieved true fluency. The experience of being involved but always apart was also incredibly important as it focused me to reassess many parts of my personality and what I really needed to be happy. And even playing all the characters - the inquisitive tourist, the entertaining foreigner, the eager worker, the properly awed cultural adventurer, the grizzled ex-pat - has made me much better at adapting on the fly to whatever professional or personal situation I find myself in.

With time, the upsides of even the worst parts of my time in Japan stick with me, as do the best memories - and my overtaxed brain minimizes or outright deletes the downsides. I had to go back to old notebooks and journals to remind myself how tired I was of standing out wherever I went and recall the angst that the bureaucracy of Japan caused in me. There was also the career limitations inherent in the position I held.

Again, there is my tendency to emphasize the upsides. Those career limitations were one of the reasons I was diligent in keeping up my freelancing, avoiding the skill/experience gap that can lock an ex-pat into staying because it is all they know. But it was soul crushing at the time to think that there could never be space in Towada - the only place in Japan I wanted to live - for me to do anything other than teach English. I loved Towada and still do, but I wasn’t convinced that the feeling was mutual enough to leverage my future on it. I imagine it is hard to get kids excited about learning fruits and numbers in English when you are past middle age with arthritis creeping in.

I do wonder about the alternate universe Andy that never left Japan. I can make some fairly informed guesses based on the experiences of fellow ex-pats who stayed. We would probably be making ends meet with my wife still teaching and myself stitching together teaching gigs, some freelance work and overseas contracting. We would likely not own a house, but we’d be renting one at a ridiculously low rate. Our cost of living would be less and our food fresher and more varied. We’d be a part of the community and still actively participating in sports, riding our bikes around town and looking forward to a different regional event or festival every month.

What I don’t know is if that healthy, happy couple - not wealthy, but doing ok - has any children with them. Is my wife still working 12 hour days and weekends going above and beyond what a Canadian elementary teacher would consider reasonable or even sane? Am I still leaving my classes every day feeling like I am making a difference? Do we still love our jobs or just our lifestyles? I wish alternate universe Andy would tell me some of these things. Because I still hear that siren’s song and in moments of struggle here in Canada, I feel like pointing our sails east again, come what may.

The Advantages of a Slightly Dumber Smartwatch

This Fall, I was pressing the button on my FitBit HR to turn off one of the alarms when the casing popped off and the button itself fell in my lap. It was well into the second year of service, so it wasn’t going to be a warranty replacement. This sent me down the rabbit hole of researching 1) other fitness trackers and 2) smartwatches in general.

After many months of FitBit, I at least knew the functions I had to have. Interestingly enough, the core function of the FitBit - activity tracking - was second on my list and the heart rate tracking didn’t make the cut. The most useful function for me by far was the silent alarms, as the birth of my daughter in January once again put quiet morning exits at a premium. The third function I somewhat liked was the caller ID on my wrist.

With this admittedly easy to fulfill list, I began looking at new features that I might be interested in. This included things like emailing from the watch, GPS, advanced activity tracking and so on. The other big thing was battery life. I understand the allure of an Apple Watch, but I am not going to plug a watch in every night as my priority function is the silent alarm - which kinda requires the device to be on my wrist overnight.

After ready too many reviews to count, I decided to go with the Pebble Time Smartwatch. It met my criteria with several days of battery on a charge, basic step counting and silent alarms with a bonus helping of alerts (text & email previews, sports scores, etc) to my wrist. The e-paper face doesn’t burn the battery as much as the more expensive watches, but I was pleasantly surprised at how slick some of the picture based faces can look. Although I am not someone you should listen to for any kind of fashion advice, I do think the Pebble looks pretty slick.

More importantly, I again found a function that I didn’t originally look for becoming indispensable to me. The music app allows you to skip songs from your wrist and I use it all the time. In fact, the alerts, the music app and an accurate weather report on the watchface mean that I rarely take my iPhone out of my pocket anymore.

So the choice of a slightly dumber smartwatch has worked for me. That, and the price point of $125 was less than it was going to cost me to replace the FitBit anyhow. It is also sturdier than I expected. So far it has handled the dings and dents that come with playing with the kids and generally being clumsy. In short, I think the Pebble is probably the way to go if you want some basic smartwatch and activity tracker functions on a budget. All in all, a good purchase.

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Update
Dammit. Well, FitBit just bought up the parts of Pebble worth anything and have generously agreed not to brick the devices for at least a year. Apparently I jinxed the whole thing by picking up a Pebble. Still love the watch, but now it is on a slow countdown to non-functionality...

Giving Up the Car and the 3 Phases of Biking

After two decades of uninterrupted car ownership spanning two countries, I’ve given up my car. Before the rush of applause starts, I need to confess that, as a household, we still have the van so my wife can cart the kids to where they need to be. Before kids, we were making it work with one car. I drove to work and my wife got by using transit. In fact, transit access was one of the things we looked for when searching for a house. Then, of course, kids. And all the things that magically pop into existence around kids, like toys, change tables, car seats and mysterious broken things that nobody touched, descended on us until the critical mass was reached to push us into buying a van. And, voila, one vehicle became two.

No matter what you buy them for, keeping two vehicles on the road gets expensive. So when the stars aligned this March and we had a chance to go back to a single vehicle family, I was genuinely excited. For the first time in my life, I have a job that can be reached by public transit in less than an hour. I was already used to a 45 minute commute by car to my previous job, so rather than signing on for the shorter drive, I decided to try out the 40 minute bus and train ride.

All in all, it has been a great change. As some studies have suggested, I experience way less stress riding versus driving. I’ve never been known for Gandhi-like patience, and driving often brought out the worst in me. There were many days where I would find myself swearing, shaking a fist, flipping the bird and even aggressively revving the engine, and sometimes that was before I even put the car in gear. So driving has never been a good fit as far as stress or blood pressure. Public transit, on the other hand, still feels like personal free time created out of thin air. I can read, listen to audiobooks or music, work on my tablet or even catch a quick nap. The other people taking transit at the prime hours are all pretty decent. I previously had a poor opinion of transit because I only took it very late at night when everyone on it - myself included - tends to be ridiculously drunk.

I also walk way more on a daily basis as a result of public transit. This became apparent on day one when my fitbit marked 10,000 steps over my lunchtime stroll rather than late in the evening (or not at all). Now four months later, I am actually a bit lighter than when I started and I willingly get off a stop early to add some extra walking distance to the commute. To be clear, I don’t think public transit will turn back the clock so I can fit the same pants size I wore a decade ago, but I do think it will help with general health and at least counteract some of the hours I spend in an office chair. Apparently sitting to work is the new smoking and I am definitely a three pack a day guy if that’s the case, so every little bit helps.

Between the time and the general health benefits, it was enough for me to park the car permanently. As of this July, we officially are a one car family. Another interesting development coming from the change is that I am actually excited to drive the van on the weekends. I used to hate driving any distance on my days off because I drove so much to, from and for work. Now it is a special pleasure. And, of course, there is the environmental benefit of taking a car off the road. In all honesty, I didn’t make the change for environmental reasons, but it is a nice knock-on benefit when combined with saving money, gaining time and getting a bit more fit.

That said, it is not all sunshine and roses. As part of this process, I flirted briefly with biking. I was able to cut out a bus and it shaved my commute down to 30 minutes because of the ability to go a direct route rather than the bus route designed to hit as many neighborhoods as possible before going to the train. I used to bike a lot when I lived in Japan. People in general bike a lot in Japan, although car ownership is also up there. Biking to and from work remains one of my favorite memories from living in Japan. Edmonton, however, is not Japan. It is not even half as bike friendly. I’d unscientifically estimate that one in every 30 or so Edmonton drivers is out to straight up murder you through either spite or idiocy.

I went through what I imagine to be common phases for Edmonton bike commuters. Phase 1 was the honeymoon where it was just awesome to feel the wind on my face again. During this phase I bought all the peripherals like the helmet and reflectors so that I felt well prepared to ride on the road. I was right in there with the traffic following the rules that I reread multiple times. I felt confident for the single left my route required. After several close calls - all of which occurred while going straight on residential roads rather than that tricky left - I entered Phase 2.

Phase 2 is where you know the rules, but you value your life more than you fear the ticket. You start using sidewalks, dismounting and using the crosswalk, and generally acting as a pedestrian that sometimes rides a bike. This worked better, but I felt the hatred of people watching me. Some seemed to want me to ride across and get the hell out of the way faster. Some probably would only be satisfied if I sprouted seven kinds of aggressive cancer and died in front of them, such was their need to get to the next red light. Some - and I will admit we are talking about only three over the period of a month - didn’t stop at all. I don’t know if they didn’t see the blinking lights, didn’t think a walking bicyclist counted as a pedestrian, or maybe thought it was a race to see who could occupy the space first. Either way, I entered Phase 3.

Phase 3 is where you leave your bike at home and just fricking walk. Which is what I do. I even stick out a hand before I enter the crosswalk now and make pointed eye contact with the drivers. They are more attentive when I don’t have the bike - again, not sure why. Since I don’t feel pressure to run across, I have more time to judge a non-stopper versus the I-hate-my-brakes-so-I-smash-them-last-minute stopper. People still neglect to stop sometimes but my hands are no longer occupied holding the handle bars, freeing them up for the double bird.

Aside from the failed biking experiment, I’ve also had to pay more attention to weather. I’ve been drenched several times or ended up dressing for the 13 degrees when I leave rather than the 29 degrees when I return. So now I have a backpack filled with all sorts of useful stuff like windbreakers, hats and umbrellas. I still can’t shake the feeling that I am a kid again and that I should really have an adult checking my backpack to make sure I didn’t forget my lunch.

All in all though, the drawbacks have been small. And I get a little thrill telling people I don’t have a car, as this is the first time since I turned 16 that I could say that. To be sure, I am not going to swear off owning a car again. Jobs change, people move, and all of that changes the practicality of commuting. I also haven’t commuted through an Edmonton winter yet. However, with those caveats, giving up the car has been a great choice.

Thailand: You’re Going to Ride an Elephant, Just Accept It.

Like a great many tourists, I sometimes feel at odds with myself when I take the easy path and do the touristy thing in a given situation. I feel like there is some authentic experience I am missing out on - maybe apprenticing under some ancient looking master of glass blowing as the mists roll over the mountains behind us.

I am, however, a tourist. So even if an authentic experience presented itself to me, I would spend most of the time trying to get a picture of it rather than actually engaging. “Look at this picture,” I would tell my friends back home (none of whom really want to see a picture of me, whether it is of me blowing glass or even me on fire), “Isn’t it great?” And they’d be guilted into asking me how it was. To which, of course, my honest response would be “I guess it was ok. It was really hard to get the picture while holding the tube, so I actually just watched this old guy do it most of the time.”

I have come to terms with this essential flaw in my character and I accept that, if I am going to have any real connection with anything, I need time to steep it in. I am a bitter tea type of personality, I guess. This is why it took me over six years to properly wrap my head around one small city in Japan.

So when it came time for my trip to Thailand in 2004, I knew I was going to ride an elephant. It is one of those things tourists do in Thailand. I accepted it. And you should too.

I met my particular elephant on the island of Koh Samui in the south of Thailand. I was staying on Chaweng beach and had planned to make the full moon party (another tourist staple), but I’d failed to account for a Buddhist holiday. Koh Samui itself was beautiful, with jungles, beaches and an above 30 Celsius temperature during my entire stay. Of course, being of Scottish, Irish and German descent, I reacted to the sun like a hermit leaving his cave after 40 years of darkness.

So when it came time to visit the elephant show, I was resplendent in my wide-brim hat and well lubricated with several litres of sunscreen. The elephant show consisted of the mahout (a.k.a. elephant rider) taking the elephant through a workout regime similar to an early afternoon aerobics show on 80s television. The elephant backed up, lifted feet, stood up, shuffled and lifted logs with its trunk.

Elephants have a special way of doing this that conveys that shows they are still confused as to how these hairless primates ended up riding them, but they can’t be bothered enough to give a shit. After watching the elephant show, which bizarrely ends with the opportunity to shake hands with a monkey, we were finally allowed to fulfill our tourist dreams and ride the elephants.

Unlike the mahouts, who rode behind the ears of the big beasts, we got to sit in relatively comfortable seats tied to the elephant’s backs. We also mounted by walking up the steps to the loading platform rather than scrambling up the neck as the elephant kneeled before us. This was probably for the best, as many of us in the group were far beyond the age or body type needed to scramble up anything steeper than an ottoman.

I was travelling solo at this point, so I got the single seater elephant (better mileage, but more road noise). The first thing that hit me is that riding an elephant was actually kind of fun. The roll of the motion and the sense of the size of the animal carrying you is unique in my experience. The second thing that hit me was that elephants smell pretty much what you’d expect a very large animal to smell like. And they do everything large. One elephant in front of us in the tourist train stopped to piss and, by a modest estimate, released an entire lake’s worth of fluid.

So go ahead and ride that elephant when you have a chance. It isn’t going to change your life like learning to blow glass from a 100 year old monk on a mountain peak, but it is a genuinely satisfying experience that will make for a picture that no one but you actually wants to see. And, after all, isn’t that what travelling is all about?

Apple Pie Politics

When my son began to speak actual words, one of the phrases that he repeated a lot was “no apple pie.” Several times a day, he’d go into the kitchen to assess the apple pie situation and then find his mom or myself to let us know that there was a serious lack of apple pie. We expected a different response when Rie would bake an apple pie for him, but he stuck to his guns in asserting that, whatever we thought that pastry was, it was “no apple pie.”

Seeing the media from two different national elections - Canada’s recently completed one and the seemingly endlessly upcoming American one - I couldn’t help thinking that my son would be a hell of a politician. Judging by the ads, the debates and the admittedly small amount of the election content I’ve been able to stomach, the primary skill required for politics is assertion. You must be able to repeat an assertive statement no matter what the particular facts of the situation.

I’m oversimplifying a bit, but the Canadian election can essentially be boiled down to the Progressive Conservatives asserting that Justin Trudeau wasn’t ready to take the helm and Justin Trudeau asserting that he was ready. Or, in my son’s worldview, the PC’s insisted there was no apple pie when Trudeau said there clearly was apple pie. In this case, Trudeau’s assertions won out and Canada has a new Liberal government after around a decade of the PCs in power.

The United States doesn’t yet have the clear apple pie vs. no apple pie messaging yet, but there are some definite messages that potential presidential candidates are leaning towards. Donald Trump, who is in the lead for the Republicans, seems to be tacking towards “America sucks, but I can make it great again” while Hillary Clinton, leading the Democrats, is going with “America is pretty good now, but I can make it better.” Now, you can say a lot about these two as people and candidates - Trump is a narcissist whose polling success is clearly from going after the lowest common denominator and Clinton is clearly leaning heavily on her husband and Mr. Obama for political cred - but at least their messaging is about the country they are hoping to represent.

The Canadian election was less about the nation and more about whether or not Trudeau was ready to give Canada its first political dynasty. From a strategic communications standpoint, this framed the election as Trudeau’s to lose. He had one overall “issue” to address and it wasn’t even one where an objective answer was possible. Enough people agreed that there was apple pie, and a new government formed.

With Trump and Clinton there is a similar lack of objective evidence for either assertion, but it opens the door to a more meaningful and interesting debate. Is America sucking right now or is it good with the potential to get better? Obviously your own personal situation is going to influence how you answer that question and ultimately how you vote.

Modern communications is all about boiling the complex down to a few key messages that you repeat, repeat and repeat some more. There is still room for thoughtful analysis in the long form magazine-style interviews and some journalistic channels, but most of the content we see are soundbytes. And maybe this is a demand driven problem. Maybe we want politics to be simple. Maybe all we want our politicians to be assertive and on message.

The risk is that we are quickly approaching a point where the key messages and polish allow someone to walk in with an undisclosed policy platform that - if properly explored - is not what the majority actually want. I don’t have a solution. I don’t think media will ever revert back to long form journalism when listicles are so much more clickable.

I don’t think politicians will ever again drop those polished facades when in front of a camera and talk about what they actually think and feel. But I have been wrong a great many times in my life. That said, my money is on there being many more “no apple pie” elections in the years to come.

Surviving In The Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Economy

Between AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and more movies than you can fit on a hard-drive, most of us feel well-educated when it comes to surviving ravenous hordes of flesh-eating undead. This article, however, won’t focus on how to get through those frightening moments when your chainsaw runs out of gas or you’re down to your last bullet. Instead, we’ll look at how to make the best choices, both for survival and your future career path in the zombie economy.

Welcome to the True Knowledge Economy

One thing that will help you thrive in the zombie economy – aside from quick legs and a strong stomach – is a longer term perspective. This will be vital in the first months when people are hoarding, rioting and looting. Very likely, someone bigger and stronger than you is going to get most of the good guns. The problem with guns, is that bullets are bound to be scarce one day. Instead of following the crowd to the gun shops, take a moment and analyze the situation according to the utility and scarcity of items. The wisest decision is to focus on items that are common enough to be carried by many stores and give the maximum utility for their weight.

Everyone’s list will be a little different, but here are some items that are likely to come in handy and that you won’t have to kill anyone to collect:

• Camping gear, including a tent, sleeping bag, crank-up lights and warm, durable clothing. Most people will be fortifying their homes, you need to be ready for when gas and electricity service no longer works.
• Tools, including axes and knives. Guns and bullets are great if you can get them, but it is harder to make your own bullets than it is to sharpen and mend basic tools. 
• Books on gardening, medicine (especially herbs), basic carpentry and trapping or hunting. Society is likely going to slip back a few centuries as zombies take their toll on the infrastructure, so it is best to bone up on how things used to be done whenever you have a spare moment. 

Now that you have what you need, it is time to run for your life.

Real Estate Tips during the Zombie Plague

People equal zombies and then more zombies as they bite people. So rather than joining massive groups that are bound to form around people with weapons, it is a good idea to look for an area with few people, fertile land and perhaps a mid-sized town nearby. If you can find an unoccupied farm with a well and a fence, then you can attempt to bunker down, but tying yourself to real estate will likely be a very dangerous decision in the short-term because the groups with guns will quickly realize that large groups need more food. And food is easier to take than grow.

The best location may be the one that is most difficult to stumble upon. Then you can set about building a minimal dwelling and securing food, supplies and seeds to bring back. Once you have an isolated area set-up, you can start looking into getting some tenants and establishing a new career beyond foraging for food and braining adventurous zombies with a hand-axe.

Building a Post-Apocalyptic Career

The key to any successful business is people – preferably people who will not murder you in your sleep for a laugh. By scouting out into the surrounding areas, you’ll likely find pockets of escapees like yourself. You can start rebuilding and securing a human settlement by smart recruiting of smaller groups. At this point, although still a threat, the zombie hordes are probably less of a threat than your hideout in the mountains being discovered and overrun.

Once you start building up a community, however, you’ll have to put some thought into what your role in this mini-society will be. You two basic choices:

• Install yourself as a ruler. This has some attractions, such as absolute power, but it comes with risks. You’ll always have to promote people in trios – two can conspire easily, but a third will usually taddle – and you will always face the chance of a shift in the political situation proving to be fatal.
• Avoid real power, but become indispensable. Using your secret stashes of knowledge and the fact you were a founder of the settlement, you can probably establish yourself as a village elder. This means you can act as an adviser to the ruler, president, council or whatever decision making apparatus is established.

Beyond the Zombie Plague

Hopefully a couple winters will clear out or at least confine zombies to the more southern climates, so a time will come when you’ll have to consider whether it is time for your settlement to establish a fiefdom or build up defenses against raiders or even try to reclaim an abandoned city. Although it may take awhile, with luck you’ll be putting down your axe and settling into a home with electricity and running water to enjoy your retirement.

Is Anpanman Going to Be Ok?

I worry about Anpanman a lot these days. Anpanman is a popular show for children that we get on the TV Japan channel and I get to see a lot of it because my son is currently a fan. All I can say is that Japanese children’s television is deeply concerning.

With Anpanman, my concerns are largely metaphysical. Anpanman is a bit like Superman, if Superman had a removable head made of pastries and sweet bean filling. Anpanman can fly, he is incredibly strong and he goes around helping people and punching out bad guys. This is all great stuff. I hope that Aito grows up incredibly strong with the ability to fly, help people and punch out bad guys, so there are many lessons that he can pick up from Anpanman.

Unfortunately, like Superman and kryptonite, Anpanman has a weakness - the fact that his head is basically dough and sweet beans. If his head gets dented, dirty, wet, or fed to hungry animals (as sometimes happens), Anpanman’s power wanes. The solution for Anpanman is to replace his head with an entirely new head. This brings him back to full power and allows him to “An-punch” his enemies so hard that they disappear over the horizon.

What I wonder, though, is whether or not Anpanman is actually Anpanman anymore after switching heads. Sure, we think that Anpanman is the same person because he does and says the same things, but isn’t it also possible that Jam Ojisan, Anpanman’s creator, is baking a new individual with each head? Could we be seeing the death of a hero every time Anpanman’s head gets changed?

Besides the existentially terrifying question of the disposable hero heads, there is the change that would have on the show itself. If each head is a different hero, then Anpanman’s nemesis, Baikinman, doesn’t actually fail each episode. In fact, he’s slowly working his way through all of the potential Anpanmans until the day when Jam Ojisan runs out of sweet beans and flour.

Of course, it would be easy to chalk up my worries about Anpanman to Japanese cartoons being quirky, but I’ve realized that it has nothing to do with Japan. Thomas the Tank Engine, another of my son’s favorites, also contains some big questions. Sir Topham Hat can’t go one episode without mentioning that all the train’s should be “really useful engines.” In fact, most of the episodes are about the trains competing to be more useful or agonizing about not being useful enough. The question I have is what exactly are the engines so scared of? What did Sir Topham Hat do to inspire that kind of fear? What happens to the engines that don’t measure up?

Now, you might say I am reading too much into both these shows - and you’d be right. I have a lot of spare time to think while watching these shows. Anpanman and Thomas tend to be a bit formulaic in the plot department. It’s almost like they were written for kids. As a person in an international marriage, I am all for understanding and appreciation between cultures. And one thing I think we can agree on is that children’s shows are crazy in any culture.

The Things You Forget: Japan Five Years Later

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Japan. I lived and worked in Japan as an ESL teacher from 2003-2009, but since then we (I met my wife in Japan) hadn’t returned. From the time we touched down in Narita, it felt like we were enacting the Japanese folktale, Urashima Taro. In the folktale, Urashima Taro returns from the ocean to find decades passed while he partied in the undersea kingdom and the world moved on. It really felt like decades passed while we were away rather than a few years, but I think it is just the things you forget when you aren’t in a country day in and day out.

For sure, some things are different. For example, Tokyo station has touch panel vending machines now, street lights have gotten slimmer and you can finally pay with a credit card in most large stores. However, there are all sorts of things that must have once been familiar and now seem strange and new. The counters and tables all felt a few inches too low, the airport and bullet trains were unbelievably clean, and the average combini (convenience store, but so different from Canada’s version) held all the products a person could possibly need in their daily lives. Even the cars were surprising as there seemed to be an endless selection of makes, models and colors.

One thing I was shocked to have forgotten was the natural beauty of Japan. It is easy to think of Tokyo as being Japan concentrated down into a single city of skyscrapers and concrete, but outside of Tokyo Japan is a country of mountains, oceans, fields and rivers. In Alberta, we can drive 600 kilometers in any direction without a huge change in the countryside. In Japan, 600 kilometers takes you from Ueno station in Tokyo to the snow covered forests of Aomori. For such a small country, Japan packs in a lot of scenery.

There were many other moments of rediscovery, including the quality of the food, the high-level of service, the mild weather, and the weight of history and culture in Japan. There are many things I wish I could bring back with me to Canada, and also some things I wish I could export to Japan. I wish my Japanese friends took more of a Canadian approach to work and took all the holidays they were entitled too. I wish Canadian restaurants could offer the service and food quality you get in Japan.

I guess I really wish I could live in a Canadianized Japan or Japanized Canada, but that’s not how the world works. That said, every time we travel to Japan or a Japanese person comes to Canada, you can’t help but take a piece of that culture with you. Piece by piece, the connection is built between both cultures. Sure, you can forget the little things like the spotless bathrooms and the talking ATMs, but the truly important things like respect and appreciation of nature stay with you forever.

The Challenges of Flying With Children: Babies Are Just As Bad As Pipebombs

When you have a child, you become part of a tribe of sorts. There are things that you discuss only with other parents – and usually only after the two beers you can fit in after your children's bedtime at 8pm and your own at 9:45pm (wild times, I know). These are things that seem frankly criminal when you write them down, like how sleepless nights you fantasized about leaving your screaming and crying child on a stranger's porch (I am not a monster - I would have at least rang the doorbell.). I've now added another story to this cache of dark humor: air travel.

Flying with a child of any age is challenging. Hell, flying as an adult is no great shakes. It seems like planes are being designed to pack the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of comfort. The economics of airlines dictates that planes are not airworthy until passengers are skin-to-skin with the strangers sitting next to them. This type of thing, plus the fact that a plane is really a metal tube held up by a suspension of belief in gravity, used to make me dread flying.

Now, I have so many more things dread as a parent flying with my child. The first major change between your old travel habits and your family travel habits is the amount of baggage you require. Aito is around 20 pounds and, if packed properly, fits on my lap. Despite the relatively compact nature of my son, he requires another 80 pounds of luggage, not including the baby carry on with diapers, wipes, snacks and clothes, as well as the significant portion of our own carry on given over to his books, toys and eating utensils. My wife and I must have looked like especially put upon pack animals pushing the six check in bags, the three carry on, and our son through the airport.

Thankfully, we were able to check everything and then quickly breeze through security riding on the backs of understanding unicorns. I am, of course, joking. The Edmonton Airport Security – the alert and tireless force that let a passenger fly after taking away his pipe bomb in 2014  – were very concerned about the baby bag. As well they should be.

After all, how could they be sure that the baby we had with us was in fact ours? More importantly, did he pack that bag himself? So the stalwarts of airport security had my wife – who I suspect has radicalized over the course of our marriage – rummage through the bag to pull out the suspicious object. This was, of course, wipes. After opening the potentially lethal package for the security officer, we were allowed to keep our wipes. We cackled manically. Our plan worked. We were now free to commit acts of extreme hygiene at 30,000 feet.

Although we did not, in fact, have a bomb or any act of terror planned for the long flight to Japan, we did feel like terrorists. People boarding the plane flinched at the sight of an infant, anticipating 10 hours of uninterrupted crying. It was my first time flying with a child and, aside from the metric ton of luggage, I had prepared as I usually did – I brought a book.

....

Sorry, I had to take a moment there to let the laughter pass. As you more experienced parents will know, a book is a bit ambitious for in-flight entertainment. I did not do enough reading on the plane to finish a postcard, let alone a book. What was I doing for 10 hours? My wife and I were both providing non-stop entertainment, snacks and soothing to the volatile and sleepless infant we had smuggled aboard. In retrospect, I owe an apology to the Edmonton airport security. They should have tasered us at the check-in counter.

Birthdays: We Mastered Babies, But Now We Have A Toddler

Although I’ve never quite grasped the physics of it, some very intelligent people have declared that time is relative. And I think they are onto something.

To me, it feels like a month, maybe two at most have passed since the arrival of our son. There is, however, some pretty compelling evidence that it has in fact been well over a year. This evidence is, of course, my son himself. At some point – I am guessing it was a Tuesday afternoon – he doubled in size, started walking, sprouted teeth, and mastered iOS8.

This was unfortunate news for us, his parents, as we were just starting to feel confident in our ability to take care of a baby. Now, we no longer have a baby. We have a toddler. What I am trying to say is that, when it was just my wife and I, we were two adults aging gradually enough that it was hard to notice a change year to year, let alone month to month.

Sure, my waistline has been expanded faster than the Russian border with the Ukraine, but that is at least a predictable rate of expansion. With a child as part of our lives, it seems like time is jerking backwards and forwards, much like the PVR does when he gets a hold of the remote.

My son is now over one year old. From now on, we can refer to his age in years rather than just months, although I notice a lot of parents hold onto the months (“he’s 16 months”) perhaps thinking that they can slow down the calendar that way or just not ready to admit that the leap between one year and two or three or sixteen seems a lot smaller than it did at eleven months. I’ve decided to take the opposite approach and start relatively aging myself at my son's rate, so I should be going through a midlife crisis sometime next week and starting to perfect my shuffle table and bridge game for retirement at Christmas 2018.

My thinly veiled fear of mortality aside, the last year and change has been as intense and rewarding as any I can remember. I imagine veteran parents chuckling to themselves as my wife and I struggle to express how incredibly weird and satisfying it is watching a baby go from a 7 pound mass of need and bowel movements to a 20 pound mass of need and bowel movements that also walks.

Parenting is full of milestones besides bowel movements, but it is always the bowel movements that we seem to track most carefully. That said, we did break out in applause when he mastered sitting up and I thought we would be receiving parent of the year awards as he learned to stand on his own.

We have videos and photos (so many photos) of all these important milestones from the first haircut to the first time crawling up the stairs. It is without shame - because really, what shame do I have left? - that I admit we are borderline stalkers when it comes to parenting. My son will never wonder about his childhood because he'll be able to search the metadata in the shared photo library and watch a minute by minute slideshow set to "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

One of the highlights in that photo library will be his first birthday. By a conservative estimate, we put the same amount of time into planning and preparing for his birthday as went into the completion of the Panama Canal. Like many parents, my favorite part of his birthday was the twelve hours of sleep that immediately followed it.

That's not to say it wasn't worth it. We did get a great picture -which we will digitally alter for the next five years to give us time to recover enough to plan another birthday party for him.

An Awkward But Enlightening Afternoon of Photography

This month I had the opportunity to attend a digital photography course through Learn Photography, and it was an experience that’s worth sharing for anyone with even a remote interest in photography. For the course, you need to bring or rent a digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera – basically one of those fancier, bulky cameras that come with all sorts of lenses, tripods and so on.

I packed the office camera and met my instructor, James, in front of the Alberta Legislature. For the first 20 minutes James familiarized me with the camera, explaining concepts like shutter time, aperture and ISO. It turns out that these three elements make all the difference when taking a photo. Using them in combination, you can make plated food look like its glowing, capture the aurora borealis, catch a perfect shot of a car moving at speed and much more.

Since we didn’t have plated food, the aurora borealis or speeding cars in the Legislature grounds, I mostly took pictures of trees, statues and James leaping, posing and running. Oddly enough, spending an afternoon photographing an Asian man is a lot more fun and educational than you might think. James took me through the camera modes and menus and showed me how even a point and click camera has the ability to take better photos. Among the neat tips James supplied were:

Photograph people by zooming in from farther away. The more space you create between your subject and the lens, the flatter the picture will be and the more flattering to your subject (simply put, it makes your subject look thinner). On the flipside, many point and clicks add weight due to a curving effect when little or no zoom is used.

Increase your shutter speed at sporting events – but not too much. If you’ve taken a photo of someone running, you’ve likely noticed how their arms and legs turn into windmills of light – much like the road runner hitting his stride. To minimize this effect, you can increase the shutter speed. Increase it too much and the subject is frozen in space with no sense of motion. The magic is to get a slight blur like a national geographic spread with lions on the hunt. I found that 1/60 or one-sixtieth of a second worked for most people-in-motion shots.

Decrease your shutter speed to photograph in low light. If you are taking pictures in shade or dark, using your flash can distort the image – producing halos, glowing eyes and the like. If you slow down your shutter speed to a second or longer, this gives the camera more time to collect the light needed to get the picture. You can also get neat effects, such as a comet trail of light when cars pass in front of the camera. All of these changes can be made on most digital camera settings menus.

There were many more useful tips and I would encourage anyone with an interest to check out classes through http://cameracourses.ca/. They offer group classes on the weekends so that you’ll have more subjects to choose from than just James. And that will probably cut down on the strange looks you’ll get from the construction workers fixing the fountains.

It's the End of the World as We Know It

Alas, for those of you caught up in hanging Christmas lights and buying presents, it turns out that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012 according to the Mayan Calendar.

Yes, some may question why people living in the age of quantum physics and the Internet should worry about the scheduling habits of a people who pulled ropes with thorns through their tongues and genitals to commune with the gods, but those people clearly do not spend enough time on the Internet.

If you do a little searching – and ignore NASA’s page of lies about how the world is definitely not ending, you will find some very interesting people readying themselves for the apocalypse. There seems to be some consensus on remote villages in various parts of Europe being the only safe havens in the coming storm. So this is either the real thing or a savvy ancient Mayan marketing campaign for European vacations.

Like any reasonable person, I like to hedge my bets. That is why I have been stocking up on rifles, ammo, canned goods, generators and ropes with thorns. If the world ends on schedule, please know that it has been a pleasure sharing this earth with you - and I will shoot you if you try to steal my canned tuna.

If, however - in some wild and improbable trick of fate - the earth does not become a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the twenty-first, I’d like to wish you all a merry Christmas and assure you that I would never shoot such wonderful people over canned tuna. Cans of Stagg Chilli, maybe, but never tuna. Merry Christmas!

Working and Living in Japan: Joining Private Club Activities

Previously we looked at how to join a school club in Japan. Now we’ll look at how to join a private club – a club where you can practice and compete with adults as well as receive instruction from qualified club teachers.

Finding a Club

The process of finding an adult club can be a little more complicated. If you are absolutely new to your town of city, the first step is to find the community center (kouminkan) in your area. These will usually have a registry of the clubs that use rooms there as well as an events calendar listing tournaments that the clubs compete it. Even ikebana (flower arranging) has annual competitions. As with school clubs, it is possible to do the research just by staking out the club areas. Simply, hang around a baseball diamond after working hours to find an adult baseball club or go to the martial arts center (shidoukan or budoukan) to find a kendo club.

There are also job-related clubs - for example, a high school teacher’s soccer team - that may be easier to join than a fully private club. Teachers’ clubs generally have a lighter practice schedule because of the heavy workload Japanese take on. The usual time for people to view and join clubs is in the spring when the Japanese year traditionally begins. As many people are shuffled around in both the public and private sector at this time, it means clubs lose members and are searching for new ones. It is fine to check out clubs at any time, but just keep in mind that some may not be looking for new members right when you’re ready to join.

Before Joining Up

It is important to know your limitations when joining a private club. Sports and martial arts clubs usually have several levels to choose from. When a Japanese member joins, he or she is assessed by the teachers/coaches/management and placed at the appropriate level. With foreigners, however, the people in charge are occasionally too timid and let the foreigner decide their own level. If you play soccer at a beginners level, it’ll be difficult for you to fit into an A-class club because people in that class have played competitive soccer for six years or more. Similarly, if you play hockey at a university level, but join a C-class team, the other teams you play will be understandably upset.

What if the club nearest to you doesn’t have an appropriate level? There may be a practice-only option. This is an option that doesn’t exist for most Japanese people, but many clubs will make an exception for a foreigner in the name of international friendship. You can usually practice with a club even if you won’t be allowed to enter competition with them. This is something you will have to discuss directly with the club managers as it may affect your club fees.

Paying Your Dues

Joining a private club involves a financial commitment along with the time commitment. Many private clubs in Japan are run like small-market sports teams, complete with team managers and coaching staff that are paid by the club. The costs of joining a club vary according to the type and the level. For example, a kimono club starts cheap (not including the cost of buying a kimono), but as you progress in levels your lessons increase in price.

The same is true of sports club. C-class hockey clubs practice the same amount as A-class clubs, but they enter less tournaments in a year, and that is reflected in the membership price. On top of the initial fee, you may need to pay out-of-pocket for special events or travel expenses. Also, there will be instances where you will be expected to give money as a gift. The hat is passed around whenever a member gets married, has a child, or someone in their immediate family dies. Usually this amounts to a maximum 5000 yen per person, and it’d be bad taste to opt out.

Getting Out

The same methods used for school clubs – direct, excuse, rotational – work for privates clubs, but you may not be able to get your club fees returned. If you are considering coming back after awhile or going on a rotational basis, you may have to pay the entire club fee for the year even if you only go occasionally. This is standard for Japanese club members and, although they may give you special consideration as a foreigner, don’t expect it. Generally speaking, the unused portion of your club fees is considered apology money for quitting the club.

Conclusion

Private clubs are an excellent way to meet people in your area with similar interests. They are also one of the best places to increase your Japanese ability. It is important to remember that Japanese people take clubs very seriously, so you should do your due diligence in finding a club that you’ll be happy staying with for awhile. That said, don’t let caution stop you from using clubs as a gateway into your community and Japanese culture as a whole.

Joining a School Club in Japan

Joining a club is one of the quickest ways to adjust to Japan and take part in your community. Whether you want to shoot hoops, shoot arrows (kyuudo), arrange flowers (ikebana), make pottery, study drumming (taiko), or strap on a mawashi and moonlight as a sumo wrestler, there is probably a club for you. We'll look at how to join a school club.

The Japanese Club System

Clubs have an important place in Japanese society. Students choose a club when they start junior high school and remain in that club for three years, choosing to either continue with the same club in high school or try out a different club for the last three years of schooling. Clubs are not mandatory, but there is a lot of pressure to join from teachers, parents, and peers, so there are very few students who don’t participate in some type of club during their school days. Sports related clubs like soccer and baseball start as early as grade 3 with practices every day.

Finding a School Club

If you are working for the public school system, finding a school club is very easy. Most clubs begin within an hour of the end of classes and, although it is better to talk to the teacher in charge of the club first, you can find the club you’re looking for by wandering around one of your schools. If you’re not a regular sight at a particular school, it’s important to visit the teachers’ room and announce yourself to either the principal, vice-principal, or the schedule teacher and tell them you want to watch the club activities.

Joining Up

Joining a school club is usually very easy. You need to observe the club once or twice to see if it’s what you want. If there’s a sport that you’ve been doing for a long time, you can probably just show up in training wear and try out the club on the first day – ask the club teacher beforehand. If you are good, the teacher may even ask you to take some of the training responsibilities. On the other hand, if you want to try something that you’ve never done before, it requires a bit more consideration.

If it is a training intensive club like Judo – where both participants safety depends on their knowing the proper techniques - you’ll have to catch up in a way that doesn’t affect the students’ progress. In all likelihood, however, both the students and teacher will be happy to have you. Likewise if the club is material intensive like art, you’ll want to either buy your own materials or pay the club fee and have extra materials ordered through the school. Make sure to watch two or more practices before making your decision so you know exactly what you are signing up for.

Getting Out

What do you do if you’ve joined a club and you find out it’s not for you? Ideally this won’t happen if you’ve researched the club properly. That said, it is easy to over-join and end up running yourself ragged with several clubs, each requiring significant time commitments. There are several ways to get out of a school club. Simply telling the club teacher directly is one, but it may affect your ability to join clubs at that school in the future.

Next, there is the excuse method, excusing yourself from practice - no actual reason is needed, just say you can’t make it – for a few weeks and then just not going again. This seems to be more acceptable in the non-confrontational sense. The final method is not to completely quit, but rather go on a rotational basis. For example, sports clubs often practice for two hours, with the first hour focusing technical practice and the last hour being matches. You can work out an agreement with the club teacher to show up for the last hour of the club once or twice a week – even once or twice a month – and thus keep your connection with the club and the students while reclaiming most of your time.

Summing Up

Although school clubs are good for sports and some basic cultural clubs, they are limited in a couple ways. One, you’re a teacher and an adult, so you don’t want to go full-out in a sports club like Judo and accidentally hurt one of your students. Lawsuits are very rare in Japan, particularly within club activities, but injuring a student still leaves you feeling terrible. Two, the students are usually new to the activities and sometimes the teacher is as well, so you may find the level of instruction lacking. The best reason to join school clubs is to get to know your students, rather than to get a workout or master a new art form.

Teaching English in Japan: Important Questions You Should Ask Recruiting Agencies

This article will focus on what you need to ask when choosing between recruiting agencies. For an introduction to recruiting agencies, see What You Need To Know About Recruiting Agencies.

Questions to Ask

Once you have a list of agencies offering the type of job you’re seeking, you need to ask some basic questions:

How are You Paid?

Are you paid per lesson or by hours on the job? Eikawa schools generally pay by the shift or month, and this means you speak directly to your superiors about any issues you have. In contrast, public schools can pay in a number of ways. If schools are paying you directly, or a board of education is paying you directly, then any issues you have with holidays, sick days, etc. should be taken up with them. If the school board pays the recruiting company and the recruiting company pays you, then any problems you have must be resolved through the company. This can be useful if your company is supportive, but working through a middleman can also be frustrating.

Is There Training and Support?

If this is your first time teaching, this question may be more important than how you get paid. Don’t be satisfied by a, “yes,” in this case. Ask about the training schedule and whether you can see a sample of the training manuals. Also ask for the contact information of current employees. If they refuse on the grounds of privacy it can be just that, but many agencies do have employees who volunteer to field questions. Whether the lack of references is a warning bell depends on how they answer the other questions. As a last resort, you can go into the message boards and find opinions on the training and support of just about every company, but take them with a grain of salt.

What Are the Benefits?

You need to know if you’re going to be enrolled in any benefit plans: health, pension, unemployment, etc. Generally speaking, most private companies have been skirting these issues with a, “don’t ask, don’t tell.” As a trade-off for a higher salary, foreign teachers are expected to arrange their own insurance, either with their home country in the form of extended travel coverage or with a Japanese firm. In reality, this results in a lot of un-insured foreigners praying that they don’t get seriously ill. If you are expected to carry your own insurance, make certain that the salary offered reflects that cost.

What Happens if I Get Sick?

This is stressing a point, but the reply tells you a lot about the company and the job. If being too sick to go to work results in you forfeiting salary, you might consider looking elsewhere.

Understanding Your Tradeoffs

A company that offers extensive training and support will probably offer a lower salary than a company that just places you (for a fee) and washes their hands. Similarly, company that enrolls you in benefit programs will withhold more salary than a company that doesn’t – you pay a premium to that company for taking the hassle of keeping your own insurance while in Japan. As long as you understand the trade-offs you’re making, you can find a company that suits you. It definitely involves more thought than simply going to the one with the highest salary.

Conclusion: Getting Out of the Recruiting Game

Once you find a company you like and have spent some time teaching in Japan, you’ll have more power to choose your next job if you want to stay. Living within Japan and having a valid working visa opens up many private jobs directly linked to a school board or the smaller, non-franchised eikawa schools with better terms. To compete for these positions, you’ll need to work on your Japanese, your teaching, and, most importantly, keep a record of the work you’ve already done in Japan.

Teaching English In Japan: What You Need To Know About Recruiting Agencies

Right now, getting a job in Japan usually means dealing with a recruiting agency, so this article is an introduction to recruiting agencies: why they exist, and the two types. Before we start, this article won’t specifically praise, lambaste, compare, or even mention any of the many agencies. There are many places on the internet where you can read specific criticisms and praise, but the impossibility of unanimous opinion on any particular agency combined with a complete lack impartiality minimizes the benefits of doing so.

Why Are There So Many?

The desire to learn English hasn’t waned in Japan, despite the end of the bubble economy that first prompted the dream of a bi-lingual Japan. Private eikaiwa (English conversation) schools will always be in demand as a hobby for older Japanese and a door to opportunities abroad for the younger generation. Changes in the public education system have now combined with the solid private demand to increase the overall need for ESL teachers.

Elementary English

English became mandatory for 5th and 6th graders in elementary schools in 2011. This does more than simply add two years to the current English curriculum. Elementary school teachers, at the time of this writing, aren’t trained to teach English as a subject at any point during their post-secondary degree. This is supposed to change by 2011, but native English speakers will be used as the stopgap measure until the kinks are worked out of the training program. In truth, the demand will likely remain until all untrained teachers have retired from the education system – that is, 30 to 50 years from now.

Japanese Exchange and Teaching Progamme (JET)

The nationally run JET Programme is proving too expensive for many educational boards that are seeing their overall budgets slashed even as their need for a native English teacher grows. To meet this demand, private companies have stepped in to make it more affordable to bring English teachers to Japan. Although JET is the best ticket to Japan for most people, the chances of getting on the program are dropping as the number of nationwide positions decrease. If you can’t get into JET, it doesn’t mean you should give up on coming to Japan.

Private or Public

The opening of the public system to private placements isn’t new, but they used to be much rarer. Now, if you are looking for a job in Japan, you have the choice of working at an eikawa school or within the public school system. Agencies generally specialize in one type and choosing between the two is a personal process.

Public School

Generally speaking, if you like children and teaching, going into the public school system will provide more job satisfaction. Working in the public school usually requires a lot of time and effort in the form of lesson planning and prep, so be clear on your reasons for wanting to work in Japan before you sign on.

English Conversation Schools

Eikawa schools, on the other hand, generally have prepared lessons and firm guidelines. This can be a great relief if you are teaching for the first time, but restrictive if you want to go beyond the guidebook. An eikawa school generally takes up less of your off-hours energy because most of the planning is already done, leaving you free to explore Japan. Both types can be deeply satisfying and a great way to experience Japan.

Summing Up

The explosion in the number of private companies offering teaching positions in Japan has increased the chances of finding a job. It has also increased the competition between companies trying to bring teachers over. In Important Questions You Should Ask Recruiters we look at how to measure each company and what questions you should be asking before you sign the contract.

Understanding Sumo: Techniques

Sumo can resemble judo or the defensive line of an NFL games, depending on the match. In the course of a top-rank match the pendulum may swing between raw power and technical precision many times before one wins the day. In this article, we’ll look at sumo techniques. You can find an introduction to the sport of sumo here.

Pushing

The most common technique in sumo is pushing. There are more than seven listed techniques that, with small distinctions, all amount to pushing an opponent out of the ring or down to the clay. Pushing or push-out can be misleading terms, so the translators for the sumo federation usually use force-out instead. This is meant to capture the sense of impact as well as the follow-up thrusting that is required to drive a man weighing between 260 and 400 pounds seven feet backwards against his will. We’ll bend to convention and use force-out from here on.

The tachiai, the crouched position that wrestlers start from, is vital to a successful force-out. A wrestler must reach the point of maximum momentum a split second before striking his opponent. This is easier said than done, as the space that a wrestler has to work with is often less than a step. If a wrestler comes out of the tachiai too slowly, his opponent can usually win simply by halting his momentum and causing a misstep for an easy fall. If both wrestlers come out slowly, they generally end-up deadlocked in the center of the ring and have to go to the belt. If, however, the taichiai is executed just right, it will have the double effect of forcing an opponent up and back, while also creating space for the wrestler to come in low and either get a hold of the belt or simply continue thrusting and pushing.

Belt Techniques

Top level sumo is all about the belt. Top flight wrestlers have to be effective on the belt, both in getting a dominant hold and initiating the throw. As the belt is connected to another sumo wrestler, power plays as much as role in maintaining a grip as technique does in making a successful throw. Once a wrestler gets an inside grip or outside grip on a belt, he has many techniques to choose from. Using the belt to twist and upset his opponents balance, the wrestler can sweep out his opponents leg, force down his opponents head, try for a more dominant two-handed grip, and so on.

If a wrestler can’t get a hand on the belt, he can try to execute a beltless throw using the same techniques and counting on the opponents balance to give out first. This can be a double-edged sword as flesh is more slippery than a belt, and a miss leaves the wrestler facing the wrong way with his opponent behind him. The most effective beltless throws involve catching an opponent’s arm at the elbow and using the locked joint as a lever to move him. Because of the high risk of failure, most wrestlers use beltless throws as a last resort.

“Dirty” Tricks

Just like a boxer who follows his hooks with his forehead, there are techniques in sumo that, while legal, are frowned upon. The feinting techniques, either sidestepping or jumping after the tachiai in hopes that your opponent’s momentum will carry him out, are considered cheap. A feint is acceptable to halt a losing streak or gain majority wins, but, if a wrestler does it too often, his opponents will take their revenge the next time.

A Matter of Class

The variation of techniques increases as you move up through the ranks. In the lowest ranks and the amateur levels, a vast majority of wins come from force-outs and those wins generally go to the largest wrestler. The highest ranks are dominated by technicians and large men capable of playing both sides. You don’t need to understand all the techniques to enjoy watching sumo, but understanding just how much strategy goes into a bout that lasts less than a minute can help you appreciate on a deeper level.

Understanding Sumo: An Introduction to Sumo

With its religious origins, extreme training system, and deep connection to traditional Japanese culture, it is difficult to find a sport comparable to sumo. In an age when athletes are measuring their body fat to the decimal, sumo dares to be big. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate the athleticism of sumo wrestlers. They collide with the same force as NFL linebackers while wearing little more than a silk loincloth. This article is an introduction to the world of professional sumo.

A Brief History

The history of sumo is long, reaching back over 1000 years. Sumo was originally part of the harvest rituals that can still be found in every part in Japan in the modern form of festivals. Wrestlers would fight to gain the favor of the gods and plead for a bountiful harvest. Ancient sumo probably resembled pre-Queensbury boxing, with very few rules and a great deal of brutality. This changed when sumo was integrated into the pomp and ceremony of the Imperial Court.

To meet the tastes of the Emperor and other nobles, formalized rules removed some of the more brutal practices like eye-gouging and high kicks. Open-handed strikes to the throat and face, arm-locks, head-butting were deemed civil enough and are still acceptable techniques today. As Japan’s population became more concentrated in cities, the demand for entertainment increased. A class of professional sumo wrestlers emerged to provide it. Newly formed governing bodies organized regular tournaments outside of the traditional imperial schedule, furthering sumo’s popularity and making it Japan’s national sport.

Ceremony

Modern sumo has kept many of the trappings from its religious past. The clay ring, called dohyo, is specially constructed beneath a hanging shrine, blessed, and then purified by each wrestler before they enter. Wrestlers toss a handful of salt into the ring each time they step over the bales. Similarly, both the opening and closing ceremonies on tournament days follow the traditional formula. The yokozuna performs the opening ritual (dohyo-iri) before the upper divisions begin their matches, and the bow dance (yumitori-shiki) brings a close to the day.

Rules

The rules have also survived from the Imperial Court with very little alteration. A wrestler can win in two ways: a) he forces his opponent out of the ring or b) his opponent touches the ground with any part of his body, excepting his feet of course. The most common techniques are the push-outs (yorikiri, tsukidashi, and other variations) and throws using the mawashi (silk belt) for leverage. A wrestler cannot strike with a closed fist, kick an opponent above the knees, grab on to the portion of the mawashi covering his opponents sensitive bits, or pull on an opponent’s top not.

Training

Most professional sumo wrestlers have been doing sumo since childhood. Generally they begin with a sumo club in elementary school and, if they rank highly in national tournaments, a training stable will pick them up after junior high school. From that point on, wrestlers live at their stables and train daily. The training regime is very harsh and, in 2007, a young wrestler died as the result of a disciplinary beating that are a part of many wrestler’s daily life. Some wrestlers have come to professional sumo through university sumo programs, but they seem to have a difficult time adjusting to the physical punishment that accrues over a 15-day tournament compared to the single day team matches that make up a university-level tournament. A growing number also come from abroad, with Mongolia being one of the most prominent exporters of sumo talent.

Tournaments

There are six tournaments a year: one in January, March, May, July, September, and November. All of the wrestlers are ranked and split into their divisions. The five highest ranks fight in the top makuuchi division. From highest to lowest, these are: yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake, komusubi, and maegarishi. In the January 2008 tournament, there will be two yokozuna, four ozeki, two, sekiwake, two komusubi, and thirty-two maegarishi. The lower divisions are similarly organized.

During tournaments, the sumo wrestlers in the upper division have one match a day and, at the end of the tournament, the wrestler with the best record wins the Emperor’s Cup. Other awards are also given out to exceptional wrestlers. Wrestlers are promoted up the ranks when they turn in consistent majority wins. If a wrestler can win two tournaments in a row while ranked at ozeki, he may be promoted to the rank of yokozuna.

Conclusion

Sumo is unique among modern sports because it has carried its origins with it as it has grown. It also one of the few sports where a combatant can find himself pitted against an opponent twice his size. If you are interested in learning more about this sometimes brutal, but always fascinating sport, we will look at each aspect more in-depth in later articles.

Related: Sumo Techniques

Thriving In Rural Japan

The continuing push for elementary English courses is increasing the opportunities to teach in Japan. Many of the new jobs, especially the private placements, are in rural settings (inaka). In this post, we will look at how to get the most out of living in rural Japan.

Welcome to the Inaka

The language barrier will be your biggest problem for the first few months. As your Japanese improves, so will your ability to meet people and make friends. In the beginning, you’re limited to English speakers and people who are patient enough to mime entire sentence with you – you may be surprised at how many of both you’ll be able to find in your town. While you’re learning your survival Japanese, however, there are still some steps you can take to make your life improve immediately.

Get to Know Your Town

Once you’ve settled the practical side of things like finding the post office, it’s time to enjoy some sightseeing. Even the smallest town in Japan has something worth seeing. These can be historical sites, local museums, public parks, temples, shrines, or simply the natural beauty of the countryside. City halls, town halls, public libraries, and community centers often carry tourist-type information pamphlets about your area. These will likely be in Japanese, but you should be able to hunt down someone who is at least willing to draw you a map. You may even find someone who is willing to guide you through the sights once they see you’re interested.

Clubs

Clubs are very important key to Japanese society and are covered in more detail in a different article. Briefly, clubs will help you get to know people in your town, and those people will be able to answer most, if not all, questions you have about your new home. The range of clubs that exist in even a small village is staggering. Taking the above example of sightseeing in your town, many rural communities have walking/hiking clubs that meet regularly for nature walks. You’ll be able to find a club that meets at least one of your interests.

Local Festivals

Most towns in rural Japan have at least a fall festival to celebrate the harvest and a cherry blossom viewing festival, and many towns have several festivals a year. In cities and towns that have been made up of several smaller villages, it is not unusual for each part to keep its local festivals in addition to the amalgamated festivals. The town events calendar is useful for keeping up with this when you learn how to read it, but constantly asking co-workers and friends will help in the meantime. Festivals are a great way to meet your students and their families as well as other people in the community who wouldn’t know you otherwise. You may even find yourself dancing in the parade, dressed in a yukata and a straw hat.

Local Industry

Take every opportunity to learn about the local industry in your town. There is a large amount of specialization in Japanese agriculture and fisheries. Local specialties vary widely with towns specializing in dried squid, sticky rice, spicy miso, black garlic, woven baskets, sheep meat, basically anything you can imagine. Although not many people hope to be placed in a town known for dried squid, actually going out on the midnight ocean and helping pull in the nets while high-powered lights lure the squid to the surface is an experience few people get in Japan. Also, on a practical note, a day spent learning to plant rice or a night spent fishing squid often results in never having to pay for squid or rice during your time in Japan.

Conclusion

Japanese people truly do want to show you the best Japan they can, but they can be shy and, particularly in the case of rural areas, may have a inferiority complex about their town. This is unfortunate as it’s the local events and traditions that make your stay in rural Japan a fascinating and utterly unique experience. By showing an interest in your town, you’ll encourage them to think of you every time there is an event. This will pay dividends in both your relationship with your town and your satisfaction with your life in Japan.