No Blog November

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Apologies folks. Bad form indeed. A whole month. All manner of death threats and bricks through metaphorical windows, point received and understood:(

What was one doing all this time you may be asking yourself. one could ask oneself the same question. Some lapses in note taking over the last few weeks. considerable gaps in memory. does this mean nothing memorable happened? hm. living vividly ? unlikely. grinding? debatable. what has been happening then. a month of mulling, mosying and mingling in various scenarios. Entertaining? possibly. Productive? questionable. Interesting? subjective, naturally. News from the homefront threw dear author into a state of reflection and set in process a set of novel thoughts about the very nature of life itself. Combined with a restlessness, renewed concern for the future and impatience, one might say the board was set for a month of mischief indeed.

First experience of an earthquake the other evening certainly shook me out of the literal and metaphorical sleep. quite a violent way to wake up. getting rattled around the bed and into the wall. outside all you could hear was the building rumbling and creaking a little bit. check the phone and theres some lovely 'warning, earthquake' notifications on there, great craic.

Newest rabbithole over the last 4 weeks. Demographics. Never really paid any attention to the topic previously. Interesting way to enter extinction. South korea projected to have 4 births within 2 generations for every 100 today. Global birth rate below replacement. What does it mean? nothing important probably but there will be a hefty elderly population required to work much later into their lives and those in retirement relying on a dwindling workforce to support them. can offset a lot of this with novel automation but then you swathes of people, who would otherwise be working to survive, fucking around doing nothing, ceteris parabus regarding the system that means a hefty amount of welfare. i am sure these are solvable issues but it doesnt solve the birth rate. I did some graphing (lol) and this time one hundred years from now we will see about a billion less people if we keep the same trend. A bit odd that its not a widely spread topic. Apparently South Korea being hit hardest as of now. 100 years from now they will be at 40% of current population. mental. The government offering $75k per new baby. Good arbitrage oppurtunity there surely

I was thinking the human race collectively is in some way giving birth to a new digital/machine lifeform. are we entering this final frenetic push with the knowledge that we are dwindling and that we need to pass the baton of life on in some way or another? the preceding factors all seem to be feeding into each other and fueling each other almost. or is the technology so disruptive that the (relative) stability we have had is being completely undermined. the graphs are all vertical on technology whereas the graphs for the development of a mindset/system to adapt to it on a large scale are fairly horizontal i would say. fair to say we need a mindset shift, greater than the nuclear policy thinking frame was (how we deal with conflict in a multi-nuclear, post-ww2 world, which led to some semblance of western stability) and probably need it faster. the issues that grew from our parents and grandparents solutions need a bit of rectification. Strange times.

Now what else has been happening. i will describe the work parties, which are an absolute feast. they are supposedly 'drinking' parties but the food is really really excellent. All manner of things i have not seen before, flavoured really insanely well. sashimi, sushi, thinly sliced steaks, soups, fried veggies, fried chicken, pickled thing, salads, egg puddings and all manner of things i cannot recall the name of. so there has been a few of those which are certainly good for the palette. They enjoy a good feed of alcohol as well, the set up is free drinks for two hours and the food just comes continuously over the two hours. unfortunately there was a situation where i was blindingly breaking some custom of sitting on ones heels (the tables are all near ground level) and i tried fora few minutes but the weak western knees had to give in, felt like there was some tendons about to snap, fair play to them and the knees. Besides this i went for a couple of different dinners etc with other folk. One a colleague and another evening with the principal of another english teachers school and a couple of new characters. My colleague had very little english and i have very little japanese so it was an interesting attempt at communication over some random bits of food, using pen and paper, google translate and pocketbooks to keep the conversation going, quite fun but obviously one does feel like the most ignorant prick in the village when you cannot string together a basic conversation in the local tongue. The other evening more merciful thankfully, more english involved. Went for 'hamburgers', again tasty. Interesting fellow, very kind and has lived here for his whole life essentially. we discussed how the place has changed over the years and he mentioned that despite the larger chains moving in and the population diversifying, they have maintained their local community and have managed to integrate newcomers and bring them into the fold. it was an interesting point, that even though you have the massive conglomerates popping up, the central community of restaurants, stores, markets etc have all been kept alive to a large extent. you can see it in the town as well, there is very clearly delineated areas. the old town and slightly younger town are seperated from the newer instalments such as mcdonalds, starbucks etc by the main road and train station. well managed in that respect despite the seemingly haphazard nature of the construction. So that was an interesting insight into the locality, will glean more in the coming weeks no doubt. also met a journalist, first actual journalist i have ever had the pleasure of meeting so it will be interesting to get some insight into that mindset as well.

Had the great pleasure of tangoing with the local bureaucracy. not a fan of bureaucracy of course, but a surprisingly smooth experience. go in, hand over the documents, they take them. wait a few weeks and get a letter saying your thing is ready. go back in, collect. Lots of smiles and pleases and thank yous via google translate. another surprisingly smooth process - medical checks. go in one morning to the city office, hand in your name, receive a little tag with a bar code on it, get a full health check within about 20 minutes. like the epitome of the division of labour by durkheim. several 'station' all sequential, chest xray (for tuberculosis apparently??), waist measure, height/weight, blood pressure, heart rate, lymph node check, bloods taken, eyesight, ecg and finally hearing. every step along the way has its own dedicated staff, they scan your little bar code and your details are logged. two weeks letter receive a report card with all the details and even a grade from A-D along all of the metrics they calculated. pretty efficient stuff, though slightly demeaning to be fully inspected and churned out like a literal unit of livestock.

There truly is a chill in the air now. you can see the snow creeping down from the mountain peaks slowly every day, creeping into the valley, coming for you. leaves a lingering shiver in you. one thing i do not understand: in every class room there is a little wood pellet fueled heater/stove unit. so that is used to heat the classroom. but then at almost all times, the windows are wide open. so the classroom is still baltic cold . it makes no logical sense to me but look, ignorance is rife. the work itself is not so taxing, make presentations, present them, come up with games, play them, read whatever phrases there are to read and head home. interesting school cultures though, there was more choirs, this time the entire city gathered into a big concert hall, all do their bit but at the end they all stand up and give props to each other, say well done etc. No competition or anything like that, just a big choir basically. it would be interesting if they did a full city choir, woth all of them be interesting to see what that sounds like. the piano and conducting is all done by students themselves, also interesting. think it continues into adulthood as the teachers were practicing as well at some point. I have vague memories of church choirs as a student so i can imagine it is fairly dreary for the majority of the people involved. few other interesting oddities - before and after every class, a student walks to the top, announces the class is starting/ending and they all shout the class name and bow or do some other gesture, fist pump or similar. there is a large emphasis placed on making the students present their work to the whole class which i think is solid training for real life, definitely a rarity in my upbringing at least, i can only recall presenting to my peers maybe twice and both times it nearly killing me with nerves. think its a beneficial skill to have.

I went on a few missions, to the highest settled place in japan (a measly 1300 metres) as well as a little venture into Osaka to make some new contacts. the drive was spurred by nothing really, just a desire to see what the place was like. it was only 3 hours so an easy day trip, but an adventure nonetheless. the entire route is mountainous obviously, traveling from about 500 to 1300 over the course of three hours. i enjoy driving so it was not an issue. travel through beautiful autumn shaded valleys, cross little streams, watch the moon rise, a full moon, swollen against a backdrop of hills, nice and low, coming around corners and it is staring at you and you can really tell it is a planet all its own in a way, all the pockmarks and scars on it far more visible than usual. go through villages and towns, all with their own unique character, lots of windy alleys, wrong turns, one way streets, few traffic violations no doubt but moving along nicely. residential areas to avoid tolls, motorways cut into valleys, tunnels cut into mountains. nice motorized ascent across fields and rice paddys. arrive at the 'town' square. go for a walk around and it is literally just a shop and a petrol station. surprisingly busy though, plenty of traffic and full car park at the shop. tiny little sign with a mountain peak on it to indicate you have arrived. but that was it, sun begins to set and one winders what the point of the whole journey was. start heading back and get a great view into the interlocking hills, mist settling in the valleys and nice shades of colour from the sunset. pretty nice, can go along at a nice cruising pace and then begin the descent along a similar route. stop near the end along a little mountain road cut into the outer edge of a hill and hop out to observe the stars and moon, now fully risen. no light pollution, full sky of stars, can find familiar constellations and can see into the valley by the moonlight, sweet. arrive home at a reasonable hour, mission complete. next mission was to secure some time on the equipment in a large city. have to do all the networking jazz and talking to folks in the 'scene'. always fun but also the chances low when you are a random foreigner strolling into communities of people. have to travel to osaka for this, five hours on a bus, plenty of sleeping, hop off, start walking and observe different side to the city this time, walking through less touristy areas. much quieter and less intense feeling, probably the lack of heat and humidity contributing there as well. Walk along a promenade by the river and observe some very large waterfront skyscrapers/hotels etc. I think osaka probably going to be completely wrecked if there is an earthquake of any significance there, how could those buildings stay upright etc. be a disaster. Anyway, find some old contacts, make some new ones, try a bit of food, bit of a party for 9/10 hours then start to head for the hills (literally). Pull the all time classic of hopping onto a train, intending to go only a few stops and then waking up to the rest of the train bustling out of the carriage. Wander out into the absolute wrong stop bleary eyed and dazed and find a new route back, buying the wrong ticket and having to negotiate with the ticketmen to allow me to pass in nagoya station. buy another ticket, hop on another train and soon find out, once again, i have not got the right ticket. apparently for every train you need a ticket to get into the japan rail platform area and then another to get specific trains? highly confusing, another round of google translate negotiations, and they give me a ticket on the train which is pretty solid. Nicer approach than being fined out the arse, just sell the ticket on the train to the miscreant, everyone wins in a way. Nice train ride, carve through some valleys and hills to get back, twenty minute walk, home and hosed ready for work. In and out of osaka within 24 hours and fully rested thanks to the propensity to sleep absolutely anywhere. we shall see what sort of returns it yields in the coming months.

Pleasant surprise the other week as a mysterious kilo of rice appeared on my desk. Will have to repay the favour with a care package from ireland when i return. Did an observation lesson which was just a bunch of english teacher in a room watching another english teacher do a lesson. then stand up and make a comment at the end on how well they did, leave. present for one sentence and gone. Interesting way to make money, standing at the back of a classroom with some other demonstrably demotivated foreigners cracking jokes about the fish tanks and the possibilities of smuggling fish out via the stomach. Next day, attend a 'wine tasting' event. gather in a small villages disproportionately large community centre and sample 50 different types of wine in an almost methodical fashion. Chat with some kind locals, break through the language barrier once again with the magic of google translate. what an invention. meet up with a fellow foreginer to conquer the challenge. it becomes a challenge rather than an event when they assign numbers to every bottle and little check boxes beside the images in the pamphlet.

what else to say really, will hopefully get these things running again more smoothly. i am sure it is obvious the initial novelty is wearing off and it becomes more and more an actual 9-5 type of deal where your freedoms are limited to 2 days per week so you really have to cram it in there when you can. have no days off until new years and no paid holidays until after february, so plenty more dribs and drabs of posts probably. but alas life is what you make it and i will endeavour to cram in some oddities into the gaps. i am sure the impending snow will provide a new dimension to it as well. Please check the below photos for a little snapshot into what has been happening.