I’ve been so hit and miss on the old bloggerino (mostly miss) that I neglected to commemorate two years of blogdom last week. Thus, inspired by my more timely post last year, here’s a belated, バラバラ sort of update that should cover a number of things in a random sort of manner.
I’m coming home.
Roughly, on August 10th, with my brother and all of my crap in tow. Mark it on your calendars, kids.
Whereas at this time last year I was preparing to head into my second year on JET, this year I am preparing to head home to Canada—permanently. Having that on the horizon is proving far less traumatic that I expected. If I had been going home this time last year, I think I would have been dying to have more time in Hokkaido to see the place and get to know folks. Though that drive still remains, I have been able to see a lot of things and get to know a lot of folks in the last year, so I can now head home feeling that I’ve accomplished most of what I set out to here. Further, the idea of being back in Canadian places, doing Canadian sort of things with Canadian sort of people gets more appealing with every day (though that shouldn’t be taken to mean that it was ever unappealing!).
With the preparations to return comes also my shift from “Successor” to “Predecessor” in the language of the JET Programme: I am moved into the role of mentor for whoever will be the next ALT to roll into my town, and I have to start making ready for his/her arrival. Well, I should say “his.” I’ve known who was chosen as my Successor for about a month now, and I dutifully wrote him up a six-page letter detailing everything about this town, but at the present time my Board of Education is distinctly unable to send it out to him.
The deadline for the first of the new ALTs to ship off to Japan at the end of July is rapidly approaching. However, due to some snag of bureaucracy that I only half understand due to it being only half translated for me, someone in a foreign ministry somewhere is holding up communications to the new ALTs over some concern related to Fukushima and the reactor meltdowns. I blame CNN and large swathes of the rest of the overly sensational foreign media for making it seem like the entirety of the Japanese archipelago has become one giant radioactive glow stick. The vast majority of us are safe. We were safe on March 12th, and we continue to be just as safe now.
Next, to harken back to last year’s update:
I’ve got no hair!
Not a biggy as I seem to need to shave my head on a semi-regular basis. What’s more, as Heather has so dutifully pointed out, a shaved head carries a far different cultural meaning here in Japan. I mean, you’ve got the Buddhist monks, for one: fairly visible members of Japanese society who go around with bald heads as symbols of faith and simplicity. Further, Heather and I have both had experiences of our junior high students shaving their heads ahead of important exams or high school interviews as it is seen as a very tidy and organized way to cut your hair. I’ve also had someone ask me if I was sick—not in a cancer sort of way but in a different sort of way where, apparently, the Japanese sometimes shave their head when they are dealing with some sort of chronic or prolonged sickness.
Basically, after the initial freak-outs from students and staff (made all the more melodramatic by the fact that Japanese folks seem unable to feel any emotion that they haven’t first spoken aloud), and the head-fuzzing by my elementary students, and the cries of “HAGE!” and “SKINHEAD!” by my junior high students, the shaved head will largely be accepted as normal and forgotten. Here, it’s not a thing.
The Lady
As she graced the last update and she is still putting up with me, I should note that Heather is around and as lovely as ever.
And as I prepare to return to Canada, I am also preparing to head to England for a few months, starting in September, for the first leg of the Heather-Nick-Colonizer-Colonizee-Tour of Great Britain and Canada. We’ll be spending an extended time in each place over the next year in an attempt to figure out where we should wind up in a permanent sort of way. Here’s hoping the result doesn’t come up as “Japan.”
Thus, though I’m heading home to Canada in August, I’ll only be there for just over a month before shipping off to England for three more months. The earliest any of the canucks will get a look at this fine English Lass will be Decembertime.
Further, CAMERA!
A Nikon D7000, to be exact.
A bit of a surprising development that I was in no way in the market for. The Nikon D60 that my father bought me just before I set out on this magical Japanimated adventure was serving my purpose just fine--right up until the point when it wasn’t. Just over a week ago, it gave me the D40/D60 equivalent of the Blue Screen Of Death:
The mirror had locked half way down, and no matter how much I pushed the shutter, it wouldn’t move either up or down.
I’m a fool, so I had asked friend and far more accomplished photophile, Ross Cole Hunter, for his advice on buying a lens (completely separate to this problem). I had figured I could justify a Nikon 10-24mm, but then Ross told me that for the same price I could easily buy a D7000 body on the Japanese discount electronics sites.
I dismissed the suggestion, justifying that lenses are better investments than bodies as they have a far longer lifespan. Plus: a wide-angle lens? Who can say no to that!? Particularly when you take as many photos of trees and rocks and shit as I do.
But then the D60 dying kind of made the decision for me. Using online resources, I figured out that it was easier to try a fix for the problem yourself than to shell out $200 for Nikon to fix it, only to have it reoccur a few months later. I popped open the case in the described places, and I lubed up the little red gear, and it all worked again!...sort of. I shot a bunch of test photos, then the mirror seized. I moved and lubed the gear some more, and it was fine...until it wasn't. I got it working for a third time just in time to run out the door to meet my JTE, and then while we were on the road, I tested the camera in sport mode, and it locked up for what must have been the fifth time. Being a dude, I tried the caveman solution and whacked the bottom of the body in frustration, and—of course—that got everything running smoothly again, and the camera has run smoothly ever since.
However, I couldn't shake the spectre of it randomly jamming on me—of it possibly jamming on me again in a similar fashion at a far less convenient time, and me being unable to fix it. That spectre, combined with the whispers in my ear from Ross, pushed me off the deep end into "second body" territory. I'm still going to hang on to the D60, though, as it's treated me nice, it was my first DSLR, and—most of all—it was a Nikon from my father.
The D7000 is a definite step up. It's got bells and whistles that I'm still getting my head around, and it has got the capability of using my existing lenses to shoot pretty things like this—IN 1080P NO LESS!
I dismissed the suggestion, justifying that lenses are better investments than bodies as they have a far longer lifespan. Plus: a wide-angle lens? Who can say no to that!? Particularly when you take as many photos of trees and rocks and shit as I do.
But then the D60 dying kind of made the decision for me. Using online resources, I figured out that it was easier to try a fix for the problem yourself than to shell out $200 for Nikon to fix it, only to have it reoccur a few months later. I popped open the case in the described places, and I lubed up the little red gear, and it all worked again!...sort of. I shot a bunch of test photos, then the mirror seized. I moved and lubed the gear some more, and it was fine...until it wasn't. I got it working for a third time just in time to run out the door to meet my JTE, and then while we were on the road, I tested the camera in sport mode, and it locked up for what must have been the fifth time. Being a dude, I tried the caveman solution and whacked the bottom of the body in frustration, and—of course—that got everything running smoothly again, and the camera has run smoothly ever since.
However, I couldn't shake the spectre of it randomly jamming on me—of it possibly jamming on me again in a similar fashion at a far less convenient time, and me being unable to fix it. That spectre, combined with the whispers in my ear from Ross, pushed me off the deep end into "second body" territory. I'm still going to hang on to the D60, though, as it's treated me nice, it was my first DSLR, and—most of all—it was a Nikon from my father.
The D7000 is a definite step up. It's got bells and whistles that I'm still getting my head around, and it has got the capability of using my existing lenses to shoot pretty things like this—IN 1080P NO LESS!
That's Kozawa-san, previously featured when he explained our garbage sorting as "fire" "no fire" and "oh-oh!". He's got the most English of anyone at my Board of Education (which is not much), but he makes up for it with over the top gestures. It makes for hilarious results. That "oh" face he pulls is pretty standard.
Alive.
Though it is so much of a non-event here as to cause me to forget that people may still be wondering: all is still well in Hokkaido. All has been well in Hokkaido since the Great North-Eastern Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami (I think that’s the English translation they’re using these days). Though there are still areas of this country that are in utter ruin, now—three months after the event,—me and most of my friends are fortunate to not be in those places. However, with issues like the aforementioned hold-up on bringing in new ALTs, as well as the fact that the area immediately around Fukushima is uninhabitable, it’s clear that this country isn’t out of the woods yet.
That being said this country will come out of the woods. If two years in Japan has afforded me the right to make any absolute judgments about this country, then I’ll spend that cultural capital on this one generalization:
Japan is tougher than you think.
From what I’ve seen since the March 11th disaster, I know that something this small can’t keep the Japanese down. It is the がんばれ/ganbare (do your best/try your hardest) spirit that they might tell you about, but which you may find hard to truly grasp until you watch a Japanese Postal worker try to make a regular mail delivery to a ruin least there should be anyone left inside.
Now I feel like I’ve got some frame of reference for what the Japanese talk about when they talk about the がんばれ spirit, and from that understanding I can tell you that the Japanese will survive and prosper on the back of catastrophe that would send western nations into an every-man-for-himself panic. Watching the Japanese deal with the aftermath of these disasters, I have repeatedly wondered if, should the same catastrophe have befallen Canada or the United States, might we not make out far worse than the Japanese in the aftermath—all other elements being equal. It’s something to do with がんばれ, but it’s also to do with putting others before yourself and waiting patiently for the help you need and realizing that everyone in a disaster is going through the exact same thing as you.
It is inspiring. It makes them look about ten feet tall in my eyes, and it can sometimes make me feel very small.
Now I feel like I’ve got some frame of reference for what the Japanese talk about when they talk about the がんばれ spirit, and from that understanding I can tell you that the Japanese will survive and prosper on the back of catastrophe that would send western nations into an every-man-for-himself panic. Watching the Japanese deal with the aftermath of these disasters, I have repeatedly wondered if, should the same catastrophe have befallen Canada or the United States, might we not make out far worse than the Japanese in the aftermath—all other elements being equal. It’s something to do with がんばれ, but it’s also to do with putting others before yourself and waiting patiently for the help you need and realizing that everyone in a disaster is going through the exact same thing as you.
It is inspiring. It makes them look about ten feet tall in my eyes, and it can sometimes make me feel very small.
No comments:
Post a Comment