The St.Patrick's Day Parade was held in Nagoya at Osu Kannon.

If it seems like I am doing stuff every weekend, ... Yeah, I seem to be busy. Odd how that happened.
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With all ones effort.


Today was the last class of calligraphy.
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I Wear Noh Mask

I went to a Noh-Kyogen Play. It was all comedy, which was at points very hard to understand. There was an American in the cast, so some of the jokes involving his English I got before the rest of the audience.


Before the play I was at the Nagoya Castle Garden, taking pictures.
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More stories of me versus the mold. This time I enlist some chemical help, in the form of this foaming bleach solution. It works quite well, plus I actually cleaned some stuff for the first time in a while. This is where my dish drying rack usually stands.

Haven't seen any cockroaches in a while, so I guess my cleaning must be better. Yes, it must be due to the cleanliness and not have anything to do with the fact that it is winter now.

Yet another episode on my living on my own.

The plum trees in the South Okazaki Park in are blooming.



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Second fire festival in as many weeks. Seems like I like festivals...

This one was at Takisanji, 滝山寺, a temple in Okazaki. The festival was very different from last week, this was more of a ceremony. It was an "Oni matsuri", or Ogre festival, and apparently also has lots of history.

I had to take a shower after I got back, since I had a very strong odour of smoke. Too bad my legs weren't black from soot...
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Rest of the pictures on Ipernity

I went to a festival in Mikawa-Toba, which is south-west from Okazaki, on the ocean. On the way there, I passed through what is now my favorite named station, こどもの国, or Children's Land. Apparently there are more than a few こどもの国s, though.

Anyways, the fire festival. (A description is Here
First, a bunch of guys ran into the ocean to wash a pole they carried from the shrine.


The 4 guys in the middle are naked, I put some Laughing Man logos over the sensitive areas...

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All of the pictures are in Ipernity

A Go game at the end.
I was white, and think I lost this one quite badly. If I place 1 stone at the top-middle, get all of the black stones in that group, which is why I took this picture. This is a small board, at 13x13. The normal size is a 19x19 board.


Go is very interesting, since there are so few rules, and a large variety of possible moves. On the opening moves, the best places to go are often far away from other pieces.

The main strategy in Go is to make the biggest possible move. The problem is that "biggest" means the move that will result in the most territory captured at the end of the game. Since empty territory is what the score is based on, making small moves or redundant moves hurts quite badly, since you lose initiative and reduce your score.

One complexity is that a piece placed might have utility in the next move, or only have an influence 100 moves later. A piece might simply threaten an area, and make it so that the opponent never goes there, making judging the relative value of a move incredibly difficult.

Along with this is that when a group of stones can't avoid being captured (taken off the board by being surrounded), you should generally play elsewhere once their capture is inevitable. This was a hard thing for me, since this means letting the enemy capture your pieces, but they are going to be captured anyways.

There are areas that I think of as "battles", where you play in a area that has lots of stones touching, and you are working to make the area "alive". or unable to be captured by the opponent. Once you have gained territory, and can guarantee that a group is alive, so that it can't be captured even if you ignore it for at least one turn, then you can look elsewhere.

Thus, a game between good players will have pieces spread through out the board, with no areas that are dense. Which is nothing like the picture above, but that was taken 6 months ago, when I was just beginning. (I am better now, but only by a certain amount)



A lot of this I see might have parallels to life. Make the biggest move, don't be afraid to cut losses, secure stuff and then move on.

For example, getting a higher paid job is definitely a "big move", but after that continuing at that job is probably more useful than making a change. Moving to Japan might also be big, but if I just continued at the same job online, it might be a rather small move. My Japanese ability is something I am building, and if I put it to use it was worth it, but if I lose it through disuse, it becomes "captured".

I have various hobbies that are quite scattered, like photography, biking, and firefighting. Maybe they will just stay there and not really grow, or maybe they will become useful later one. (Or be captured by the Japanese Government, in the case of firefighting, while I am here...)

Of course these all boil down to making decisions based on the risk/reward, where decisions should be made to maximize the value. But Go, with the occasionally long lag between making a move and it becoming useful, and the almost simultaneous but independent areas on the board resemble life to me. Maybe that is one reason why it has been popular for 2,500 years.

他人の気持ちを考えた上で行動すること
オラフ

　マナーは他人を大切にし、しかも短い時間でできることだ。簡単にみえるが、しないと失礼な感じを与える。人間関係がうまくいくように文化によって正しいマナーにしたがう。
例えば、すぐ後ろを歩いている人の為にドアを開けることは一つのマナーだ。昔のアメリカでは男性が女性の為にドアを開けてあげるのは「騎士道」と思われた.現在では性別は大切ではなくて誰でも近かったらドアを開けてあげるようになった.
また、礼状を送ることむ、マナーの一つだ.プレゼントをあげた時やお世話をしてあげた時は礼状をもらうともう一度したいだろう。子供の時は、親に書かせられたが、大人になったと自分で書きたくなった。だたら、他人に大事な事をあげると礼状を期待する。このような文化で期待された事をしないと失礼な感じがする。
　自分にしてもらいたい事を他人にする事がマナーだ。人によってしてもらいたい事が違う為、文化により、他人の為にほうがいいのではないだろうか。

Things Done in consideration of other peoples' feelings

"Manners" are things that can be done in a short amount of time, for other peoples sake. They can seem simple, but don't do them and you convey a rude feeling. For good human relations, display manners according to culture.
For example, opening a door for someone following you is one kind of manner. In American history, men holding the door open for women was considered "Chivalry." Now, it has become something that isn't dependent on gender.
Another is sending "thank you letters". When giving a present or care to someone, when you receive a thank you letter, you will probable want to do it again. As a child, I was made to write letters by my parents, but after becoming an adult, I write them by myself. Thus, thank you letters are expected. This kind of manner is expected by culture, and if you don't do it you appear rude.
Manners are thing you do want done to you that you do to other people. Since what people want is different per person, it is probably best to follow culture.





This is an essay I wrote for the essay elective class, so it is a bit longer. I had some issues thinking up examples, and the second half I wrote quickly.

Today I made some bagels with friends near Libra. I basically only spoke Japanese all day, aside from a little bit of "Lets use what we learned at English class".


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Second class of 書道, this time with special paper. The teacher gave us the kanji to write, so I concentrated on 4 words, 風-wind, 愛情-affection, 優-kind, and 柔-soft.

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I found this fairly nice chocolate stout style beer at the local Seiyu. I think it is being sold for Valentines Day, so it isn't going to stay around for long.

Too bad, I really like this beer. It is an actual stout, which is something that most breweries in Japan seem to have confused with black ale, the Nagoya Kinshachi brewery being a notable local exception.

But, this is Japan, and they love to release new products. Kit-Kat at Seiyu has 2 flavours every month, aside from the normal flavour. Beers are quite seasonal, with more than just the winter/summer styles coming and going.


It is kind of fun, for something like Kit-Kat where I like the normal flavour, and some of the special ones like maple. Banana was a flavour that I was glad to see leave quickly, though.

For beers, where I don't like the standard Japanese style (they love pale styles of beer, similar to a Pilsener), having styles I do like appear occasionally is quite annoying.

(And I have no clue why I am starting to write in British. Maybe my next quest will be to find some nice tea and crumpets?)

Today I went to an elementary school, and gave a presentation about my "country", Colorado.

The beginning was kind of odd, since another Yamasa student and I were put into a classroom with a bunch of students, and then the teacher disappeared. Since there was a laptop and projector already set up, we figured out what to do, but it was kind odd not having the teacher around at all. Here is my description as it would appear in a text-based adventure game for that room:

"You are in a classroom. 12 6th-grade students are looking at you expectantly. Most of the desks are shoved against the north wall, except for one in the middle with a projector and laptop on it. The teacher is nowhere to be seen.
Exits: West"

My presentation was just lots of pictures in a slide show.

I think the only thing they will remember from the presentation is that some people in Colorado can take pictures of bears from their kitchens, and that Colorado has lots of mountains.

After that we started playing games, and then the English Lesson happened. The English Lesson was broadcast on the school TVs, opening with a guy singing Row Your Boat very slowly. Then they went over a couple of phrases as a response to "How are you?", except with very exaggerated pronunciation.


Then we started making mochi, a thick paste of rice.

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I went to the 書道/Shodo, or Japanese calligraphy class today.

In Japan it is more of an art, so there isn't one "Correct" way to do things. But, you have to practice a bit to get whatever kind of result you do want. My characters are still way too fat, and I don't have the different endings on the strokes right. The characters that are written are also up to me, so I had fun choosing interesting kanji. Usually characters are chosen to have a good meaning or something worthy of being art, but I went with stuff like war (戦争) and ship's hold(船倉), which are pronounced the same: sensou, box-garden(箱庭) and other really random kanji words.


熊 (Kuma) Bear
馬 (Uma) Horse
鹿 (Shika) Deer

But,　馬鹿 (Baka) is idiot. So, a Japanese person looking at this would first see a couple of animal kanji, bear and horse, and then see "idiot".

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But "Difficult" is not my middle name........
(I have been going by my middle name since I came here to Japan, thinking it was easier for Japanese to say. My last name gets butchered in Japanese horribly, but my middle name survives with just an extra vowel at the end. Apparently my name is so "foreign" that some people even have a hard time imagining that I am an American, insisting that I have to be from Scandinavia)

I went to a restaurant tonight with some Japanese friends, and one of them wrote my name in Japanese on the list of people. Then, the people I was with were joking about how the staff would call us, whether they would call my name, since it was obviously a foreign name. I was the only white person in the restaurant.

The host managed to completely avoid saying my name, and instead came up to us and said, "You guys are the party of 3, right?", at which point we all started to laugh.

In the last of the "Youthful 18 Ticket" adventures, I went with some classmates to Takayama.
最後の「青春１８切符」旅に高山へクラスメートと行った.


IR did something fantastic here.
赤外線で撮った、とても面白くなった。
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All of the picture on Ipernity

I walked along 8km of the Nakasendo, or old highway between Kyoto and Tokyo. (If you want that in American units, use Google)

I started in Tsumago, and ended in Magome. I had to take a bus to and from those cities, since it is a ways off the Chuo line, hence the preserved state of the area.

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All of the pictures from that day are here

Yesterday I went to Tsuruga, Obama, and Fukui.


It was snowing along most of the northern coast I went to, so a lot of the trip looked like this.

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Some of the boats, and trains I rode on the trip.

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Pictures from my recent trip through Japan


This is how the trip started, with a snow covered delayed train.