February 2004

February 29, 2004

Laura and I are in the midst of another very relaxing weekend...cushioned on both sides with paid holidays...how sweet it is. When I go back to work on Wednesday, I will have only 15 working days to go.

Life these days is a little restless, as Laura and I are in that post-decision-pre-action limbo where all major choices have been made, life is poised to change drastically, but you are left to wait for things to run their course. It's still a shock to the system that we will be leaving Japan after so long, as we have really gotten used to life here. I had the revelation recently that I have lived in Kyoto for longer than I lived in Toronto, and I undoubtably know this city better.

That being said, a recent visit to Ian's (Kyoto Ian, not either of the Ian's back home!) place found we three Canadians waxing nostalgic about the shops and restaurants of Toronto, the sound of a loon echoing over a misty lake and the joys of canoing, and I realized that we have been away from Canada for a very long time...none of that is to mention the longing mentions of back bacon that found their way into the conversation as well!

February 23, 2004

Ahhhhh, a truly relaxing weekend. Laura and I celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday, as I spent last weekend being thrown about on hardwood floors on top of a mountain, which wasn't really great on the grand scale of romance. It was really great to take things slow and enjoy a quiet weekend, and I think that the relaxation has done wonders for my health.

Training for my Aikido test continues at full tilt, and tonight's class was considerably easier now that I've broken through my chest cold. If I can stay healthy for the test, I should do well!

And staying healthy for the test should be easy, considering that out of the 37 days that remain before I finish work, I will be off for 18. That's pretty sweet. I'm hoping to clear some things off of my long-standing and ever-growing list of things-to-do, and hopefully get some solid work done on the web site. I've gotten woefully behind on that front, and haven't put together an actually page in ages.

Laura and I saw the third movie in the Lord of the Rings this weekend, and as excited as we were for the movie, I can't believe that it actually met and exceeded our expectations...fantastic! A very impressive movie indeed, even if we did have to wait forever for the Japanese release.

February 22, 2004

The weekend is here at last, and I'm looking forward to getting a little relaxation. Laura had the first of her holiday-Saturdays yesterday, and she'll be having four day weeks until the end of March. Pretty sweet! I'm in a similar situation, not having any more five day weeks myself until we're done, though my days off are spaced out differently.

My fever that I started the week with has mellowed into a chest cold, and I had the interesting experience of trying to teach yesterday as my voice withered away to nothing.

That being said, I've spent the last few days with a little more of a spring in my step and a smile on my face, as everything seems to be coming into place for Laura and I. For one, the weather has difinitively shifted, and we are now in spring mode. The plum blossoms are opening, and yesterday it got up to 18 degrees here in Kyoto.

Other great news is....(drum roll)....on Thursday I found out that I will be able to test for my black belt before coming home! The test is set for March 8th, and though I'm a little nervous it's a big load off knowing that I'll be able to fit it in before leaving.

And the last reason I'm smiling...

Only 19 more days of work to go!

February 19, 2004

So here's a good one for you. I haven't been following the whole 'mad cow' thing very much, as it seemed to be a fairly insignificant development in the grand scheme of things lately...that is, until I found out yesterday that I couldn't get beef anymore at the restaurant where I take my lunches most days. That's right, gyudon, which is basically beef on rice, can no longer be bought here. Beef is no more. After doing some panicked research, I now realize that beef imports were banned by the Japanese government two months ago, and supplies have finally run out.

Above is the sign out in front of Matsuya - the place I go to almost every day these days - announcing that there is no more beef to be had. What I have been wondering is if this is something that people are scared of, or if this is a push by the government. While I was sitting in Matsuya the other day, an older man came in and demanded to know if they were serving beef or not. When the woman responded that they were, he snorted loudly and stormed out of the restaurant. I think it's time to start doing some informal polls in the classroom to find out common feelings toward beef here these days! This seems pretty extreme over one cow in Washington. When I bought some domestic beef in the store the other day, it cost me about $3 USD for about 100 grams!

February 18, 2004

I was looking at the page statistics for my site this morning, and I'm surprised that in just under two years I've gotten 5739 hits. Looking at the tracking page is actually quite interesting, as you get to see where in the world people are logging on from, how they found the page...okay, generally geeky details, I know, but interesting for me anyway.

I've actually gotten a lot of interesting emails from people based on the site; usually positive, but most recently from some guy railing on me randomly for my ignorance and stupidity (but he was from Pennsylvania, so...). Lots of people write for travel advice, one guy wrote me to ask what the sound of one hand clapping was, and another guy wrote to ask me where his brother was (I know Japan is small, but it's not that small!)

Based on the search page, it looks like the most common search term that people find my page with is 'Aaron Williamson', which leads me to believe that it is most likely other Aaron Williamson's doing the searching. It's quite funny to think that there are a bunch of other people out there with the same name, as my Dad figured out when he registered his domain name and found himself a part of a loose network of Howard Williamson's in North America.

February 17, 2004

Last night was probably the longest night of my life. I don't know just how high my fever got, because I forgot how to speak English and couldn't ask Laura to get me the thermometer. The worst part is, that's not a joke! I've never actually had a fever bad enough to make me go delerious, so it was a bit of an interesting experience. My internal monologue switched entirely to Japanese, and I couldn't remember how to use English (even in thoughts), which was really frustrating because a). my Japanese isn't all that good, so my thoughts reverted to those of a challenged five year old, and b). because the only person who was around and could help me was Laura, and she doesn't speak any Japanese.

All in all, a very strange experience. I spent the entire night tossing and turning, narrating every movement in broken, repetitive and mostly nonsensical Japanese inside my head. After 10 hours of that, I came to the realization that I had never been so bored of myself in my whole life. But then, the fever broke.

So today I had another sick day. I went a whole year without taking a single day off work, and now in the past month I've been off twice...I'm sure my boss will be thrilled.

Anywho, all's well that ends well...who knows, maybe it was chicken flu.

February 16, 2004

I'm back from my weekend in Kurama, down in the city where it's a little warmer and a lot less snowy. I thought we were really in for it when, on Saturday, it began to pour just as we were heading up the mountain. Sometime in the night, however, the rain turned to snow, and when we woke up at five o'clock yesterday morning to climb to the top of the mountain, we found the world around us lightly carpeted with white.

Doing the shugyo training again was an interesting experience, as it gave me the chance to gauge myself against the Aaron of one year ago. What was taxing and difficult for me a year ago I now found myself thinking of as a fun weekend...indeed I had to start thinking of it as a fun weekend because I found it neither taxing nor difficult. And that's the strange thing about challenging yourself: do you have to keep ratcheting things up? Does it turn into an endless game of increasing the odds, and if so, to what end?

Therein, I think, lies an important lesson in human nature: the constant desire for more. Even if that desire happens to be for more asceticism (strange as that is), it can turn into a destructive drive. I just read this morning about a survey that AMEX did of its customers regarding Canadian attitudes towards money. Most people earning salaries in the $200,000 dollar range did not consider themselves rich, but indeed characterized their situations as 'just getting by' on the money they were making. So the question becomes, when will it ever be enough in your life? When will there be enough money, challenge, status...when will you have enough stuff?

But I digress. Right now, the one thing that I don't have enough of is time left on my working visa, so it's off to the Immigration Bureau with me.

February 11, 2004

This week is racing by at an alarming speed, as did my weekend. Laura and I are in the midst of doing some planning for our much-anticipated trip to Europe, and the list of destinations seems to be changing so fast it's difficult to keep track. Right now it looks like we'll be limiting ourselves to Italy, France and Greece, with all other details left totally fuzzy. The debate goes on as to whether we should go with or without a plan.

Yesterday I was interviewed for an article in a magazine that will be coming out late next month. The article is focusing on Western people studying Zen in Japan, and they somehow got in touch with my teacher, Yoshitomi-san. It was an interesting experience being interviewed, and sitting in the 700-year-old Nanzen-in temple doing meditation while someone snapped away with the pictures. A strange contrast, indeed. It was also a rare opportunity for me to practice my ailing language skills, as the entire interview was conducted in Japanese...ahh to have a captive audience as I stutter away!

This Saturday I've taken a paid holiday, but far from relaxing and taking a long weekend as would seem to be advisable at this point, I'll be going to Kurama temple to do Round 2 on the shugyo scene. I'm not sure what, exactly, made me think this would be a good idea, as I've been running myself pretty ragged lately, but I figure that with my time being so limited in Japan these days I need to try and pack in as much as I can...so why not slot in some ascetic training at the end of a busy work week?

So as it stands, the plan for next weekend is somewhat daunting...Go to Aikido class Saturday morning, get my stuff together afterwards and head to Igo-sensei's dojo in Northern Kyoto; go from there to Mount Kurama, then hike up the mountain to do some more Aikido training; wake up the next morning at 4 o'clock, do more training, do more training and then a little more training and then a little more after that until late afternoon, when it will be time to head back into the city to meet people for a goodbye party, which I shouldn't stay too late at because I have Zazen fairly early the next morning, but at which I can't linger too long because I have to bike 20km to pick up something which I have in for repairs but can't leave too late because I have to be back downtown in time to make it to my Aikido class at 7:00 for...more training. And then, of course, it's back to work.

And that has been the typical sort of weekend lately, interspersed only by similarly packed work weeks. The main consolation is that the hard training might pay off in a black belt in the next couple of weeks, and that the work will bankroll a five month (or more) vacation in the very near future. As the Japanese say, ganbarimasu.

February 3, 2004

I went to watch the Super Bowl last night at a local bar that was showing a tape, and it was certainly a different football-watching experience from what I am used to. First of all, the Super Bowl was actually a really good game, which is indeed a rarity. It was, however, my first football game in two years, and it's always strange staring back at your own culture with fresh eyes...not that it takes two years in Japan to figure out that the Half-time show is ridiculous!

The funny thing was that outside of the few Westerners that had come to the bar to watch the game, nobody else knew or cared what was on the TV. It's quite strange watching the Super Bowl - one of the most hyped sporting events in the world - in a room full of people with their backs to the television. The biggest reaction I saw from any of the Japanese people was when two business men came in and one of them remarked, "Hmm, I think it's the Super Bowl." before sitting down with his back to the screen. Heck, one of the staff members turned off the game at half-time (arousing howls of rage from the Westerners, of course) because he thought it must be over by then. The same mistake in Canada would likely cost you your life.

Laura and I went ring shopping yesterday, but weren't able to find anything that we liked. Apparently gold is very passe here, so there's nothing but platinum. We've decided we're probably going to have to buy our rings in Canada, so in a slightly rash act of rebellion, we went and bought a new digital camera. Though we're not really any closer to solving the ring problem, the new camera is awesome. I've never seen anything so small!

With February here, Laura and I are left with only two more months of work. After all of my paid holidays are figured in, I will only be working three day weeks for most of March...pretty sweet.

I have really come to miss home, and after so many years of bouncing around from here to there, it's quite nice to really start wanting to be in Canada once again. I can't say that I miss the cold, but after a while it's the little things that get you...like having a beer in a pint glass, with a pour that isn't one-third head. Italian restaurants run by...Italians (imagine that!). Restaurants where you can sit without feeling rushed...not to mention central heating and hot water out of a tap!