My First Experience Fishing in Japan

Two weeks ago I was invited to go deep sea fishing with one of my students and some of his friends. I happily accepted as I haven't been fishing since the summer of 2009 and I've missed it greatly.

On the morning of 7 November we arrived at the fishing wharf at the crack of dawn - 5:45. My friend had reserved us a spot on a boat headed out to catch scabbard fish. Before coming to Japan I'd never heard of them. They're thin, silver fish that have a whip-like tail and don't put up much of a fight. If I caught any there will be pictures somewhere in this post...

We got on the water by 6:00 and had our lines wet by 7:00. Wet, and tangled. There were 30 people on the boat and there was no more than a meter between each person. This resulted in a lot of lines getting tangled - sometimes three or four different lines. This happened so frequently that there were people employed whose only job was to untangle tangled lines. Our lines were getting tangled every one out of three times we reeled in - though strangely never with each other, even though we were standing next to each other.

Having our lines tangled so often was frustrating for both of us - for similar and different reasons. The similarity of our frustration was that we had both paid money to come fishing, not to get our lines tangled damn near every other cast. Kazu's own frustration came from the trip being less than he had expected for his foreign friend. He put a lot of pressure on himself to deliver a good time and the success or failure of the fishing part of our trip, unlike the excellent dinner and breakfast he prepared, were out of his control. I could tell this bothered him.

My own frustration came from not being able to vent about how shitty the fishing conditions were. They were out of his control and I don't fault him at all, but being able to complain about the fish not biting or giving your brother or father shit because they got their line tangled with yours (never, ever the other way around) has been part of fishing for me since I first learned how. I lack the language skills to vent without potentially offending Kazu so I had to bite my tongue.

We did catch some fish though.

Our first fish came about an hour into the trip at almost the same time. As I was told, they didn't put up much of a fight. They're so small and weak and the line is so strong that it was hard to tell one was even there. I caught two more in the last 5 hours and Kazu caught one. He told me that the scabbard fish season was ending soon so there weren't a lot left. The ones that were still hanging around were the smaller ones we were catching. I didn't mind too much as it was my first time fishing in Japan and I was enjoying the experience, despite the poor conditions.

When we got back to Kazu's place I posed with my fish before he showed me how to clean them.



They were pretty easy to clean. Scale, gut, fillet. The ribs end about halfway down, at which point the tail turns into the whip I was describing. This whip part is the easiest place from which to cut sashimi.



I'd never had sashimi that fresh before. It was delicious. Kazu told me it's his favourite kind of sashimi. He said it was partly because the fish is so fresh, partly because it's not stocked in super markets so it's rare, but mostly because he catches them himself. I understood entirely how something that you catch and prepare yourself tastes infinitely better than something caught and prepared by someone else.

No Wonder We Got Seats

I forgot to post this a couple of weeks ago.

I was working an extra shift on my day off and another teacher and I rode the train home together. This scene greeted us when we got on the train.

Unfortunately I can't move the crap at the right side of the screen so that the full video is viewable from this website.



Public intoxication is really common in Japan and isn't frowned upon. I've seen more drunk people stumbling around the streets here than I ever did at university. And no one cares.

Today I Was A Pirate

The first book I ever received was a present from my grandmother: Today I Was A Pirate. I'm pretty sure that's the book on Amazon but there's no picture so I can't be sure. I have the book at home on a shelf so I can't check the author's name.

It was an excellent book for a kid my age and got me hooked on pirates. How many little boys have a grandmother who encourages them to be a pirate? Just me.

For Halloween at ECC we had to dress up for a week. I teach at 5 different schools so I had to wear my costume five times during the week leading up to Halloween. It wasn't too bad though because I had a sweet costume:



I wasn't really going for the Johnny Depp/Jack Sparrow look but this was the only pirate costume at the department store near our house. It worked out well though. All of my kids liked it (some a little too much as I ended up with significantly less black plastic hair by the end of the week) and all of my staff members were happy to pose with Jack Sparrow. The best part for me was that I looked about 8 feet tall with that hat on.

At the end of the week I realized that I should have dressed up as a pirate a long time ago. I received Today I Was A Pirate when I was 5 or 6 (I think) but Halloween week was the first time I had ever dressed up as a pirate. Sorry I took so long Grandma!

There Are Some Big Spiders in Japan

No, it's not poisonous. We've seen a lot of these spiders while out hiking this autumn but this is the first picture that turned out. They're quite difficult to get the camera to focus on for some reason. I do only have a point-and-shoot which is likely part of the problem.

Spiders don't bother me - I think they're pretty cool. These ones are neat because they're so multicoloured. From far away they all look the same but close up the different markings make them quite distinguishable. They all have a black base with coloured patterns on their legs and bodies. This one was purple, yellow and black. We've seen some with up to five different colours on them: orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

I was hesitant to pick one of these ones up because they've got some formidable looking mandibles. But when we get spiders in our house I catch them and put them outside. Actually, when Aimee points them out I catch them and put them outside. If Aimee doesn't point them out I just let them roam around our apartment. Usually they're just jumping spiders - those are my favourite. I think they're cute and they're a lot of fun to watch jump around. I'm fascinated by the fact that they can jump distances up to 10 times their body length. That would be 20 meters for someone my size.

My First One-on-One Conversation with a Politician

"Excuse me," the man said, "does this train go to Nagoya?"
"Yes," I said while smiling. "It's two stops from here. Do you want a hand with that bag?" The man was lugging a box from Noritake (a fine porcelain store) and a large suitcase onto the subway.
"Yes, thank you."

We exchanged pleasantries while riding the subway and it turns out I was talking to the former Minister for the Environment of Nicaragua. He was here for the COP (COP stands for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity) conference that's being held in Nagoya this year. I asked him in what capacity he was here since he was no longer the Minister for the Environment and he said that he was just here for public relations and to stir up awareness. And also, a very important political position: dirty joke teller. Apparently he likes to tell dirty jokes when he travels.

We continued to talk and he told me that all of the important discussions had already been had before COP 10 had convened. There would be nothing talked about spur of the moment, nothing added to the agenda. There wasn't even anything to sign - it had all been done before any of the nations arrived in Japan. This confirmed a long-standing belief I've had about large, multi-national meetings like COP: they're useless.

Meetings like these (G8, G20, etcetera) could be held over the internet and would save millions of dollars, time, energy, and resources. Instead the host countries waste all of those things for the prestige of hosting these meetings. What a joke. If everything can get agreed upon and signed without having an in-person meeting, then why have one?

There are two other things about giant conferences like COP that bother me: infrastructure that gets built only because there's a big event in town and wasteful advertising.

One:

This is a new bike rental station. I realize that bike rental stations don't fall under infrastructure but I wasn't sure how to classify them. These bike rental stations popped up in about a one kilometer radius of the main COP 10 conference location a week before it convened. They're covered in COP 10 advertising so there's little chance their arrival didn't just happen coincide with the COP 10 conference.

I'm not against bike rentals stations. I think having these stations is a fantastic idea and riding a bike is a great way to see almost any city. Nagoya is quite flat so it's an especially good idea here. My problem is that a project like this likely wouldn't have been undertaken without the COP 10 conference being here. I liken it to Vancouver finally getting a Light Rapid Transit line from downtown Vancouver to the airport. It had been talked about ever since the LRT system first started but it took the Olympics coming to town to finally get it done. Why does something like the Olympics (or in this case a conference whose size pales in comparison to the size of the Olympics) have to come to town to get really useful infrastructure built? If Vancouver was able to throw the kind of money it did at the Olympics then it easily could have afforded to build the Canada Line years ago, so I don't buy the line that the Olympics were necessary to get the money to do it.


Two:

Usually the Nagoya TV Tower is lit up with regular lights but since COP 10 is being held here all of the lights were changed to green. I think this is an unnecessary waste of energy - especially to advertise for a conference about environmentalism. It's also a waste of light bulbs - how many new ones had to be purchased to make the tower green? A better message would have been to have the lights on the TV tower turned off for the conference's two week duration. Having the tower darkened would have caused just as much conversation and would have saved a lot of energy and money.

Meeting this politician was both good and bad. Bad because it made me angry about how much of a waste of time the COP 10 conference is. Good because he was an interesting and funny man. When I asked him what he bought from Noritake he smiled and said, "A beautiful vase for my wife. I have to silence the beast."

After Eight

In North America, After Eight is a delicious after dinner snack. In Japan, after eight is the time you go to the grocery store to get 50% off sushi. Japan's version is substantially better than North America's.

The quality of grocery store sushi is nothing to scoff at. An After Eight bought in Japan tastes the same as one bought in North America, but the quality of sushi from a Japanese grocery store is head-and-shoulders above that from a North American grocery store.

I think the best part of the experience was seeing that we weren't the only people who were waiting around for the sushi to go on sale. Two or three other people were hovering with me waiting for the grocery store clerk to finish tagging the trays of sushi with the discount prices. There's probably a whole sub-culture of people who do nothing but try and buy the best discount sushi they can. I wonder if there's an iPhone app for that...

Idling Cars are Michael's Playthings

Everyone in Japan leaves their car running when they're parked. Every time we walk to the park to go running we walk past parked cars that are sitting idling while their owners are: reading, writing, emailing, talking on the phone, watching movies, smoking, sleeping - you name it, we've seen it. One time when we went running there was a guy who parked his car in front of our apartment and left it running while his wife sat inside it. He was moving boxes in and out of his apartment. When we came back from a 10.4km run (20 minute walk there, 50 minute run, 20 minute walk back) he was still moving boxes into the car and it was still running.

When we walked to a neighbourhood restaurant this evening we walked past a guy who was sitting in his running car watching a DVD and using an electric razor that was plugged into the car's cigarette lighter. When taxi drivers park on the side of the main road here to chat with each other they leave their taxis running.

Where am I going with this? I fantasize about turning these vehicles off for their operators and then giggling my ass off when they get upset. In Canada I would (and have) approach(ed) people who do this but here I lack the language skills to properly lay into people when they tell me to mind my own business. You polluting my air is my business and one day when I'm better able to I'll tell you. Or at least find out why idling vehicles are so prevalent here.

As a society we've become dependent on cars and we've decided that it's necessary to use them instead of mass public transit to navigate our cities. This causes a ton of unnecessary pollution - an amount that is increased by idling vehicles. If your vehicle isn't moving it shouldn't be running.

I remember my grandfather telling me that when he went to Switzerland he was amazed to see signs posted indicating that drivers were to turn off their vehicles at stop lights and were only permitted to turn them back on when the light turned green. I was amazed not at the law but that it hasn't been implemented world-wide. It's so simple to do but the effect would be amazing.

I discussed this last night with some friends and their objections were the objections that a lot of people have: it takes more fuel to start a vehicle than it does to leave one running; and, starters will need to be replaced due to more use of the ignition. I told them the same thing I tell everyone else I talk to about idling: those objections are simply not true.