Your friendly neighborhood gaijin or How are YOU?!?

Thought I'd stick up another picture today. Here's the gondola from the kitanomine side of the ski hill. The gondola seats about 6 people and gives you a great view of Furano and the ski hill. This is also where we wait when we are participating as ski hosts.
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Unrelated to the picture: If you ever see a Japanese person --- and there appear to be many in the world --- go up to them and say "How are you?" (exactly those words); you will almost inevitably get a quick response of, "I'm fine thank you, and you?" It can even happen if they initiated the conversation.
Japanese person A (fluent in English): Oh, hi Mr. B, how've you been?
Mr. B (non-Japanese): Oh, fine. How are you?
Japanese person A: (reflexively) I'm fine thank you, and you?
Mr. B: Um... I just told you I was fine...
Because the majority of the English they learn is through "chanting" (same in Japanese: chant-o) the answer is reflexive. It doesn't matter if their father just died or they were just hit by a car. Ask them, "How are you?" and you'll quickly be answered "Fine thank you, and you?"
At some point classes tend to go something like this:
Teacher: (in a loud chanting voice) HOW ARE YOU!
Class: (in unison) I'M FINE THANK YOU, AND YOU!
Teacher: (in Japanese) louder! (Eng.) HOW ARE YOU!
Class: I'M FINE THANK YOU, AND YOU!!
Notice that it's not even a question anymore, it's a set phrase in the chant. You run into problems when you get two of the students practicing English together.
Student A: How are you?
Student B: I'm fine thank you, and you?
A: I'm fine thank you, and you?
B: I'm fine thank you and you?
A: I'm fine thank you, and you.....

I have actually observed this happening. It can go on for a minute or two before they even realize that they've become caught in a loop. Certainly this sort of problem is to be expected WITH ROBOTS!!! But not with real living breathing students!!! And they can be the best English speaker or the worst, the results are almost guaranteed. There are English teachers who I know to whom I can speak for hours in full unabbreviated English at full speed; yet when I see them and say those magic words, "I'm fine thank you, and you?" complete with the slight head tilt and the pause expectantly for my immediate and automatic reply of the same phrase.

BUT... but... the worst part of it all is when you, the friendly neighborhood gaijin (foreigner) with all of your expert knowledge of your own native language which you've spoken since birth (or a little thereafter)... when you catch yourself doing it too!!!
Me: How are you, Student A?
Student A: I'm fine thank you, and you?
Me: I'm fine thank you, and you? ...ah! waitaminu...
Student A (before I can correct myself): I'm fine thank you, and you?
Me: *crying because of my lost ability to speak in my native tongue*

So my question to you is: How are you?!?

A picture is worth...

Taken on the way back from the ski hill. This is Furano.

My Palace

This is where I live. This building had 4 apartments, I am the top right apartment. It's not huge, but by Japan standards it really is quite large. Also, because it's only me living here, it feels quite large. The apartments next to me and below me have entire families living in them.

Hey look! There's Sven.

Up at the ski hill, kitanomine side! The picture is looking down away from the ski hill. Right around the ski hill there are a whole bunch of hotels. This area is called kitanomine, hence the name of this side of the ski hill. Skiing is a huge tourism thing in Furano. In the summer we have lavendar fields, in the winter we have a great ski hill. So, there are lots of interesting places and people at these hotels tend to speak a bit of English or something. Some of the hotels like the one behind me imitate a European style, while others try to attract tourists by being traditionally Japanese-style. Since I live here I've never stayed at any of these hotels.

Course Map Furano Ski Hill

This is a map of the Furano Ski hill. The right-hand side is the "kitanomine side", it is very close to town, I have walked up this side to go boarding. At the bottom of the other side is the Prince Hotel, so we call this the "Prince side". There are, of course, crossover courses from one side to the other. From kitanomine you ski down to a single rider (hitori-nori which rhymes is the Japanese for single rider) lift which takes you across. Retuning from the Prince side is a bit more tricky, at least for us snowboarders. There is a long narrow path across, but large portions of it are pretty flat (or at times slope upwards) so it is just about impossible to make it across with out removing your binding to push. Even the skiers complain about the crossing.

Lost in Translation

You know in some movies where there is a non-English speaking main character and a subordinate who translates for this person. A situation arises where the non-English speaking guy speaks for like 15 minutes in Japanese or Chinese or tongue clicks and then the translator translates this into some short phrase like: "Please take a seat." or "You must die now!" or "Excuse me I need to use the toilet." Well, this sort of thing is not simply a movie occurrence, it happens in real life. The photo, one of many examples that I have seen/heard, is a prime one. There is a big long string of Japanese and then the translation just says: "Please return your dishes." No wonder foreigners (of Japan) get the misguided idea that everything takes longer to say in Japanese (which is not true to any extent). The Japanese actually reads: "Please return your dishes to the return window. Please separate your garbage by cans/bottles, burnable, and food materials to dispose of it." and the big red Japanese at the top with the red arrow says "Return window". It's pretty funny. After being here a while you will find that even though EVERYBODY has studies English during junior high and high school (and many in college) there are numerous English mistakes all in all sorts of public places and important displays. Such is the state of things in Japan. ;) I'll post further examples as they appear.

Where does Sven buy his cans of coffee?

Oooh mighty vending machine, thy glory hath no bounds. The Japanese vending machine is a completely different brand of de-lovely than it's American counterparts. While the food/snack vending machine, often found in American high schools or health clubs (ironically), seems less implemented, the beverage variety is highly advanced and widely implemented. I mean, REALLY widely! Like almost every street-corner has a couple of drink machines. And, you can't even call them soda machines; probably the most prominent beverages are cans of coffee. After that would be green tea or sports drinks, and then other odds and ends like Coke or orange juice. Whereas an American alternative would house about 8 or so buttons which really only give you about 4 to 6 choices of different sodas that are all of the same maker, one Japanese vending machine usually houses about 18 or so different choices, of its 30 odd buttons. Not only this, but the Japanese machines offer both HOT and COLD beverages in the same machine (and corn soup that you can drink from a can). The picture at the top has only cold beverages (as represented by the blue button and cold written in Japanese) the picture at the bottom shows both hot and cold options (red vs blue above the buttons). The other thing is that you won't ever find just one vending machine alone. I'm not sure why, since they often carry the same drinks. Perhaps competition between different vending machine companies. The other thing you might notice from the picture at the bottom is that the smaller vending machine is a BEER vending machine!! BEER, in a vending machine!! In US this would be pretty unheard of. Here it is very commonplace. Most of them don't even have any warning note for minors not to purchase and partake in products of the machine. So anyway, anyone who finds themselves in need of a drink one night while wondering the streets of Japan when all the shops are closed (except for Seven-11, but we'll ignore that) you can always find a vending machine with whatever you're looking for.
One last note: on the subject of the food/snack vending machines, they do exist, but where they do, they are much more advanced than what I'd expect in US. I have eaten fried chicken and potato wedges that were prepared by a vending machine. I put in my money, pressed the button, it cooked and spat out the food to me with a fork and pair of chopsticks and probably even told me to have a nice day in Japanese. ;)

Where does Sven play?

I took this picture today at the ski hill! Here in Furano, due to the great ski hill which attracts many foreign tourists, especially from Australia, there is a program called Furano Ski Hosts. To be a ski host volunteer you need to live in Furano and speak a bit of English. Then you go to the ski hill and ski with foreigners while utilizing your English ability to converse with them. Originally I had been unable to join this program due to time conflicts in the weekends (and there is a minimum volunteer rate per month if you do it). But during these weeks when we are not on vacation, but when the schools are still on winter break, the office decided that us going up and helping the ski volunteers with their English could acceptably fall under the category of "internationalization": the ALT prime directive. So... for this week I have been put to the difficult and unfortunate task, of, regrettably, having to force myself to go up to the ski slopes every morning (with my board, naturally) and complete the most arduous tasks of speaking in English and snowboarding, sometimes simultaneously. It's a hard job, I know, but I'm just the kind of selfless individual that is willing to give up my diligent time at the office to persevere in this endeavor.

Where does Sven work?

Back into the swing of things and returning from my self-imposed vacation from the website. This is a picture of the office that I work in on the third floor of the library. This area is outside of the actual office, it is a sort of waiting area. Often when someone comes to the office we will come out here and sit at the chairs or purple square stool-things and have Japanese (green) tea or coffee while we conference. The room straight ahead (and slightly to the right) is the board of education, where I work. This is where I come every morning before heading out to my schools for class. This is also where I pick up the car keys for the BOE cars that I use to drive to each school. Even if I had my own car here (which I don't) I would need to use the BOE cars for work purposes such as driving to class.