Joshura's blog

Earthquake happened. It was pretty crazy.

Friday, just before 3 pm, I was finishing a rather entertaining class where my friend the primary teacher had prepared a Jeopardy-style game for the kids to play. This class was particularly special because this period had been designated for parental observation. We practiced the “lesson” a bit with other classes leading up to this point, and we ended up impressing the parents, I think. Just after we said our closing words and started cleaning up the room, the other teacher and I noticed an earthquake had begun. Out of instinct or habit, the other teacher instructed the students to get low to the ground, relatively calmly and unconcerned. Most of the students didn't listen and continued preparing to head home with their parents. Earthquakes are fairly common in Japan, so I wasn't surprised by this at all. But this earthquake kept coming.

Two days prior, I had been in Mito, about an hour north of my town, when we received a 3.4 shock, the biggest I had ever experienced. Friday, I realized that might have just been a hint at tectonic activity to come at the moment this quake seemed a bit different. As it continued, students started listening to us. I literally shoved kids under desks, holding their heads there. A minute in, people were screaming, everyone was down, and it was all rather chaotic. I failed to recognize the presence of any real danger, which gave me the composure to handle the students calmly. After about two minutes, the shaking stopped, and the kids were quickly rushed out the door. Many children tried to get their bags ready so they could go home with their belongings, coats, or whathaveyou. Knowing the general rule of fire drills back home, I shuffled many of these students out the door without their belongings. I left behind my jacket (with apartment key).

The school was evacuated, an easy feat considering the 3rd year students have all graduated. We shuffled out towards the field, where teachers took attendance, as the after-shocks began. Within the next hour or so, the teachers tried to get kids home with all their belongings, sending several of the male teachers into the building between rumbles to retrieve bags at random. I was among these teachers. Another large shock came and ultimately it was decided it would be too dangerous to continue with the bags.

Kids were upset, many just surprised, others annoyed, some scared. I don't think anyone had realized just what had happened yet. People were getting onto the Internet from their phones and rumors of a 9.2 (ultimately revealed to be 9.0) earthquake started circulating. People with relatives in Tohoku, the area most heavily affected, freaked out.

After the kids went home, the teachers stood outside for a while, waiting out the primary danger, or something. Honestly, I'm not sure what we were doing just standing there. There was really nothing to be done at that point, nothing better to do than to sit around. Lucky we were there, though, when a student came running back to the school, yelling for help. Moments later, one of the younger male teachers came running in carrying an old woman, the student's grandmother, who had fallen. She's fine now, but the will of these teachers, the want to help... was really quite inspiring. They provided her with a blanket and a pillow, set her on a bench, and saw to her safety for the rest of the time.

Eventually, teachers went back inside to try the phones, water, etc. The power was out, and the water wasn't working. The phones were down and everything was a mess. But, people seemed confident enough about the safety of the building that I was allowed to run back to the larger part of the school where I had left my belongings. I normally wouldn't have taken the risk, but my house keys were up there. On my way through the school, I saw the true extent of the damage. Wood panelling on a wall popped off, a part of the ceiling fell in the hall, some doors came off their sliding tracks. Really, nothing major. I was surprised to find out the school was closed until Thursday.

Afterwards, I went home to find my mess of an apartment slightly more messy. Most anything I had stacked was now unstacked. Nothing is broken, thankfully. I took a walk, surveyed the damage, and took some pictures around town.
There really wasn’t much going on besides the loss of power. Some walls dividing properties and roads fell over a bit, some roofs lost some tiles. An electronics store lost some glass and its sign. Upon returning, I met my neighbors for the first time in the seven months I’ve been here.

I spent the night using my bike's light as a flashlight but ended up so bored I just went to sleep. I managed to get a call out to my friend an hour south from me to confirm her well-being. Then I found that I could still send emails from my phone, so I contacted my parents and one carefully chosen friend who could tell the world we were okay the quickest. The sun set completely by seven. The night sky without the city’s light pollution was breathtaking; truly a refreshing view after the day’s trouble. I went to bed shortly after, woken up every few hours by an after shock. One in particular was pretty bad and prompted me to leave the apartment until it was over. I’ve been sleeping in clothes ever since.

I woke up at dawn the next day, disappointed the overhead light hadn't turned on during the night to alert me I had regained power. I had wanted to sleep through the hours without power, but no such luck. I wasn’t able to get online and contact my friends and family until about 11 am that day.

Before the power was restored, I went on an adventure around the town to see what I could learn. Vice principals were standing around at the school, happy to see me and answer some questions about the extent of the quake. At that point, I had no idea how bad off the area just 170 miles north of us was. After a short chat, I learned the trains weren’t running in our neck of the woods (still aren't), but the power was on its way back district by district. I checked the grocery store to find a huge line of people waiting to buy non-perishables set out on a table in front of the store. The same lines were at every store I checked, no matter how small.

Then I dropped by the chicken place near my apartment, delighted to see that my buddy the owner had opened up business for the day. I had a delicious breakfast of yakitori thanks to him. It was during that breakfast that the power finally came back. Hurray!

Through the past few days, I’ve noticed people rebuilding so calmly, so... normally. It’s as though life hasn’t changed at all here. I went back to that chicken place a few nights later for a quick to-go meal, but ended up drinking and chatting with random Japanese people for hours on end. The virtue of Japanese tradition showed itself strongly that night as these strangers poured drinks for me, offered me delicious foods, and spoke with me. We even managed to regard the earthquake lightheartedly, joking that an aftershock was responsible for a man’s drunken stumble.

My experience has been a walk in the park compared to the damage done just north of here. This nuclear power plant situation is troubling, but we’ll manage. Most international media outlets are sensationalizing the news there anyway. I have friends far south of here should anything major happen. In the meantime, I’d like to ask that anyone feeling like they want to help should donate to the Red Cross or another relevant charity. Though your contribution may be small, the more people who get into the mindset of donating, the more those little amounts add up! Short of that, keep the people here in your thoughts and prayers, they certainly need it.

So hey, Drupal sucks. If you didn't know, Drupal is the software that this site is running on.

For the past few weeks, we've been constantly assailed by 404 errors, which came to a head last night in the form of 500 and 503 errors, which disabled the site completely. I did my best to wade through the errors to turn off the chatblock, finally succeeding after far too much time. If Drupal were a better CMS, such errors wouldn't even have the capacity to break the whole site, and for that, I'm kinda pissed. One of the reasons I finally settled on Drupal some 8 months ago involved the presence of a certain module that has since become unsupported. In absence of that, we're basically just trudging along through shit. Please enjoy our older chat in the meantime.

So, I'm going to enlist the help of the smartest people I know for bringing this site to a truly modern web experience. A wonderful friend from college is going to handle the software and coding, while our own Cadenza (whether he knows it or not), will be helping supply some art to the new design! I'm hoping to ask one more person for his most enlightened help in the process of converting all of our current data to the new system. If he's reading, he knows who he is <3<3<3. I'm also switching to a new web host! That change will go live with the new design, so I don't have to spend hours copying the old data!

Expect these changes within a month or so. I cannot yet guarantee that all our content will be on the new site, but I can guarantee that the old content will be available somewhere. I can guarantee that any features you're fond of in this current design will be available from the start of the new site.

Please drop any suggestions or lingering desires you have in the comments for this post.

This past weekend was the Ishioka Festival, which is apparently quite a big deal for this town. People from the surrounding area know Ishioka because of this festival, and many come all 3 days of the long weekend. I was not aware of the scale of this thing until I came back from Tokyo on Saturday.

Saturday morning, I woke up around 7 in order to get on an early train and meet CJ on our way to Tokyo (more accurately, to a town near Tokyo), for Tokyo Game Show. While we had meant to get to the place a bit early, expecting to wait in line for a bit, we did not anticipate that the line would continue past opening time for an extra hour, as we walked around the entirety of the exhibition hall in a huge crowd, in the sun. It was rough. Once we were finally inside, we found the crowd even more unbearable, as we found ourselves unable to move in several instances.

TGS itself is a story for another time, though.

After we got our fill of the event, we headed into Tokyo for the first time ever on both our accounts. We went to Akihabara, which is also known as “Electronics Town,” as it has become the essential destination for anything involving technology or related interests. These interests range from comic books to girls dressed up as maids advertising porn shops and restaurants where the the waitresses are all costumed. Of course, such things are not on my agenda. It was pretty awesome, though, walking around the area, finding little stores here and there selling fun things. I’m going to have to go back at some point after I get my first paycheck... or maybe that’s the exact sort of place I should avoid.

On Saturday, I went out to drink with the teachers at my school. I expected to be making friends of my own age, but instead, I got sat next to the principal and vice principals. It was fun, but I sorta missed out on making friends. It was also super expensive!

But, then I learned something about alcohol that I had never had to learn in the past. Exercise after drinking actually makes you more drunk! I know, it seems like an obvious assumption, but it was almost fun!

First, we went to a hotel banquet room to have a big old dinner party with unlimited drinks. It was not cheap. I introduced myself again there, to the teachers in more detail, and to some of the parents. It was good. Then, this vice principal who’s been really cool asked if I would go to karaoke, a prospect that did not seem like a bad idea to me. I expressed some concern about the location of my bike outside the hotel before we left, but I was assured that I’d be able to get back. Turns out, they intended for me to take a taxi, which was way more expensive a prospect than I wanted to endure.

A few more drinks and songs after we were dropped off, I thought it might be a good time to leave, in case I needed to get more money from the ATM to help pay, or just to get myself home before an absurd hour. I tried my best to make sure I was covered, expense-wise, then commenced the 40 minute walk home.

More after the jump!

Today has been rather interesting.

My first day of work was technically not a day of work, but rather, a day of sitting in a chair doing very little. In my school, the first few days back from summer vacation are spent practicing for the autumn sports festival. This festival is a curious concept, indeed, it doesn't seem to serve a purpose beyond promoting competition among the students. Yet, they seem to rehearse for the given day, not just practice.

And today was a rehearsal day, so everyone goes through the motions of each event without really trying or caring. The race where you use a bowl to carry water from a barrel to a bucket for your team was practiced without water. I'll have more to say when I see the actual festival, in any case.

So I came to work today wearing a tie, expecting every other teacher to be wearing just a button down shirt, or something vaguely nice, but everyone here was actually wearing their workout clothes. Luckily, knowing I might be asked to do some sports stuff with the kids, I brought my own workout clothing, and was able to promptly change. I got through the morning meeting and my introductions to everyone while still wearing a tie, though.

Okay, so yesterday was cool.

First of all, I took pictures of my apartment. You can find those on Facebook, or here. It's bigger than I anticipated, but it's still quite minimal. Everything I need is here, at least. The one thing missing from those pictures is my shiny new rice cooker!

In the morning, I attempted to play HL2 on my newly built computer, only to discover that something is wrong with it. After much frustration, I just put it aside and went out shopping. One rice cooker and a few plates later, I went to McDonald's! Sad news, though: Japanese McDonald's no longer sell the MegaMac, the 4 patty version of the Big Mac. I am very unhappy about this.

On my way back, I noticed a restaurant very close to my apartment was more open seeming than it has been in the past, so I decided to give it a shot, hoping to strike up some conversations with the people there. It was a yakitoriya, which means it primarily serves chicken on a stick, with some other meats on sticks also. I ordered a medley of stuff, not knowing what I'd get and sat down with a beer. Eventually I started talking to the people around me, and noticed a few things.

Whenever you tell someone that you're a teacher, they will no longer refer to you by your name, but instead by "sensei." Also, Chicken tendons are not very good. And, lastly, beer is expensive.

I had a pretty good time there, and I think I have a new friend who works at a used goods store, where I might be able to get the rest of my necessities. I call this post "part one," because I do intend on returning in the near future, hopefully making new friends and such. WELP, that's all for today.

Two days ago, I moved into my apartment in Ishioka, Japan.

My coordinator, my contact at the dispatch company I work for, drove me all around the city to get me settled in (getting my key, introducing me to the school staff, etc). It took us forever to find the apartment, though, since the only access road is this really narrow, winding path through a dense residential neighborhood. Once there, though, we managed to set up the Internet, so that was awesome.

The apartment itself, which I’ll post pictures of soon, is one and a half rooms. The main room is a living/sleeping area with a TV, a closet, a small fridge and a microwave, as well as a bed frame with my futon. There’s a sliding door at the end of it that opens out to a balcony, despite the fact my apartment is on the first floor. It is actually a balcony, believe it or not, raised slightly above the ground, with an enclosing fence. The room itself is rather large, or it least it feels that way since everything is so close to the ground. Tomorrow, a floor chair is being delivered so that I can actually sit at the coffee table thing I have.

The “half room” I mentioned is a very efficiently used space consisting of a bath room, a toilet room, a kitchenette with a sink, a stove (with one burner), a cupboard, and a mini fridge, and then there’s a washing machine right next to that. The whole thing is kind of neat, and there’s a door separating the two rooms, so that’s fun. Yesterday, I found a cockroach, though, but it was easy enough to chase it out the front door.

The complex itself is very clean looking compared to the rest of the neighborhood, but it seems like there might be at most 5 other people living here, based on the cars and bikes I see around. I have yet to see another person go into an apartment.

There's a lot more to read after the jump.

So I got my placement. I'll be living in an apartment in a town called Ishioka. It's a little under 2 hours from Tokyo, and about an hour from the nearest friend in the country. I'll be commuting by bike every day, and life should be fairly relaxed. The town is pretty small - 50,000 people. I'm teaching at a Junior High School.

So, as of tonight, I won't be on the Internet for at least a week or two, depending on how quickly I can get Internet and/or a phone. If there's any serious problems, I'll try to keep checking my email, see what I can do from there, otherwise, good luck, you all! See you soon!

On August 22, I will be leaving for Japan, and I will not return for at least 7 months. I’m working for the Heart School, which is based primarily in the Kanto region (which includes Tokyo). I currently do not know where I will be staying or teaching, but I do know where and when orientation is, at least. My goal in Japan is to become completely fluent in Japanese, and ultimately pass a standardized test called the JLPT2.

The extent to which Japan will affect my involvement with this site is still unclear, as I do not know my daily schedule. I do know that my hours will be flipped, and I may have more regular contact with European friends than American. Come October, FFXIV will have been released, and this site will take on the role of organizational forum for whatever community we build there. If I have a lot of downtime, I would like to start learning advanced CSS and PHP practices, which will help me fix all those little problems with the site.

I’d also like to take a moment to officially welcome the survivors of the Vegapunk forums. I know a lot of you had already found your way here, and I appreciate that. Please feel free to invite any of the other regulars here, as they’re more than welcome. I say that not only wanting to draw new visitors, but because I miss them!

A small list of what’s in store for the site in the near future is after the jump.

Hey everyone. It's been a while, if I haven't spoken to you recently. If I have, then I guess it hasn't been a while. Sorry to lie like that, then.

I just graduated. From college. I am really proud of myself. I have come to realize that this is an extremely important year in my life, and the things I do now will shape the entire direction of my life. And so far, I've been wasting time at my mom's apartment, doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. Before I continue, those nothing things are:

"Doctor Who" - Season 5 started a little while ago, and it's been interesting, at least. The new companion is the best of the series, and the new Doctor is pretty fun, just not entirely the Doctor I'd like. Some shit just went down that has my mind blown still.

"Big Bang Theory" - Just had its 3rd season finale. This show actually came to my attention before I graduated, and I watched all of it then. It is also dumb, but still amusing. Worth a shot. It's rare that a show has so many good characters. Now, if only the plot was as good...

"My Name is Earl" - All four seasons of this show are on Netflix Instant Watch. It is not particularly spectacular, but it is amusing. The first two seasons are the best. I'm a little surprised it got canceled, as I've seen worse shows go longer.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Bought this the other day, wanting to play a game, but not wanting to approach Mass Effect again for the hundredth time (I'll get back to it later). Once I complete the game, I'll post a review, but I can say now that it has been amazing. People say that it's really just Galaxy again, as though Galaxy were made into a longer game. It's kind of true, in a way, except you would also need to imagine that Galaxy never existed, then this game came out. Of course, it did, so every little problem is smoothed over, and made awesome. I'm not actually in love with the game. But, with Mario games, I get in this mood to collect every little item, and can't stop until I do, and this game is making that quite fun. Better than the first one, for sure.

"Invader Zim" - The first season is on Netflix. It's not as funny as I remember.

"The World's Fastest Indian" - Just watched this movie last night on Instant Watch, and I absolutely loved it. Anthony Hopkins is one of the greats, but it seems like his skill is put to waste so often (Bad Company, Zorro, etc.). In this surprisingly low-budget indie film, you see him at his best. The story is uplifting, and provides many moments for our dear actor to pull you through a full spectrum of emotions. There is tangible fear for the man's safety and true happiness for his success. So good.

Scott Pilgrim - There's a movie coming this August starring Michael Cera called "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." For me, the trailer was out of nowhere, shown before Iron Man 2 (which was also quite good), and seemed like another stupid Michael Cera as Michael Cera movie. The friend I saw Iron Man 2 with quickly informed me that the movie was based on a recent comic series. On his recommendation, I just started reading it, and boy, is it awesome. I read through the first volume dubiously after being hooked by just the preview on the site, then ordered every volume in the series from Amazon. I'll probably give it a full article sometime soon - once I read the rest.

So that's the random media I've been enjoying. Read on for more about my -life-.