Jas goes Political: a doctor's take on the health care bill

03/24/10

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that this past Sunday the House voted to pass the health care bill.

Most people I've talked to, however, have no idea what the health care bill actually entails much less what it will really do. I've heard lots of general naysayers and also lots of speculation (by non-doctors or health care workers) on how it will surely be detrimental to our health care system and our doctors. I can talk about how health care reform is a good thing until I'm blue in the face; but at the end of the day, I'm just one of the millions that it will help and not professional in the field.

So I decided to ask one about it (a professional in the field, that is). The response I got was very enlightening, and I hope that everyone takes the time to read it and maybe learn a little in the process.

And now without further ado, here is one doctor's take on the health care bill:

"As a primary care pediatrician, I strongly support the bills passed by the House of Representatives on Sunday night. Trying to get through all the rhetoric and arguments, Americans need insurance reform. Every day we delay reform, Americans die from lack of insurance or underinsurance.

Currently, 45 million Americans lack adequate insurance. Many are willing to pay for insurance, but cannot afford it. In contrast, others who work for large corporations or the government receive amazing insurance AT THE TAXPAYER’S EXPENSE. But regardless, for those 45 million Americans who do not have insurance, many will die or get gravely sick because they lack access to health care. The bill has a huge impact on patients with cancer and their treatment. Dr. Maurie Markman, from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses these positive ramifications in a internet video (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/718975) I know cancer patients are breathing easier, realizing they cannot get dropped from their insurance because of their difficult illnesses.

Daily in my work, I hear young and hard working parents report that they are not covered, or their insurance does not cover this or that condition since it is “pre-existing”. One young family reported that their family paid $20,000 in one year for their child’s medication for ADHD. Also, almost daily, I spend 10 to 15 minutes filling out forms and looking through medical records at the request of insurance companies to find out if a certain diagnosis occurred before a child was insured. Obviously, there is a great deal of insurance company money and time insurance companies put into denying people coverage instead of helping them with their health.

The American Academy of Pediatricians, the American College of Physicians, and the American Medical Association all back the current legislation. While the legislation did not address tort reform, I believe access to care will decrease the need for lawsuits. Many people sue physicians to help pay for medical expenses.

A helpful website to see what Health care reform means for each state is http://www.healthreform.gov/

In Tennessee, approximately 950,000 people will be able now to purchase insurance. 595,000 people will get tax cuts to help them purchase insurance. 995,000 seniors will receive preventive services through Medicare. 62,400 small businesses will get tax cuts to help make insurance more affordable to them.

Key points of the bill that go into effect immediately:

• Private insurers will no longer be able to cancel policies of people who get sick except in cases of fraud. They also cannot refuse to cover children with preexisting conditions.

• Insurers may not put lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage.

• Medicare recipients will receive free preventive care such as cancer screenings without any co-payments or deductibles. They also will receive a $250 rebate to apply toward the coverage gap in the Medicare Part D medication program called the "doughnut hole," which the bill will fully eliminate by 2020.

• Children can remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.

With all the rhetoric and threats flying around the media and the web, the bottom line is that this legislation will help MILLIONS of American live healthier and longer lives. By fighting this legislation or repealing it, lawmakers are showing a lack of compassion for suffering Americans. Personally, I plan on calling my senators today to make sure they know that I support insurance reform and affordable medical access to health care for all Americans. "

Jas goes over a Nigerian Scam

03/22/2010

We all know the story about the Nigerian prince who needs a loan, if you could only just give him some money and/or all of your bank account info he will pay you back plus more ...

WELL not enough people are falling for that one these days so the scammers now have a new approach.

My husband Ian posted a listing on craigslist selling 2 of his camera lenses (speaking of, anyone want to buy a wide-angle and/or 18-200 lens?) and he got messaged by a woman with a semi-American sounding name in upstate NY who was interested in both as a gift for her son's graduation.

Craigslist has an advisory warning against dealing out of state, so Ian looked up this person in white pages and found that her name and address etc were all legit. so he messaged her back. She wanted his paypal email address, and was going to post the money to paypal and then send him a pre-paid fed-ex label to ship the lenses to her. So far, so good.

He immediately got an email back saying that the payment had been posted, and as soon as he got a confirmation email from paypal to just go ahead and send the lenses. Oh, and by the way, she couldn't use her pre-paid fedex so she added some more money to the paypal payment. Oh, and also by the way, Ian had to send them to her son (different, definitely not at all American sounding name) in Nigeria. And he had to do it ASAP.

Ian got this email from paypal@service.com :

"Dear (Ian's email address),

This is a confirmation email of the payment of $1370.00USD you received from Mrs Gabler Sara what is required of you in order for your account to be credited is the item's tracking/reference number, this number will be given to you at the courier office after you might have sent the item to the bearer, this is part of our new policy and a security measure in order to protect both the buyer and the seller, also to verify if the item was really bought from you we have sent you a confirmation email earlier to inform you that the payment is legal and has been confirmed, also to guide you against fraudulent acts.

We have included the buyer's full name and amount paid for you to know this message was really sent from PayPal. We advise that you make sure the item is sent out as soon as possible and request for a tracking number at the post office after you might have sent out the item, then you can email us the number by replying directly to this message after it might have been given to you at the courier office so as to credit your account without delay.

After we receive the number from you for security verification, your account will be credited at once, Our system has witness new upgrades, Please don't be surprised if you see us forwarding you to new customer attendants, its due to the amount of fraud going on involving our name which we are trying all our best to limit and put a stop to. As soon as we receive the requested information from you, your account will be credited.


PayPal Account Review Department.

Sincerely,

PayPal

Copyright © 2000-2010 PayPal. All rights reserved. "

A few minor problems. The actual paypal email address is service@paypal.com.

Paypal also ALWAYS addresses emails using the full name of the person who has the account (ie. it would not have been addressed to his email address).

Whenever you use paypal, the money is immediately credited to your account for you to put into your bank account - it is not dependent on submitting a tracking number.

Not to mention the horrible English.

Also, when Ian pulled up his paypal account it had a big fat ZERO dollars in it.

Ian wrote back to the supposed buyer and basically said he wasn't going to fall for this, please don't be an idiot. The "buyer" still persisted, and immediately sent him another email saying that he/she was going to contact the FBI if Ian didn't send the lenses to Nigeria RIGHT NOW.

Such silliness is not worth responding to, so Ian wrote an email to paypal's fraud department instead. They wrote him back and said that yes it was indeed a fraudulent email and thanks for pointing it out to them, & have a nice day.

So - for anyone out there who uses paypal - take heed and don't be scammed!

And for all you Nigerian scammers out there - get a real job already.

Jas goes to the Women's Wine Down

03/19/2010

This March marked a milestone: the first annual Knoxville Women's Wine Down. I have no idea who's brainchild the Wine Down was, but that person is a genius.

The Wine Down adds a new dimension to the already wildly popular commercial event that is the Women's Expo by serving up a wine tasting to 500 lucky guests - and all the proceeds go to charity. It gives people a chance to sample 7 different wines, try some amuse-bouches from local area vendors, and raise money for a good cause.

Everybody wins when women wine.

This year's cast of characters:

-- Celebrity Host -- Top Chef cheftestant Fabio Viviani

(my personal favorite cheftestant ever & owner of Cafe Firenze http://www.cafefirenze.net/)

-- Featured Winery -- Gnarly Head (http://www.gnarlyhead.com/Wines/)

-- Local Foodstuffs -- Salsaritas, Brixx Pizza, Avanti Savoria (http://www.avantisavoia.com/) and The Crown and Goose (http://www.thecrownandgoose.com/kitchen.html)

-- Plus all the local area vendors who usually show up at the Women's Expo --

Upon entering the Wine Down area each person is given a wine card. This card lists off each wine that is available along with a short description. This year all of the wines came from one winery (the aforementioned Gnarly Head) which can be a good thing or a bad thing. If the winery is subpar, then all of the wines will be too. However, if the winery is generally good, then all the wines should be as well. Luckily, Gnarly Head is one of the latter and while I've had better wines, I would recommend any of theirs (especially the Cab. Sauv. & the Merlot).

Hard-core wine connoisseurs will find the Gnarly Head wines completely fine - but for a 500 person wine tasting Gnarly Head was the perfect choice. They had a good selection of both reds and whites, and every single one was completely unoffensive. It takes a true buff to love the extremes of any kind of wine (ie. Chardonnays tend to be very dry, Merlots can be a bit spicy and earthy, etc), but all the Gnarly Heads were completely middle-of-the-road: a necessity to be a crowd pleaser! The guests at the Wine Down had 2 hours to go to different booths scattered around the convention center and get a glass of wine and have their wine-cards stamped (so each person could only get one glass of each wine).

I was slightly disappointed, however, with the selection of food paired along with the wine. Salsaritas had chips and salsa (boring) and Brixx had spinach dip & some crusty tomato bruschetta (definitely NOT tasty). I was pleasantly surprised by Avanti Savoria; a local Italian import store that has an excellent selection of olive oils, cheeses, spreads and etc. At the Wine Down they provided a fabulous cheese table (I had seconds!), and I will be visiting their store sometime in the future. Last but not least was my favorite: the Crown and Goose's watermelon/tuna ceviche. This Mexican-Asian fusion food consisted of diced watermelon, tuna, cilantro and black & white sesame seeds all tossed with lime juice and some sort of light sauce (rice wine vinegar? olive oil? whatever it was it was perfect) and served over a seaweed salad. I could have eaten buckets of this, it was that amazing (please see the picture at the very top). I hope that next year, every restaurant decides to put forth something interesting like the Crown & Goose and Avanti Savoria, and I also hope the Wine Down organizers find a few more places willing to participate.

The highlight of my evening, though, was the celebrity host: Fabio Viviani. I am a die-hard Top Chef fan and Fabio has always been my favorite chef on the show because of his passion, his general nice-guy-ness, and his sexy Italian accent. He did not disappoint at the Wine Down! At the beginning of the evening he gave a short cooking lesson (which I unfortunately missed), and then spent the rest of the night going back and forth between taking pictures and giving autographs. Guests were able to get their pictures taken with Fabio in a photobooth for $10, (all the proceeds of which went to charity) and Fabio was signing copies of his cookbook (which was conveniently for sale nearby, which I bought, and which I completely love). Having a celebrity host most definitely added to the excitement of the evening and Fabio was the perfect choice!

In short, I had a fantastic time at the Wine Down, and I hope all of you get the chance to go next year.

Jas goes to Canada

01/01/2010

We all know Canada as that magical place where maple syrup grows in trees, the beer is always fresh and cold, the skiing is superb, and hockey reigns supreme in the world of sports.

Today I want to tell you about something else that’s awesome in Canada: its french-fry toppings. I’m not talking about poutine (some sort of strange gravy), no -- nacho fixin’s. Picture everything that would come on loaded nachos, but on french-fries. They serve this delicious phenomena everywhere from ski lodges to Taco Bell (Fiesta Fries, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…). Ian and I were lucky enough to try some top quality nacho-fries at the ski lodge near our hotel, and it was a taste explosion in our mouths.

I can only hope that one day the US will catch on and we too can order nacho-fries at any restaurant and Fiesta-Fries at the Taco Bell. But at least I know that despite the frigid temperatures (it was -15 degrees F when we were there over new years), I could happily live in America’s Hat.

Jas goes to Jeni's

09/06/09

I love ice cream.

And so, when I read an article about the top 10 ice creameries in the USA a couple months ago, (http://www.shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/top-10-ice-cream-shops-around-the-u-s-468406/), I immediately scanned the list to see which were the closest to Knoxville.

There's one in Atlanta called Morelli's Gourmet Ice Cream & Desserts ... and there's one in Columbus Ohio called Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. I have never forgotten these locations (just in case!), and it just so happens that we went to Columbus this past labor day weekend while we were in OH visiting family.

Of course a trip to Jeni's was in order!

Jeni's earns a place on the list by 1) using all natural and all organic locally grown ingredients ... 2) having crazy-unique flavors ... and 3) being delicious.

Here are a few of the ice creams they offer:
- Thai Chili
- Salty Caramel
- Bourbon Buttered Pecan
- Goat Cheese with Roasted Red Cherries
- Sweet Corn & Black Raspberry
.... and lots and lots more, not to mention all the toppings and extras you can add!

Between 6 of us we had Sweet Corn & Black Raspberry, Bourbon Buttered Pecan, Carrot Cake, Lavender & Berries and a Sundae (and almost everyone tried a sample of the Thai Chili - spicy ice cream isn't something you find just anywhere!)
Everything was fresh & fabulous, including the location.

There are a few Jeni's scattered around Columbus and the one that we went to was right in the heart of downtown, and only a few minutes drive away from the super-cool COSI science museum (where you can ride a unicycle on a high-wire across the lobby... really).

I definitely recommend visiting Jeni's if you are ever in Columbus (and riding across the high-wire at COSI) -- I know I'm already looking forward to going again!


http://jenisicecreams.com/index.html

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's newest movie, Inglourious Basterds, has had the biggest opening of his career to date.
This is not surprising, as Basterds is also the best movie of his career to date.

Let me start out by saying that Basterds is NOT a revenge movie (we've already seen one of those, thankyouverymuch, it's called Kill Bill) although the plot is often misconstrued as such. Instead, this movie was made to mock American Bloodlust.

In a nutshell, the movie is about a special troop of Jewish-American soldiers (called the Inglourious Basterds and led by Brad Pitt) who are sent to harass and harangue the Nazis during WWII. The movie culminates with a plot to take out all of the Nazi head-hanchos (Hitler included) during the premiere of a Nazi propaganda movie.

-- spoiler alert!!! --
The first scene of the movie portrays Nazi brutality as they gun down a Jewish family ... and the next hour shows Americans shooting, scalping, stabbing and beating-to-death-with-a-baseball-bat, Nazis. Being that this is a Tarantino movie, all of the above is shown in great (and bloody) detail.
Throughout all of this, a good 90% of the people around me in the theater were cheering, yee-hawing, clapping, and shouting praises at the Basterds' bloody works.

Later on when the higher-ups of the Third Reich are watching the Nazi propaganda movie, the entire Nazi theater is alive with cheering, yee-hawing, clapping, and praises for the hero: who is shown shooting and killing wave after wave of American soldiers.

Sound familiar? I'd just been hearing the *SAME THING* in my East-Tennessee movie theater for the entire previous hour!
There is absolutely no difference between what the Nazis did and what the Basterds are doing on screen, and Tarantino has America yelling for more.

What he has done with Basterds is cleverly point out that - in the movie - we are both the same. In Basterds, American brutality and Nazi brutality are next to indistinguishable
Historically, Nazis would carve the Star of David into the chests of Rabbis, however this is not shown or mentioned in the movie. Instead, in Inglourious Basterds Pitt and his gang carve swastikas into the foreheads of Nazis in able to "identify them after they remove their uniforms". Also, aside from the first scene of the movie and then later on in the propaganda film, there really is very little Nazi violence portrayed onscreen. The vast majority of the blood and gore is the Americans' doing.

Tarantino uses a movie-within-a-movie to make a poignant commentary on the ideas of American superiority and bloodlust; and in doing so, makes Inglourious Basterds truly glorious indeed.

Jas goes to Bath Junkie

08/19/2009

While I was in Japan I taught a few self-introduction lessons and got LOTS of questions about my "hometown" of Knoxville. Both of the above basically amounted to me talking all about Knoxville and extolling it's many virtues.
This in turn made me realize that Knoxville really is a cooler city than I ever gave it credit for when I was living here before!

For example - Knoxville has a Bath Junkie.

For those of you who haven't been; it's a store which carries an fantastic collection of bath products, lotions and etc. However, unlike the million other bath stores around town, at Bath Junkie you mix your own scents and choose your own color - thus enabling you to get *exactly* what you want (or to mess up and make something hideously-smelly)... and it is LOTS of fun.

There's a extensive selection of scents to choose from for your mixing enjoyment.
Among them: jasmine, almond, cinnamon, champagne, asian rain, candy cane, and man magnet.

Who wouldn't want to wash their hair with man-magnet shampoo?

http://www.bathjunkie.com/locations/tn/knoxville/#

Jas goes to Texas

08/10/2009

A few days after we got back to Tennessee, we turned right around and went to Austin, Texas to visit my mom.
Texas is not quite like the rest of the United States ... and Austin is not quite like the rest of Texas!

Which is why I love Austin.
(No offense to the rest of TX)

For those of you who haven't been, here are a few of my favorites:

Cupcakes:
www.heycupcake.com
(2 locations in Austin)

Mexican food:
www.guerostacobar.com
(any Mexican food in TX is good food, really, but Guero's is one of the best!)

Any food:
www.centralmarket.com
(you can find anything and everything here, and oh how I wish there was one in Knoxville!)

Bats:
www.icebats.com
(Austin's very own hockey team; they're pretty good too)
http://www.austincityguide.com/content/congress-bridge-bats-austin.asp
(real bats!)

Summertime entertainment:
www.zilker.org
(free theater in the park!)

Suffice it to say that Austin is a fun town and an ideal place to vacation anytime of the year :)

Japan part last

o7/31/2009

In our last 2 weeks in Japan we:
1. Conquered Fuji (kind of)
2. Went to our first Japanese baseball game (It was fun for a little while but really -- who can stand watching an entire game of baseball? Not I! )
3. Saw the BEST art exhibit EVER (by Japanese artist Seiji Fujishiro who works completely by cutting and pasting various types/textures of paper)
4. Went inside the largest wooden structure in the world (Todaiji Temple in Nara City)
5. Said lots of goodbyes ...

But Fuji probably makes the most interesting story.

It is said that only a fool never climbs Fuji ... or climbs it twice.
We decided to start climbing in the dead of night so that we could reach the peak in time to watch the sunrise. Japan is, after all, the Land of the Rising Sun. Fuji has 10 stations - the first being the base and the 10th being the top - and most people (ourselves included) start from the 5th station. There is in fact a bus that will take you straight to the 5th station, and so began our trek. We started out at about 9PM and had a really pleasant hike and made good time all the way up to the 8th station. At the 8th station, however, we realized several things: it was cold and getting colder, it was wet and getting wetter, everyone around us had waterproof pants and jackets, and we were wet and cold and had waterproof jackets but regular pants. Not to be daunted by such things we pressed on anyway, only to realize that we were indeed ill-prepared.

By the time we left the 8th station (about 1:30 AM) it was so cloudy and wet that Ian's glasses were completely fogged up. It was still pitch dark outside so I was directing him where to walk as we made our way up. In most places it was so steep that we had to hold on to a guard-rope... unfortunately this guard rope was wet, which in turn soaked through my gloves, which in turn froze my hands and was definitely uncomfortable. We both had on gore-tex shoes and heavy smart-wool socks, but our feet were frigid nonetheless. We realized that freezing and blind is no way to climb a 13,000 foot mountain (not safely anyway) and so at the 1/2 way point to the 9th station we had to head back down.

On the way down we were hit with strong winds, then rain, then torrential rain, and finally, hail. It was really not ideal!
Luckily we made it all the way down in one piece and our Nikon D300 camera was none-the-worse for having been rained and hailed upon (we discovered that our waterproof bags were not actually waterproof). As it turns out, none of the people who actually made it to the peak that day saw the sunrise either because it was too cloudy!

So in the end, we really didn't miss that much by not going to the peak, we had a fabulous time (rain and hail aside!) and we're already looking forward to Fuji Climb part 2: the Revenge!

Japan part 8

It's now our last month in Japan (in fact we'll be back in the states in exactly 3 weeks and 3 days ... Taco Bell here we come!); but we have been keeping busy and our last few days are filling up fast.

This past Saturday we went to our on-again-off-again pottery class and I had my weekly taiko practice. My last taiko will be on July 25th, and I'm definitely sad to be leaving! I've already done a Google search for taiko dojos in Tennessee and it seems like there are exactly zero in the eastern US, so it looks like this might be the end of my taiko days (for now anyway). However, my group is having a going away party for me and Ian a few days before we leave, and that will be fun :)

Yesterday (Sunday) one of the English classes that Ian tutors took the two of us out to dinner in Kobe. We went to a "Viking-Style" restaurant ("Viking-style" = Buffet .... I have no idea where they got the name from) overlooking the Kobe bay. It was really cool; Ian and I had never been to the Kobe waterfront before and now we want to go back at least one more time before we leave!

This week is my last week of school. On Wednesday all the JETs who are leaving Nara (myself included) will be going to Nara city to have a farewell ceremony and meet the Governor of Nara prefecture. We will get our picture taken together and get some sort of "Nara ambassador" certificate - which is cool - but we will also have to wear suits (in 85 degree weather with 85% humidity) and make a speech in Japanese - not so cool.... Then this Friday is my last day of school ever, so I have to make a speech to my teachers (in Japanese) and a speech to the entire school during the closing ceremony (in Japanese).

You may think that after a year of living in Japan we would both speak Japanese really well, but this is not the case! We both have a pretty good listening comprehension level, but our speaking skills are next to nil. However, I have written a basic speech in Japanese that I can use for all three occasions with a few little word changes here and there. My governors speech is about how I enjoyed Japan and will miss Japan; my teachers speech is about how I enjoyed Takatori and will miss teaching, and my closing ceremony speech is about how I enjoyed teaching and will miss the students. ( Clever, I know. )

Next week we are going to make our last day-trip to Kyoto (we've been there handful of times over the past year but it doesn't get old!) and we are also going to climb Mt. Fuji. As luck would have it, one of Ian's students is taking a short family vacation to Fuji next week and said that we could ride along with them! We weren't quite sure how to get to Fuji & back (and we heard it can be pretty pricey) so it's super nice and convenient that they are going to drive us. As a matter of fact, almost everyone here has been INCREDIBLY nice to us, so before we leave we are also going to go on a big shopping trip for some little gifts for all the people who've helped us along the way during our stay here.

Anyway - the week after that we have another going away party hosted by another one of Ian's classes, and we are also going to see a Hanshin Tigers baseball game. Hanshin is the Osaka/Kobe team, and the pride of the Kinki/Kansai area of Japan! We've heard that the games are quite an experience ... not so much because of the team, but because of their die-hard fans. Sometime in there we also want to make one last day trip up to Osaka and Nara cities.

Then on August 5th we will be back in the states!

Japan part 7

05/19/2008

Since last november I have been taking drum lessons at a local community center. These are not American drums, but rather Japanese drums called "taiko" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko).
They have religious origins, and temples will often call in a taiko team to play for a religious ceremony or festival. My taiko group performed on April 3rd at a temple near Nara city, for a festival celebrating Buddah. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEYMp94wZUQ

It was definitely great fun, and even though I wont have any more performances before we leave, I am still going to my weekly classes :)

April is also the start of the new Japanese-school-year. This means there is a lot of shuffling around of teachers. The way the school system works here is that each teacher belongs to the system as a whole, and the head-hanchos can move teachers around as they see fit. A teacher can put in a request, or refuse to move, but the board of education does not have to honor their wishes. Teachers can be moved after one year, or 14 years... they never know for sure when it will happen! They're given about 3 days notice, and during those 3 days all the teachers in Nara-ken who are moving must pack up all their stuff and unpack again at their new school. Thus the begining to middle of April was full of welcoming ceremonies and goodbye parties of various kinds.

Towards the end of April real classes at school finally start ... but then during the first week of May there is a string of National Holidays known as "Golden Week" - which basically amounts to a 5 day weekend!

All of Japan gets Golden Week off so traveling is typically busy and expensive during this time ... so Ian and I decided not to go anywhere and just relaxed at home. It was very nice :)

In other news - right now Japan is in the middle of a swine-flu scare. A group of students from Osaka went to Canada for Golden week and one of them returned with swine flu. That student was on the volley ball team at her high school, and there was a volley-ball match between other Osaka & Kobe highschools .... and now there are over 100 cases of swine flu in Osaka / Kobe (hand-washing using soap is not common amongst the students!) and every single school in Osaka is closed for the week. On top of that, they are screening every single passenger on-board any planes coming from the states or Mexico, and if just one passenger has a fever, that passenger and every passenger around him will be quarantined in Tokyo for a week! I personally think they are over-reacting, by, well, A LOT; but who knows. At least if swine flu comes to Nara I might get a week vacation!

Japan part 6

03/02/2009

Its the first week of March here - and that means several things in Japan: entrance exams for junior high school students, the end of the year for senior high school students, graduation, and the Naked Man festival! I'll start with the entrance exams ...

In the states the high school you go to is determined by where you live and everyone automatically gets in.

Here, however, all the junior high school students have to apply to various high schools and then take a rigorous exam to get accepted. Lots of these students go to extra "cram school" for 3 - 5 hrs every day after their regular school just to prepare for this test! In fact, its a lot like applying for college in the US! The security surrounding these exams is intense as well, with every teacher doing everything they can to make sure not a single snippet of information leaves the school before the exams start.

After the testing is finally over and everything has been graded, all the students who took the test (and their anxious parents) are invited back to the school to see the unveiling of the results. They all stand around in our courtyard and watch as some teachers on the 3rd floor of the building lower giant wooden boards covered in numbers. The numbers are the student's testing ID numbers ... if their number is displayed on the board, they got in! If their number is not there, they failed. There was a lot of joyful screaming and also a lot of crying that day...

Just in case a school doesn't get enough students during the first testing period (we didn't), two more are scheduled in mid & late march.

March 1st was graduation! Its basically what you would expect for any other graduation: speeches from the principal / vice principal / a student, lots of pictures, lots of crying, and the handing out of diplomas. The diploma-giving is one area where this is a big difference, though. Whereas in the states (where we celebrate individuality) the diplomas are handed out to the students one-by-one; here one representative from each home room (there are 6 total) comes to the stage and accepts one diploma with everyones' names on behalf of the entire home-room. I found that to be slightly odd, but sensical in a culture that emphasizes groups and teams.

In another cultural note - some of the JETs here recently participated in a very interesting festival called "Hadaka Matsuri"or in English: The Naked Man Festival.

As you may have guessed by the name, this is a festival involving (nearly) naked men. It takes place at the end of February, and basically what happens is at midnight a bunch of men wearing only socks and fundoshi (otherwise known as sumo-wrestler diapers) run together through a city, around a sacred pond, and into a temple where they try to grab a lucky stick. The man who grabs the stick will have good luck all year.

It's very hard to actually get the stick, though, because: 1. literally thousands of other men are also trying to grab it, 2. there is a lot of pushing and shoving 3. the Japanese mafia (the yakuza) sometimes make an appearance and punch people in the face (I was told that was indeed the case this time!).

All-in-all, this is a uniquely Japanese (and slightly dangerous) experience. Ian and I decided not to go and I think it was probably for the best. 6 of the other JETs here ran in the festival, and 2 fell down the stairs (by "fell" I mean were pushed), and another one got his head stepped on and developed an unsightly rash on his leg from rubbing against so many fundoshi.

Here is a link if you want to read more about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadaka_Matsuri

Japan part 5

12/18/2008

Teaching is going well for me - two weeks ago we gave out our finals and last week we did grading. I actually really enjoy grading the students essays because they say the funniest things. For example: one essay question was, "is it okay to marry a foreigner?", and one student wrote - "yes, because if you marry a foreigner you will have a mongrel baby. Mongrel babies look like angels. Many times I buy magazines to admire mongrel babies." Don't we all?

This week I have been anxiously awaiting my winter break! Since Christmas isn't a holiday here I DO have to use some of my vacation days, but luckily not that many. Dec. 23rd is the Emperor's birthday (and so a national holiday) and then our school gives us off from Dec. 28 - Jan 4th for New Years. It's quite convenient!

While Christmas is not an actual holiday here, they do still celebrate it ... kind of.

"Merry Xmas" signs are literally EVERYWHERE in stores and buildings and train stations (but we have yet to see "Merry Christmas"), and in some of the bigger malls (and Starbucks) they have been playing American Christmas music non-stop for the past few weeks!

Japanese families with small children will sometimes get a Christmas tree (always fake) and give their kids 1 or 2 presents each ... but this usually stops before the child becomes a teenager.

Couples also celebrate Christmas by going out to eat at the neighborhood KFC (which is also decked out for Xmas; including colonel sanders dressed as Santa).

So, while it is definitely different here; we are still getting into the Christmas spirit! Most recently we went to Kobe to see the luminarie festival.

According to wikipedia:

"The Kobe Luminarie is a light festival held in Kobe, Japan every December. It began in 1995 and commemorates the Great Hanshin earthquake of that year. The lights were donated by the Italian Government. They are kept up for about two weeks and only turned on for a few hours each evening. Each light is individually hand-painted. Major streets in the vicinity are closed to auto traffic during these hours to allow pedestrians to fill the streets and enjoy the lights."

Unfortunately, because admission is free and Kobe is running out of money, this may be the last year they do the luminarie, so we were really glad we had the chance to go.

Japan part 4

11/03/2008

The big news of the moment: we finally got internet! It took 2.5 months, but better late than never, as they say...

Recently the English department at school had a welcome lunch for me (only a mere two and a half months after we got here) - and they took me out to an American style restaurant. This, like most things here, wound up being very Japanese!

We drove from the school to a quaint little log-cabin looking house displaying Canadian flag and a sign that says "Country Kitchen". The seating inside was Japanese style (i.e. you take your shoes off at the door, sit on cushions on the floor and eat at very low tables). After we got settled a server brought out our first course: a stew with meat, beans, broccoli, bell pepper, peas, okra, and clams. Next came egg and tomato sandwiches, followed by rice-paper spring rolls and some mystery deep-fried-food (it was good though). Then the server came out with a pizza. This was very exciting for me because pizzas are not super common here and cheese is almost unheard of. It looked like a BBQ chicken pizza (complete with dark BBQ-esque sauce and some white chickenish meat) but when I took a bite I discovered that it wasn't Barbeque sauce at all ... it was squid-ink! And what I thought was chicken was in fact squid as well.

I don't really recommend it.

Next the server brought out pasta with a tomato-cream sauce topped with basil (or so I thought!). Upon closer examination it was actually pasta with a ROE-cream sauce and nori (dried sea-weed) on top! This sounds really strange but it was actually pretty good. Maybe not as good as tomato-cream and basil, but definitely better than squid ink! Then she came out with an American-style tomato-sauce and cheese pizza (yay!), and finally we all had some cheesecake for dessert.

Now, when I say cheesecake I don't mean American cheesecake; I mean a cake that is made with cheese. It's no New-York style, but it is a suitable substitute!

The other big October event was Halloween.

Halloween is not celebrated in Japan.

Some may say that's because Halloween is a purely western tradition, but I say it's really because:
1. there is no fluoride in the water here, so all that candy is more likely to rot the childrens' teeth right out of their skulls, and 2. many people here dress up in a costumey-fashion on a regular basis, so its really no big deal for them! (this phenomena is known as cosplay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay)

However, all this really means is that they miss out on trick-or-treating and all the department stores etc start decorating for Christmas a month earlier (they've already got the xmas music & winter desserts out at our local Starbucks).

Japan part 3

10/09/2008

The weather is finally starting to cool down, the rainy season / typhoon season is finally ending, Ian and I are getting into the swing of things, and of course, the holidays are approaching (which is always fun!).

Last weekend Ian and I went on a shopping trip to Osaka. I was never much for clothes in the States; and anyone who has ever looked for pants in my size will know they are hard to find! Here, on the other hand, EVERYTHING is my size! I have never had such an easy time and I love it.

We went to a landmark mall in Osaka, which is famous first of all for being enormous and second of all for having a huge ferris wheel on top of it (which we went on!). The "Hep Five" ferris wheel is the 15th tallest in the world. Here is a website with some more information about it for anyone who is interested: http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-2763615-hep_five_ferris_wheel_osaka-i

Then this week at school we had our school's "sports day". Sports Day in Japan is NOTHING like any school-related sporting event in the US.

It starts out with all the students waving flags marching around the sports field (in a very organized fashion) according to class and grade (each grade is divided into 6 classes); and whenever they pass by the school principal all the students "heil", just like the Germans (yes really).

Then they all line up - still according to grade - across the sports field and they do warm up exercises to the "exercise song". The exercise song is a song that apparently every one in Japan knows: it is played on the radio every morning at 5 AM, and every morning there is a large portion of the population who gets up and does their morning exercises to this song.

Finally the actual sports start. There are a few of the expected ones, like the 500 meter dash, 1000 meter races and so on - however those are the minority.

The major race of the day was the "crazy race". It involves students crawling under netting, jumping various hurdles, and getting into potato-sacks to jump to the finish line.

There were several relay races too, the most interesting of which being the "crazy relay", which is kind of like a scavenger-hunt combined with a race. The students pull a card out of a hat, and then have to race to get the people/things named on the cards and bring them to the center of the field.

There was a massive tug-o-war competition, with 40 students on each side of the rope, and also a massive jump-roping competition (again with 40 students per rope!).

There was also some strange sport where two students held up giant bamboo poles with baskets on top while all the other students tried to throw balls into the baskets.

My favorite sport involves those same giant bamboo poles, but this time with no baskets on top. Instead, about 6 students hold the bottom of the pole steady, one student kneels in front of the pole to act as a spring board, and one student comes running across the sports field, jumps off the spring-board student, and climbs the bamboo pole to put a flag at the top. There are 3 groups doing this, and it is a competition to see who can get the flag up and down the poles the fastest. As you can imagine, the poles fell a few times and there were several minor bamboo-pole and jumping related injuries.

Sports day was a very very amusing day for me.

Japan part 2

09/03/2008

School has started so now there is finally something new to do!

There is no class on the first and last days of a semester here; instead there is an all-school assembly in the gym. There is no central heat or air conditioning in the gym (or in the rest of the building either for that matter) so as you can imagine it was hot in there on Monday. In fact, there are 750 students and about 50 other staff members so when I say "hot" I'm really talking about sauna-like heat and humidity. Two people passed out from the heat (luckily I was not one of them) and I gave a speech introducing myself to the school (it was just a few short sentences in English about how happy I am to be here and so on) and it went pretty well!

Then yesterday was the first day of actual classes - my schedule this semester is really pretty easy; I have 3 classes on Monday, 4 Tuesday, 2 Wednesday, 1 Thursday and 3 Friday. So yesterday I taught 4 classes but my lesson plan was the same for all of them (a self-introduction on my part followed by a worksheet on "summer vacation" for the students) so it was easy and it went smoothly. All of my students so far are really sweet (and funny) so I'd say things got off to a good start yesterday.

As for the actual teaching situation: the motto of the JET Programme is basically "every situation is different"; meaning that some JETs don't do much or any teaching at all and are simply used as "tape recorders" to say vocab words in English - and other JETs may to most if not all of the lesson planning and teaching! The only similarity in JETs jobs is that there will always be a certified "Japanese Teacher of English" (JTE) in the room. My school is one of the more JET-friendly ones (luckily)!

Ian and I are working on getting internet at our apartment, so hopefully that will happen sometime this month! It is not unusual in Japan for seemingly simple things (like getting internet) to take a horribly long time. What can be accomplished with one phone call in the states tends to take several phone calls and lots of paperwork here.

Jas goes to Japan

I was a member of the JET Programme from August 2008 - August 2009 and I lived and taught in Japan for a year. Here are some anecdotes from my Japanese experience ...

08/13/2008

Here is your latest update from the land of the rising sun.

We are starting to get in to the swing of things here; every weekday morning we get up around 6:00 and eat breakfast together before I leave for work at 7:20. I have to be at school before 8:25 even thought it is summer vacation for the students right now and there is not much for me to do yet! (School starts on Sept. 1st). I leave everyday at 4:00 to catch the train back home. Depending on the train connections, it takes between half an hour and 45 minutes to get from our apt. to my school, so its not too bad. Also, all the teachers here are really nice; they all love to talk to me (and they all talk about Ian all the time) and one of them took me out to lunch the other day! She drove me around to see some of the local temples\ruins (of which there are tons!), and that same teacher wants to take me and Ian to a nearby archeological museum this Friday.

Ian has kept himself busy while Ive been at school - he is in charge of grocery shopping (and household stuff) and learning where everything is in our town. The other day he surprised me with iPhones! This is quite impressive considering it is hard to find things around here (there is a definite lack of street signs and those that are displayed are all in Japanese of course) and nobody in the store spoke a single word of English! (The entire transaction was done with the help of some third party person at a call center). And for those of you who were wondering, iPhones are very very awesome. :)

Yesterday Ian went out to get us collapsible bicycles. Aside from the coolness factor (folding bikes are pretty neat), they are the only bikes allowed on trains. Being able to take bikes with us when we travel by train is going to be a great help!

The train system here is super convenient as it is, and we're in a great location to travel around. We live about 5 minutes (walking) away from Yagi Station in Kashihara city, and from Yagi (by train) its only about 45 minutes and $5 to get to Nara city (the capital city of Nara prefecture, and famous for it's park filled with thousands of tame deer). In fact, we are going to Nara tonight to see the lantern festival that is taking place in the park! Here is a link:

http://damien.douxchamps.net/photo/japan/nara/tokae/

From Yagi it's also about an hour and $9 to get to Kyoto, 45 minutes $8 to go to Osaka, and about an hour to get to Kobe. So anyone who wants to come visit us will have lots of vacation options! However it takes several hours (and its rather expensive) to get to Tokyo from where we live; but anyone who is visiting can pick up a Japanese rail pass in the states ($200) and get unlimited train tickets anywhere in Japan for a week.

Speaking of vacations, some of you have asked when I have time off work. I get every weekend off (and if I ever do have to come in to work, they give me an extra vacation day later) and I have a few scattered 3 day weekends between now and November, but I dont really have any long breaks until late December - at which point I will hopefully be able to take a week & a half or 2 weeks off for Christmas break! Of course we dont actually get Christmas off here, but December 23rd is a national holiday (the Emperors birthday) and we will get several days off for New Years, so it should be easy to get a good chuck of Christmas holiday time!