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6.25.2003 This time, Julie of the Italics will begin the weblog. We've been warned by everyone we know that rainy season is tough. It's hot and humid and it rains 23 hours a day...and it lasts for about five weeks. Sure its not convenient, but HELLO, we're on our first of many, HUGE adventures! That was until this morning. When I lifted my facial soap, I found it covered with mold. How can I have that fresh feeling all day if my soap covers me with mold? I won't fight this sitting down. Instead, I'm attacking this apartment with karabi kurina (MOLD KILLING CLEANER)! We'll be loopy from that fresh mold-killing smell, but we won't be moldy! Here are a few fun facts about Japan to get you through the work day: 1. Japan has approximately 1,500 earthquakes every year. 2. Crows are sacred animals. (Yeah right, who wants to eat crow?) 3. While most Japanese people know about Santa, almost no one has ever heard of the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. 4. Japanese students call anything you drink in a 20 oz. bottle, juice. (These bottles are called PET bottles, and most recycling bins have PET printed on the front.) Approximately 90% of my students do not like Coca Cola juice. 5. Most of the plastic containers that you get deli foods in at the grocery store are made from the same plastic as "Shrinky-Dinks". 6. The most common video game I have seen here is "Mah-Jongg". 7. Japanese cotton clothing is not pre-shrunk. So the drill here generally goes: I buy a T-shirt. I wear it once. I wash it. I dry it at the laundromat. I give it to Julie. .: posted by Zander Cannon 10:09 AM Tokyo Time 6.17.2003 We just put up a new photo album about our tea ceremony. Enjoy! .: posted by Zander Cannon 10:10 PM Tokyo Time 6.12.2003 I'm sitting here waiting for Ryo Matsumoto (age 12) to come to my house for his English lesson. He's just begun middle school and goes to kendo (fencing) practice every day, so he might have better things to do. I understand his English teacher at school is a bit of a weird one. He apparently had the students copy a page out of "Alice in Wonderland" on the first day, when a great deal of them still didn't know how to say "Hello". So as far as we know, Ryo is not assured of a great English education at the public schools. I'm still teaching English early every morning (and Wednesday evenings) at Honda with my friends the Honda engineers, or "Hondaneers" as one other teacher sometimes sleepily refers to them. They are really a charming bunch, and have begun joking with me and each other. Sometimes in the minutes before class starts, they even help me with my kanji homework. I'll have to get a picture of them sometime, but the sign at the front gate at Honda says that you can't bring cameras in (or cell phones -- since they've all got cameras nowadays) to forestall the inevitable industrial espionage perpetrated by English teachers/Nissan engineers/ninjas. This summer Julie and I will be coming back to America for a few weeks, to Minnesota and to New Hampshire, and I will have the opportunity to go to the Chicago Comicon and talk with fans and editors and all that. Smax the Barbarian, my project with Alan Moore, is going along nicely, and will feature coloring by the inestimable, and improbably named, Ben Dimagmaliw. Hopefully there will be issues to share at Chicago. So to the people I'll be seeing in Chicago, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, I ask you-- got anything you want me to bring from Japan? I got some ideas already, but some clues couldn't hurt. Just drop me an email and let me know at zander@zanderandjulie.com We got to see a genuine Japanese tea ceremony this past weekend. Well, first let me tell you something about "traditional Japanese" anything. 1. It's hard on the knees. My legs have the flexibility of somewhere between a Mr. Universe contender and a two-by-four, but sometimes I think that even the Moscow Circus would be brought to tears by the endless polite silences, perched upon your heels. About every two-and-a-half minutes I would smile sheepishly, then agonizingly move my legs out to the side and sit in a decidedly non-Japanese posture, palm on the floor, legs flopped to the right, askew and defeated. 2. It's pretty precise. We watched Mrs. Fujita fold and refold her silk cloth, dust away stray bits of powdered tea, dip the bamboo dipper into the pot, and wisk water and tea together several times and she did it the exact same way each time. She always folded the silk cloth the same way, she always dipped the dipper the same way, the same number of drops always dripped out of the dipper after she poured it into the cup, and the same amount of powdered tea was always on the edge of the spoon. 3. It's a lot to remember. Not just for her, but every time we came forward to get our tea, we had to move the cup as far forward as we could without moving, then scoot, then move the cup again, then scoot. Same for coming back. Then when you pick up the cup, you have to hold it in your left hand and rotate it clockwise two quarter-turns with your right hand. Then take a sip, savor it for a second, then drink the entire rest of the cup. Now, that's not a lot of tea, but it's hot, and it's a little rough on you if you want to drink it fast (so as not to call attention to yourself). Then you have to make sure to slurp the last bit so that people will know you're finished, then rotate the cup two quarter-turns counter clockwise, then put the cup down with your right hand, on the outside of the tatami mat you're sitting on. Got all that? Add a liberal amount of bowing (from your knees) and polite inquiries about where the pottery was bought (at the appropriate times), and you've just about covered it. OK bye! .: posted by Zander Cannon 4:59 PM Tokyo Time 
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have a pop-up window.