Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!


Above is a picture of the elusive tanuki, or raccoon-dog that lives all over Japan. Unlike raccoons and dogs that are quite plentiful back home, the tanuki is quite hard to find it would seem. This weekend Hugh and I took a road trip to the closest big city, Sendai (pop. 1 million) about 400 km away from here, or about half way from Aomori to Tokyo. On the way down we saw many warning signs along the side of the road to look out for bears and tanuki. We were disapointed that we never saw one tanuki or bear the whole way down.. not even as road kill. Once in Sendai, we checked into a sleazy old business hotel called the Mayflower and then went to a punk rock concert by the American band Suicide Machines at some local club. Suicide Machines is one of those American bands that nobody knows about in America, but has a huge cult following in Japan for some reason. The next day we drove around a whole lot looking for some outlet mall, then shopping at a different mall called "The Mall". After that we went to the zoo. The zoo was great! It had pretty much just as many animals as the Toronto Zoo, but they were all crammed into an area about the size of the High Park 'Zoo', so you didn't have to walk far to see all the exhibits. Best of all we got to finally see a real life tanuki! The next day we went to this touristy place outside of town called Matsushima that was kind of like the 1000 islands back home, complete with lots of boat tours and gift shops selling useless crap. We checked out one of the islands and a cliff with a bunch of Boudas carved into it, then picked up some omiage (sovenire snacks) so as not to offend our co-workers. It pretty much expected here that if you go anywhere on business or vacation you better bring back snacks for everyone. That night back in Hirosaki we went to this Japanese Hip-Hop club with a bunch of other JET teachers. There were a few black guys from the military base in Misawa there, but mostly it was full of hardcore blackanese dudes. It was a pretty interesting experience. The dudes were all wearing the standard baseball and basketball jerseys, though I doubt many of them knew anything about the teams their shirts represented. The girls were mostly pretty slutty looking and two of them were doing some crazy gyrating on the floor, complete with hand stands and ass shaking. Suddenly all the dancing stopped and everyone sat politely on the floor as a group of girls did a funky choreographed dance routine, followed by a blackanese dude freestyling on the mic with Japanese speaking black guy backing him up. Today I hung out in Hirosaki for a bit and did some more shopping. I've been trying to find a carbon monoxide detector for my apartment as I fear my kerosene heater is going to kill me one of these days, however I can't seem to find one anywhere. You'd think considering kerosene heating is the only way homes are heated over hear, people might be a little more concerned about not droping dead from asfixiation. If you don't see this website updated for a while, then you'll know why. Finally on the way home today I was driving along the same road I massacred all the frogs the other week and much to my surprise I saw a tanuki! It was dead and lying in the middle of the road. Guess they could have used more of those tanuki warning signs after all.