Frustrations

Grahh. It seems the entire world conspires against me at times. Today I went and after wandering a good portion of the city found a travel agent and got a ticket from Tokyo to Toronto really cheap. It costs more to pay directly onto credit card, so I told them I'd come back with cash. I need money from my visa to get through the next couple weeks anyway, so I went to an international ATM to take money out on it. At this point I am told by the machine that "Your card issuer has declined your transaction." I asked the people at the bank if they could call the number provided with the message and try to straighten it out, but they wouldn't do anything. I'm guessing it's flagged as suspicious because it's a withdrawl in a different country than Canada, but I called just before I left and told them I was moving so things like this wouldn't happen! My original plan was to leave for Kyoto tomorrow, but now it's looking like that might be impossible. Now that I have a date booked for my plane home, I don't want to waste that time dealing with all this mess when I could be seeing more of Japan. What a hassle. I can't call the Visa people for a few hours because they're closed right now (2:30am in Canada), and by the time I *can* get through to them, the bank and travel agent will be closed. Hopefully things come together tomorrow and I can get an overnight bus out. Still need to figure out what to do with my luggage (I called the embassy in Tokyo, and they were pretty much clueless, and just redirected me to someone's voicemail).

Intersection

Short post. Todd mentioned before that he'd like some pictures of an intersection, so as I was wandering today I came across a Y-intersection with a small bridge across it, so I took pictures of the various roads joining together. Not the most interesting of intersections I'm afraid, but here it is. (The last one is from the ground, looking up at the bridge the others were taken from.)

Food Festival Revisited

Here's the account of yesterday. Mark and I returned to the food festival. There was a big international food area that wasn't set up Saturday, so we wandered around there a bit and had lunch. (For me, lunch was a Brazilian sausage and some Indian curry with naan). Then we went back to the part of the festival next to the castle, split a cheap bottle of sake, and just sat there hanging out in the sun for a few hours. When it got dark out we got Craig to join us and sat next to the river at the Peace Park and drank some beer. Then we wandered to a game complex and had a round of bowling. Not very exciting, but it was one of those relaxing days where you really appreciate what's around you.

A musical performance at the festival. Interesting, but not really my cup of tea.

The infamous bottle of sake we sat on the grass drinking.

Mark reading the various thank you notes Nova students left taped to the door of the Honko office.

A little mini night festival going on at one of the shrines. More food vendors around it.

The A-Bomb dome as we sat in the Peace Park drinking.

Hiroshima Food Festival

This weekend is the Hiroshima Food Festival, which is set up around the Hiroshima Castle. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but it was free to go check it out, so I decided to take a look. As I got closer to the area it was in, I could tell by the massive number of people moving about that it was probably bigger than I initially thought. I also soon learned that it was more than just a festival for food, although food was certainly the major theme. All told, I think there was more than 400 food vendors set up, and probably another 50 or so booths selling used clothing, plants, appliances, and all manner of other odds and ends. There were also various entertainment set up in the area - some directly part of the festival and others I think just taking advantage of the number of people in the area for the day.
You can kind of get an idea of the crowds from this. This picture has 3-4 vendors though, and as I said, there was probably over 400, so you get an idea for how massive it was in total.

An okonomiyaki vendor.

I'm sure there is an appropriately Japanese name for this that I don't know, but for me, it's fish-on-a-stick. Yummy?

Some wandering guys dressed up as samurai. It was a pretty hot day, so they must have been boiling on this outfits.

I boat that circled the moat around Hiroshima Castle all day. I think you could pay to sit on it as the rowed it around, but I was far too cheap to do that.

The Food Festival Continues!

Yakitori grilling. Those Japanese like their skewered meat.

Some performance involving like... giant snake dragon puppets, and a guy with a sword at one point, and some dancing... I'm sure there was a story involved, but I have no clue what it was.

They had a big section with a bunch of plant displays. I think it was a sort of plant exhibition going on as part of the festival, but a lot of them were really impressive.

Some music. I actually thought this band was really good. I find much of the music popular with Japanese people pretty boring and much of it is too much the same, but this was a bit rockier and had more edge to it. Good variety in their songs too. Too bad I don't know their name.

The garden show center piece. It was this huge garden made in the form of a model of Miyajima. The torii and everything is on the other side (I have pictures of that side too, but I'm only going to include the one here). Pretty amazing though.

I didn't really have much to eat at the festival... I bought some orange icecream which they make right in front of you, squeezing the orange juice and everything, and I had a few miniature okonomiyakis which cost 100 yen each.

Plans

Well, I've learned now that beginning in November I either need to start paying rent here, which I can't afford without using my credit card, or leave the apartment. Nova is shut down for restructuring for at least the next 10 days, and after that it's still awfully iffy. So, assuming I haven't found a job by the end of the month, I see myself with 2 main options. First, I could just buy a plane ticket, and head home, probably losing about $4000 on this venture. Other choice is that I can spend a couple weeks running about Japan and actually see the country, and head home, probably losing $5000. For the extra $1000, I'm thinking it's probably worth seeing the country and getting a bit more mileage out of this experience. I'll start deciding things and hopefully have a plan one way or the other by the end of the week.

Drama!

Ok. Quick post. So, everything is shut down today. The president of Nova got fired, and the government has taken over Nova under some special law. There is a good chance that it will be going bankrupt in the next few days. In a way, it's good because now we know what's going on and it won't just keep dragging on. The bad news is that you need to have been working in Japan for 3 months before you can be entitled to any unemployment insurance. With Nova gone under, it's likely that our landlord is going to be kicking us out before long, and still no real leads on a job. Unless something develops quickly, I'll probably need to get a ticket home, and maybe I'll come back and try again in a bit. The uncertainty was ok when I at least had a place to stay, but I don't have enough money for a place to live and I'm not sure I can keep waiting for a job if I'm going to lose my apartment. Anyway, if anybody knows where I can get cheap plane tickets, let me know! It looks like it's $2000 for a one-way ticket, or something like half that for a round-trip ticket. Not sure if I can just get a round-trip one and cancel the second half....

Weekend Summary

Debating whether to go to work tomorrow or just keep hunting for jobs. Some places I've applied have told me outright "we're being flooded by Nova employees, so we're not even looking at applications by anybody currently working for Nova". Hopefully that some of the smaller/more out of the way places aren't so overwhelmed.
My art project is going to take a big longer than I had thought. Yesterday I got a late start, and today it rained for most of the day. I'll keep working on it when I have time though, and hopefully it will be completed soon! Instead I just uploaded a few random pictures taken from my wanderings over the last couple days.

A bunch of vending machines. There are 5 more to the right that I couldn't fit in the photo. So far, the biggest group of machines I've come across.

This is looking down Rijo dori. If you look closely a few blocks ahead you can see a bunch of people walking across the street - that is where Hondori intersects Rijo dori.
A bit of a mouthful. Miyuki bashi-nishizume dori Avenue.

Craziness

So I went in to work today, and just before I was about to start my lessons, I was told by the Japanese staff that nobody else was coming in today. From what I can gather, 2 of them are "striking" because of the pay thing, and 2 of them are legitimately sick, and the other one had her regular day off today. Well, this changed my schedule around a lot, but since the kid classes are the highest priority, I ended up doing 4.5 hours of kids straight, and then had lessons with the max number of students for the rest. On the plus side, one of my students (Megumi) brought in these yummy pastry things filled with cream as a gift. At least I have my weekend now, to relax and figure things out a bit more.
I still have my weekly excursion planned for tomorrow. I'm going to do some job hunting as well, but I figured it would be sad if I stopped doing anything fun while I'm here. The tentative plan is a combination scavenger hunt/art project, and if it works out you'll see the result at some point over the next week! If it doesn't work out, I'm sure something equally interesting will happen, so I'll talk about that instead.

Update on Life

Still no pay, and at this point, I'm thinking it's pretty unlikely I'll ever see any of the $3000 I'm now owed. Strangely, I'm kind of at peace about it all. For now, I'm still going in to work for 3 reasons. First, I don't really have much else to do. I've been applying for new jobs, but you need to remember I came with the expectation of not only getting a pay cheque, but getting a cash advance from the company to survive the first few months. Without either, moving, paying rent on a new place and buying food until I start getting paid by them is looking unlikely. Second, I feel bad for the students. They're hurt by this too, since the way Nova is set up they pay heaps of money for lessons for multiple years, which they're likely to all lose now. Finally, part of me is still hoping that I'll get at least the first paycheque. At this point, I'll probably keep applying for jobs until the end of my 2 days off, and if I don't have any promising leads consider just packing things in (and paying a huge cancellation penalty for my phone). As I see things though, it's been a great experience, and I've learned a lot about myself and about the world. It's too bad things have gone this way, but maybe it means my karma is owed now. Does karma pay interest? Most of the employees are a bit shell-shocked right now. Today, there was only one instructor in the head branch. I had this one kid class today where only a single 5 year old girl showed up, and because her friends were there, she just sat there and cried the entire class. I kind of knew how she felt. I still have about half the money I came over with left. I don't think that it's quite enough for a plane ticket home, but I've always got credit cards too. Just kind of debating now how long I should hold out before I give up. The three main options if I'm not paid are to a)cut my losses and go home immediately, b)splurge on the remaining of my money and see a bit more of Japan, but come home even more in debt, or c)keep living off the cheapest of food and drag things out while hoping for something good to come along. Despite the horror of it all, I'm still in a pretty good mood about things, and am finding it easier to just be amused by the irony of the entire thing than to really get upset. Life's crazy sometimes.