Cold comes to Nagano

First night of the year where it was proper cold yesterday, down as low as one degree centigrade. It won't be long before we start seeing frost in the mornings. I do love this time of year, I have to say.

Over the mountains from us in the ski resort of Hakuba, it's already started to snow. You can see pics of it here. None here in Nagano yet, but soon, soon, soon ...

Chris Ward
November 12th 2013

Alps view

Just a nice view shot today. This is looking over at the Northern Japanese Alps from Kinasa, a kind of mountain village area about half an hour from my house.

Chris Ward
November 4th 2013

Repairing the shed roof

So, for those of you who don't know, the wife and me recently picked up a pretty old house which we're in the process of doing up. It needs a lot of work done on it, but today I took a break from the insides to get to something I've been meaning to do for ages, repairing the roof of the shed.

Basically, when we moved in, the shed only had half a roof, was full of sodden junk inside and had these pieces of corrugated iron lying around which I assumed had at some point fallen off the roof.

Not being one for heights, it was quite a sketchy experience having to climb up on to the roof of the house in order to reach across and nail the things back down. Needless to say, I survived, and hopefully if the rain stays out I can put my snowboards and cricket stuff in there. The shed, funnily enough, is about the same size as my first apartment in Nagano.

Anyway, here's some pics.

One piece of the corrugated iron was particularly rusted through, so I used a few plastic bags to improvise a waterproofing layer. Not sure if it'll work, but we'll see ...

The bit I had to do was the nearer two pieces. I actually turned them over because they were all bent and warped and it was easier to push them under the bit in the middle. 

The other side.

Looking down on the shed and its repair job from the roof.

And a few pictures of the view from the roof of my house. The building on the right is Nagano Commercial High School, where I currently work. Nice and close! In the background is Suga Daira, a mountainous highland area which is good for hiking and skiing.

The tree with the orange fruit is a persimmon tree. Not a big fan myself. The kind of red coloured building in the middle is a nice onsen (hot spring).

My neighbour's garden. They have a really nice carp pond, but I can only see it from the roof!

Chris Ward
October 26th 2013

Nice car ...

Saw this beauty outside my local 7Eleven this morning ...

I'd say that's most of the cast of Anpanman, a kid's cartoon. The driver was a middle-aged office worker who gave me a sour look when she saw me photographing her car.

Come on, let those cuddly little bread-men cheer you up ...

Chris Ward
Sept 25th 2013

Construction a-go-go part 1

Next to my modest little house there used to be an overgrown wasteground area that my cat loved to hunt in. A few months back it was sold off and now it's being turned into a construction site. I'm rather sad about this but it has been fascination to watch it all change from trees, flowers and weeds into concrete and mud.

Here are a few pictures of the change so far.

 

 In this first picture you can see how it was before, looking from my house. All the houses in the background have now been torn down.

  

 And a sprint picture from a similar angle. That white house is to the left of the line of four in the first picture. All this (except the white house) is now soil and concrete.

 My cat, Miffy, might not appear too disgruntled, but I can assure you she is.

 The trees and vegetation has all been scrapped away and now they're preparing the land to put in big lumps of concrete. That little house with the red roof is where I live. Neither writing nor teaching are making me, the wife and the cat rich, but I enjoy both. It belongs to my school.

The digger shows up.

And the destruction begins. All these houses are coming down so they can build an access road. No idea where all the tenants went.

That line of four houses is now gone. The fifth, detached, one on the right is still there, although the tenants are gone and its been gutted. I assume at some point they'll pull it down too.

And the current state of play. The houses are gone and they're putting in drainage ditches or whatever they're called.

They're making a ton of noise outside as I write this. I'll post some more pictures in a few days.

Chris Ward

21st Sept 2013

My desk at work

An exclusive look at where I work! This is my desk at the high school where I work three days a week (Tues and Thurs I go to my "visit" school).

I'm an assistant English teacher. At the moment this pic was taken I was writing letters to a group of kids up at mountain school which is connected to my visit school. Piled up on the left is a bunch of stuff I was preparing for a talk on England.

If you look carefully you can see a pic of me two two kids in animal costumes, taken at our school's festival, while beside the computer is the "fear" mug, which has a picture of me and the wife at Fuji-ku Highland. The pic was taken while we were zooming down the third tallest rollercoaster in the world, and is so named because of the expression on my face ...

Chris Ward
May 6th 2013

Today's Japanese lesson

A short Japanese lesson for you today, and its an important one! Those four big red characters read no-mi-ho-dai, which means "all you can drink".

Japanese is usually read from right to left and top to bottom. The first character on the top right means "drink'. On it's own it's read "no". The second character below it is a hiragana character (used to make tenses, etc) and is read "mi". The one on the top left is read "ho" and the one below it is "dai", together meaning "all you can" or "as much as you want".

The white ones mean "no reservation necessary". The number is the price, 1500 yen, or about $15. That's pretty good value ...

Chris Ward
30th April 2013

A perfect combination?

Spotted this interesting little combo in a bar in Matsumoto this week. Hmmm...

English Day in Fuetsu High School, Iida

Today, despite being Saturday, I went down to Iida in south Nagano to help out at Fuetsu High School's English Day. There were six foreign teachers in total and we had to do a variety of activities with a total of around 40 students.

Due to Iida being in the butt end of nowhere, I stayed over at a mate's house the night before and we made our way down together. Still, it required a 5am start. We were on the road at 5.50am, and while the sunrise was nice and all, I'd have much rather been asleep!

Fuetsu High School is set in a really pretty location halfway up a hill from the main part of Iida town.

For my special "world culture" activity, I taught the students how to make English tea. There were six groups of students, and because the first couple went pretty heavy on the milk I had to water it down to make it last. The last couple of groups had some pretty strong tea!

They seemed to enjoy it well enough, though.

 After lunch my base group had to listen to me "lecture" them for ten minutes and then make a presentation based on my talk. I told them all about the history of the words "Britain", "England", "Great Britain" and "the UK", and then about hte origins of the British flag. Surprisingly none of them fell asleep.

 Here they are discussing what to talk about.

And here's my group doing their presentation. They did it completely ad-lib without writing a script like all the other groups did, and while it was interesting, and one point there was a two-minute period of giggling and whispering. Slightly un-pro but they did a good job anyway!

Overall, lots of fun was had by all and the kids really enjoyed it. I caught the direct bus back to Nagano (three long hours) and found it rather surprising that it was still snowing up in the highland areas. It's late April!

Chris Ward
20th April 2013

Where I live

Nagano City is located in the middle of the Japanese Alps, two hours by train / four hours by bus from Tokyo. It's a relatively small city by Japanese standards, about 380,000 people, and is famous for the 1998 Winter Olympics. I remember nothing of that, of course, because in 1998 I was at university and spent most of my time drinking and watching crap horror movies. Oh well.

I live right on the edge of the city, not far from the river you can see in the above picture. I work at a high school called Nagano Shogyo, which means Commerical High School. My students are pretty good but they generally don't like English and don't speak it very well. They're quite good at sports, though, and you can see the edge of my school's baseball ground in the foreground.

Of course, it's currently spring time, and Nagano, like everywhere else in Japan, is famous for cherry blossom viewing, what is called "hana-mi", literally "flower-viewing".

The cherry, or "sakura" flower is the most popular, and is a light pink colour.

Here's some at the end of my street.

Generally, what people do is sit underneath them and get drunk, which is all well and good but in early April it can be freezing cold in the evenings. Still, it's a national pasttime, so it has to be done!

This is Zenkoji, the Buddhist temple near my house and Nagano's number one tourist attraction.

This is my old car, in the snow last winter. We get some pretty huge dumps and this was one of the biggest, probably about 30cm overnight. On the right is my house. That's about all you need to see of it. It's pretty small and is owned by my school. Still, it does the job.

Not far from my house we have views like this. That line of mountains in the distance is the northern part of the Japanese Alps. Lots of great skiing and hiking.

This is my new car, a 2004 Honda Fit, which I just bought a month ago. It was dead cheap because it has high mileage, but it's been really well looked after and compared to my old car it's a Rolls Royce. In the background you can see the Alps again.

And this of course is my cat, Miffy, the reason I'm not as productive as I'd like and why I get up at 4 a.m. every day. She turned four this month.

As well as an English teacher I write books in my free time, and have been doing so since I was eight or nine years old. Yes, that's them you can see in the side bar, and if you've come here from my writing blog then welcome. This blog isn't to sell my books but of course I won't mind if you buy fifty copies or so for every single person you know. They're actually quite good.

Anyway, that's all for now. Be sure to stop in again soon.

Chris Ward
April 18th 2013

Good morning and welcome

I just set this blog up today. My name is Chris Ward, and I am an English teacher and part time writer living in Nagano, Japan. This blog will be about my Japanese life.

I'll try to be posting at least once at week. Be sure to sign up for the mailing list to make sure you don't miss any posts.

Thank you for reading!

Chris Ward
April 18th 2013