I had the chance to join an aquacultural expedition this morning out onto Lake Saroma.  Scallops are one of the biggest industries in this small town, and the last week of May is one of the most important times of the year for the scallop harvest.  The scallops are farmed, going through a process of maturation over four or five years before reaching the consumer, one that I don’t fully understand.  But this morning, I got a chance to remedy that, and ventured out onto the Lake in a boat for the first time.

It came up just yesterday afternoon.  I had found out that I would have to start paying Japanese local, prefectural, and national income tax starting in June rather than in August like I had thought.  I had also found out that I would be docked 35,000 yen in pay from my June paycheck due to my overuse of personal leave in May.  I wasn’t feeling great.  Yuko, in her infinitely helpful way, suggested that I join a fishing crew with Mr. Sumiyoshi, who works across the room in the Social Ed. Dept.  I already had a busy week, but didn’t want to miss the free boat ride.  I volunteered to go the next morning.

I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but that’s how new experiences work.

Sumiyoshi picked me up at my house around 2:45 AM, and we made the 15 minute drive through fog to Toppushi fishing port, north of central Saroma on the lake.  The amount of traffic on these country roads at three in the morning was impressive.  This is in a town where the national highway is deserted after 8 PM.  Something was definitely going on.

We walked to a small work room, sort of like a shed, but part of a much longer structure that paralleled the dock, where boats were lined up, all of similar white, moulded construction, with yellow and red running lights on the masts.  I was given good waterproof purple pants and a jacket and good grippy gloves and a yellow life jacket.  The women giggled as I struggled to enter the strange vestments, but I’m used to that.

After some introductions to Grampa and Gramma Sumiyoshi, fisherpeople to the core, we quickly made our way out to the boat, set off from the dock out into the lake, and some minutes later rendezvoused at a yellow buoy.  30 or 40 other boats from the same port were also waiting, all the same distance from the shore, as if a line was drawn parallel the same distance as the buoy.  I asked Sumiyoshi what exactly was going on, if this was where we were fishing, this close to shore.  He explained that everyone was waiting for the Fishing Cooperative to make the announcement to start.  “Oh, so is it sort of like a race?” I jokingly asked.  “Yes, that’s pretty much it.” he replied, and as he did so, an announcement came out from the port, piped shortwave through speakers on the boats, echoing disorientingly across the foggy morning gloom.  It was time.

And off we raced.  To our own premarked buoy.  Nubby four-pronged grappling hooks were tossed into the water which grabbed a set line from the water and lifted it up onto two pulleys on the side of the boat.  These pulleys moved the line sideways along the boat, until hanging nets full of scallops emerged.  Hauled up and over the side by a rotating rubber cylinder, they landed with slimy, clattering thuds on the cold deck.  These nets weighed 100-pounds, and were full of one-year-old, white-on-one-side, black-on-the-other, silver dollar sized scallops.  Slid to the side, their rip cord yanked up and out to open the net, they were emptied by two people shaking the scallops as fast as they could into plastic crates on the deck.

My back hurt.  Time flew.  The sun came up.  We went back to the port.  The skipper became a forklift operator and the scallop-shuckers became net-sorters, crate-stackers, deck-swabbers and truck-drivers.

While most of the ten people in our team (that number includes me) prepared the boat and nets and materials for another go, Old Man Sumiyoshi drove the entire catch to the other side of the port for wholesale to other fishermen from Mombetsu, 50 miles up the coast.  These fishermen continue cultivating the scallops by setting them in the cold Sea of Okhotsk.

Back on the boat, we hauled ass back out into the lake, engine belching diesel fumes, men swilling six ounce cans of Georgia coffee and smoking Seven Stars brand cigarettes. We would do this three more times.  On these next three trips we hauled up much smaller nets that I could handle myself.  It took a bit of figuring out, but I caught on quickly and focused so hard on dumping slimy mollusks into a dingy crate that I almost forgot I was even on a boat in the middle of a lake in Japan.  On the final trip ugly green fish kept showing up in the nets.  Gramma said they were called “ganji.”  I have no idea what they are in English, but I enjoyed tossing them out of the boat.

We finished a little early because they had to finish selling the day’s take to the Mombetsans on the other side of the port.  They said there was another run to do, but no time.  So, here I am at home, 7:33 AM, having been awake for five hours, eating fish and rice and drinking sugar-free Emerald Mountain Blend Café au Lait.  Will I do it again tomorrow?  No.  But hell if that wasn’t cool.

I always try too hard to make clever post titles, so I didn’t bother this time.  I also have an increasing tendency to write very long, deep posts every month or two rather than writing more frequent posts every few days.  It’s frustrating to not write for so long, but it’s also frustrating to write something that seems extraneous or forced.  I wrote two very short articles for the Saroma-Palmer Sister City Newsletter yesterday, very quickly because they were already weeks past the date I had promised them by.  They read like 5th grade book reports.  I’m not ashamed of them, but not as proud of them as I am of the writing on other parts of this blog.  I guess in the end, I mainly write for myself, and if I ever choose to become a writer as a profession, I’ll have to learn how to do it for others.  For example, last years post about my Papua New Guinea experience was written over several days, with a lot of editing and careful thought, but also with a lot of inspiration.  I browsed back to it on my iPhone on the way to Papua New Guinea a few weeks ago and was impressed with what I had written.  It took me back to that first experience and made me newly excited for the next.  Hopefully I can keep doing that.

I just talked to my uncle Andy on the phone.  I sent him a postcard from Papua New Guinea with a picture of a fire eater on it.  There’s a guy crunching down on a burning stick like it’s a loaf of french bread.  I’ll miss seeing Andy when I return to Fairbanks next month for Chris and Hosanna’s wedding.  He’ll be cycling around southern France with his wife.  It made me nostalgic once again for travelling.  Keep in mind that I’ve been back from a two week trip to Papua New Guinea for all of a week, and I am living in Japan.  You’d think I’d had enough travelling.  But it’s addicting.  I think as one extends the lifestyle that you find while travelling, creating loose and distant yet numerous relationships, being itinerant becomes a kind of permanence.  It almost becomes kind of a cycle.  With no material or social anchors, (house, wife, kids, mortgage, land, real job) it becomes very easy to jump at chances when they come.  But constantly moving around pursuing those opportunities doesn’t allow those kinds of anchors to get set.  So it perpetuates.  I feel a little bit fluxed sometimes, because I don’t see my current lifestyle leading anywhere that people expect lives to lead.  I can’t see more than a few months down the road, so I don’t plan further than that.  Now, concerning long-terms things like an IRA, I suppose I could use some work.  But for now, I don’t feel the need to reach out into the future and grab at things.  The future will come to me.  I actually surprised myself in an messaging exchange the other day with my friend Jacob, who is likewise postponing adulthood, but in a much more adult way, as a graduate student in Middle Eastern Security Studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. His blog, “The One Seventh Report” is linked to at the right.

9:03 PM me: I am delaying my entry into the workforce

  but I am paying off debt, sort of

  but I am not gaining any valuable skills

  well I guess japanese

  but damn sometimes I laugh at how cush I have it here

 Jacob: I was going to say, you’re delaying your entry into the workforce by… working?

  getting paid?

9:04 PM me: hahahahahaha

  it’s funny that you have to correct that

  I don’t particularly see it that way

  I often don’t feel like an adult

  or even a real person

I surprised myself with that.  Jacob had to remind me that I have a job.  He had to remind me that I am making money, like any other productive member of society.  I suppose he might see me similarly to the way I see him - someone who is pursuing a productive course in life that can be respected and admired.  Maybe I don’t always see things that way.

Well, this post is turning into a musing on things other than Papua New Guinea, so I’ll have to post that in the next update.  As it stands, the trip to Alaska is fast coming.  May 1st will be my last day of work until May 20th.  During that time, I plan to drive to Sapporo, stay there one night with Yoshie, take an overnight ferry from Otaru to Niigata, stay in Niigata one night, meeting friends and colleagues from last year, then take the bullet train to Narita Airport in Tokyo, and try to catch a standby flight to Minneapolis on May 5th.  I’ll hang out with Nate, maybe run to Omaha, and definitely see the new Star Trek movie on May 8th, perhaps the best stroke of luck ever that I am there for that.  The evening of the 8th I have a first class one way award ticket on Alaska Airlines to Anchorage.  The 9th there will be a potluck in Palmer at the Sister City Church where I will give an update on Saroma and my job there to the Sister City Committee and related people.  Sunday is Mothers’ Day and I will relax with my mother.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be serious workdays.  Meeting with principals of all of the sister city schools, the mayor, the superintendent, the school board, visiting high school Japanese classes, Saroma-Palmer exchange student meetings, and presenting to students at Pioneer Peak about Saroma.  I might even wear a tie.  Thursday the 14th I will drive to Fairbanks with Mom and Monte and hang.  Chris Green and Hosanna Tolman will be married on Saturday, May 16th.  I’ll technically be a groomsman, although a poorly groomed man.  On the 17th, I will drive my trusty Subaru back down the Parks to Palmer, finally returning it home after it decided to spend the winter in Fairbanks after blowing its timing belt last August on the way to Chena Hot Springs.  4:15 AM on the 18th I will hop on a 747 heading for Taipei, then onto Tokyo, and back to Saroma, in bed by 10 PM the next night, ready for work on May 20th.  All this has worked out pretty well, and together, with ferries, trains and them infernal flying machines, is a measly $1,300.  I’m looking forward to it, especially the opportunity to reconnect and strengthen some of the sister school relationships.  I sometimes don’t feel particularly qualified to act as a representative of Palmer, since I have absolutely no idea what is going on there.  It’s like I’m one of those exiled Iraqis who fed the US bad intelligence prior to the war - they hadn’t lived in their own country for 20 years.  I haven’t lived in Palmer for seven years now.  While I’ve been back semi-frequently, a few times a year at least, I can’t keep up with all of the changes of people and landscape and life.  I need to go home and conduct research on my hometown from abroad.

One last thing to tie it all together.  I’ve been to many countries, but I’ve only been to a few twice.  Those are the United States (hey, I came back, didn’t I?), France, Italy, Japan, and Papua New Guinea.  Russia technically counts as well, but as it was only Vladivostok for a total of 9 or 10 days, I won’t count it.  France and Italy also don’t fit the mold because they were breeze-through countries that I never developed a lasting connection to.   That leaves the US, Japan, and PNG.  I’d honestly say that Alaska, Hokkaido, and the Waria Valley are the three places on this planet that I feel the most connected to.  I happened to collect several kilograms of rocks from the bed of the Waria River at Pema a few weeks ago.  Green conglomerates, smooth white balls of quartz, gnarled, purple metamorphics.  I like them.  I’m thinking that this summer, I’m going to pave a small doorstep to the ALT house here in Saroma, and ring it with rocks from this area of Hokkaido that I’ve found along the Okhotsk Sea and in the mountains, rocks from Papua New Guinea that I’ve found in the Waria River, and rocks that I intend to find in Palmer, in the Matanuska and Chugach and Talkeetna Mountains.  A tangible synthesis of my favorite pieces of the planet.

George Carté, head of the Sister City Committee in Palmer and former AET, asked me to write a few short articles on recent events in Saroma for the newsletter that he puts out.  I obliged him, and while I’ve written better, here they are.

Final Classes at Saroma Elementary

In Japan the school year begins in April and ends in March.  Last month the 5th and 6th graders at Saroma Elementary wrapped up the year’s English activities with some fun projects.
The two 5th grade classes spent the last three English classes designing their own countries.

In groups of four, they chose their country name, designed the flag, and thought of the president, currency, economy, geography, food, and laws.  They used English as much as possible.  It was a very open ended activity, so it took some time to get started, but in the end I was very pleased with the range and depth of student creativity.  The imagined countries included Sports Land, Junior Kingdom, and Dog Island (pictured).  I’m looking forward to having these students in 6th grade!
The 6th grade class spent their last two lessons writing and performing English skits.  They used all of the English they’ve learned in elementary school and then some.  The skits were performed in groups of about six students, so each student had only one or two lines, but they spoke with confidence, presenting some very funny material.  Skit situations included a restaurant, convenience store, police station, and mortuary.  Just this week, these students entered Saroma Junior High as 1st graders (7th graders).  I hope I can help continue their enthusiasm for English in the coming school year.

Snowstorm in Saroma

Coming to live in Hokkaido after 20+ years living in Palmer, I did not expect to be surprised by the winters here.  But the weekend of February 21st exceeded my expectations.  I awoke on Saturday morning to three feet of new snow plastered across my front door, and a seven foot high drift wrapping around the back of the house.

My car was similarly covered, although a kind neighbor used his front-end loader to clear me out.  I had planned to drive to Abashiri City that Saturday, but a quick check on the Hokkaido road office website showed a “road closed” X on nearly every major highway in the area.  So I stayed home and shoveled.  In the afternoon, the sun came out.  I braved the remaining wind and piled drifts to take a walk down the river levee toward the butter factory and back through town.  Everyone in town was outside, clearing off cars, driveways and roofs.  Those with snowblowers and loaders were helping out their neighbors, eager to get some use out of their expensive toys.  I’m glad the weather intervened that day.  Walking around Saroma on that sunny, white afternoon I felt the sense of community in this small town.  And I now have nothing to brag about concerning snow winters.

In five years of studying Japanese, I have always written my name in katakana, the phonetic syllabary used to write foreign words.  Sean was ショーン (shoun) and Holland was ホーランド (hourando).  In college, I never thought much of this. Outside of Japanese class and a few visits to Japan, I never wrote my name in Japanese.  When I moved to Japan for the first time, my supervisor in Murakami had a personal seal made for me.  She was rather clueless in many matters, and made the seal for my first name rather than my last.  Whenever I used this stamp, I felt a little childish, especially when next to the stamps of the stylized Chinese characters, or kanji, of other co-workers.

A few times, I gave thought to choosing phonetically similar kanji for the sounds in my name.  Both a friend in Gifu and a Japanese professor chose matching characters, or ateji, for my name.  I thought it was neat, but found no particular interest in using it or making it my own.  The meanings never particularly struck me as myself.  Sean is my name.  Its biblical meaning, as a variant of “John”, is “god is gracious,” but it’s more the sound and spelling of the name that I’ve wrapped my personality in.  Phonetic character matches gave meanings such as “the sound of history,” or “one who has received a benefit from the sun.”  Whatever, I thought. Nice, but no thanks.

I never felt particularly deserving of a real kanji name.  Living in Japan, one feels so foreign, and, actively or passively, is treated almost constantly as an outsider.   I felt that assuming characters for my name, shedding its obvious katakana foreignness, would be a ruse without meaning as long as I felt like an outsider more often than I did not.

Last month I found out that I passed level 2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). While I didn’t and still don’t put much faith in the test’s ability to measure my actual proficiency, I realized that I had reached a milestone in terms of what I am able to do with my language ability, and how I have managed to assert my own identity here in Saroma using Japanese as a primary medium of communication.  Suddenly the idea of a kanji name seemed appropriate.  Plus, the BOE and my eikaiwa (english conversation class) students and some other friends threw me a “goukaku iwai” or test passing celebration.  That was last night.

A few weeks ago, I opened up my copy of the Compact New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary, and wrote down every character that fit the sounds of my name.  I narrowed it down to a few I liked and asked my friends.  All of the women in my eikaiwa liked either 緒温, 翔音 or 初音, “the “beginning of warmth,” ”soaring sound,” or “first sound,” respectively.  However, all of the younger Japanese I talked to (especially the women, and young Japanese women tend to have my ear) liked 勝運 or 将雲 the best.  The first means “winning luck,” and the second, something along the lines of “commanding clouds” or “commander of clouds.”

I spent a lot of time thinking about these.  My first feeling was to go with the ones that were softer, warmer, more kind and general.  But the more I thought about 将雲, “commanding clouds,” the more I liked it.  As a friend told me, “it sounds like a tycoon’s name.”  It’s also a little over the top, and fun.  I may not have the leadership skills necessary to command clouds, but I usually have my head in them.  I decided this was the one.

After choosing the kanji for my first name, those for my last name came rather easily.  I had originally thought I would use 豊蘭土, “bountiful land of orchids,” partly because my last name is the same as the country, and in Japanese the name of Holland was traditionally written with the middle character for orchid, ran.  But after choosing “commander of clouds,” it didn’t seem to match “bountiful land of orchids.”  Apparently, there were a great many more kanji for ho and ran than I had originally found in my compact character dictionary.  They were somewhat obscure readings, but were much much cooler.  I decided on 峰嵐土, “land of stormy peaks.”

So, my new name, as it is written in Japanese with phonetically equivalent Chinese characters is:

Holland Sean

Land of Stormy Peaks, Commander of Clouds

It’s a new word.  But I didn’t create it.  The Japanese did.

I’ve been having problems with my taxes since I moved to Saroma.  For some reason the tax exemption that I receive as a resident foreigner didn’t transfer from the tax office I was using last year.  Apparently I had to request an entirely new $35 IRS form 6166: “Certification of US Tax Residency,” which costs $35 dollars and requires the submission of IRS form 8088 8802, Application for United States Residency Certification. Well, until that document arrives (still waiting) I am being taxed.

The tax man from down below, Mr. Kobayashi (he also changes my PC password for me) explained the situation to me in Japanese; that once the district tax office received the letter confirming my exemption, all of the previously taken taxes will be returned to me, and I will stop being taxed.  As he was concluding his explanation, he says “puramaizero ni naru wake de,” basically “it will all even out in the end.”  Well, I almost laughed at him, because of the first thing he said, “puramaizero.”  It’s basically the title: “plus minus zero” phoneticized into Japanese: “purasu mainasu zero” clipped and blended into the much shorter “pura mai zero.” I just love this because it encapsulates a fairly complex idea with just a few clipped English words.  Try using it on your friends.

I need to write a lot of things spanning from December through the winter to March.  I’ve worked myself into this idea that I can’t write unless I have an unlimited amount of free time to write into, that somehow I can’t write a blog post over a few one-hour sessions on weeknights.  I treasure that lazy Sunday morning, with a cup of coffee and a donut and NPR.  So, with the intent to write, I thought I’d also do some willing advertising.

Pandora, the fantastic online radio service is disallowed outside of the US.  That sucks, and it’s been a thorn in my side ever since moving here.  But I recently remembered another, older and more traditionally simple internet radio station that somehow is as amazing and listenable as Pandora but without the fancy tech.  Radio Paradise is something that my uncle Andy told me about more than five years ago.  It’s free, it’s high-quality, and it has no commercials.  And it’s good!