Bullet with Butterfly Wings

So the Monkey Park was great, but do you know what's even better?  Riding the Shinkansen, Japan's bullet train.  Imagine if a train and an airplane fell in love and had a baby.  That's essentially what the Shinkansen is:  clean, fast, and convenient.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if I'd have the chance to ride the Shink before I leave Japan.  As I once (accidentally) told the nerds I left behind, Japan is fucking expensive, and the bullet train is one of the most expensive things I've encountered.  So when I was trying to figure out the logistics of getting to Jigokudani, I actually asked Sensei about taking the slow train.  She looked it up for me, but the Shinkansen turned out to be cheaper, and that was all the provocation I needed.  The following Saturday morning saw me on a platform at Tokyo Station waiting to be allowed to board the train.

See, the train gets into the station, everyone gets off (because Tokyo is the last station on the line, or, in my case, the first), and then the crew goes to town and cleans the whole train in about fifteen minutes.  About five minutes before departure the doors open to let everyone on, and we all file in, in the most polite and orderly way.  I was still getting my backpack and coat settled above my seat when I realized the train was already moving.  I'd hardly felt it take off.

It was so easy.  I'd sprung for the reserved seat, and there was no one sitting next to me the whole hour and forty-five minutes.  I felt the euphoria attached to travel shenanigans take hold of me and I realized that this is what I'd been missing.  It's a little strange, but over the last few years in Mongolia I found myself getting less excited about traveling, and decided it was okay that I wasn't going to have much money for traveling while I was in Japan - after all, everything I wanted to see was here.  That said, I have to admit that when Shutterfly or Facebook remind me what I was doing one year ago, or five, I feel jealous of myself.  I miss being that intrepid traveler, and I have to say, that's one of the things I'm looking forward to the most about going back to Mongolia.

Because, oh yeah, that's happening.  In my last post I mentioned I wasn't renewing my contract.  The kicker is that neither is my successor at my old school.  When I finally told my students I was leaving UB, I tried to reassure them that I might be back, and it turns out that's exactly what I'm doing.  What can I say - I miss them.  And Engrish and Blondie, who are still there.  And having money to travel, and save, and, oh yeah, pay for this master's degree that I'm in the middle of.  I also miss being able to get foot massages and eat hotpot and take taxis.  So that's that.  Back to Mongolia I go!

I enjoyed having an empty seat beside me so much that I actually bought the Shinkansen equivalent of a business class ticket on the way back because I wanted a little more room, and let me tell you, THAT was totally worth it.  I worked on my current sewing project and checked out the bathroom, and watched the trolley witch roll her trolley full of goodies past (I didn't buy anything because this was not the Hogwarts Express so she didn't have any pumpkin pasties or chocolate frogs). 

I loved the whole experience so much that I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it again in two weeks - we have a (sorta) three-day weekend, and I still haven't been to the Zao Fox Village.

Monkey Business

Just before the holidays I got my contract for next year.  It included a significant pay raise and inclusion of airfare, but I realized that just wasn't enough.  Officially, I'm paying for my master's out of pocket, and here I just can't do that AND afford my rock and roll lifestyle.  Unofficially, I'm just not happy at my school.  Teaching anklebiters is tough enough; teaching ones that backtalk and take FOREVER to instruct because they. Will.  Not.  Be quiet! is - turns out - impossible.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg, but that's a discussion for a more appropriate forum.

This got me thinking about what I want to do before I leave Japan.  Hopefully I'll be back, but who knows what the future holds, so I decided to carpe the fuck out of of the diems I have left, which is how I ended up deciding to go to Jigokudani this weekend.  We had a three-day weekend (an actual one, as opposed to one where the school makes us work on the Saturday), so I booked a room at a ryokan and off I went.

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave Japan is my pocket wifi.  Most of the fact-finding I did about getting to the monkey park I did on the Shinkansen Saturday morning.  When I got off the train I went straight down to the Nagaden train station to get the Monkey Pass, a 3-day pass that gets you into the park free and allows you to ride any of the trains and buses as much as you want.  At the bottom of the stairs I was met by a signboard that said they were being sold at the bus stop.  On the other side of the station.  I fought my way through crowds of gaijin with skis and snowboards (whom I prayed weren't going my way...some were, but I didn't end up throwing any of them off the mountain) and eventually paid my 3,500 yen and went to get snacks before getting on the 1:15 express bus, which takes you nearly all the way to the park. 

It's fortunate that I've been missing Mongolia lately.  If not, I might have been a little resentful of all the snow.  I saw snow for the first time in Tokyo that morning, and it lasted all of 10 minutes.  In the mountains the trees were weighed down with the stuff.  Blondie had warned me to wear good hiking boots, and between my Skechers and my penguin walk, I didn't fall down off of the mountain.  I probably should have rented the crampons - my legs and hips were aching from my unaccustomed gait.  The signage as you go through the onsen town says the park is 1.6 kilometers away...but that really means once you hit the trail. 

Finally I got to the entrance to the monkey park, the end of the 1.6k...which was followed by a steep climb up stairs and along a little more trail.  Before long I hit the cabin - a kind of museum/gift shop/toilet/lockers facility where they stamp your monkey pass, since it's only good for one visit.  This is also the only place you can eat snacks in the park - if the monkeys see or hear plastic, apparently they mob you.  I left my backpack in a locker and went down toward the stream and bathing pools, where the monkeys were doing monkey things.

And luckily, one of them wasn't shy about getting in the water.  It's hard to predict animal behavior, and I probably would have felt a little cheated if none of the monkeys were actually IN the water.  Maybe I should have gotten there earlier, but I got the shots I came for, so I left happy.

And I am happy to report that none of them jumped on my head.  Monkeys always make me a little nervous, and you'd be justified in asking why I keep going to see them.  In this case, I have to say it was the draw of that - as Blondie put it - perfect NatGeo photo.  For an hour or so, I got to pretend I was out on assignment, taking shots of these majestic wild beasts.  All of which is, of course, a fiction - they're not that wild and I'm definitely not a pro-photographer.  However, this term's course for my master's is in photography, so hopefully by summer I'll be a little bit more of one.

This Could Be Love

If you've been reading this blog any length of time, you should know by now that not only do I teach others to make cool ass shit (cause I'm an art teacher, yo), I also make cool ass shit myself.  This is relevant because back in October I got a message from my friend Cori (from the Wayback in Mongolia), asking if I wanted a Cricut Maker.  Her hubby is a mechanical engineer for the company, and during a discussion of anime my name came up and since I'm the target market they offered to send me one if I was interested.

I'm definitely more crafty than tech-y, but I feel like only an idiot lets the opportunity to get new toys slip through their fingers (particularly if you have half-formed dreams of actually making money off your hobbies), so I told her yasss - onegaishimasu!  A few weeks later, a DHL guy was handing over a very large box, and I was facing the fact that until that moment, the whole thing had kind of felt like I'd dreamt it up, and I had some major housekeeping to do before I'd be able to set it up.  I left it sealed in its box as I swept the floors and rearranged my work surfaces.  Then I realized that my iPad is old AF and can't use Cricut Design Space because it won't update to iOS 10.  Luckily my school just bought a class set of iPads, and by promising I was planning to use the Maker for art club and that I would give up my firstborn child* if I broke one, I got permission to borrow one at night or on weekends as needed to get me started.  With that, I was finally ready to break open the box!

It crossed my mind to do an unboxing video for my new toy, but I don't have a cameraman and I've never really seen the point of watching someone else open up something exciting.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that it came with materials for my "first project," so once I got through the intro screens of the app I decided to try it out.

It's a cute card but relatively simple to make.  First I had to load a pen into the tool holder thing, and the Maker took it from there, drawing out the lines that you see.  The fact that they were drawn, not printed was kind of a surprise to me, and had me thinking about what all you might be able to do with a robot to do all of your drawing.  Next it used a blade to cut the cardstock down to size as well as cut out the letters, the tail of the kite, and the places where I inserted the blue.  So far, so good.

That said, the point of having one of these things - for me at least - isn't to make other people's projects, but to make my own.  I decided its first real test would be to cut a pair of glasses for one of my plushies.  Having mislaid my old pattern, I had to redraw it.  Then I had to scan it.  I could have done this at school, but it's mendoksai to use the scanner there, so I used the much more straightforward method and visited my friendly neighborhood combini - all of them have English-speaking copy machines that also print photos (or, you know, the Golden Kamuy paper sumo pdf, which was like Christmas coming early) and scan.  Eventually it made it to the school iPad I borrowed and I uploaded it to Design Space.

When I said above that I'm not very tech-y, I meant it, but as long as it's not too complicated a program, I can usually figure things out.  I think Design Space was created with users like me in mind, because it didn't take too long to figure out how to get it to cut out my glasses.  I was even able to alter the dimensions of it in the program to solve the slight proportion issue my drawing had.  The one issue I had was that I didn't have the right cutting tool for craft foam, so the cuts only went about halfway through...still far enough to be able to "punch out" the glasses.

I had my doll pattern already scanned and ready to go, so I uploaded it and tried cutting out a couple of head shapes.  That went pretty well but I wasn't too sure what to do next.  A week later I had my answer.  After cutting out the head I finally started making my Sugimoto doll, but so far he was bald.  Around two years ago I spoke to my Dark Lord and Master about business strategies** and he'd suggested making kits.  I've been toying with the idea but wasn't sure how to go about doing the hair.  This finally forced me to work on a solution.  I sketched out a pattern for Sugimoto's hair, scanned it in, uploaded it, and set the Maker to work.

At first I wasn't convinced that all the effort was worth it, and for one doll, it might not be.  That said, the pattern was a pretty complex one.  After putting the cutting mat into the maker, it went to work and was beautiful to watch.  Since one of my drawings didn't scan as well as it should have I had a chance to test how the two techniques compared.  After watching the rotary blade make quick work of the pointy bits on Sugimoto's hair I had to sit down to trace and cut the final piece.  I ended up with Sharpie all over my hands and it took probably about the same amount of time from start to finish as getting the pattern into Design Space and cutting it with the Maker.  I can see vast potential for the whole "make a kit" idea with that - I could design the basic hair shapes and customers could choose which one they wanted to make, using their own Maker to precisely cut the design.

With the end of the term and coming up on Christmas break, I didn't get any further than that, but I had plenty of ideas.  Now that I'm back from the holidays, with a new iPad of my very own, and very little motivation to leave the house hopefully I'll start putting those ideas into action.  Stay tuned.

*Joke's on them, though - I'm never having kids!
**Most people pay big bucks for the kind of advice he gives me for free.  What can I say - it's one of the perks associated with the lease on my soul.