The Japanese Countryside
Well if NBC can do it, why the frick can’t I.
Yeeeeeeess folks, it seems half of the point in video podcasting is being able to recycle old content under the thin veil of embracing a new and exciting method of distribution, whilst making a tidy 100% profit on everything you sell because all the people listed under the royalties agreement are dead.
Unfortunately for me though, this is a free podcast.
This video - which I’m hoping some of you might not have seen - is a look back in time, to a period of my life that I will never forget. Before I moved to Tokyo and starting working in the real worldâ„¢, I spent 3 years living in the Japanese countryside, teaching in a rural community of about 2500 people. This was all thanks to the JET programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching). It would be impossible for me to say how profound an experience this was on so many different levels, but needless to say, it’s an experience that I’m going to look back on very fondly, and maybe cry a single tear of pain as I remember how many times those little bastards at the kindergarten would punch me right in the testicles, dropping me to the floor, thus inviting all of them to spring up from their seats and gang-hurt me.
The video itself was made for a JET seminar. Every year or so we had these prefectural conferences with seminars hosted by volunteer JETs, that were meant to help to spread teaching techniques etc. Given that the average JET knows precisely frick all about teaching, you can probably imagine how useful these were, with entire seminars based upon themes like “Entertaining your students for an hour - with a pack of playing cards!” or “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…HANGMAN” - both of which are highly effective means of educating children. In the 1950s.
Anyway I digress. Every year shortly after the intake of new JETs there is an “orientation” conference. This is where older, wiser JETs impart their knowledge about the JET world to the new JETs. It’s actually a useful conference since many new JETs will also be Japan virgins, thus a lot of the seminars revolve around how to function in your new lives - paying the bills, going to the post office, public transport etc.
One of these seminars invariably has the theme “Living in the Inaka” (the Japanese countryside). The vast majority of JETs are cast into the Japanese countryside with very little idea of what to expect or how to adapt. As a foreigner living in a small Japanese community, your first few weeks can feel very isolating - it’s likely no one will speak English and you’ll probably be a fair distance from any kind of city or other foreign person.
I hosted this seminar with a JET friend called Mark, who lived in a similarly tiny town. Our actual seminar content was surprisingly competent, which had our attending friends reeling from shock, but the highlight of the seminar was the last 10 minutes, in which we showed this video. To end the seminar on a positive note we showed the audience a light-hearted look at life in the Japanese countryside - the world they would be living in for the coming year or more, and the place myself and Mark had come to love to hate, but deep-down in some perverse way were sort of begrudgingly grateful for having lived there.
Someone hold me.
Entertaining and strangely educational. More of this sort of thing-only current-would be a great addition to your site.
Very funny. You in the box with the styrofoam peanuts was a quick glimpse into Yongfook as a 3 year old. Unfortunately, the picture quality/resolution was horrendous. Is that an artistic 50 second black-screen at the beginning? Or is something wrong with my download?
nope, that first bit was just filmed in almost pitch darkness.
Saw this video years ago. I still have it on my harddrive. Doesn’t that creep you out?
you misspelt kindergarten.
apologies. We don’t call it that in the UK, if that’s any excuse. We call it Nursery School. Or “Satan’s Funhouse of Disease”. Or “The Sack Punching Club for Junior Persons”.
Why do the americans use the german word for that by the way ? Should’nt that have become freedom school along with the chips (/fries, you transatlantic degenerates) ?
I was hoping the half-fulled styrofoam peanuts box to crack or break when you sat in there. I didnt happen after all. =S
haha, thats a very good entry, Jon!
That was awesome. What’d you shoot (and subsequently edit) it with?
lol I like the way you focus on the boobs of the swedish tourists for 10seconds without them running after you with their handbags
n00bs
Ah, summer in the inaka. Supressive humidity and geji-gejis. Good times, good times.
You TOTALLY stood me up, you whore! I want a divorce, half a share of ALL the booze you’ll ever drink again AND the dog goddamnit.
Wow, that took me back. It’s a shame you can’t make a film like that now, because the innocent pleasures of beer can stacking and surreptitiously filming ladies surreptits has given way to the vigorous onanism to online stoat pr0n.
old. want new. ]:
Quit stalling. Cock pics!
Well, I stopped clubbing the baby seals for the length of the video…..
hey, no more old shit
and did u speak any Japanese before coming to Japan?
aah good old Kumamoto days. i miss readin old fooky. new fooky nibbles too much.
Congratulations on a great job of recycling ;) Very funny though.
“new fooky nibbles too much.”
Yes , I’m sure everyone here will agree he’s a hideously lardy porker.
*
meh. old footage make me speechless.
Argh dammit yongfook. The link is HTML-n00bed up. It ruined my reading experience and I want half of whatever Fuckstress gets!
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/%E2%80%9Chttp://www.honda.co.jp/motor-lineup/monkey/special/index.html%E2%80%9D
Hella funny stuff. But this new blog layout sucks! My scroll button should be no longer than 2cm! Gah!
I sincerely hope you wash your hands before going on your eating adventures if you fixed an entire village of horses.
Damn. That made my day. The part where Mark starts talking about how it’s been nearly three weeks since he lit anyone on fire, that’s gold.
there are two tourists from my country [Holland] but they didn’t wanna speak english, weird! Oh no, not that they didn’t want to but .. shy lol. Feel isolated? Surely, no one will speak english, that’s amazing :O
interesting where your site has come. i suppose a lot of people prefer how it was with the food reviews and the layout, and i was thinking that too. but then i realised, well, it’s done and we can still go back and read it. and even if it is sort of bloggy nowadays, your new stuff is still funny because you have a talent for that. you’re trying new things, and that’s pretty admirable really.
Wow, a solitary voice in the meat-headed clamour of cyberspace embraces change. I never thought I’d see the day…
fuck you, meat head
Good God, you’re the first person I’ve come across who’s too dumb to realise I was complimenting him. I think I’ll withdraw it after your somewhat spiky response. As witty and intelligent a comeback as it was.
please stop talking about meat and heads, it’s very much arousing my ardor.
:) I know what you mean. ‘Cover up those table legs mother…’
I know we are both referring to the same thing, but I’ll be fucked if I can remember where it’s from. Enlighten me.
oh hang on, I think it might be Bill Bailey. Right?
andy, thanks for calling me dumb. i hoped you’d realise it was supposed to be funny…
I like that kind of humor. A smiley face at the end usually helps I find. Or maybe it doesn’t…
It is indeed Bill Bailey, Bewilderness. The force is strong in this’un.
Video is pictures that move.
Christ, Sciby, welcome to the new millenium. “Moving pictures” is, like, so last century. They’re called “talkies” now.
I prefer the “moanies”.
WTF? Is Jon like, dead and rotting in his room or something?
Aaaaaand Fuckstress jumps in with a comment designed to totally turn me on.
because it’s not weird to be turned on by dead, rotting bodies, Jon’s or otherwise…. (Bigger Than) Totoro: I got it.
Fuckstress > I’m incredibly busy at work. I don’t even really have time to finish this se
quin cod-piece I’ve been working on for my hot hunk of man meat, Gary.
No worries, Jon. I finished it for you.
Damn…now we’ll never know what YF was about to say…
“sentence”? “sexual encounter”? “secret mission to destroy the universe”? We’ll never know!! Finish what jon?! WHAT!?
…. dead and rotting was a better excuse.
necrophiliac, and a flaming queen too. Not everyday you find someone in which both characteristics coincide.
i was once looking into the JET program, but was told by quite a few individuals to avoid it like the plague. so, that i am doing.
Had my Nova orientation today in Osaka. Got myself a mobile phone. Turns out you can watch TV on it. And check Hotmail. I’ve been dreaming of this kind of toy since I was 6. Thank you Japan for catching up with my childhood imagination. I love this country… so far.
ahhh new youtube hotness…
I also saw this video some months ago