I have two friends that have been teaching me about life in America.  I imagine that this isn’t a planned thing but last year I spent the 4th of July with them and went to a demolition derby and this year I visited over Hallowe’en.

Children really do go trick or treating.  They dress up, go out walking around the streets, and come back with bags of candy.  I’m not really sure if there is any actual tricking, as all I saw was treating, but it looked like fun.  Well, it did until the only thing I could think of was a dreadful horror movie I had watched as a child that had something to do with Hallowe’en masks and the killing of children. But back to the fun things…

My friends turned their porch into a pirate ship (I kid you not) and filled a chest full of candy treasure.  I dressed up as a wench and stood back and watched as the children looked amazed at the chilling effects that can be made by good lighting, a smoke machine, and several well positioned skeletons.

This was not my only Hallowe’en event as I also attended the first Hallowe’en costume party I’ve been to since I was about 12.  I can still remember that party as it was fairly unusual for us to do anything like that at Hallowe’en.  The church I belonged thought that dressing up as vampires and witches was evil.  But for whatever reason that year someone thought it would be fun to let us dress up.  And it was.  I spent hours on my make-up and remember looking fairly horrific.

This time I also spent quite a bit of time on my make-up as I wanted to look suitably dead.  I also discovered that a veil is a wonderful thing for hiding the lines on my face, but not an overly practical one.  It makes it incredibly hard to eat or drink.  It’s also surprisingly hot to dance in.

I imagine that Manhattan looks amazing if you manage to look up and see the city.  But when I’m walking through the streets I have to constantly watch my feet.  The pavements are uneven and crowded with people who don’t appear to be paying attention to where they are going.  Today I nearly lost my footing when someone pushed their bag into the back of my knees.  I spent time dodging the tobacco smoke and the ash that gets flicked my way from the people who walk and smoke.  I had to navigate road works and building works.  And of course you have to avoid the cars and taxis that drive at you even when you have right of way on a crossing.

And then there is the noise.  The constant honking of car horns, the blaring of sirens, the construction at the World Trade site, and the yelling people.  And the people here yell all the time.  I accidentally knocked into a man in the supermarket and he turned and screamed into my face whilst I was apologizing.  People who are walking by themselves will be yelling into their phones or their blue-tooth headsets.  I met Marty for lunch today but we didn’t talk much.  He couldn’t hear me in the restaurant and I didn’t feel like shouting through lunch.  I’ve always thought that people from New York talked loudly and now I know why, you almost need to scream to be heard.

But despite the noise, the smells, and the chaos on the streets, this is a city I could grow to love.

I am always reluctant to visit the doctor.  In the U.K. I was encouraged not to go to the doctor if I had a cold or a flu. It can be hard to know what exactly is wrong when I’ve had a bad cough and back in 2006 I got very sick when I didn’t have a chest infection treated quickly enough.  In Japan you are supposed to go to see the doctor as soon as you suspect you might be ill.  I have been trying to do this but I still worry that I’ll be wasting the doctors time with something silly.

Yesterday I went to see the doctor about my cough and he encouraged me to behave like the Japanese whilst I live in Japan.  He told me that it was better to be sure and pointed out that my cough was indeed bronchitis and treating it sooner was better.  He gave me four different types of medication, which is three more than I’ve ever gotten before.  I have antibiotics, something for the cough, some sort of expectorant, and a patch to help me breath at night.  I don’t really like the patch, as I was warned that it could make me shake, but I did manage to sleep last night.

I can’t imagine going to see the doctor for every cold or headache but I should probably stop worrying that the doctor will think I’m wasting their time when I do finally go.

Last week I went to see the largest Buddha statue in Japan at Nihon Temple, Nokogiri Mountain.  It seems that many statues claim this title by tricky use of words.  This may be the largest sitting Buddha made out of stone.  And even that may not be accurate.  It might be the largest sitting statue made out of stone that is considered an ancient Buddha, and not one of those modern ones that was probably made to attract tourists.

Whatever it actually is it was still impressive at 31 metres in height.

I gave my first talk in Japanese at YAPC::Asia last week.  It was a lightning talk, so I only had to speak for five minutes.  It was incredibly nerve wrecking even though I had spent hours practising.  I dread to think what my accent was like and I completely messed up one of my lines but I’m glad that I tried.  It also means that I have completed another item on my “101 Things to Do in 1001 Days” list.

YAPC::Asia is over.  Actually the conference ended over a week ago but for me it only finished when my house guests left.  Miyagawa said, “actually it gets over once you blog it, so if you haven’t, blog it now”.   I’ve been so busy that I haven’t blogged about anything in weeks, but it’s about time I said something about the conference.

YAPC::Asia is still the biggest YAPC in the world, this year with 518 registered attendees.  I don’t believe that they all turned up on the day, but there were still a lot of people there.  Well, a lot of men, as less than 3% of the attendees were female.

For me YAPC::Asia is very different than YAPC::NA or YAPC::EU.  At the other conferences the social aspect is very important but in Asia I have a language problem.  There is some sort of hallway track, though it seemed mostly a outdoor picnic track, but I wouldn’t easily be able to participate.  I also become much too tired to attend the evening social events as hours of listening to Japanese tires me out.  (Since moving to Japan I have nothing but admiration for the conference attendees and speakers I meet who are always dealing with their non-native language).

The conference is very quiet at the opening and becomes fairly noisy by the time the lightning talks begin at the end of the day.  Larry Wall opened the conference and I had to try not to giggle too loudly at some of his dreadful puns and word-plays as most of the audience was listening in respectful silence.  I have been told by speakers that it can be very difficult speaking in Asia as you don’t get a lot of feedback from the audience during your talk.  Jesse Vincent overcame that problem during his keynote.  He managed to get the twitter stream scrolling across his slides during his talk which made it one of the most interactive talks I’ve seen at a YAPC::Asia.

I’m always impressed by how much effort the volunteers put into organising the conference and there is no doubt that this conference was well organised.  This is one thing, however, that I would change.  There was no scheduled lunch break.  This meant that I left the conference at around 1pm and missed the talks that were scheduled at that time.  I don’t think this was really fair on the speakers as I imagine that many people left to eat lunch.  It also lead to a bit of confusion around what was happening at lunch as people tried to work out if there was a mistake in the schedule or not.

It was the last conference I plan to attend this year, and I’m glad it was a good one.

On Tuesday evening we stayed at a hotel in Nikko.  The hotel combined features from a western hotel and a Japanese guest house. Our bedroom reflected both styles.  One half had carpet, beds, a desk, and a TV, the other half had tatami mats,  Japanese cushions, a tea table, and space for futons.

In the countryside restaurants close very early and we decided that it would be more convenient to eat at the hotel.  The meal probably cost more than the room as they were serving kaiseki ryori, the Japanese version of haute cuisine.  When we first moved to Japan I avoided this sort of food as I could rarely work out what I was eating and at times even how to eat it.  I assumed that by now I wouldn’t be surprised by the food I was served, but I was wrong.

We were given 13 courses, four of which we could choose ourselves.  I’m not very good at recognising types of fish from pictures so I will admit that for one of the choices I just pointed at a picture and hoped for the best.  We were served tofu, tempura, pickles, grilled fish, steak, beef stew, and soba, all of which I have eaten before. The third course was sashimi, raw fish. This was the course that I picked from the pictures.  The waitress had two plates, one with sea trout and the other with something I thought she called “dreaming fish”.  I picked the sea trout as I don’t really like looking at fish heads, and the dreaming fish had the whole body of the fish with the sashimi in the middle.

After the waitress put the fish on the table she kept looking at us expectantly.  She pointed at the fish and again I thought she said “dreaming fish”.  We smiled at her, not having a clue what she was waiting for, and then looked at the fish.  It moved.  The head of the fish was moving.  It was then that I realised she had been saying “living fish”.  We were given food that was still moving and continues to move while you eat its cut up insides!  I hope I managed to hide the look of horror on my face.  I could not have eaten that fish, I could barely look at that fish.  After that course the strange stringy stuff in broth, the unknown squishy vegetables, and the rice served in a bowl of tea were incredibly easy to eat – at least they weren’t alive.

On Tuesday morning we hired a car and headed out of the city for a couple of days.  Tokyo is amazing but I wanted to see something different than the concrete jungle.   We drove towards Nikko and the Chuzenji Lake area.  Nikko is about 150 km outside Tokyo and has some beautiful mountains and forests.  When I went to Nikko before it was by train and, although the public transport system is fantastic, it’s not the best way to see a mountain.

Once we got off the Tohoku expressway we drove up through the mountains to the lake.  I loved the drive.  The scary road full of hairpin bends was one-way allowing us to enjoy the drive without being overly worried about other cars. The mountains are spectacular but I found it hard to take any good pictures.

I really like the mountains in Northern Ireland but they are very different than Japanese mountains.  The highest mountain in Northern Ireland, Slieve Donard, is only 850 metres.   Lake Chuzenji is at the foot of Mount Nantai and the lake is about 1,250 metres above sea level!

The other thing I really wanted to see was a waterfall.  I had read about Kegon Waterfall but we didn’t manage to find that on Tuesday.  We did, however, manage to find Yudaki Waterfall.

I spent a couple of hours this morning practising my Japanese accent with my teacher.  I am working on a lightning talk for YAPC::Asia.  I don’t know if this talk will be accepted but even if it isn’t this is an interesting learning experience.  Usually it’s a text book that determines what I learn next and not something that I wrote myself.  This can lead to me learning about things that I never use in day to day life and, as a consequence, things I quickly forget.  The talk contains concepts that I actually want to be able to speak about.  With help from a friend I now know the correct way to say “Perl” and “YAPC” in Japanese.  And I also know how to talk about altering clothing.

I am having quite a few problems with my accent.  It’s not terrible when I am speaking normally but speaking in a loud voice amplifies every imperfection.  I am having problems with pitching and with some sounds.  The length of my vowels isn’t always correct and there are sounds that I find nearly impossible to say in combination.

I’m also having problems finding my voice in Japanese.  At times I sound overly girly.  I end up speaking in a higher pitched voice than usual because many Japanese woman have high pitched voices.  It works, in a Japanese context, but my teacher can’t imagine me sustaining it for 5 minutes.  If my voice becomes too low I apparently sound scary and not friendly enough.  I’m not sure where my real voice is hiding but I need to find it before the middle of October.

This weekend I made a Double Orange Cake. It was the first time I made this cake and it turned out really well. It was very light and not overly sweet.  It wasn’t overly hard to make but I did run into problems with the orange.  The recipe called for “the juice of one large orange”.  I didn’t use the whole orange as I thought that it would make the cake too moist.  I much prefer recipes that tell me exactly how much orange juice to use as I have no idea how large a large orange is.