Monday February 16, 1998: 8:50pm
So here I am in Ueda, and it's MOnday. Didn't bother to write anything on Saturday or Sunday because nothing exciting really happened. How could it? I worked 11 hours on Saturday, and 8 hours on Sunday - not much of a weekend - so I got today and tomorrow off. Beta one has finally been released, yay! With only minor bugs too, well, so I think.
Oh on Saturday it really did get up to 20C or so - wow. But then yesterday it SNOWED! Crazy crazy place.
Anyway so I stayed up really late last night to watch some Olympics stuff, and read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Slept in, went for a late run, packed up some stuff for the next 10 days, and caught the 3 o'clock bus to Nagano. From the station I walked (well, ran actually - I was late) to IBC to catch the hourly bus to Ueda. Just in time I got there, and now I'm in Ueda, at the station, waiting for Jason. I'm not actually too sure if he knows I'm here because I had to use his pocket bell (this was PLAN C, after PLAN A (phone home), and PLAN B (phone office) had failed) which is a high-tech contraption somewhat reminiscent of... of... a pager, kinda. You phone some number and leave a "typed" message, and Jason reads it on a mini pager type thing. I've never used, or even seen a pager, so I"m not sure about the comparison.
Anyway, he should be here any minute...
Tuesday February 17, 1998: 2:50pm - Nagano
Yeah, so Jason arrived with Satsuki, and since we were close to Noah's (the restaurant) and they were hungry, we dropped by for some free, scrumptious pizza. Yum!! We hung around there for awhile, fun stuff, and then at 11 or so Satsuki drove us back to Jason's place. I stayed there the night because my volunteer accomodation didn't start until today. Anyway, we chatted for awhile, Jason got up at 7:30 or somethingthis morning for work, and I got up soon afterwards. Did a bit of reading (fi nished Demon Haunted World yesterday, started this neat book called Final Jeopardy by Linda Fairnstein, so far so good) then went for a nice long run around Ueda - saw the main streets (wow! Waaaay bigger than Hino), found my way to the station and back, and also went to Ueda-jou (Ueda castle) which is spiffy, as the castles always are. By the time I got back and took a shower, Jason had returned for lunch, but I had to rush out to catch the bus into Nagano. At the media bus station I coincidentally ran into Naoki, this girl Jason and I had met last weekend on the shuttle bus from Nagano to Ueda. She's also a volunteer at IBC. Anyway, I chatted with her for the ride, and when I got to IBC, I set out to find the place where I'd be staying.
Only took about 15 minutes to walk from the Big Hat (the hockey rink) and actually the building is the Postal Workers Training Facility. Uh-huuhh. Checked in, and went up to my room. The place smells and feels like a dormitory although it is very clean. I'm on the fourth floor, and the room has quite a nice view. Nagano, Ueda, etc are completely surrounded by mountains, it's quite beautiful. The room is pretty big, and there are four beds. I'm obviously the last one to get here cuz the other 3 were already taken. There are 2 desks, some really nice swivel chairs, and a pretty big balcony outside. All in all, I'm pretty impressed. Then again, I haven't checked out the bathrooms yet...
One girl is here - Aki-chan. She tells me that they've all been volunteering since January 24th or so.. woah! Naoki on the bus was the same. Aki-chan is also volunteering at IBC - she's a security gal, so she has to check everyone - but this is a *great* job because she gets to personally MEET everyone who enters the building. And she tells me that lots of famous people are coming and going for interviews and stuff. Cool, I can't wait!
Anyway now I think I'm gonna go out and wander a bit, check out the town. I'm meeting Geoff and Simon at 5 in front of Big Hat - we've got tickets to the womens' hockey finals - between Canada and the States! Cool!!
11pm
So yeah, I headed to IBC, because it's warm, shows the Olympics on numerous TVs, and I thought there just may be some other perks. NO kidding! First of all, the place is BU-SY. Just crawling with people! I guess that's what I should've expected, but it wasn't this crowded last weekend for sure. Now it's packed with all these camera crews and just, well, a bunch of people. I go in, and who do I see, Aki-chan, who zaps me through security, cool. Oh, on my way to IBC I took a long detour via the Nagano station, to check out the souvenir status. Woah, it ain't lookin' good - the store where I went last weekend was basically sold out of everything but some keychains and ugly hats!! Oh man, if I don't find t-shirts for Sensei, Jon, sis, etc... I'll be in trouble! I just can't believe every store would be out of stuff already...
OK, back to IBC. I was thirsty, so I thought I would just find myself a vending machine. That wasn't very hard - the problem was that I couldn't find the slot to put my money... puzzling. So while I'm investigating the machine, some dude walks up to the one beside it, pushes a button and voila! a drink. Huh... ohmygoodness - it's FREE! All the coffee, coke, and hot chocolate you could possibly drink. My dream come true!! I can tell I'm gonna like it here.
I also found these Video On Demand things, which are basically terminals with a TV and a touch screen - and you can view *any* event you want!! And you can fast forward, rewind, pause, view only the medal performance, um, etc - all at the touch of your screen!! Wow!! So I watched the aereal competition (a TV crew came by and filmed me while watching - only *slightly* distracting, having a big camera in my face) So neat!
I saw Geoff wandering around - it was his last day volunteering . He had some stuff to do - also said he wanted to somehow get into the CBC room, at least to take a look, but he didn't know how to get in without getting booted out. Anyway I don't think he got in, and at 5 we headed over next door to Big Hatto meet Simon. Hockey game! We got our seats -- row Y. Yes, row Y, which is the very last row of the stadium (I think naming a row "row Z" would be too depressing or something). But y'know, I thought we could see quite well, and I was very pleased.
Most of the fans were Canadians and Americans, it seemed, except for the ones right around us - they wer all impartial Japanese. Well no, there was one totally drunk American dude who was really making a fool out of himself and eing a general annoyance to the spectators nearby, throwing beer, stealing flags, etc.
Ok so the game started at 6 and well hey, I had fun! Simon brought 3 flags, so we could have one each, and we were waving away. Our spirit didn't help Canadian play though, and the Americans were pretty darn good I must say. We just didn't seem to be together - the passes weren't really there, and if they were they were slow. Anyway I'm not one to talk seeing as my hockey skills leave puh-lenty to be desired... in the end I thought it was an interesting game - very stressful to watch, and I was impresssed by the level of play. THe Americans won 3-1, they got a goal at 19:52 in the 3rd period on an empty net, woah. And they got the gold, they were pretty happy. So was the drunk guy a few seats away. The Canadian team was extremely glum, which is understandable I guess, but I think a silver is purdy darn good. Oh we got to watch the medals ceremony which was neat too.
After the game I headed back to the dorm place, and prepared to go to
sleep. I was originally planning on running before volunteering, but at
about 10 a lady came in who said that I had her bed. Indeed, I *did* have
her bed, but that was only because when I arrived, Aiki-chan had already
taken MY bed. Anyway, all 4 beds were already taken, so I was a bit
puzzled as to where this girl was supposed to be sleeping, and so was she.
So she went to get the security guard guy, to solve things, and we just
spent 20 mins or so trying to figure things out. They're still thinking,
and I'm just waiting for them to tell me what to do or something.
Wednesday February 18, 1998: 9:15pm
Six alarms went off in our room at 7 this morning. Six. Mine was the first one. There are only 4 of us in this room, so I'm not quite sure how this works but six it was. I jumped up, got dressed, and was down at breakfast in a jiffy, the first one to the caf. Oh, I seem to be the only gaijin staying in this dormitory, so I"ve been making a bit of a fuss it seems. The cafeteria people had a blast - they kept on coming out and chatting with me - bringing me food and stuff, it was great! Actually, this volunteer stuff is really going to boost my Japanese-ego, I can tell, it has only been a day or two, but I'm getting more compliments than is healthy on my Japanese! Ah yes, breaky. A bag of 3 croissants, a green salad, potato salad, ham (didn't eat it), and milk. Strange huh, but good.
I was at IBC by 8, reporting for duty. There weren't too many people there actually, which kinda surprised me. OH, and the reason my shift didn't start at 5 was because they changed it from 5-1 to 8-3!! Cool!! That's much more reasonable.
Yeah, so Kayo-san showed me the ropes. The language of communication of the day was predominantly Japanese with the volunteers, and English and French with the media people. Woah actually I think I spoke too much French with to my liking today... I just haven't spoken it in too long. It's hard ofr me to switch from Japanese-mode to French-mode. Once I get into the right mode then I'm fine - I can talk fast and get my point across in both, but it's changing the modes that's the problem.
So when I arrive at IBC, the Japanese ski jumping team (gold medalists yesterday) were just leaving. Cool! They've been on TV a lot lately (cuz they're obviously good) so I recognized them. THen, I walk into the building, and right into a photo shoot/interview with the US womens' hockey team!! Neat! And then later in the day I saw Elvis Stojko waiting alone in a van in front of IBC - one of the volunteers told me she'd seen him out there so I went and looked - no one else even noticed he was there! And it was him too, I walked right by the window and gave him a smile, I didn't tink I should bother him so I didn't. Oh and later I saw Catriona LeMay Doan too! (500 m womens' speed skating gold, Canadian) Cooool.
So I answered a bunch of quesetions all day - I'm actually the transportation info person, so most questions were about shuttle bus schedules. Also questions about sights in Nagano, or where to find a certain TV station in IBC, etc etc. I had one French guy, Monsieur Jean Paul, really go nuts on me. In general, these media people were short tempered or bad mannered. I suppose they've been here too long, and are under a lot of stress. This Jean Paul guy was particularly angry, but luckily I have a sense of humour and could just laugh about it.
Things at the desk kept me pretty busy. I took a nice long break for lunch (I get a Y500 ($6) chit each day I voluneer) which got me plenty of food. I also took full advantage of the free vending machines. I don't even want to know how many hot chocolates and cafe ole's I had.
I worked until 3:30 or so, then headed over to one of the video-on-demand booths to check out some events. I didn't actually leave IBC for a long time - why would I, there's so much neat stuff there. OH, I was sitting down reading and this guy from CBC came over to chat with me cuz he'd seen I was Canadian from the flag badge on my bag. And the guy (Rob) gave me a tour of the CBC studio! Cool! I should tell Geoff, make him jealous. It was really neat - I got to see the editing room, and reporting room, makeup room, oh, and where they broadcast from too! Like, the actual studio! Neat huh.
After that it was past 6 so I left IBC to go back to the dorm, but headed right back out again for a run. It was funny because I got a lot of stares from people - I think they thought I was an olympic athlete. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was wearing a hat in the dark, or because I was out running in the cold, I dunno, but it was funny!
I ran all around - I made it up to Centre Square where I caught the
last minute of the medal ceremony there tonight. It's so neat to be here,
I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be a great week!
Thursday February 19, 1998: 8:40pm
Another day at IBC, and pretty fun too. Got there just at 8, after a breaky of rice and miso soup (a-la-Japonaise). I managed to avoid the natou, on advice from, well, everyone I know who has tried it. At IBC I started off with some free something -or-other, and oh, had my picture taken with Eric Bergoust (aerial gold medalist, USA), not with my camera though so I don't know if I'll ever see it. And with him was Nikki Stone, the womens' gold medalist. Cool. I resisted the temptation to touch the medal because a crowd had formed and everyone was flogging him. I felt a bit b ad to be taking part in it, but not horribly bad (hey.. his fault for winning the gold!). That was the fame of the day, although Jason said Wayne Gretsky was supposed to be showing up - as far as I know he didn't though.
Let's see, I had on Swedish lady (I'm pretty sure she was Swedish) just go crazy on me for about 15-20 minutes. And then as soon as we got the forms filled out, and that business was over with, suddenly she switched into the super-nice mode and we e nded up chatting for a bit. That was funny. Oh, and I had a 40++ year old guy ask me out for dinner tonight... hahaha!! Said no, although I rarely turn down a chance for free food... And then there are the Italian dudes that keep on showing up to speak with "Alessia" (say that in an Italian sort of way) and that's funny. And I bumped into that CBC guy again, and he told me how he partied with the Canadian mens hockey team last night, NO FAIR!
After "work" I hung around IBC and watched a few events and read a bit, then headed out to find some t-shirts. That took me over to the station, then on to Centre Square. I couldn't find shirts *anywhere*. But THEN, I came upon this guy who was se lling shirts on the sidewalk - not official shirts, but even better! His name is John (Jon?) and he's a Canadian living in Matsumoto. He made these shirts himself, and they're really good. Very original! And with a definite touch of Japan. Hope every one likes 'em.
Oh, and I got my picture taken with the Olympic torch! Yeah! I was just walking down the street when these 2 volunteers say "hey, we've got the Olympic torch, want a picture?" And they really *did* have the torch! It wasn't lit, but I don't care, it was neat!
Then I went back to the dorm, and out for a run. Ran over to M-Wave, where they have the speed skating events. After M-Wave I got really lost and ended up going into a gas station to ask directions. The guy asked me if I was one of the athletes, '
cuz I was out running - I was tempted to say 'yes', but I didn't know what sport to choose, and besides, I didn't feel like signing autographs... As it turns out, if I had just run 50 metres more I would've known exactly where I was (I'm sure this is writ
ten in Murphy's Law somewhere), so I got back without a problem. Tomorrow I have my one day holiday so I'm going to read up on Nagano tonight.
Friday February 20, 1998: 10pm
I woke up to drizzling rain, yuck. Since I missed breakfast at the dorm, I grabbed an ice cream at the 7-Eleven on my way to IBC. You can't go wrong when you have ice cream for breakfast, really. From IBC I caught a shuttle bus up to Kanbayashi sn owboard park in Shigakougen, where they held the snowboard half-pipe events. I wanted to go there because it's where the monkey park is. It took about 40 minutes by bus, and then a 30-40 minute hike up a mountain path to reach the park. It was a nice w alk through the forest, and the day was warm (by this time it was only raining lightly) and the path wasn't very crowded. But the monkey park had plenty of people, understandibly... it was fabulous. Everyone at IBC has been asking at the desk for transp ortation info on how to get up to the monkey park, so I figured it must be quite interesting. See, Nagano is famous for its onsens natural hot springs. So this monkey park is an onsen, but instead of humans taking baths and relaxing in the outdoor pools, *monkeys* from the surrounding forest do! It's quite the phenomena. These monkeys were just everywhere - they come and go as they please - it's not a zoo - they come almost everyday to warm up in the baths! What a life! So they hang ar ound, swim, bathe, fight, and they're not really afraid of humans so you can walk right up to them (and they'll walk right up to you). Anyway it was lots of fun despite the fact that I discovered that my last week's worth of pictures weren't actually bei ng taken properly and undoubtedly won't turn out. Argh!!
So I hiked back down to the bus stop. Got asked directions by quite a few athletes who thought I was some sort of authority figure (must be the jacket)... whatever! Oh, and Tipper Gore was up there as well.. a star-studded morning.
By the time I got back to IBC it was about noon, so I grabbed some lunch and sat down with a book (Sudden Prey by John Sandford). Watched some events. At about 4:45 or so I went into the 3D mini-theatre they've got in IBC, put on the funky g lasses, and watched the Canada-Czech hockey semi-finals in style. Actually the 3D effect was really neat, and so was the game, even though we lost. Came down to a shoot-out, how stressing!! I don't know if I can take the pressure of watching hockey gam es!
So I hung around IBC for awhile longer, and now I'm back at the dorn. There's no one here, how strange.
Saturday February 21, 1998: 9:20am
Ah, pretty slow today. Other than people panicking about transportation to Narita. Oh I checked my olympic email today, neat! We get an account while we're here, but I think it's just internal. So I sent an email to Simon. Sent a few to Waterloo , ,but I doubt they'll make it.
Breakfast: cold fried egg, rice, miso soup. Never thought I would eat a cold fried egg, but I think I'be been assimilated. Either that, or I was hungry.
Sunday February 22, 1998: 9:30am
Last night Jason, some other volunteers and I all went to the closing ceremony rehearsals, and it was great despite the cold. Well serves me right for forgetting I'd be outside tonight when I left this morning, opting against bringing my hat, etc. So the ceremony is gonna be really neat I think - they had all these taiko drums going, which sounded just great, and then all these matsuri festival dances and parades, and the MC was this famous comedian Kin-chan, who was really funny. Th ey did all these tricks with lights in the sky and also there was a special Salt Lake City Introduction which was... interesting. Well spectacular at least - they did a whole Wild West theme, complete with cowboys on horses and old wagons, carriages, etc ... kinda funny. Lots of inflateable balloons going around. And it ended in one big grande finale, with all the dancers, singers, drummers, all out in the stadium dancing to the cheery Olympic song, it was neat. Just a bit cold.
Got back to IBC by 8 or so and found out Canada lost the bronze to Finland. Oh well. I had watched the first period in 3D before the rehearsal, and we had been behind.
Took a shuttle bus to Ueda and met up with Satsuki and Satcho-san (?), and we drove over to Sega World. Jason desperately wanted an air hockey rematch after I whipped his butt 2 weeks ago. Understandible. We played 3 matches with different team co mbos, and I lost all 3... *sigh*. Lost the game I played 'gainst Jason so now we're even. Hehehehe. We played around Sega World 'til it closed.. Satsuki-chan creamed a couple of people in the "virtual on" robot game that was great! Then Satsuki-chan d ropped Jason and I off at Jason's place because I had to crash there as the shuttle buses had stopped running for the day. I ate a good chunk of Jason's junk food (aaa, yummy!) and got my beauuty sleep - yeah. Now, I'm at IBC manning the desk. It's the last day today (of the Olympics, that is) so things are winding down it seems, except for the people all wound up about transportation to Narita. They're keeping me plenty busy..
10pm
yeah, keeping me busy, these people... I can see why they're all a bit tiffed - the transportation people are not organized at all. None of the volunteers want to be at the desk (they all want to be outside directing traffic) because it is no fun de
aling with some of these people! Oh well. so I watched the hockey finals in 3D, wooo, good game. Then I went ofr a run and got lost. Ran and ran and ran. Found quite the nice route along a river - pity I couldn't enjoy it more for my lost state. End
ed up taking me an hour and 40 minutes to get back, sheesh! So now I'm a bit pooped. The dorm is deserted - I think most volunteers finished up today so they've moved on out. Hey, more food for me!
Monday February 23, 1998: 9am
Wow, this is like the twilight zone! I got to IBC this morning and it is totally empty. The security at the front is gone, all the posters have been taken down, all the clocks, statues, dolls, etc, even the comfy sofas are gone! It kind of looks l ike the high school gym after the dance is over... left over streamers and paper cups, and the occasional person. I'm the only one at the info desk.
8pm
Well the day got a bit busier but not much. But I finally got some emails, to keep me busy. Ok, one email, from Blue. I didn't even try the email system until 2 days ago, even though I'd been told we'd get accounts. I had just assumed the accoutn s would be internal only. Guess not! I could only send emails to those whose addresses I know by heart (Gee, that narrows it down to 4), and I was extra happy that Levon mailed me back. Of course she thought I'd already left so didn't say much at all.. .
Forgot my book today, that was really smooth. Basically, I had nothing to do. So I started writing down things to talk about for the 3 day Beppu seminar since, now that I think about it, the materials will have to be ready very soon. Sheesh.
I've been pretty party-pooper-ish this last week. Don't know why. I like the dorm, mabye that's why. I mean, the place is *heated*. Really. And the hot showers with pressure (at the SAME TIME!!) are such a luxury. And don't get me starte
d on the toilets - they've got an operating panel.. ya know, for heating the seat, starting a massage (oh yeah!), etc etc. I like the place. Except that at 7am they play wake-up music, and some guy yelling an excercise routine over the intercom system -
- too cheerful for early morning. But I would put up with that for hot showers every day..
Tuesday February 24, 1998: 8:20pm
More of the same today. The info people have packed up and left, so it's just me at the desk. I remembered to bring my book with me today (The Wind that Shakes the Barley: A Novel of the Life and Loves of Robert Burnes by James Barke) but I finished it, so who knows what I'll do tomorrow. More Beppu stuff I guess.
I got into trouble with the building's security guard this morning though, because - get this - I left the building before 6am. Yeah, I left at 5:45. And the guy was having a fit about 15 minutes! Crazy.
Oh I waled to Zenko-ji (Zenko temple) tonight, and wow, that's some temple. I hadn't been over-enthusiastic about going, but I"m sure glad I did, even though the inner part was closed. It has some magnificent gates, and nice cobblestone streets. A
nd the grounds are a fair size. It's a very old temple, and quite central to Nagano - not to mention it's the first and foremost tourist attraction. Walked back here (the dorm) and now I've started packin' up (ew). Back to it!
Wednesday February 25, 1998: 10:30pm
So this morning I checked outta the dorm and went over to IBC for my last day. Woah, it was incredibly, well, boring. I kinduv had nothing to do. I wrote down some more stuff down for the Beppu seminar, but there's only so much of that I can do at a time! Ah well it wasn't sooo bad, and I only stayed until 1 because the 4:30 bus was already full and I would have to take local trains (Shinkansen too expensive), and local trains take a major detour through Matsumoto. I left on the train at 2, and got into the Toyoda station at 7:45!!! Long trip. I slept for a good half of it, and when I was transferring trains at Kobuchizawa, I met this Japanese snowboarding guy, so we talked about this n' that for the remaining 2 hours. Actually we played this game called shiritori which is a kids' game where one person says a word, such as ichigo, and the other person has to say a word starting with the last letter, in this case "go", so gokiburi, or something. I found it amazing that th is actually kept us entertained for over 20 minutes! hahahaha.
Oh and when I got home, Mom phoned and told me that Sariya's booked us flights to CHINA in August! China!! For almost 3 weeks! Oh this is sooo neat! I can't believe how lucky I am! Chinaaaa!!!!
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