Yesterday, I went to a Kamaishi Seawaves rugby match. For those of you who’ve never watched rugby, it’s kind of like American football, only without all those pesky pads and rules, and with an extra dollop of AWESOME! In rugby, it’s not enough to just take the guy down; you must destroy him utterly. Or at least take the ball. Bonus points if you rub his face in the dirt while doing so. It was a lot of fun to watch, and the Seawaves won. On the other hand, there was a thunderstorm during the match, and we (myself, Nathalie, the Elusive Tim and Eri) all got soaked to the skin. We ate at a restaurant (Marumatsu, which seems to be the Japanese equivalent of Village Inn/any casual-dining chain) after the game, and I got some curry to warm myself up.
Today, I did laundry and gave my apartment a long-overdue spring cleaning. Still needs some work, but it’s 100% better than it was. I also put the family pictures I got in a recent package into my scrapbook/photo album. Still needing to be done: give the stove a good scrubbing and clean the floors.
This week’s culinary experiment: I have a bunch of barley I bought with good intentions of using it in soup over the winter. Since it’s no longer really “soup” weather (though it has been a bit wet this weekend), I’m going to use it to make a salad. I’ve got beans and bell peppers and a few things to season it with, so we’ll see how it turns out.
Must do dishes now. ‘Bye!
Just a quickie update: Last Saturday, the four of us Kamaishi folk (Josh has dubbed us “Pat, Nat and Kat”–I suppose we could add his last name, Katz, to the bunch and make a band) went to Tono for a special luncheon. The owner/proprietor/head chef of our favorite local establishment invited us to meet his friend, who runs a tiny, but ritzy, restaurant there. The meal was indeed delicious (Italian with a Japanese flair; she made it work, and even had vegan options for Josh), and we had a lot of fun.
Afterward, Patrick and I went to Morioka to see the new Star Trek movie. We had a bit of time to kill, so Patrick showed me the biggest bookstore in Morioka, which had a nice-sized English section. I bought a new Japanese-study book (I’ve worn my kanji book to a frazzle and am attempting to do the same with my conversational-Japanese book) and The Neverending Story, which I’ve long wanted to read. After that, we went to Starbucks. We met up with friends of his there, and they were all very nice. The movie, fortunately, was subtitled in Japanese rather than dubbed, so we could understand it. I had a minor crisis with a bottle of lemon seltzer that decided I’d shaken it just wrong and exploded all over me when I opened it. Fortunately, Patrick, who was planning to spend the night in Morioka, had a towel on him. I told him he’d make a very good galactic hitchhiker.
The movie, by the way, was amazing. Loved it, would see it again, except probably not in Japan. Too much work to get there.
Afterward, Patrick was staying and I was going, so I said my goodbyes and hit the road. Patrick was very sweet, asking that I please call him when I got back to my apartment because it was raining and dark and he was worried. As it turned out, fortunately, there wasn’t really anything to be worried about. The roads were quiet, and my new vehicle is very sure-footed. I made it back in record time.
Overall, it was a good weekend. There’s a rugby game this weekend, which I’m planning to go to with Nathalie and the elusive Tim, the newest American in the area.
Oyasumi nasai!
Long week, lots of classes. Not a bad week, necessarily, though it did have the bad moments. We started the adult English classes again (they go in eight-week terms), which added to the long-ness of the week. We have plenty of students, though, which is nice. All levels of knowledge, too, from the near-fluent to the Schoolkid English-speaker who hasn’t used it in years. It’ll make for interesting Wednesday nights, at least.
What I am not looking forward to is seeing the sannensei at one of my schools again. If we could expel about half a dozen of the worst boys (and their stupid mullets), things would improve 100%. As it is, the classes are loud, disrespectful and almost completely unmanageable. Typical junior-high wiggles and noise I can deal with; aggressive indifference makes my teeth hurt. Unfortunately, the mullet-heads have decided they don’t want to learn, and they don’t care about the students who do. Most likely, they’re not going to go to high school, which means they really don’t have to care about their grades this year. And unfortunately, in this particular district, getting junior high students to shut up or get out is next to impossible. I pity the poor full-time teachers who have to deal with them all month.
Yesterday was the worst. I had two sannensei classes. By the afternoon, my head hurt and I was so exhausted I was almost falling asleep at my desk. I left as soon as I reasonably could, and as I was in one of my rare “I don’t feel like cooking” moods, grabbed a Japanese curry at a take-out place on the way home and grumped a bit on Facebook. Then I went to bed around 8:45. I woke up this morning feeling all the better for it.
Today went better. Yes, I had another sannensei class, and no, it wasn’t an appreciable improvement on yesterday’s, but at least it was the first class of the day, and I went on to two lively, but sweet, ninensei classes. I hope they don’t get it into their heads that *that* is the way all sannensei behave. Last year’s weren’t like that, though, so I’m hoping it’s just a particularly bad year for attention-seeking yahoos with bad haircuts.
Bah. I hope I get the ichinensei next visit. They’re small, and very cute. They think I’m cute, too. The first day I was at this school, I came out of an ichinensei class and came face-to-face with a girl who immediately started jumping up and down, saying, “Kawaii! Kawaii!” Really, who can blame her?
You just never quite know what to expect around here. One of the loveliest surprises of the spring was the sudden flood of tulips. Beds of them flank one of the roads I use to get out to Ohtsuchi. Some pictures:
I love the huge pink-and-white ones.
We got a huge amount of rain the other week, but it was worth it. It’s green! Seems like it all happened at once, but the leaves are out, and they’re every shade of green. This is what it looks like in the mist:
Pretty, huh? It’s getting greener every day. Much as I miss Alaska, it sure is nice to have an early spring!
Really, there’s not much happening. I went back to work and discovered that one of my schools has been taken off my schedule. Apparently, they’re only using city ALTs Josh and Samuel this year. Oh, well. Means I only have four schools now. The irritating thing is that the school that got taken off my schedule was the only one I can get to by bike. The others are all too far away or halfway up a mountain. Or both, in the case of Ohtsuchi High.
Anyway, I was nervous about going back at first. My lessons have gone pretty well on the whole, though, so apparently, I haven’t lost my touch. In other news, one of the teachers I taught with last year is now on maternity leave, and her substitute barely speaks English at all. I feel kind of bad for him–he obviously just got told, “Hey, you’re teaching English this year because you’re the next best English speaker we’ve got.” He seems pretty quick on the uptake, though, and he and I were able to get through two lessons without any major problems.
I made vegetarian chili and cornbread this week and took some for my lunch Thursday and Friday. The kids and teachers were very interested and thought both looked good. Sadly, cornbread isn’t easy to make around here. I had to pick up the cornmeal at Jupiter last time I was in Morioka, and it’s both expensive and in a small bag. But it’s worth it. I found a good recipe at AllRecipes.com and even figured out how best to bake it in my toaster oven. I’d still like a real oven, but beggers can’t be choosers.
I have a cold. Well, I think it’s a cold. Sore throat, mostly. Nothing too dramatic.
It’s Golden Week here in Japan, which means I’ll have three days off next week. Pretty nice, that. Gives me time to get over my cold.
Okay, no sense putting it off any longer–gotta do laundry. Later!
Teramachi is a shopping arcade–pretty much a semi-open-air mall. I went there looking for a foreign-books bookstore. Would you believe it’d just gone out of business? *Sigh* Still found some cool stuff, though, like a little restaurant that served an excellent margherita pizza.
In Teramachi, you can also find one gem of a thrift store. The entire second floor? Kimonos! If you have the shape for one, it’s an excellent place to find kimonos and all the fixins–including some gorgeous obi wraps. Me, I’d have to get one made especially for me, what with my very non-Japanese body. Some of them were so gorgeous, though, especially the real-silk wedding kimonos and furisode for unmarried women.
Gion is the artsy district of Kyoto. It’s where the geisha (yes, they’re real) live and work.
Now entering Gion via a big, bright orange temple arch.
Across the main square, with loads of people and a temple in the background with prayers fluttering all over it.
Another temple with a bright-orange theme. Honestly, they’re kinda blinding in full daylight.
More of the temple complex. Gorgeous Japanese architecture!
You could take pictures of these all day in Gion and run out of room on your camera before you run out of temples. That might be a slight exaggeration, but they’re seriously everywhere you look.
Sakura, with a couple of bonus lamps thrown in.
Just some of the food and market stalls in the area.
Gion had more of the blooming trees than anywhere else in Kyoto. These are very pale pink; most of the darker pink blossoms were still buds. They must bloom a little later.
I found Aflac here floating on a little pond with a few other ducks and geese.
Same pond as Aflac.
Gion has a feeling of an open-air fair/market where you first enter. They put out tarps on the lawns so people can sit down and eat foods from the various stalls.
This is what people are in Kyoto to see this time of year: gorgeously blooming cherry trees. This one was huge, and absolutely dripping with blossoms.
Couple of very serious gentlemen. With swords.
Kimonos! Aren’t they pretty?
I caught this group of young people in traditional garb while pretending to take a picture of the tree behind them.
A closer picture of the blossoms.
Looking up into the tree.
Another tree bursting with blooms.
I got away from the fair-like atmosphere to get some quiet and more pictures.
This little waterfall was right off one of the paths.
Were it not for the paved road and the occasional vehicle, you could mistake this street for Japan of old.
Another temple and arch. Or a teahouse. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.
I took this from higher ground. It was slightly overcast, but still a beautiful day.
Another view.
Up a stone stairwell and down another street that looked like it could’ve come out of a movie.
Pretty, no?
I liked this sign.
The pretty keeps on coming!
Pretty sure this was a teahouse. Or a temple.
This was a little restaurant where you could sit out under the cherry blossoms.
And rising out of nowhere, a pagoda. I was hopelessly lost by this point. Had to get directions from a lady selling art.
Kyoto by night, and random kaishain, or businessmen.
All right, folks–thus endeth the tour. Hope you enjoyed it!
So, I went to Kyoto last week. It was amazing. And I have pictures to prove it!
First day: Kinkakuji
I got into Kyoto pretty late the first night, found myself a hotel (not terribly easy; Kyoto is a tourist town), and got an early start the next morning. First stop: the main train station. Good place to get a bite to eat and some maps.
The place is enormous, and, like an iceberg, keeps a lot of its bulk under the surface. I got lost underground more than once.
First shot of cherry blossoms. This was at a university campus, actually. As usual, I got on the wrong bus. Fortunately, it wasn’t far from Kinkakuji, so I sucked it up and hoofed it the rest of the way.
At the Kinkakuji grounds. It’s not yet peak cherry blossom time, so this tree was all buds, no flowers. Still a lovely setting, though.
Kinkakuji from across its little lake. It’s really quite breathtaking, especially for a temple that’s so small compared to a lot of others. Being gold-plated will do that, I suppose.
A closer shot of the temple. When the sun hits it, it’s truly stunning.
More of the lake it sits on. Gorgeous!
The lake is inhabited by some very large koi. No fishin’ allowed.
This pretty little fall was alongside the main path.
The shiny part is coins. People try to toss them into the stone pot. Luck, I suppose, or it’s the equivalent of a wishing well.
The temple grounds again. It’s such a pretty place.
A little pond with a little shrine.
Bit closer to that shrine.
Kinkakuji, as seen from just over another hill.
Back at the station, I found another cherry tree in blossom.
Inside the station lobby. It’s semi-open-air; when I got breakfast at a cafe there the second morning, I had a pigeon as a dining companion.
Women in kimonos! This is a very common sight in Kyoto, much more common than in most other places I’ve been.
Engrish, anyone?
This is where I ate dinner the first night, and where I’d happily go again. The restaurant is called “Harvest”; those of you who read hiragana will realize the name is gairaigo spelled in hiragana, which is very unusual. Generally, gairaigo are spelled in katakana. For those of you who have no idea what I’m saying, I’ll get on to the food now.
It’s a natural-foods buffet. They pride themselves on local, in-season ingredients in all their foods. Thus, I dined on small portions of mashed pumpkin squash, a couple of different salads, fresh greens, a few things I couldn’t identify (but were good), fried chicken, and my personal favorite, curried fried potatoes. They also had iced oolong tea, fresh-squeezed juices, and some very good coffee. The dessert bar featured a salt caramel pudding that was really quite delicious.
Anyway, if you go to Kyoto, I highly recommend this restaurant. It is, like so very much, under the main train station.
Finally, my hotel room. Small, but comfortable, and yes, you do see an ashtray; the only single room they had left was a smoking one. But it was a good price, so, oh, well.
Next post: Gion!
I thought I should share a few more pictures I’ve taken since Christmas. First, Morioka and Mt. Iwate:
Iwate, incidentally, is composed of the kanji “iwa”–meaning “big rock”–and “te”–meaning “hand.” Big Rock Hand Mountain. *shrug*
Next up, a classroom full o’ kids:
High schoolers, these. They’re ichinensei, or first-years, about the age of American high school sophomores.
The tide coming in along my estuary. I absolutely love my estuary. It’s my favorite place to go to just mellow.
Here, we have a typical bento lunch: veggies, a piece of fish, a steamed dumpling, and brown rice.
Making bento lunches is more time-consuming than taking along last night’s leftovers, but as you can see, it’s very healthy food, and very tasty. I’ve been experimenting with making them different ways, and I finally figured out the best way to cook the rice so it’s not crunchy.
Um, I don’t know what this thing is:
It’s a Snoopy-looking dog’s head sitting atop a very large cappuccino. With a crown on top. It’s in the lobby of the Aiina building in Morioka. We’ll call it modern art and leave it at that.
This is one of the adult classes I teach. The lady standing in the back is the very sweet and helpful Mayumi, who teaches me Japanese and also helps me with things like filling out credit card applications. The guy with his hands up is Patrick. He’s flamboyant. I’m sure you couldn’t guess that.
Some of my fellow Iwate ALTs at the farewell party I talked about in my last entry, all in varying stages of drunkenness. Nathalie is standing in the back, wearing pink.
More drunken ALTs. Actually, Kenta, on the right, didn’t drink a drop that evening, as he was driving, so I don’t know what his excuse was.
Finally, it snowed in Kamaishi this week. Didn’t stick for even a day, but it sure was pretty while it lasted.
Seems like I’ve been in Morioka as much as I’ve been in Kamaishi these days. This month, I was there for five days total.
First: Nathalie and I decided to treat ourselves to a little shopping trip. I drove, she supplied the CDs. We hit the main drag in front of the train station first. I found a hat–which I’ve been needing in the cold–at an outdoor-wears shop. It’s really cute–knit in white yarn and topped with a little poof of fur. I also found a bag at a second-hand shop. It’s absolutely adorable. It looks a bit hippy–knit again, in a rainbow of colors–but it’s the perfect size to carry my wallet, camera, phone and a few necessaries. I’ll use it while walking around in Kyoto. We also hit the shops in the train station, where I purchased my first pieces of Japanese fashion. One’s a peacock lace tank, and the other in a pale-pink knit top with ivory detailing that I found in a plus-size shop. I don’t mind being a plus size in Japan, but it does get hard to keep perspective when surrounded by all these tiny women.
When we headed back to Kamaishi, I accidentally discovered a shorter way in and out of town. I overshot the exit that would’ve taken me back through the pass and hit Sennintoge Road instead. It takes you through the mountains via four lengthy tunnels instead of over them. So, good on that.
The second and third trips were for training. Fairly boring stuff generally, but they’d broken us down into small groups, which was nice. We got to know each other better that way. Quite a few Iwate people are leaving the company or the prefecture, I found out. Hope I’ll like the new people.
The fourth trip was to see a doctor. Long story short, one of my prescriptions got lost in the mail, and I needed to find a local equivalent. Interac sent me to Morioka to meet with an IC (independent consultant, i.e. the Japanese people who help us Westerners so we don’t trip over our own feet) at the prefectural hospital. Unfortunately, they’d sent me a map to the municipal hospital. I got there and stood around being conspicuously white, waiting for someone to identify herself as Akiko. No one. So I hauled out my phone and called her. Ah, nope, wrong place. I consulted my map and discovered I was across town from the correct hospital.
So I found my way over to the prefectural hospital, where I was promptly met by the painfully cute Akiko, who speaks near-perfect English. She’s married to an ex-JET, it turns out, and has spent quite a bit of time in the US. She helped me fill out the paperwork and talk to the reception people. Of course, it turned out that the staff endocrinologist wasn’t in that day, so they sent us to the University hospital. *Sigh* Naturally, there was a two-hour wait just to see a doctor there, so Akiko and I got something to eat, then returned. The doctor was rather puzzled by Synthroid; it’s not sold in Japan. I got a brain-wave and wrote down “levothyroxine,” which he did recognize, and set me up with a local brand. I got it filled, thanked Akiko profusely, and headed for home.
The next day, of course, the package with my Synthroid arrived, weeks late and looking the worse for it.
This last trip was for a goodbye party for the ALTs leaving Iwate. Nathalie and I took a train up and met the group, about twenty people, at a Japanese-style restaurant that was really cool. It was dominated by a huge tank of water with a “ship” in the middle which was basically a raised tatami floor. Swimming around in the water were various fish, which you could actually fish for, and if you caught one, they’d prepare it for you. We didn’t get to sit on the ship, but we did get one of the surrounding rooms bordering the tank. The food was good and the room was boistrous, lubricated by pitchers of beer, screwdrivers, and a concoction called “reggae punch.” The last looks a great deal like iced tea, tastes a bit like white peach, and has a low alcohol content. I decided to go wild and have a glass. Not bad stuff. On the other hand, I tasted a Japanese drink called midori, and it was horrid. Green, bubbly, cloyingly sweet and bleah. I also tasted the screwdriver, and I’ve decided that if I ever do take to drinking, it will not be vodka. Ugh.
Sooner or later, the party at the restaurant wound down. Most of us decided to go find some other fun. One of the girls insisted we all had to go to the only taco place in town and try their “flaming pumpkins.” A short car ride, a bit of walking and a small run-in with the Morioka yakuza later (no, not kidding; I’ll explain at a future date), we were at the taco stand. Turns out a flaming pumpkin is a shot composed of Kahlua, Bailey’s, a dash of cinnamon and 100-proof Polish vodka lit on fire. I was told it was supposed to taste like a piece of pumpkin pie. Right.
Why did I actually take the thing? I don’t know; it just seemed to be less of a hassle to try it than to turn it down, and I wasn’t driving, so I figured, why not? It tasted, just so you know, like rum and cream with a strong overtone of rubbing alcohol. Not doing that again.
After that, we walked a bit more and ran into some of the Kamaishi Seawaves. They remembered us from the party in December, so we chatted with them a bit. They were quite lovely, just as they were at the party.
More walking, and the group finally decided we should do some karaoke. We found a place with a big room, and the bunch of us piled in, some literally on top of each other, and had some singing and more drinking. I stuck with lemon Fanta, for the most part. I did have another reggae punch, and I quite accidentally tried, um, something else. Don’t know what it was. I thought it was another Fanta for me, but the taste . . . my best guess is that the drink was a mix of club soda and PURE EVIL. Horrible!
The karaoke was much fun, though. The only thing funnier than one drunk person belting out the Stones’ “Satisfaction” is a whole room of drunk people belting it out. Especially if you’re singing along. (I was not, mind you, drunk; “mildly buzzed” is the most I ever got.) Eventually, the party wound down, and the remaining partiers ended up raiding a McDonald’s at 3 am. I partook of an orange juice without nasty vodka mixed in (seriously, how do people drink that stuff?) and some fries. After that, I crashed on a girl named Sarah’s apartment floor. She loaned me a single futon, a warm comforter and a pillow, and I slept for about five hours before awakening to a nastygram from my back. Stupid back. Still, I think I got off lightly, considering what monstrous hangovers some of the crew must have today.
I thanked Sarah for her hospitality and left in search of a bus to take me back to the station. Well, the first stop said the bus headed for the station wouldn’t be by for almost another hour, so I started walking in the direction of the station, figuring sooner or later, I’d find a handy bus. Second stop said the bus wouldn’t be by for forty-five minutes, so I walked on. Third stop was no better, and before I knew it, I’d walked back to the station, taking an hour to do so. I felt that justified French toast at Tully’s, a coffee shop in the station. Nathalie and I met up and found a Rapid headed back to Kamaishi then.
And now, after washing the cigarette smoke and some spilled reggae punch (not my fault) out of my clothes, making dinner, doing the dishes, and taking a bath in hopes of appeasing my sore muscles, I am downright tuckered. I’ll try to update again soon.
I’m wicked tired this week, and unfortunately, I’m not going to get a weekend until Monday. My high school’s graduation is Sunday, which means all the teachers are working Saturday and Sunday to get ready for it. But I’ll have a three-day week next week, so all’s well that ends well.
I got observed last week. Some people came in from the Iwate Board of Education and also the local Kamaishi branch and watched a lesson I taught at Kamaishi JH (from here on out referred to as KJH). I got one day’s notice, so I went ultra-demure with my clothing–bright pink turtleneck sweater, brown skirt, opaque brown tights; it’s an outfit that’s gotten me raves from my colleagues, and I really didn’t want to take a chance on cleavage with these guys in the room–and quickly polished up a lesson plan. Happy to say the class really went quite well. Actually being successful at a job and enjoying it is a new sensation for me.
Last night at Japanese class, Nathalie brought in a box of cognac chocolates to share. I took one, ’cause, hey, chocolate. What I did not count on was that in Japan, cognac chocolates don’t come with cognac ganache or something like that in the center. No, they’re little chocolate shells with a little shot of PURE LIQUOR inside. It was, needless to say (yet I say it anyway), a real shock. At least I amused the others with my facial expressions and spluttering.
In Japan, there is prayer in school. This caught me off-guard. Next week, the sannensei (third-year JH students) take their high school entrance exams. Today at Kasshi Jr. High (KaJH from now on), the teachers held a Shinto prayer ceremony for them in the teachers’ room. They put a plate of rice, a bottle of sake, a plate of salt and a platter of Japanese laurel clippings on a table as an offering and then did the prayer with all the sannensei teachers participating. I stood back and quietly watched without participating, which I felt was the most respectful thing a Christian could do under the circumstances. Given how very secular Japanese society is in general, I was rather surprised at the whole thing. I wonder, though, if their general aspirituality makes things like this less controversial–to them, it’s basically tradition, and no one has any bones to pick with the religious aspects because, again, it’s just tradition.
I did, however, enthusiastically participate in the cake-eating that followed the ceremony. Felt it was the least I could do.
Will update with new pictures soon. Hopefully.
