Update: February

Sorry for the delay! Here's a quick update on what's been happening on this side of the world...

In February, I went to the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaido, with a group of JETs to see the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival). The festival is in Sapporo, which you may know from the beer of the same name.

The Snow Festival was pretty awesome. They spend weeks sculpting snow and ice into these huge sculptures and stages. Here's one in progress:
I spent the majority of my time wondering the main park/festival, looking at the cool sculptures and enjoying yummy festival food like yakisoba and crab legs.


This one is of a famous castle in Hokkaido...I don't know it's story, but it was really impressive. The detail was incredible!
At night, they lit up the sculptures with different colored lights.


Here's a video of some J-Pop group performing in front of the sculpture of Sapporo Station. This guys are what most of my boy students try to look like... :)

(The dancing people in the crowd in the green coats are my friends who were really rocking out!)

Most of the other JETs went skiing or snowboarding. I opted to go snowmobiling instead. Watch out! It's dangerous!!

This was a really fun weekend trip -- definitely one of the highlights of Japan!

Japanese phrase of the day:
Abunai desu yo! That's dangerous!

And the winner is....

In an attempt to update my blog, I'm going to write about the Inoshishi Matsuri I went to Jan 26th. (Sorry this is so late -- I've been super sick and had to write 2 final exams, both of which took several drafts to satisfy my JTEs...anyway).

Here they are, the inoshishi a.k.a. wild boars. Sasayama city is known for it's wild boars (apparently) and so the fine people decided to dedicate a day to the inoshishi as only Japanese people can do.

The main street was closed down and this interesting cage was sent up. At one end was a hole for the boar cage to butt up against (also the Start) and the other end had a Finish sign that the boars would rip as they ran through. There was a race every hour on the hour all morning.

There they are -- whizzing past! Actually, I thought the races were pretty sad. They used the same 3 boars for each race and they were pretty beat up by the last race. If you didn't already know, boars are kinda aggressive. Shocking, right? So the boars would race down to one end of the cage and then, with nothing else to do, would start running around attacking each other. Then the boar handlers would step in and push the boars, using a wooden board, back into the Start cage. By the last race, they were bleeding and one had a broken leg!! It was really sad and felt bad for them. The winning boar's name is "Shishi-Fire" and although they said they wouldn't eat the winner, seeing how bad of shape they were in, I doubt it.

Also at this festival was festival food. Not just any festival food, but festival food made from, you guessed it, boar meat! I enjoyed a shishi-burger and shishi-sausage. The flavor was a bit different. Gamey?

Yum!

There was also plenty of souvenirs to buy and a mascot to pose with. Here I am with my Sasayama friends and the friendly inoshishi:

It was quite an experience and I'm glad I went, even though I felt bad for the little boars. I think they're kind cute in an ugly kind of way. :)

Japanese phrase of the day:
Inoshishi no niku wa oishii desu! Wild boar meat is tasty!

Midterms and Matsuris

I realized the other day that I have neglected my blog again. Sumimasen! (すみません〕 I've been so busy with school, Japanese class, and traveling, I forgot to write it down :)

This week is midterms - from Tues through Fri the students only have 3 class periods and 1 or 2 tests each day. I am in charge of writing the midterm for my 1st graders. Fun fun fun. But this also means that I have a lot more time during the day to plan lessons (or update my blog!).

Let's see, this past weekend, my friend Scot visited from Sasayama (in the north countryside) and we went to Osaka for a Beer Festival under the Sky Building. The festival had beers from all over the world - really! We had beer from Palestine, the Netherlands, Greece, everywhere! Of course Guiness and Heiniken were there, but I skipped those for the more exotic ones. I think the entire gaijin (foreigner) population showed up - approximately half the people I saw were English-speakers. :) How do you get a large group of foreigners in one place? Offer them beer, of course!

After the beer, a group of us went to Nishinomiya for dinner. We went to this fantastic Italian restaurant that had *real* Italian food - not Japanese-Italian (they like to put squid and squid ink in their pasta, weird). It was wonderful and only about $25/person for appetizer, entre, desert, and 2 glasses of wine!

The weekend before, Erin (another ALT that lives in my building) and I went to Miki for their matsuri (festival). Miki is a very small town northwest of Kobe. We ran into a group of ALTs from Awaji Island, so we hung out with them for the day. During the festival, all the men in the town carry these huge wooden floats, called danjiri, through the streets starting at about 8:30AM. (To help them gain strength, they take beer breaks about every 30-60 minutes.) There were about 50 men per float and 8 danjiri! We got there around 1PM, and everywhere we went people were shocked to see "so many gaijin!" (there were 6 of us). But everyone was very nice and wanted to talk to us or offered us beer. Around 4PM, the men carried the danjiri towards the town's shrine. The shrine is located at the top of a very steep hill - you have to walk up a long flight of stairs to get there. And those drunk men carried the danjiri up the stairs and paraded them in front of the shrine! It was amazing! I wish I had pictures, but my camera ran out of juice and the batteries I thought were charged, weren't. Pooh.

Here's a picture I found online that is similar to what I saw:

It was pretty crazy! The town I was in was much smaller than this picture - all the residental streets that they carried the danjiri through are only one lane. There was only one two-lane road that went through the town to the next town. Again, I wish I had pictures!

Well, I should probably get back to work. Midterms and all. I'll try not to wait so long between postings next time!

Japanese phrase of the day:

Tomodachi to matsuri e ikimashita. 友達と　まつりヘ　行きました。I went to the festival with my friend.

Aug 5th & 6th: Dancing Queen

On Aug 5th I went to a town north of Amagasaki, called Sakasegawa, to check out the festival. Every town, city, neighborhood, etc. has their own festivals all summer long. You can go pretty much anywhere and find a festival going on. I met up with my pred, Chris, Emmy, Mukonoso-Dave, and Richard. This festival was mainly for the kiddos - games where you could win a giant blow-up Disney animal, goldfish, and other toys. The food was very interesting: giant hot dogs on sticks (didn't taste like our hot dogs), shaved ice, yakisoba, tako-yaki (deep-fried octopus dumplings, I haven't worked up the courage to try these yet). The kids are adorable all dressed up in their yukata.

For dinner we went to an okonomi-yaki restaurant. Okonomi-yaki is sort of the Japanese version of pizza; it's a savory pancake topped with cabbage, meat, mayo (of course), fish flakes, and some other things. At the restaurant, every table has a giant hot plate built into the center. You order whatever types of okonomi-yaki you want (mostly the sauces are different, but you can get garlic, kimchi, and a whole bunch of different flavors and innards), the cook puts them together in the back and then brings them to the table and puts them on the hot plate to cook. It's interesting to watch because the fish flakes are on top and while they cook they curl up and it looks like the food is moving...strange! It's very tasty (however, I don't recommend the take-home version from the grocery store - didn't turn out well).

On Aug 6th I ended up going back to the festival by chance. I had decided to sign up for Japanese tutoring at the International Center in Takarazuka (about 2 train stops from Sakesegawa) since a lot of the other ALTs recommended it. I met up with Richard, Chris, and Casey and they helped me sign up before their tutoring sessions. The tutors are little old ladies who volunteer their time (so they have someone to talk to, I think) and it costs only 500 yen (about $5)!! Afterwards, we walked back to Sakasegawa to check out some dancing - Casey's bf is a dance teacher and his students were performing. I guess I was expecting traditional Japanese dancing...what I saw instead was hard-core hip hop! It was like something out of a rap video! Apparently this type of dance is very popular and even really young kids like the "sexy dance."

After the "dance recital," we went to a ramen restaurant for dinner. You wouldn't believe all the types of ramen that are available - not just your regular Top Ramen!

We went back to the festival and I was so excited to see some taiko drummers setting up. I so was busy watching the taiko drums, I didn't notice the circle of grannies that had formed a circle around my friends and me. They started doing ban dancing, a traditional type of line dancing! I was thrilled! After the first dance, a couple of the ladies convinced me to join into the circle (but, really how hard is it to convince me to start dancing?) and I just followed along the best I could. I had a blast and the ladies were all so nice!

Well, it's time for dinner! I'm going to a spaghetti dinner at a friend's house (yeah, some ALTs actually get houses instead of tiny apartments! I'm a little jealous...).

Japanese phrase of the day:
Dansu ga suki desu-ka? Do you like to dance?
Hai, dai suki desu! Yes, I really like it! (~it's the best!)

Observations from Aug 2-4

I've been debating whether I should keep going in chronological order or write about more topical things...maybe I'll do both. I've also been wondering how I should deal with people's names. According to a friend, you should never use anyone's actual name in a blog (for various reasons), but considering my audience hasn't met the people I'm going to be talking about, nicknames might be a bit hard... I suppose I'll just stick to first names? Arg, the difficulties of writing a blog! :)

So, Aug 2nd, my pred, his friend Chris, and Chris's gf Emmy took me out to dinner. We went to a restaurant that serves Shabu Shabu. Like many all-you-can-eat restaurants, you pay by the hour. At every table is a giant pot of boiling water. The waitress brings you fresh vegetables and thinly sliced raw meat (we had beef and pork). Also at every table are several different types of sauces -- Japan has some of the BEST sauces I have ever tasted! First you put in all the vegetables, so the pot begins to look like a soup. Then you add the meat - and because the water is so hot and the meat so thin, it cooks almost instantly! Then you grab a bite, dip it in your sauce of choice, and enjoy! It's amazing and delicious!! Also at this restaurant was my first taste of ume-shou, a plum liqueur that is served on the rocks. Oh my goodness, it is wonderful. I will have to send some home for everyone to try!

After dinner we went to karaoke! Karaoke here is not like it is in the US. Again, you pay by the hour and depending on the level of karaoke plan (so-to-speak) that you choose, you get different drinks or food as all-you-can-drink/eat. (The 1st level is a-y-c-d chou-hi, a vodka-like fruity drink, the next level is beer, and from there the drinks get more fancy and food is in the picture...) You get a private room with booth seating, a huge tv, karaoke machine, a couple mics, song books (in English if you ask), and neat remote control thingys to chose your songs. There is also a phone so you can call the front desk and ask for more drinks/food, too. Basically, you pass the song book and remote control around and everyone plugs in their song(s) of choice -- as soon as the first song is put in, the singing begins! I have found that the most fun is had when you have a large group of people squished into the booth and everyone is singing along, regardless of who picked the song or who holds the mic. It was harder having only 4 people thinking of enough songs to sing to fill up our 2 hours... Anyway, karaoke is awesome and I am no longer shy about belting one out!!!

Some observations I had written down at this point:
1. Cicadas are the most irritating, ugly creatures I have ever come across. They begin chirping when the sun comes up and don't stop until they die, which is what 24-48hours later? So it pretty much doesn't stop!
2. Everyone carries around long umbrellas if there is even a hint of rain. You can't find the nice, small, compact umbrellas you can throw in your bag around here.
3. Women carry dark parasols all the time - it is fashionable for women to have very pale skin. So, they don't let their skin see the sun! It is very common for you to see women with a parasol, a visor that completely covers their face, gloves past their elbows, and long pants in 100+degree weather! I don't understand how they don't sweat themselves to fainting, but they don't!
4. Everyone also carries a handkerchief or small towel with them everywhere. This is for 2 reasons: a. because there are no paper towels in the restrooms, b. to mop your sweat whiles dealing with the heat and humidity. Women use designer towels/hankies - I've seen Vivienne Westwood, Anna Sui, Burberry, the list goes on... Quite expensive sweat rags!

Aug 3rd: Opened up my bank account, got my keitai (cell phone), and applied for my Alien Registration card. A nice thing about being a registered alien is that I get a driver's license-type card that I can carry instead of having to have my passport on me at all times.

Aug 4th: Fireworks festival!
The Japanese love fireworks and will come up with festivals just for the fireworks! Pretty much any weekend you can find some fireworks somewhere. This time we went to a place near Osaka, along the river (don't know the exact name). The fireworks were amazing! The show lasted nearly an hour and the fireworks were huuuuuuge!! The audience oohed, ahhed, clapped, and on the really big ones yelled sugoi! (fantastic!) It was strange being American and watching the fireworks because there is something inherently patriotic about fireworks for us. Someone else mentioned that they kept expecting a band to break out in the Star Spangled Banner because every round of fireworks felt like the big finale! It's true though -- we only see fireworks on the 4th of July and New Years. It was hard not to think about the 4th of July while watching the show, especially since it was just the month before. But I digress. Because it is a festival, everyone dresses up in their summer-style kimonos called yukata. They are much less complicated than kimonos... It's very cool to see huge crowds of people dressed up in yukata.
I just bought my own yukata this past weekend while I was in Kyoto visiting a friend of mine from high school. Her husband tied it up for me :)

For dinner that night (before the fireworks), pred, Chris, Emmy and I went to one of those conveyor belt sushi places. I think they wanted to take me "someplace new and exciting," but I've been to a conveyor sushi place before.

Something I've noticed about food: don't let people fool you into thinking that Japanese people eat sooooo healthy. Most foods are fried, covered in mayo, or both! I'm surprised more people don't keel over from heart attacks because their arteries are clogged with mayo! Yes, you can eat healthy if you eat at home, but most restaurants are not the place to go for health nuts.

I think this is where I will stop for today!

Japanese phrase of the day:
Oishi desu-yo! This is delicious!