Yesterday, the leaders of the big band I'm in posted the set list for our next concert. The second tune on the list?
BRIDE OVER TROUBLED WATERS
I'd really like to hear the lyrics to this version... ;)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Snakes on a Plane
I was searching the internet to see if I could bring a real python-skin sanshin back to the US* when I came across this article:
"A young woman has been cautioned at Scotland's Glasgow Airport after attempting to smuggle a live snake on a journey from America** to the Netherlands.
Customs officers in Glasgow were carrying out a routine check on the woman when they noticed that her snakeskin belt was in fact a live snake. The harmless reptile had been chilled prior to the flight to keep it in a comatose state but it came to life in the warmth of the airport terminal.
The snake was confiscated and the woman was allowed to catch her flight after being given a warning, according to Scottish newspaper The Herald. "
-- Courtesy of Airline Industry Information, Feb. 18, 2002
Genius.
When I mentioned this story to one of my private lesson students the other day, he came up with a brilliant idea of his own.
Ryu: Hey, didn't you say you're going to have give your goldfish away before you go back to America?
Me: Yeah, the softball team wants to FedEx them back to Seattle for me, but I don't think that'll work so well....
Ryu: You should find a piece of opaque plastic piping, fill it with water, put the goldfish inside, and wear it as a belt on the plane!
It might be worth a try. I'd sure feel bad if my poor goldfish suffocated, though. I suppose every once in a while, I could sneak into the bathroom, take the belt off, and blow bubbles into it....
*Apparently pythons are an endangered species, and it's illegal to bring products made from endangered species into the US, so I settled for a synthetic snakeskin sanshin instead.
** Does this mean that she had already smuggled the snake on a plane once when she flew from the US to Glasgow??? Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to get the sanshin through customs after all....
"A young woman has been cautioned at Scotland's Glasgow Airport after attempting to smuggle a live snake on a journey from America** to the Netherlands.
Customs officers in Glasgow were carrying out a routine check on the woman when they noticed that her snakeskin belt was in fact a live snake. The harmless reptile had been chilled prior to the flight to keep it in a comatose state but it came to life in the warmth of the airport terminal.
The snake was confiscated and the woman was allowed to catch her flight after being given a warning, according to Scottish newspaper The Herald. "
-- Courtesy of Airline Industry Information, Feb. 18, 2002
Genius.
When I mentioned this story to one of my private lesson students the other day, he came up with a brilliant idea of his own.
Ryu: Hey, didn't you say you're going to have give your goldfish away before you go back to America?
Me: Yeah, the softball team wants to FedEx them back to Seattle for me, but I don't think that'll work so well....
Ryu: You should find a piece of opaque plastic piping, fill it with water, put the goldfish inside, and wear it as a belt on the plane!
It might be worth a try. I'd sure feel bad if my poor goldfish suffocated, though. I suppose every once in a while, I could sneak into the bathroom, take the belt off, and blow bubbles into it....
*Apparently pythons are an endangered species, and it's illegal to bring products made from endangered species into the US, so I settled for a synthetic snakeskin sanshin instead.
** Does this mean that she had already smuggled the snake on a plane once when she flew from the US to Glasgow??? Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to get the sanshin through customs after all....
Monday, March 03, 2008
嬉しいこといっぱい (Too Much of a Good Thing??)
For the last couple months, business has been booming at the medical school -- I think I've gained four or five private lessons just lately. This makes at least four one-hour lessons everyday, and that's not including the university classes and the free tutoring sessions I do for the medical students. If you add in prep time and the proofreading work I do for doctors at the medical school, I'm basically at school from 9 AM to 9 PM every day.
In a way, this is a good thing. I like my job, and I certainly don't want to be sitting around with nothing to do. As long as I'm living by myself in the middle of the Japanese countryside, it's best to keep busy.
On the other hand, all of these new lessons mean that I literally have no time to eat dinner until at least 9 at night Monday through Saturday....although on the bright side, once I come back to the states, I'll probably be a lot thinner.* Maybe I can become a super model.**
* Or fatter?? Isn't eating right before you go to bed supposed to make you gain weight? Or maybe my occasional late night snacking will be canceled out by the fact that sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the floor without eating anything at all.
** Shoot..forgot that I'm not over six feet tall...
Anyway, suffice it to say that with the sudden deluge of work since the first of the year, I haven't been able to write too many blog posts lately. :( But as usual, there's been plenty of stuff to write about. Here's a quick rundown of the most exciting non-work related events of the past few weeks:
Since I went to Okinawa last year, I've been a bit obsessed with the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo-ish instrument that people play there. It's a little hard to describe what it sounds like, but people play it at festivals and dance to it, so it's rhythmical and fun...maybe you could call it Okinawan-style hoe-down music??
Anyway, in Okinawa, I bought a really cheap sanshin for practice, and figured that if I ever got good at it, I could switch to a better one. Real sanshin are made from wood and covered with python skin, but my cheap one was made from a tin can. (After the bombing in World War II, Okinawa was completely devastated, and there were no materials to make sanshin, so people made them out of whatever they could find -- mostly scraps of wood and empty cans. Now the cheapest sanshin in souvenir shops are still made that way.)
Unfortunately, my sanshin was a little too cheap (or maybe I am stronger than I thought.) I was tuning it one day, turned one of the wooden tuning pegs a little too hard, and broke the peg in half. I glued the peg back together with wood glue, but it was never quite the same. :( Lamenting the loss of my sanshin, I mentioned to my parents that I wished I had a real one, and they surprised me and ordered me one for Christmas. And two weeks ago, my new sanshin finally came to the medical school. The new one is beautiful, and the sound is sooo much better than the tin can. :D
The day after my sanshin came, I checked the mail again and found a postcard with results from the Japanese proficiency test I had taken last December. (The test is for foreigners who are studying Japanese, and there are four levels depending on how long you've been studying. For my level, I had to know ~2000 Japanese characters and ~10,000 vocabulary words, so all November and December, I was studying characters like a crazy person.) My postcard was kind of small, and since a small envelope usually means bad news, I figured I must have failed the test, but I opened it anyway and found that I had actually passed! I hope no one was watching me because I was so surprised that I kind of did a little jig up the stairs to my apartment.
The following day, the postman brought me yet another surprise -- another postcard from Nodo Jiman (the American Idol-ish TV show) inviting me to audition for the TV show again. The audition was last weekend, and I decided to sing an Okinawan song and play my sanshin.
Unfortunately, this time around, I didn't sing terribly well and didn't make it on TV, so there's no videotape, but here's a still of me and my beautiful sanshin:
Just like last time, the rest of the auditionees (250 people total) were very entertaining, so despite the fact that I wasn't able to make much progress in my quest to become a Japanese pop star, I was glad to have gone to the audition.
My English student's sister came to hear me sing, and after the audition was over, she invited me to spend the night at her apartment instead of taking the hour and a half long bus ride back home.
In case you're wondering how I know my English student's sister, I suppose I'd better catch you up on a little background information. Last fall, my English student, Yumi, took me to see a big festival in her hometown and introduced me to her whole family. Here's me, Yumi, and her sister, Hitomi, next to one of the festival floats:
See that gigantic pole I'm leaning on? At the festival, the men put the poles on their shoulders and carry the float and bounce it up and down. About five minutes after this picture was taken, the manly men from the float next door decided they wanted to have a fight with our float and started charging towards us. Fortunately for me, Yumi and Hitomi realized that we were about to be sandwiched between two enormous pieces of wood and we all ran to safety in the nick of time.
...but I digress....
Here's Yumi, me, and Hitomi's five year old son, Yuuto, at a little safer distance from the action:
Yuuto is absolutely hysterical. When I first met him last fall, he was really scared of me because he had never seen a foreigner before. (For the first hour or so of the festival, he kept saying, "I don't like foreigners. I hate people who speak English!!") But after a bit, his curiosity got the better of him and we became pretty good buddies:
During dinner, he kept running over to sit on my lap and ask me questions like, "What does your grandpa look like?" and "Are there dogs in America?"
Ok, so back to Nodo Jiman day... After my audition, Yuuto was apparently really excited that I was coming to stay at his apartment. When I walked in the door, he pulled me inside and immediately gave me the grand tour, saying, "I've been cleaning house all day to get ready for you. Doesn't it just sparkle??" And then we played and played all night long...with board games and play money and video games and picture books...it was the first time I had played that much in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. :D
Later that night, we went out to dinner, where Yuuto told me the whole story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and then to the public bath. Yuuto insisted on coming into the women's side to play with me, and then almost dragged me into the men's side too when he decided to look for his dad later on. (笑)
When it was time for me to go home the next afternoon, we did one more jigsaw puzzle and then sadly parted. Yuuto told me to come back next Sunday and he would be sure to clean the house for me. I think I'm in love. <3 <3
In a way, this is a good thing. I like my job, and I certainly don't want to be sitting around with nothing to do. As long as I'm living by myself in the middle of the Japanese countryside, it's best to keep busy.
On the other hand, all of these new lessons mean that I literally have no time to eat dinner until at least 9 at night Monday through Saturday....although on the bright side, once I come back to the states, I'll probably be a lot thinner.* Maybe I can become a super model.**
* Or fatter?? Isn't eating right before you go to bed supposed to make you gain weight? Or maybe my occasional late night snacking will be canceled out by the fact that sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the floor without eating anything at all.
** Shoot..forgot that I'm not over six feet tall...
Anyway, suffice it to say that with the sudden deluge of work since the first of the year, I haven't been able to write too many blog posts lately. :( But as usual, there's been plenty of stuff to write about. Here's a quick rundown of the most exciting non-work related events of the past few weeks:
Since I went to Okinawa last year, I've been a bit obsessed with the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo-ish instrument that people play there. It's a little hard to describe what it sounds like, but people play it at festivals and dance to it, so it's rhythmical and fun...maybe you could call it Okinawan-style hoe-down music??
Anyway, in Okinawa, I bought a really cheap sanshin for practice, and figured that if I ever got good at it, I could switch to a better one. Real sanshin are made from wood and covered with python skin, but my cheap one was made from a tin can. (After the bombing in World War II, Okinawa was completely devastated, and there were no materials to make sanshin, so people made them out of whatever they could find -- mostly scraps of wood and empty cans. Now the cheapest sanshin in souvenir shops are still made that way.)
Unfortunately, my sanshin was a little too cheap (or maybe I am stronger than I thought.) I was tuning it one day, turned one of the wooden tuning pegs a little too hard, and broke the peg in half. I glued the peg back together with wood glue, but it was never quite the same. :( Lamenting the loss of my sanshin, I mentioned to my parents that I wished I had a real one, and they surprised me and ordered me one for Christmas. And two weeks ago, my new sanshin finally came to the medical school. The new one is beautiful, and the sound is sooo much better than the tin can. :D
The day after my sanshin came, I checked the mail again and found a postcard with results from the Japanese proficiency test I had taken last December. (The test is for foreigners who are studying Japanese, and there are four levels depending on how long you've been studying. For my level, I had to know ~2000 Japanese characters and ~10,000 vocabulary words, so all November and December, I was studying characters like a crazy person.) My postcard was kind of small, and since a small envelope usually means bad news, I figured I must have failed the test, but I opened it anyway and found that I had actually passed! I hope no one was watching me because I was so surprised that I kind of did a little jig up the stairs to my apartment.
The following day, the postman brought me yet another surprise -- another postcard from Nodo Jiman (the American Idol-ish TV show) inviting me to audition for the TV show again. The audition was last weekend, and I decided to sing an Okinawan song and play my sanshin.
Unfortunately, this time around, I didn't sing terribly well and didn't make it on TV, so there's no videotape, but here's a still of me and my beautiful sanshin:
Just like last time, the rest of the auditionees (250 people total) were very entertaining, so despite the fact that I wasn't able to make much progress in my quest to become a Japanese pop star, I was glad to have gone to the audition.
My English student's sister came to hear me sing, and after the audition was over, she invited me to spend the night at her apartment instead of taking the hour and a half long bus ride back home.
In case you're wondering how I know my English student's sister, I suppose I'd better catch you up on a little background information. Last fall, my English student, Yumi, took me to see a big festival in her hometown and introduced me to her whole family. Here's me, Yumi, and her sister, Hitomi, next to one of the festival floats:
See that gigantic pole I'm leaning on? At the festival, the men put the poles on their shoulders and carry the float and bounce it up and down. About five minutes after this picture was taken, the manly men from the float next door decided they wanted to have a fight with our float and started charging towards us. Fortunately for me, Yumi and Hitomi realized that we were about to be sandwiched between two enormous pieces of wood and we all ran to safety in the nick of time.
...but I digress....
Here's Yumi, me, and Hitomi's five year old son, Yuuto, at a little safer distance from the action:
Yuuto is absolutely hysterical. When I first met him last fall, he was really scared of me because he had never seen a foreigner before. (For the first hour or so of the festival, he kept saying, "I don't like foreigners. I hate people who speak English!!") But after a bit, his curiosity got the better of him and we became pretty good buddies:
During dinner, he kept running over to sit on my lap and ask me questions like, "What does your grandpa look like?" and "Are there dogs in America?"
Ok, so back to Nodo Jiman day... After my audition, Yuuto was apparently really excited that I was coming to stay at his apartment. When I walked in the door, he pulled me inside and immediately gave me the grand tour, saying, "I've been cleaning house all day to get ready for you. Doesn't it just sparkle??" And then we played and played all night long...with board games and play money and video games and picture books...it was the first time I had played that much in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. :D
Later that night, we went out to dinner, where Yuuto told me the whole story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and then to the public bath. Yuuto insisted on coming into the women's side to play with me, and then almost dragged me into the men's side too when he decided to look for his dad later on. (笑)
When it was time for me to go home the next afternoon, we did one more jigsaw puzzle and then sadly parted. Yuuto told me to come back next Sunday and he would be sure to clean the house for me. I think I'm in love. <3 <3
Friday, February 29, 2008
Golf
A few days after the autumn festival, I got another call from the softball guys:
Them: We're having a golf tournament in the three day weekend in November. You're going to play this year, aren't you?
Me: Uh, gee, I'd like to play, but...
Them: Ok! Don't worry about a thing. We'll find clubs for you!!
Me: Wow, thanks...but, uh, just so you know, I've never actually played golf before.
Them: Oh, no problem. If you can play softball, of course you'll be able to play golf....
A week later, Shinohara-san called to say that he was bringing a putter to my apartment and wanted to take me shopping for golf shoes. I thanked him and asked if we also might make a side trip to the driving range, but he didn't appear to think that was necessary.
Another week passed, and my big golf debut was getting dangerously close. Feeling a bit anxious about the fact that I had never actually touched a golf club before, I finally called Shimada-san, another one of the softball guys, and asked if he would give me a golf lesson. Fortunately, he agreed to take me out to the driving range.
When we arrived at our tees, Shimada-san thrust a driver in front of me and asked me to show him my swing. I quickly obliged, and turned back to see Shimada-san scratching his head. "I think we have a little work to do," he said.
I went back to the driving range two more times with Shimada-san and once more with my Japanese teacher. By the day of the tournament, I had progressed to the point where I could make fairly reliable contact with the ball. Unfortunately, once I hit the ball, I had almost no idea where it would go, but that couldn't really be helped.
The golf course was on the side of one of the mountains near my apartment, and the view was really amazing. Looking out from the first tee, it felt like I could have flown off the mountain and soared out over my town....and a few times, my golf balls certainly did. (Or at least, they probably would have if they hadn't gotten stuck in the trees somewhere on the side of the course.)
I was unprepared for how hilly the course was going to be, and the first time I stepped up to hit the ball, I had this nightmarish vision of me hitting the ball, watching it fly halfway up the hill toward the pin, and then roll back down to where I had started. However, I quickly realized how silly I had been to worry about this, when I finally teed off and watched my ball land in the long grass in the rough. (What a marvelous thing friction is!)
The other three guys in my group were all very good golfers, (and very patient! I think I hit the ball approximately five times for every one of their swings.... (>_<);; ) so I was able to benefit from lots of excellent advice and learn plenty of Japanese golf lingo. At the end of the back nine, I heard my first "ナイスオン！" (Nice on!) , which I believe translates to, "Way to go! We can't believe you made it onto the green in less than six shots." Anyway, they were very nice to me, and even insisted that I come back to play with them again in May. 頑張ろう、わたし！
The softball men really are the greatest. In Japan, there are a lot of things that I can't do quite as well as I'd like -- with the language barrier, even little things like talking on the phone are difficult, and sometimes I feel like such an idiot. But it's so much easier to keep trying to do better when I know that I can count on people like the softball men to bear with me. I'm very lucky to have found them. :D
Them: We're having a golf tournament in the three day weekend in November. You're going to play this year, aren't you?
Me: Uh, gee, I'd like to play, but...
Them: Ok! Don't worry about a thing. We'll find clubs for you!!
Me: Wow, thanks...but, uh, just so you know, I've never actually played golf before.
Them: Oh, no problem. If you can play softball, of course you'll be able to play golf....
A week later, Shinohara-san called to say that he was bringing a putter to my apartment and wanted to take me shopping for golf shoes. I thanked him and asked if we also might make a side trip to the driving range, but he didn't appear to think that was necessary.
Another week passed, and my big golf debut was getting dangerously close. Feeling a bit anxious about the fact that I had never actually touched a golf club before, I finally called Shimada-san, another one of the softball guys, and asked if he would give me a golf lesson. Fortunately, he agreed to take me out to the driving range.
When we arrived at our tees, Shimada-san thrust a driver in front of me and asked me to show him my swing. I quickly obliged, and turned back to see Shimada-san scratching his head. "I think we have a little work to do," he said.
I went back to the driving range two more times with Shimada-san and once more with my Japanese teacher. By the day of the tournament, I had progressed to the point where I could make fairly reliable contact with the ball. Unfortunately, once I hit the ball, I had almost no idea where it would go, but that couldn't really be helped.
The golf course was on the side of one of the mountains near my apartment, and the view was really amazing. Looking out from the first tee, it felt like I could have flown off the mountain and soared out over my town....and a few times, my golf balls certainly did. (Or at least, they probably would have if they hadn't gotten stuck in the trees somewhere on the side of the course.)
I was unprepared for how hilly the course was going to be, and the first time I stepped up to hit the ball, I had this nightmarish vision of me hitting the ball, watching it fly halfway up the hill toward the pin, and then roll back down to where I had started. However, I quickly realized how silly I had been to worry about this, when I finally teed off and watched my ball land in the long grass in the rough. (What a marvelous thing friction is!)
The other three guys in my group were all very good golfers, (and very patient! I think I hit the ball approximately five times for every one of their swings.... (>_<);; ) so I was able to benefit from lots of excellent advice and learn plenty of Japanese golf lingo. At the end of the back nine, I heard my first "ナイスオン！" (Nice on!) , which I believe translates to, "Way to go! We can't believe you made it onto the green in less than six shots." Anyway, they were very nice to me, and even insisted that I come back to play with them again in May. 頑張ろう、わたし！
The softball men really are the greatest. In Japan, there are a lot of things that I can't do quite as well as I'd like -- with the language barrier, even little things like talking on the phone are difficult, and sometimes I feel like such an idiot. But it's so much easier to keep trying to do better when I know that I can count on people like the softball men to bear with me. I'm very lucky to have found them. :D
Monday, January 21, 2008
Hibernation
Greetings from freezing cold Japan! I'm back in Ehime with a bit of spare time on my hands, so I'll try my best to bring this rather heavily slumbering blog out of hibernation. (....although right about now, a few months of hibernation actually doesn't sound like such a bad idea...It's 32 degrees here at the most, with snow, hail, and biting winds that just about rip my face off every time I ride my bicycle home. Also, the heater in my apartment has been making some really strange sounds since yesterday and I'm getting a bit nervous. If it breaks, I will have to resort to...rubbing my poor frostbitten hands together over the warmth of the vents on the sides of my laptop??? ;)
Anyway, for now, I'll take you back to the blissfully warm days of October when the softball team invited Michael and me to this year's autumn festival. You may recall last year's festival from a previous post -- the day-long event where the men carried the huge portable shrine around town to pray for a good harvest. This year's festival was more of the same, only this time I had a digital camera to document the action.
Here's the men of the town dressed in purple happi. Every time they picked up the mikoshi, they lifted it up above their heads and twirled around in circles a few times. Click on the video below and you can see for yourself.
Then they lugged it down the streets....
...past some rice fields...
...and set it down at its next destination. Here's Shinohara-san (the manager of the softball team), me, and our little friend.
Whenever the mikoshi stopped, the shinto priest (a.k.a. jazz pianist) had to sit in front of this little altar and do a ceremony. He was chanting some kind of scripture(??) when I took the video below.
I hope that didn't make you carsick....
This goblin guy was standing around the festival all day waiting to whack people on the head with his bamboo stick. Apparently, if he whacks you, you'll have good health for the next year.
The kids of the town had been practicing traditional dances and drumming for weeks before the festival, and they took turns performing every time the mikoshi stopped. In this dance, an old man and his wife are trying to till their field, but the monkey in the red suit keeps jumping on top of the old man and keeping him from working. Silly monkey.
Here's my student's sister, dancing with a fan, while the shinto priest/jazz pianist drums in the background.
And here are two of my students, Kiko and Hinako, watching the dancing. (On a side note, I had noticed during our English lessons that both of these girls were absolutely mesmerized by my American mechanical pencils, so the last time I went back to the states, I brought back a few pencils for them as a a gift. Last week, I gave them their presents at the lesson, and I have never seen anyone so excited about a pencil before. Kiko, the little girl in the red jacket, told me that her heart was beating so fast that she wasn't sure if she could finish the English lesson. :)
Besides my private students, Michael and I ran into some other kids from town who were really curious about the two of us. They hung around us all day and brought us food and little presents. (The tan blob in Michael's hand is a bit of Silly Putty that they gave us :) We also had some great conversations which were a little reminiscent of last year's festival:
Sayaka: So are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?
Michael: Nope.
Sayaka: Then, you must be married!
Me: Nope, we're just friends. We work in the same office.
Sayaka: (rummaging through Michael's backpack) Well, when are you getting married, then?
Michael: eh.....we're not getting married.... (moves his backpack away from little prying hands)
Sayaka: Ah....then you must be brother and sister....
This is me and Kosaka-san, another guy from the softball team who helps to organize the festival.
And here are the softball guys again a little later on in the evening. They had been carrying the mikoshi around since 4 AM that morning so I think they were a little tired out by this point. Even so, when the festival ended at 10 PM, they insisted on loading me up with extra bottles of tea and walking me back to my apartment. Aren't they the greatest? More on the softball men the next time I get around to posting...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
People in my Neighborhood
There was a time last year when I was the most fearsome creature in all of Ehime. I would walk down the street in my town and the neighbors (with the exception of the softball team and the Shinto priest) would immediately look straight down at their feet and walk past me as quickly as possible, presumably to avoid any awkward English conversations.
Luckily, due to a combination of factors including my growing pop star fame* and the fact that I speak a little Japanese, I no longer appear to strike fear into the hearts of my neighbors, so we're getting to know each other a little better.
Last week, I was talking to Tyler for a minute outside of our Japanese teacher's house when I noticed this older man staring at us from across the street. I bowed to him and expected him to nod back and keep walking, but a few seconds later, he strode right up to us, whipped out his camera, and ordered us to pose so that he could take pictures of us and finish off his roll of film. After he had finished with his camera, he apparently had a thing or two he wanted to tell us, and proceeded to give a lengthy (~30 minute) lecture on topics including orchids, film cameras, old-school vacuum tube speakers, the war in Iraq, and his personal collection of fake American rifles. I don't think I ever quite understood what the point of all this was, but it was entertaining.
After I extricated myself from the man's lecture and said goodbye to Tyler, I walked back towards my apartment, and two minutes later, found myself being waved towards the cigarette vending machine** on the corner next to my apartment. An elderly lady from down the street was standing there, and she told me that she needed to buy cigarettes for her son but didn't know how to use the vending machine. She thrust a thousand yen bill into my hand and asked me to figure out the machine, so I helped her buy a couple packs. It wasn't until she thanked me and walked off down the street that it hit me -- she had been talking to me in mad Japanese the whole time like she didn't even notice that I was a foreigner. Perhaps I am starting to blend in...or perhaps she was just really frustrated with the vending machine.
* I sang in front of a pretty big crowd at the American Idolish singing contest last month, which was great fun. Unfortunately, I didn't place this time, but I did win an honorable mention coffee gift certificate from the judges. Also, at dinner after the contest, this random lady came up to me in the restaurant, told me she enjoyed my song, and gave me a box of fruit jelly. :D
** Yes, they sell cigarettes in vending machines here. I can't quite figure out why they even bother to make cigarettes illegal until you turn 20...
Luckily, due to a combination of factors including my growing pop star fame* and the fact that I speak a little Japanese, I no longer appear to strike fear into the hearts of my neighbors, so we're getting to know each other a little better.
Last week, I was talking to Tyler for a minute outside of our Japanese teacher's house when I noticed this older man staring at us from across the street. I bowed to him and expected him to nod back and keep walking, but a few seconds later, he strode right up to us, whipped out his camera, and ordered us to pose so that he could take pictures of us and finish off his roll of film. After he had finished with his camera, he apparently had a thing or two he wanted to tell us, and proceeded to give a lengthy (~30 minute) lecture on topics including orchids, film cameras, old-school vacuum tube speakers, the war in Iraq, and his personal collection of fake American rifles. I don't think I ever quite understood what the point of all this was, but it was entertaining.
After I extricated myself from the man's lecture and said goodbye to Tyler, I walked back towards my apartment, and two minutes later, found myself being waved towards the cigarette vending machine** on the corner next to my apartment. An elderly lady from down the street was standing there, and she told me that she needed to buy cigarettes for her son but didn't know how to use the vending machine. She thrust a thousand yen bill into my hand and asked me to figure out the machine, so I helped her buy a couple packs. It wasn't until she thanked me and walked off down the street that it hit me -- she had been talking to me in mad Japanese the whole time like she didn't even notice that I was a foreigner. Perhaps I am starting to blend in...or perhaps she was just really frustrated with the vending machine.
* I sang in front of a pretty big crowd at the American Idolish singing contest last month, which was great fun. Unfortunately, I didn't place this time, but I did win an honorable mention coffee gift certificate from the judges. Also, at dinner after the contest, this random lady came up to me in the restaurant, told me she enjoyed my song, and gave me a box of fruit jelly. :D
** Yes, they sell cigarettes in vending machines here. I can't quite figure out why they even bother to make cigarettes illegal until you turn 20...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Death of a Goldfish
Hi again! Since my last post, there's been good news and bad news. The good news is that I've finished writing essays for all ten of my medical school applications. Also, I got one invitation for an interview last week, so I'm coming back to Seattle for a week in the end of October. :)
The bad news has to do with the nine goldfish that I got at the festival last month. (I guess I spoke a little too soon in my last post.....) Last weekend, I came back to my apartment from a lesson and was about to feed my goldfish when I noticed that something didn't feel right. On a whim, I counted the fish and found that there were only eight in the tank. At first, I figured number nine must be hiding in a plant, but after a quick inspection, I realized that this couldn't be true. At this point, I happened to look down at the floor and saw number nine lying on the tatami. He was very dry and very dead. :( :( Apparently, he had been feeling a bit too frisky and jumped clear out of the tank. I wish I had been there to rescue him. :(
I think number nine must have had a girlfriend (boyfriend??) in the tank, because the next day, another poor goldfish started swimming in corkscrews on its side and was dead by the next morning. Probably of a broken heart. Poor kid. :(
I didn't really think that I would get so attached to the goldfish, but I must admit that the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I saw number nine on the floor. It really was an awful feeling to see him lying there and realize that he's never going to move again. *shudder* Guess I've never really had a pet die before. :( Wish me luck with the other seven fish!
The bad news has to do with the nine goldfish that I got at the festival last month. (I guess I spoke a little too soon in my last post.....) Last weekend, I came back to my apartment from a lesson and was about to feed my goldfish when I noticed that something didn't feel right. On a whim, I counted the fish and found that there were only eight in the tank. At first, I figured number nine must be hiding in a plant, but after a quick inspection, I realized that this couldn't be true. At this point, I happened to look down at the floor and saw number nine lying on the tatami. He was very dry and very dead. :( :( Apparently, he had been feeling a bit too frisky and jumped clear out of the tank. I wish I had been there to rescue him. :(
I think number nine must have had a girlfriend (boyfriend??) in the tank, because the next day, another poor goldfish started swimming in corkscrews on its side and was dead by the next morning. Probably of a broken heart. Poor kid. :(
I didn't really think that I would get so attached to the goldfish, but I must admit that the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I saw number nine on the floor. It really was an awful feeling to see him lying there and realize that he's never going to move again. *shudder* Guess I've never really had a pet die before. :( Wish me luck with the other seven fish!
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
More Than Halfway There
After two more weeks of writing essays for medical school applications:
Number of essays finished: roughly 18
Number of essays still to write: roughly 9
Number of goldfish still alive: 9/9 (!) Aren't they beauties??
I think I know why a bunch of the world's greatest authors went crazy at some point in their lives. I'll bet you they all sat alone in their hot, muggy apartments grouchily writing medical school admissions essays and talking to goldfish all day.
On a related note, it's that time of year again when the high school next door starts preparing for its Field Day. This means that the students are at the school at all hours of the day and night running laps around the soccer field, beating drums, and chanting things that sound strangely like, "This is a cat! Foul ball!! This is a cat! Foul ball!!" This may be another sign that I am slowly going crazy, but I've heard them do the same chant every morning, and no matter how many times I hear it, it sounds the same....
Number of essays finished: roughly 18
Number of essays still to write: roughly 9
Number of goldfish still alive: 9/9 (!) Aren't they beauties??
I think I know why a bunch of the world's greatest authors went crazy at some point in their lives. I'll bet you they all sat alone in their hot, muggy apartments grouchily writing medical school admissions essays and talking to goldfish all day.
On a related note, it's that time of year again when the high school next door starts preparing for its Field Day. This means that the students are at the school at all hours of the day and night running laps around the soccer field, beating drums, and chanting things that sound strangely like, "This is a cat! Foul ball!! This is a cat! Foul ball!!" This may be another sign that I am slowly going crazy, but I've heard them do the same chant every morning, and no matter how many times I hear it, it sounds the same....
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Something to Talk About
In another week or so, I'll be halfway through my stay in Japan. (In case you haven't heard, I extended my contract another year, so I'm going to stay at the medical school until August of 2008.) Over the next couple of days, things are going to change a bit. Tyler is leaving Ehime and the new teacher is coming sometime next week. Of course I'm excited to meet the new teacher, but also a little sad to see Tyler go -- it's been fun working together and nice to hang out with someone who shares my love for karaoke. :D
Let's get one thing straight, though -- although Tyler and I get along well, contrary to popular belief, we're not married, dating or otherwise bound by vows of eternal gaijin love. Despite this, I think we've both become resigned to the fact that everyone in Toon city thinks we're married. The softball men, the shinto priest, and various other people in my neighborhood have asked me how my husband is doing so many times that I've lost count. And yesterday, at dinner with two of our students (both exchange students from China), I realized that the medical students also appear to think that we're a couple.
Student 1: So you want to learn Chinese?
Me: Oh yes, please teach me!
Student 2: Ok. Do you know any words already?
Me: Well....I can say 你好 (hello) and 我愛你 (I love you.)
Student 1: Ooooo, you can say 我愛你??? Good! Now say it to Tyler!! (The two students look at each other and giggle. wink wink. nudge nudge.)
Tyler and Me: ???
Student 1: We've actually been wondering if you two have any good stories to tell us.
Me: Stories?
Student 1: Yeah, like...you know...stories about the two of you...together....
Me: haha. I don't think I could tell you anything very interesting.
Student 1: Oh....so you mean he didn't propose to you???
Tyler and Me: ...
Really, it doesn't bother me that everyone here thinks I'm married to Tyler. I actually find it quite entertaining. But I do wonder what will happen when the new teacher comes, as he just so happens to be male. I can only imagine the scandal. It'll probably make the front page. (TROUBLE IN PARADISE??? GAIJIN LOVE TRIANGLE IN TOON CITY.)
Yikes...who knew I would get married, divorced, and remarried in just one short year.
Let's get one thing straight, though -- although Tyler and I get along well, contrary to popular belief, we're not married, dating or otherwise bound by vows of eternal gaijin love. Despite this, I think we've both become resigned to the fact that everyone in Toon city thinks we're married. The softball men, the shinto priest, and various other people in my neighborhood have asked me how my husband is doing so many times that I've lost count. And yesterday, at dinner with two of our students (both exchange students from China), I realized that the medical students also appear to think that we're a couple.
Student 1: So you want to learn Chinese?
Me: Oh yes, please teach me!
Student 2: Ok. Do you know any words already?
Me: Well....I can say 你好 (hello) and 我愛你 (I love you.)
Student 1: Ooooo, you can say 我愛你??? Good! Now say it to Tyler!! (The two students look at each other and giggle. wink wink. nudge nudge.)
Tyler and Me: ???
Student 1: We've actually been wondering if you two have any good stories to tell us.
Me: Stories?
Student 1: Yeah, like...you know...stories about the two of you...together....
Me: haha. I don't think I could tell you anything very interesting.
Student 1: Oh....so you mean he didn't propose to you???
Tyler and Me: ...
Really, it doesn't bother me that everyone here thinks I'm married to Tyler. I actually find it quite entertaining. But I do wonder what will happen when the new teacher comes, as he just so happens to be male. I can only imagine the scandal. It'll probably make the front page. (TROUBLE IN PARADISE??? GAIJIN LOVE TRIANGLE IN TOON CITY.)
Yikes...who knew I would get married, divorced, and remarried in just one short year.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Festival Day II
The softball team invited me back yesterday for the second day of the Obon festival. Here's a quick summary of what went down:
Number of boxes of kleenex won: 0 (The two day total stands at 21. Not too shabby.)
Number of goldfish I managed to catch at the goldfish carnival game: 0 (Very poor showing...wish I could have better represented my country....)
Number of goldfish the softball team gave me to take home anyway: 9 :D
Number of days the goldfish lived in a pot in my kitchen because I didn't have a better container to put them in: 0.5 (I bought a small aquarium for them today. Hopefully they're happier now.)
Number of reporters from the Ehime prefectural newspaper who came to interview me for some kind of human interest article: 1 (笑)
Probability that I will become an international celebrity before I leave Japan: 0.5 (and rising rapidly with all this extra publicity I'm getting ;)
Number of public baths visited last night: 1 (That makes a total of two visits in the last two days. The people who work the night shift at the bath recognize my face now. I am thinking of moving out of my apartment and into the bath. I seriously could live there if I wanted to. The bath is open twenty-four hours with a restaurant, a room with comfy looking recliners, air conditioner and of course, a bath. If only it were in biking distance of work...)
Number of boxes of kleenex won: 0 (The two day total stands at 21. Not too shabby.)
Number of goldfish I managed to catch at the goldfish carnival game: 0 (Very poor showing...wish I could have better represented my country....)
Number of goldfish the softball team gave me to take home anyway: 9 :D
Number of days the goldfish lived in a pot in my kitchen because I didn't have a better container to put them in: 0.5 (I bought a small aquarium for them today. Hopefully they're happier now.)
Number of reporters from the Ehime prefectural newspaper who came to interview me for some kind of human interest article: 1 (笑)
Probability that I will become an international celebrity before I leave Japan: 0.5 (and rising rapidly with all this extra publicity I'm getting ;)
Number of public baths visited last night: 1 (That makes a total of two visits in the last two days. The people who work the night shift at the bath recognize my face now. I am thinking of moving out of my apartment and into the bath. I seriously could live there if I wanted to. The bath is open twenty-four hours with a restaurant, a room with comfy looking recliners, air conditioner and of course, a bath. If only it were in biking distance of work...)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Octopus Balls and Tired Feet
The last week or so, I've been waking up really early, probably because my apartment faces east and gets like an oven as soon as the sun comes up. Yesterday, I woke up at about 5:30....which doesn't fit my theory at all since the sky still looked like this:
Anyway, for whatever reason, I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. And so began a very long day of randomness.
Monday through Wednesday of this week are a Japanese holiday called Obon. During Obon, people believe that the souls of their ancestors come back to earth for a few days. Many people go back to their parent's house, eat special food, and visit their family's grave to honor their ancestors. (I tried to ask where my grandma's soul would go. Do the souls of non-Japanese people or Japanese-American people come back to earth too? Would my grandma's soul come back to her grave in Seattle? To her house? To her relatives' house in Okinawa? Nobody really seemed to know. Anyway, it was interesting to think about it.)
Many towns also have festivals for Obon with food and traditional dancing, and in my town, the festival's organizational committee happens to be run by.......my softball team! One of the softball men called me yesterday afternoon and asked if I would make food at one of the booths, so I rode my bike over to the festival to help out.
In the middle of this little park, they had set up this tower thing with a drum inside:
and tents with grills and deep-fryers to make soba noodles, fried chicken, french fries, udon, and octopus balls.
I was given my very own apron and towel and recruited to work at the octopus ball grill where I greased grills, poured batter, sprinkled cabbage and bits of octopus, and turned balls for three hours. It was fun to learn something new, but reeeallly hot behind the grill.
Meanwhile, lots of people from town came to the festival dressed in yukatas (a kind of light summer kimono) and danced in a circle around the tower like this:
Sorry, I'll have to work on my taking-pictures-in-the-dark skills, but oh well. The blurriness gives it character. :)
After the festival, there were some raffle prizes leftover so the whole kitchen staff was invited to draw tickets. Curiously, everyone drew prize number 4, which happened to be three boxes of tissues, and on top of that, everyone decided to give their tissues to me. I'm pretty sure that unless I catch pneumonia and am sick in bed every day until I leave Japan, I won't use 21 boxes of kleenex by myself, but they insisted on giving them to me so I graciously accepted them. :D
After the raffle, we grabbed some udon:
(Me and the first baseman, who gave me an apron from his sake factory.)
Anyway, for whatever reason, I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. And so began a very long day of randomness.
Monday through Wednesday of this week are a Japanese holiday called Obon. During Obon, people believe that the souls of their ancestors come back to earth for a few days. Many people go back to their parent's house, eat special food, and visit their family's grave to honor their ancestors. (I tried to ask where my grandma's soul would go. Do the souls of non-Japanese people or Japanese-American people come back to earth too? Would my grandma's soul come back to her grave in Seattle? To her house? To her relatives' house in Okinawa? Nobody really seemed to know. Anyway, it was interesting to think about it.)
Many towns also have festivals for Obon with food and traditional dancing, and in my town, the festival's organizational committee happens to be run by.......my softball team! One of the softball men called me yesterday afternoon and asked if I would make food at one of the booths, so I rode my bike over to the festival to help out.
In the middle of this little park, they had set up this tower thing with a drum inside:
and tents with grills and deep-fryers to make soba noodles, fried chicken, french fries, udon, and octopus balls.
I was given my very own apron and towel and recruited to work at the octopus ball grill where I greased grills, poured batter, sprinkled cabbage and bits of octopus, and turned balls for three hours. It was fun to learn something new, but reeeallly hot behind the grill.
Meanwhile, lots of people from town came to the festival dressed in yukatas (a kind of light summer kimono) and danced in a circle around the tower like this:
Sorry, I'll have to work on my taking-pictures-in-the-dark skills, but oh well. The blurriness gives it character. :)
After the festival, there were some raffle prizes leftover so the whole kitchen staff was invited to draw tickets. Curiously, everyone drew prize number 4, which happened to be three boxes of tissues, and on top of that, everyone decided to give their tissues to me. I'm pretty sure that unless I catch pneumonia and am sick in bed every day until I leave Japan, I won't use 21 boxes of kleenex by myself, but they insisted on giving them to me so I graciously accepted them. :D
After the raffle, we grabbed some udon:
(Me and the first baseman, who gave me an apron from his sake factory.)and then the softball men went off to the community center to have a post-festival party. We were sitting at the table snacking and chatting when the first baseman and the manager decided they wanted to go to a public bath and invited me to come. On one hand, it was already 11 PM and I had been up since 5:30 that morning, but on the other hand, I was pretty sweaty and greasy from grilling octopus balls, so I decided to take them up on it.
By now, I've gotten over the weirdness of bathing naked with a bunch of people I've never seen before, but I still don't quite understand the social side of the public bath thing -- lots of people go to the bath with friends or their family for fun, but of course, men and women have separate baths so they can't really hang out together. It doesn't seem like the best way to have a group outing. At any rate, last night, the two softball men went to their bath, I went to mine, soaked for awhile and met up again an hour later. The water felt really nice after standing in the hot octopus ball booth all day. I guess last night's bath was less about bonding and more about sweaty, tired feet. That was cool with me.
By now, I've gotten over the weirdness of bathing naked with a bunch of people I've never seen before, but I still don't quite understand the social side of the public bath thing -- lots of people go to the bath with friends or their family for fun, but of course, men and women have separate baths so they can't really hang out together. It doesn't seem like the best way to have a group outing. At any rate, last night, the two softball men went to their bath, I went to mine, soaked for awhile and met up again an hour later. The water felt really nice after standing in the hot octopus ball booth all day. I guess last night's bath was less about bonding and more about sweaty, tired feet. That was cool with me.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Art
This is a self portrait of Mai, one of the girls who I teach on Friday. She's 11 and wants to be a comic book artist when she grows up.
Yurie (12 or 13, I think) drew this picture during class a few weeks ago. Apparently this is what I look like during the lesson. :)
Actually, this one isn't from my students. It's from Maiko, my dad's cousin's daughter who lives in Okinawa. She drew a shisa, a traditional Okinawa guard dog-lion thing that is supposed to keep bad luck away from your house. It says, "To Big Sister Lindsay. This is a happy shisa. Don't you think so? From Mai Nakamura." There's kind of a Japanese pun in there that I can't translate, but it's very cute.
Yurie (12 or 13, I think) drew this picture during class a few weeks ago. Apparently this is what I look like during the lesson. :)
Actually, this one isn't from my students. It's from Maiko, my dad's cousin's daughter who lives in Okinawa. She drew a shisa, a traditional Okinawa guard dog-lion thing that is supposed to keep bad luck away from your house. It says, "To Big Sister Lindsay. This is a happy shisa. Don't you think so? From Mai Nakamura." There's kind of a Japanese pun in there that I can't translate, but it's very cute.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
デンジャラス・ジャパン
Summer in Japan is not for the faint of heart -- an assortment of perils lurk right outside my apartment door. Today, I stepped outside my apartment, and after a thirty second walk down the stairs to my bike, I was already dripping with sweat. By the time I arrived at work five minutes later, I had a rather unattractive stain down the front of my shirt. Ugh.
It is really hot here.
Along with the recent heat wave, the two flights of stairs up to my apartment have suddenly become quite perilous. Since the exterior of my apartment building is bright yellow and brightly lit, every night, every single bug in the whole city comes flocking towards my building. When I come back to my apartment at night, I have to duck and dodge various critters, most of which are at least twice as big as any bug I have ever seen in Washington. Sometimes I feel like I'm living inside a video game:
Level One: Duck the spider webs on the first flight of stairs, and be sure to jump over the two gigantic beetles patrolling the second story landing. Don't let them spear you with their fearsome antennae and eat you, or you'll lose one life and be sent back to start.
(This one is actually one of the smaller beetles. I dropped my keys right next to him and dreaded picking them up, but fortunately, he was a rather sluggish type so I was able to retrieve my keys unscathed and pass on to Level 2.)
Level Two: The second set of stairs are relatively easy to negotiate, but beware of the occasional spider webs and purple lizards climbing up the walls. The lizards won't hurt you, but they can sure freak you out if they jump onto your head.
Level Three: On the third floor, keep low and time your dash to your apartment door carefully to avoid being dive-bombed by small birds which fly back and forth across the walkway frantically trying to find a way out of the netting that surrounds the apartment. When you reach your door, open and close it as quickly as possible to avoid letting in any unwanted guests.
***Should an unwanted guest enter your apartment, (e.g. a gigantic green bug with wings) nervously watch it fly circles around your light fixture, try to ignore it for half an hour, and finally trap it in a cup and take it outside in order to avoid accidentally inhaling it in your sleep.
----
Two Sundays ago, I discovered yet another peril of living in an old apartment in the heat of the Japanese summer. I had been working in the next city every night from Thursday to Sunday, so I had been eating out and hadn't used any of my kitchen appliances for almost a week. When I came home on Sunday night, I opened the refrigerator and was greeted by the most disgusting odor I have ever smelled in my life.
My ancient refrigerator had succumbed to the heat and quit working at a very inopportune time. In the sweltering heat, the leftover noodles, frozen hamburger, and the veggies in the crisper did not fare too well, and there was black mold everywhere. Fortunately, I eventually managed to clean out the fridge and freezer without dying from the fumes. The mold was pretty terrifying, though.
After a week with no fridge at all, my office ordered a new fridge and sent it to my apartment on Monday. It is hands down the most beautiful fridge I have ever seen in my life. Big, clean and cold inside. I love it. If it were human, I would marry it.
On a completely unrelated note, I have just noticed that the brand name of the new fridge is "it's," the brand name of my microwave is "Love and Rest," and the brand name of my toilet paper is "Mrs. Wisely."
It is really hot here.
Along with the recent heat wave, the two flights of stairs up to my apartment have suddenly become quite perilous. Since the exterior of my apartment building is bright yellow and brightly lit, every night, every single bug in the whole city comes flocking towards my building. When I come back to my apartment at night, I have to duck and dodge various critters, most of which are at least twice as big as any bug I have ever seen in Washington. Sometimes I feel like I'm living inside a video game:
Level One: Duck the spider webs on the first flight of stairs, and be sure to jump over the two gigantic beetles patrolling the second story landing. Don't let them spear you with their fearsome antennae and eat you, or you'll lose one life and be sent back to start.
(This one is actually one of the smaller beetles. I dropped my keys right next to him and dreaded picking them up, but fortunately, he was a rather sluggish type so I was able to retrieve my keys unscathed and pass on to Level 2.)Level Two: The second set of stairs are relatively easy to negotiate, but beware of the occasional spider webs and purple lizards climbing up the walls. The lizards won't hurt you, but they can sure freak you out if they jump onto your head.
Level Three: On the third floor, keep low and time your dash to your apartment door carefully to avoid being dive-bombed by small birds which fly back and forth across the walkway frantically trying to find a way out of the netting that surrounds the apartment. When you reach your door, open and close it as quickly as possible to avoid letting in any unwanted guests.
***Should an unwanted guest enter your apartment, (e.g. a gigantic green bug with wings) nervously watch it fly circles around your light fixture, try to ignore it for half an hour, and finally trap it in a cup and take it outside in order to avoid accidentally inhaling it in your sleep.
----
Two Sundays ago, I discovered yet another peril of living in an old apartment in the heat of the Japanese summer. I had been working in the next city every night from Thursday to Sunday, so I had been eating out and hadn't used any of my kitchen appliances for almost a week. When I came home on Sunday night, I opened the refrigerator and was greeted by the most disgusting odor I have ever smelled in my life.
My ancient refrigerator had succumbed to the heat and quit working at a very inopportune time. In the sweltering heat, the leftover noodles, frozen hamburger, and the veggies in the crisper did not fare too well, and there was black mold everywhere. Fortunately, I eventually managed to clean out the fridge and freezer without dying from the fumes. The mold was pretty terrifying, though.
After a week with no fridge at all, my office ordered a new fridge and sent it to my apartment on Monday. It is hands down the most beautiful fridge I have ever seen in my life. Big, clean and cold inside. I love it. If it were human, I would marry it.
On a completely unrelated note, I have just noticed that the brand name of the new fridge is "it's," the brand name of my microwave is "Love and Rest," and the brand name of my toilet paper is "Mrs. Wisely."
Monday, August 06, 2007
Career Change
I think I'm going to give up this medical school business after all. Or maybe become like Patch Adams or something....because I swear that by the time I leave Japan, I will have become some type of celebrity.
I was walking down the street in Matsuyama with a friend the other day, when a man came up to us and asked if he could take a picture for a magazine. A picture? Of me? For a magazine? Surely, I must not understand his Japanese, I thought, but since we had nothing to do that day, we had our picture taken and went off to karaoke.
I was walking down the street in Matsuyama with a friend the other day, when a man came up to us and asked if he could take a picture for a magazine. A picture? Of me? For a magazine? Surely, I must not understand his Japanese, I thought, but since we had nothing to do that day, we had our picture taken and went off to karaoke.
I forgot all about it until three or four weeks later. This medical student, who I had never met before, came up to me in the hallway at school and said in an excited whisper, "Town Jouhou!! Town Jouhou!!" (Town Information! Town Information!) She was looking me straight in the eye with this huge smile like she expected me to understand exactly what she was talking about, but I had no idea. Finally, I asked her what was up, and she told me that she had seen a picture of me in the Matsuyama Town Information magazine. In the next few days, a whole bunch of random people -- medical students, secretaries, one of my bosses -- showed me the magazine, so I guess it's a pretty widely read publication and my beautiful picture must be all over Matsuyama by now. Perhaps I will become a model.
(Click on it to enlarge it.)
...Or perhaps I will become a pop star after all. One of my students brought me a flier about another American Idolish singing contest the other day. This one is a little bit smaller than the last one and probably won't lead to any big television appearances, but I figure I have to work on my publicity in any way that I can. ;) I sang in the preliminary round of the contest the other day, and found a postcard in my mailbox on Friday saying that I made the first cut, so in two weeks, I'll be singing at the semi-final during a festival in the middle of downtown Matsuyama. Watch out Kelly Clarkson! Watch out Clay!!
Oh, yeah. I was on TV again the other day when our jazz band's concert was locally televised. You can check out video of my guest vocal appearance here if you like. :) I was pretty nervous singing with a big band for the first time but didn't do too bad....except for a little part at the end when I ran out of air and was dying...and the part after I finished singing when I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to leave the stage. I kind of looked at the emcee and bowed a bunch of times because I wasn't sure what to do. It sorta looks like I was doing an impression of the bowing lady from the contest at the end of the Sound of Music (>_<);;
(Click on it to enlarge it.)Oh, yeah. I was on TV again the other day when our jazz band's concert was locally televised. You can check out video of my guest vocal appearance here if you like. :) I was pretty nervous singing with a big band for the first time but didn't do too bad....except for a little part at the end when I ran out of air and was dying...and the part after I finished singing when I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to leave the stage. I kind of looked at the emcee and bowed a bunch of times because I wasn't sure what to do. It sorta looks like I was doing an impression of the bowing lady from the contest at the end of the Sound of Music (>_<);;
Friday, August 03, 2007
Back
Hi!!! How have you been? Have you been taking your vitamins? Sleeping 8 hours a night? Eating breakfast?? Doing your homework??? I hope you're all doing well! Don't be fooled by the lack of blog posts -- I'm still alive* and enjoying myself in Japan. :D
For the past month and a half, I've been all over the place. I went to Kyoto, Himeji, Oita, Hiroshima, Ehime, Okinawa, and Nara with my family, and then to South Korea with my friend, Chris. After that came another round of essays for medical school applications, and then the final exam for the medical English class. The time has flown by so fast that sometimes it seems like there's hardly been time to think, let alone write blog entries. Things never get boring, though, and hopefully life will stay that way. :D Anyway, on to my (very disjointed) impressions of the last few weeks...
My family came to Japan in the end of June, and in the middle of their trip, we all went to the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. Even though it was my third time at the museum, it was still quite intense. Inside are a variety of exhibits about the atom bomb victims: a lunch box full of charred food that a junior high school girl never got to eat because she was incinerated by the heat from the bomb, a drawing of a husband peering helplessly through the ruins of his burning house at his wife who is stuck inside, a picture of a man so badly burnt that his face, back and legs are completely covered with blisters/charred skin(??). Really awful stuff.
In South Korea a few weeks later, Chris and I went to another museum where I saw more of the same. This museum was about the prisons that the imperialist Japanese army ran while it occupied Korea from the early 1900's until World War II. I had known that the Japanese army committed war crimes in Korea and China, but the museum was still pretty shocking. There were lots of really graphic displays showing how Koreans who protested against the occupation government were thrown into jail and tortured in all sorts of despicable ways. What struck me the most was that the tortured Koreans in the pictures looked just as awful as the a-bomb victims in Hiroshima. There's really not much difference between a back covered with blisters and a back covered with long gashes from a whip. Different means of violence, but the same horrible result, at least on the level of the individual victims.
All of these awful, awful pictures were, of course, depressing and left me thinking some pretty dark thoughts. How can human beings do such horrible things to each other? But throughout the rest of the trip, people did so many kind and good things for my family and me that it was difficult for me to be pessimistic for long. While this blog is not exactly the best place to make any big claims about the goodness of human nature, I have found lots of reasons to be optimistic. Here they are in no particular order:
-- Chris's friend Jin, who let us stay in her apartment even though I had never met her before. She was a fabulous host and showed Chris and me all around Seoul in between studying for her midterms and working at her part-time job.
-- the Korean guy sitting next to me on the plane back to Korea, who realized that I couldn't eat my sandwich because there were nuts inside and kindly offered me his yogurt. :)
-- my friends in Kyoto. My folks came to Kyoto on a Friday night, but my ferry arrived there much earlier that morning. I thought I would call up some of my friends in Kyoto to see if they could meet, but figured that it might not work out since they have classes on Fridays. Surprisingly enough, they all managed to reschedule somehow or other and took me out to lunch, dinner, and fireworks. One of my friends had a test in Osaka in the morning and her part-time job in Kobe in the afternoon, but still took the forty-five minute train ride out to Kyoto to meet up with us for an hour or so before running back to Kobe. Talk about going out of your way!
-- all of the Japanese relatives. In Oita, my dad's aunt Toshiko reserved our hotel for us, took us around in taxis to the best restaurants she could find, and fed us until I thought I was going to burst. :)
Our relatives in Okinawa were equally hospitable. My dad's aunt rented the biggest van I have ever seen, and her son, Dai, chauffeured us all over the island for the whole weekend.
(They also covered us with a tiny umbrella to make sure we didn't get sun burnt.)
-- the people of my town. Four of my lady students invited us over to one of their houses for lunch. They had mentioned that they would prepare some sort of light lunch, but I should have known better. When we got to the house, we found an absolutely gigantic spread of salad, okonomiyaki (a Japanese style pancake kind of thing), sausages, rice balls, cake, Japanese sweets, and several other dishes. It was delicious, but certainly not a light lunch.
That night, the softball men had a welcome party for my family. They started by driving us out to the first baseman's sake factory for a tour, and even enlisted an interpreter to come along and help explain things. After the sake factory, they ushered us over to the local shrine where more softball men and the Shinto priest/piano player were waiting to receive us. At the shrine, they had arranged for a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and koto (Japanese stringed instrument) concert:
and a performance of shishimai, a traditional dragon dance:
We watched the show from the seats of honor, well-supplied with tea and mosquito repellent.
Then we set off to a restaurant for dinner. At the door of the restaurant, the softball men gave all of us happi (traditional Japanese summer jackets) and had us participate in a traditional welcome party ceremony where you break the top of a sake keg with big wooden hammers.
Dinner was huge and delicious, (in hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have scheduled lunch with my students and the softball team's party on the same day, because we were all quite full) and in the middle, all sorts of little surprises kept popping up. At one point, the shakuhachi player gave Steven his very own shakuhachi to take back to America. A little bit later, several softball men stood up to make speeches about how happy they were to have us in their town, and then requested that each of us get up and make a speech of our own. And in the middle of the speeches, the mayor of my town entered the restaurant and presented all of us with towels as a gift from the City of Toon. I felt like a diplomat or a movie star or something. It was all pretty great.
-- my family, who came all the way to Japan to see me! I had such a good time seeing you again!!
It's hard to recreate the last few weeks in a blog post, but the general feeling of goodwill and hospitality that I encountered everywhere I went was just incredible. Sometimes, back at work, I have these moments where I remember a funny moment with all the great people I hung out with during the trip and find myself smiling. Ikuko thinks I'm crazy, smiling for no particular reason in front of my computer screen, but I think I'm probably just happy. :)
* Still alive, but covered with mosquito bites. I think a small family of mosquitoes has taken up residence in my apartment.... (>_<);;
For the past month and a half, I've been all over the place. I went to Kyoto, Himeji, Oita, Hiroshima, Ehime, Okinawa, and Nara with my family, and then to South Korea with my friend, Chris. After that came another round of essays for medical school applications, and then the final exam for the medical English class. The time has flown by so fast that sometimes it seems like there's hardly been time to think, let alone write blog entries. Things never get boring, though, and hopefully life will stay that way. :D Anyway, on to my (very disjointed) impressions of the last few weeks...
My family came to Japan in the end of June, and in the middle of their trip, we all went to the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. Even though it was my third time at the museum, it was still quite intense. Inside are a variety of exhibits about the atom bomb victims: a lunch box full of charred food that a junior high school girl never got to eat because she was incinerated by the heat from the bomb, a drawing of a husband peering helplessly through the ruins of his burning house at his wife who is stuck inside, a picture of a man so badly burnt that his face, back and legs are completely covered with blisters/charred skin(??). Really awful stuff.
In South Korea a few weeks later, Chris and I went to another museum where I saw more of the same. This museum was about the prisons that the imperialist Japanese army ran while it occupied Korea from the early 1900's until World War II. I had known that the Japanese army committed war crimes in Korea and China, but the museum was still pretty shocking. There were lots of really graphic displays showing how Koreans who protested against the occupation government were thrown into jail and tortured in all sorts of despicable ways. What struck me the most was that the tortured Koreans in the pictures looked just as awful as the a-bomb victims in Hiroshima. There's really not much difference between a back covered with blisters and a back covered with long gashes from a whip. Different means of violence, but the same horrible result, at least on the level of the individual victims.
All of these awful, awful pictures were, of course, depressing and left me thinking some pretty dark thoughts. How can human beings do such horrible things to each other? But throughout the rest of the trip, people did so many kind and good things for my family and me that it was difficult for me to be pessimistic for long. While this blog is not exactly the best place to make any big claims about the goodness of human nature, I have found lots of reasons to be optimistic. Here they are in no particular order:
-- Chris's friend Jin, who let us stay in her apartment even though I had never met her before. She was a fabulous host and showed Chris and me all around Seoul in between studying for her midterms and working at her part-time job.
-- the Korean guy sitting next to me on the plane back to Korea, who realized that I couldn't eat my sandwich because there were nuts inside and kindly offered me his yogurt. :)
-- my friends in Kyoto. My folks came to Kyoto on a Friday night, but my ferry arrived there much earlier that morning. I thought I would call up some of my friends in Kyoto to see if they could meet, but figured that it might not work out since they have classes on Fridays. Surprisingly enough, they all managed to reschedule somehow or other and took me out to lunch, dinner, and fireworks. One of my friends had a test in Osaka in the morning and her part-time job in Kobe in the afternoon, but still took the forty-five minute train ride out to Kyoto to meet up with us for an hour or so before running back to Kobe. Talk about going out of your way!
-- all of the Japanese relatives. In Oita, my dad's aunt Toshiko reserved our hotel for us, took us around in taxis to the best restaurants she could find, and fed us until I thought I was going to burst. :)
Our relatives in Okinawa were equally hospitable. My dad's aunt rented the biggest van I have ever seen, and her son, Dai, chauffeured us all over the island for the whole weekend.
(They also covered us with a tiny umbrella to make sure we didn't get sun burnt.)-- the people of my town. Four of my lady students invited us over to one of their houses for lunch. They had mentioned that they would prepare some sort of light lunch, but I should have known better. When we got to the house, we found an absolutely gigantic spread of salad, okonomiyaki (a Japanese style pancake kind of thing), sausages, rice balls, cake, Japanese sweets, and several other dishes. It was delicious, but certainly not a light lunch.
That night, the softball men had a welcome party for my family. They started by driving us out to the first baseman's sake factory for a tour, and even enlisted an interpreter to come along and help explain things. After the sake factory, they ushered us over to the local shrine where more softball men and the Shinto priest/piano player were waiting to receive us. At the shrine, they had arranged for a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and koto (Japanese stringed instrument) concert:
and a performance of shishimai, a traditional dragon dance:
We watched the show from the seats of honor, well-supplied with tea and mosquito repellent.
Then we set off to a restaurant for dinner. At the door of the restaurant, the softball men gave all of us happi (traditional Japanese summer jackets) and had us participate in a traditional welcome party ceremony where you break the top of a sake keg with big wooden hammers.
Dinner was huge and delicious, (in hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have scheduled lunch with my students and the softball team's party on the same day, because we were all quite full) and in the middle, all sorts of little surprises kept popping up. At one point, the shakuhachi player gave Steven his very own shakuhachi to take back to America. A little bit later, several softball men stood up to make speeches about how happy they were to have us in their town, and then requested that each of us get up and make a speech of our own. And in the middle of the speeches, the mayor of my town entered the restaurant and presented all of us with towels as a gift from the City of Toon. I felt like a diplomat or a movie star or something. It was all pretty great.
-- my family, who came all the way to Japan to see me! I had such a good time seeing you again!!
It's hard to recreate the last few weeks in a blog post, but the general feeling of goodwill and hospitality that I encountered everywhere I went was just incredible. Sometimes, back at work, I have these moments where I remember a funny moment with all the great people I hung out with during the trip and find myself smiling. Ikuko thinks I'm crazy, smiling for no particular reason in front of my computer screen, but I think I'm probably just happy. :)
* Still alive, but covered with mosquito bites. I think a small family of mosquitoes has taken up residence in my apartment.... (>_<);;
Friday, June 22, 2007
Nail Biters: Working, Waiting, Expecting (??)
The last few weeks here have been a little hectic. I've been teaching classes as usual, reserving hotel rooms for my family (coming to Japan today!), and finishing off my medical school application. By the time I turned in the application last week, it was easy to tell that I was a bit stressed out.
Exhibit A: My apartment, which I had cleaned so beautifully two weeks ago, once again became a wasteland of dirty clothes, yogurt containers, and cold medicine wrappers. Fortunately, on Tuesday night, I successfully carried out an emergency cleaning session and order has once again been restored.
Exhibit B: I now have (almost) no fingernails. There is something about the incredibly anal med school application system that makes me doubt every move I make. (Did I send in the right transcript? Did I format that paragraph right? Should I enter this in all caps? Where is my legal residence again??) And as I flipped through the 100+ page AMCAS (American Medical College Application System) Manual the other day trying to decide how to input my transfer credit, I slowly and unconsciously picked every single one of my fingernails off. I definitely need to stop that. On the bright side, my application apparently cleared the preliminary processing step today, so I guess I entered everything right after all. よっしゃ！
Exhibit A: My apartment, which I had cleaned so beautifully two weeks ago, once again became a wasteland of dirty clothes, yogurt containers, and cold medicine wrappers. Fortunately, on Tuesday night, I successfully carried out an emergency cleaning session and order has once again been restored.
Exhibit B: I now have (almost) no fingernails. There is something about the incredibly anal med school application system that makes me doubt every move I make. (Did I send in the right transcript? Did I format that paragraph right? Should I enter this in all caps? Where is my legal residence again??) And as I flipped through the 100+ page AMCAS (American Medical College Application System) Manual the other day trying to decide how to input my transfer credit, I slowly and unconsciously picked every single one of my fingernails off. I definitely need to stop that. On the bright side, my application apparently cleared the preliminary processing step today, so I guess I entered everything right after all. よっしゃ！
----
At the medical school, every where you go, there are guys in suits and ties standing in a line in the hallway with briefcases. They stand there all day doing absolutely nothing (as far as I can tell) besides smoothing their ties and looking at their watches. For the first few weeks I was here, it kind of creeped me out a little bit, because they would stand there and stare at me every time I walked by. I spent a lot of time speculating about the mysterious men (inspectors?....but what are they inspecting besides the gaijin walking down the hall?? yakuza [Japanese mafia]?? naw...no tattoos...hosts??) until I finally asked Ikuko, who told me that they are representatives from pharmaceutical companies waiting to meet with professors in the medical school. I guess if the professor's not in, the men in suits just stand there and stand there and wait for him to come...
By now, the men and I have gotten used to each other. Actually we're pretty good buddies. We nod to each other as I pass them in the hallway. But I still can't help but wonder why they stand outside the professors' doors all day instead of just going in and making an appointment. It seems like the most inefficient and boring job in the world. :(
----
The other day, on the way to the copy machine, I ran into a student of mine in the hall. At the beginning of the year, all of the medical students were terrified of being forced to speak English with me, so most of them would pretend not to see me if we happened to pass each other. But now, I am proud to report that they have gotten used to me, and so we have conversations like this:
Student: Hello. What are you doing?
Me: Oh, hi! I am going to the copy room to prepare for my lesson. Today, I have a lesson with three children.
Student: .... ?
Me: (gesturing and speaking more simply....or at least trying to....) I have three children...my students. I will teach them English today.
Student: (She thinks and then her eyes get absolutely gigantic. Points at me and gestures in the shape of a pregnant belly.)
Me: ... Huh?
Student: You have a baby???!!
Me: Hahaha....no no no no. I have students. I teach them English!
Student: Oh, oh, oh. I see. I see. Sorry, sorry!!
Monday, June 11, 2007
MD In Training
A few weeks ago, I saw my very first case of debrachiosis. I wasn't quite sure how to handle it, though...
Maybe I should actually go to medical school before I see my next patient...
Maybe I should actually go to medical school before I see my next patient...
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Toon Town (東温市）
My town (click on it to make it bigger):
The big white buildings in the center are the medical school and the hospital where I teach. One of my private lessons is at the house just to the right of the blue netting on the left side of the picture.
The big white buildings in the center are the medical school and the hospital where I teach. One of my private lessons is at the house just to the right of the blue netting on the left side of the picture.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
蝶々
I almost stepped on this butterfly on my way to the dining hall today :( but saw it just in time and missed it. It started to fly away just as I took this picture. Hopefully it landed somewhere safer.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Idiot in a Blue Jacket
This year, during Golden Week^ I went to Kyushu (the island west of my island) with Tyler, Shisei (aka Fake Japanese Girl 2), and Shisei's friend, Nell. We were all so busy with work right before Golden Week that the trip almost didn't happen, but in the last few days, we made a mad scramble to book hotels and everything worked out.*
Shisei and Nell live in Kyoto, which is on an entirely different island, so Tyler and I met them halfway in between in the ferry. Before the trip, I had actually never met Nell before, and Tyler had never met either Nell or Shisei, so we quickly introduced ourselves in the ferry's lounge, and then jumped on a bus to spend the next five days together. Fortunately, all four of us are pretty flexible and laid-back, so we ended up getting along really well and by the end of the trip, it seemed like we had all known each other much longer.
Our first stop was Yufuin, a little town in Oita famous for hot springs and chicken tempura. The hot springs had a really nice view of the mountains and felt quite nice after three or four hours on the ferry and bus. After hitting one of the hot springs, we went to a little restaurant that served famous pudding. The pudding was all right, but a bit disappointing because it was so expensive.
In the evening, we checked out the shops on the main drag, grabbed dinner, and then tried to walk back to our hotel. The hotel was theoretically only a ten minute walk from the middle of town, but Yufuin is a bit out in the countryside so the roads are very narrow, windy, not particularly well-lit, and not so pedestrian friendly. We ended up trudging up one very dark road in the pouring rain for what must have been half an hour. After twenty minutes or so, it occurred to us that maybe we weren't walking in the right direction, so we brilliantly decided to check a map.
And luckily, it turned out that we had been walking the right direction after all, so we continued down the road and made it back to the hotel without incident.**
The next day, we got on another bus to go to Mt. Aso, a famous volcano in Kumamoto. The bad weather continued all that day, and the top of the mountain was really cold and foggy. Fortunately, it was also super windy too, so sometimes the wind would blow the fog away and you could suddenly see down into this huge, steamy caldera filled with bubbling turquoise water. It was pretty cool looking.
At the bottom of the mountain is a huge plain with a small lake in the middle. All of the touristy pamphlets showed people horseback riding around the lake, so we decided to head over and try it out. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the lake, apparently the horses had gotten wise and gone inside to avoid the wind and cold, so instead of riding horseback, we did the next best thing and took pictures of each other jumping over a ditch...
...and preparing to do back flips (??).
Then we jumped some more...
...and went back to the ditch again.
This time, no one fell in the ditch.***
That night on the way back to the hotel, I had my first idiotic moment of the trip. For some reason which I can't recall at the moment, Nell and I decided to race down the road towards the hotel. I was running down the road when I heard something fall out of my bag and hit the ground. I ran on for several feet before it registered that I had dropped something, and then stopped and checked my bag. Fortunately, my wallet and camera were still there.
Unfortunately, the key to our hotel room was not. I felt like the biggest idiot in Japan.
The road was pretty dark by then so I highly doubted that we had a chance of finding the key again, but miraculously, after five minutes or so, Tyler found it in the grass by the side of the road. I still felt like an idiot.
Idiotic moment number two happened the next day on the train to Fukuoka. We got off the first train to transfer and walked halfway around the station before I realized that something was missing, that "something" being a certain gray duffel bag with all of my clothes and toiletries.
I quickly ran over the station office to ask if they could look for my bag, and the people in the office called and asked someone to search the train, but couldn't find anything. There wasn't really anything I could do so I left my contact information at the station office and got on the next train toward Fukuoka.
On the bright side, there was nothing valuable in the gray bag and losing it meant that I had less baggage to carry around, but even so, it was a bit annoying to have no clothes. For the last three days of the trip, I wore the same t-shirt, jeans and socks, bought a toothbrush at a convenience store, and mooched off of Tyler and Shisei's toothpaste.
However, I couldn't quite deal with the idea of wearing the same underwear for three days straight, so Shisei, Nell and I made a quick side trip to a mall. I don't know why, but the underwear trip was strangely awkward at first. Maybe it was because up until then, I had never shopped for underwear with anyone other than my mother. But thinking back on it now, I realize that it was a little ridiculous of me to be embarrassed, considering the fact that we had all just gone to a public bath together and seen much more than each other's underwear.
Anyway, two days later, I asked about my bag at the station in Fukuoka and the (very grumpy) people at the lost-and-found finally helped track it down and shipped it back to my apartment, so everything ended well. My wardrobe is still intact with a net gain of two pairs of underwear (!).
Fukuoka is famous for ramen, so we stopped at a shop there for lunch. The ramen was good but the most interesting part was the odd, antisocial layout of the shop. The counter was partitioned into little private booths so that you couldn't even see the person sitting right next to you. Also, you couldn't see the staff behind the counter either, because there was a curtain in front of you with a little gap at the bottom where they passed you your ramen. The menu explained that the little booths were designed to give you privacy so that you could properly concentrate on your ramen....I guess they're really serious about their food there. Still, the atmosphere seemed a little weird to me. I felt like a criminal huddled in my little secret booth, and half expected one of the ramen chefs to slip me some kind of contraband through the slit under the curtain.
Here's Tyler caught in the midst of some shady ramen dealings.
I was very tempted to peek over the partition like this at the unsuspecting Japanese person on my left, but finally figured that I had done enough stupid things on this trip and restrained myself. It would have been kind of funny though....
^ Golden Week = a random week around the beginning of May where (almost) everyone in Japan gets time off and goes on vacation
* Well, almost everything...on our last night in Kyushu, there was a big festival in Fukuoka so there was not a single vacant room in the whole city. We ended up going to karaoke from midnight to 6 AM that night and slept for maybe an hour in the karaoke box. It wasn't so bad though, because I slept the next day on the bus and ferry back to Ehime. :)
** Well, almost without incident...all except for the part when the sidewalk dropped off suddenly and Tyler fell in a small ditch.
*** Really. No one fell this time.
Shisei and Nell live in Kyoto, which is on an entirely different island, so Tyler and I met them halfway in between in the ferry. Before the trip, I had actually never met Nell before, and Tyler had never met either Nell or Shisei, so we quickly introduced ourselves in the ferry's lounge, and then jumped on a bus to spend the next five days together. Fortunately, all four of us are pretty flexible and laid-back, so we ended up getting along really well and by the end of the trip, it seemed like we had all known each other much longer.
Our first stop was Yufuin, a little town in Oita famous for hot springs and chicken tempura. The hot springs had a really nice view of the mountains and felt quite nice after three or four hours on the ferry and bus. After hitting one of the hot springs, we went to a little restaurant that served famous pudding. The pudding was all right, but a bit disappointing because it was so expensive.
Tyler's holding 500 yen and I'm holding about 720, I think
(120 yen ~ $1):
(120 yen ~ $1):
In the evening, we checked out the shops on the main drag, grabbed dinner, and then tried to walk back to our hotel. The hotel was theoretically only a ten minute walk from the middle of town, but Yufuin is a bit out in the countryside so the roads are very narrow, windy, not particularly well-lit, and not so pedestrian friendly. We ended up trudging up one very dark road in the pouring rain for what must have been half an hour. After twenty minutes or so, it occurred to us that maybe we weren't walking in the right direction, so we brilliantly decided to check a map.
And luckily, it turned out that we had been walking the right direction after all, so we continued down the road and made it back to the hotel without incident.**The next day, we got on another bus to go to Mt. Aso, a famous volcano in Kumamoto. The bad weather continued all that day, and the top of the mountain was really cold and foggy. Fortunately, it was also super windy too, so sometimes the wind would blow the fog away and you could suddenly see down into this huge, steamy caldera filled with bubbling turquoise water. It was pretty cool looking.
Tyler and I bravely attempting to avoid being blown into the temporarily invisible crater full of boiling water:
At the bottom of the mountain is a huge plain with a small lake in the middle. All of the touristy pamphlets showed people horseback riding around the lake, so we decided to head over and try it out. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the lake, apparently the horses had gotten wise and gone inside to avoid the wind and cold, so instead of riding horseback, we did the next best thing and took pictures of each other jumping over a ditch...
...and preparing to do back flips (??).
Then we jumped some more...
...and went back to the ditch again.
This time, no one fell in the ditch.***
That night on the way back to the hotel, I had my first idiotic moment of the trip. For some reason which I can't recall at the moment, Nell and I decided to race down the road towards the hotel. I was running down the road when I heard something fall out of my bag and hit the ground. I ran on for several feet before it registered that I had dropped something, and then stopped and checked my bag. Fortunately, my wallet and camera were still there.
Unfortunately, the key to our hotel room was not. I felt like the biggest idiot in Japan.
The road was pretty dark by then so I highly doubted that we had a chance of finding the key again, but miraculously, after five minutes or so, Tyler found it in the grass by the side of the road. I still felt like an idiot.
Idiotic moment number two happened the next day on the train to Fukuoka. We got off the first train to transfer and walked halfway around the station before I realized that something was missing, that "something" being a certain gray duffel bag with all of my clothes and toiletries.
I quickly ran over the station office to ask if they could look for my bag, and the people in the office called and asked someone to search the train, but couldn't find anything. There wasn't really anything I could do so I left my contact information at the station office and got on the next train toward Fukuoka.
On the bright side, there was nothing valuable in the gray bag and losing it meant that I had less baggage to carry around, but even so, it was a bit annoying to have no clothes. For the last three days of the trip, I wore the same t-shirt, jeans and socks, bought a toothbrush at a convenience store, and mooched off of Tyler and Shisei's toothpaste.
However, I couldn't quite deal with the idea of wearing the same underwear for three days straight, so Shisei, Nell and I made a quick side trip to a mall. I don't know why, but the underwear trip was strangely awkward at first. Maybe it was because up until then, I had never shopped for underwear with anyone other than my mother. But thinking back on it now, I realize that it was a little ridiculous of me to be embarrassed, considering the fact that we had all just gone to a public bath together and seen much more than each other's underwear.
Anyway, two days later, I asked about my bag at the station in Fukuoka and the (very grumpy) people at the lost-and-found finally helped track it down and shipped it back to my apartment, so everything ended well. My wardrobe is still intact with a net gain of two pairs of underwear (!).
Fukuoka is famous for ramen, so we stopped at a shop there for lunch. The ramen was good but the most interesting part was the odd, antisocial layout of the shop. The counter was partitioned into little private booths so that you couldn't even see the person sitting right next to you. Also, you couldn't see the staff behind the counter either, because there was a curtain in front of you with a little gap at the bottom where they passed you your ramen. The menu explained that the little booths were designed to give you privacy so that you could properly concentrate on your ramen....I guess they're really serious about their food there. Still, the atmosphere seemed a little weird to me. I felt like a criminal huddled in my little secret booth, and half expected one of the ramen chefs to slip me some kind of contraband through the slit under the curtain.
Here's Tyler caught in the midst of some shady ramen dealings.
I was very tempted to peek over the partition like this at the unsuspecting Japanese person on my left, but finally figured that I had done enough stupid things on this trip and restrained myself. It would have been kind of funny though....
^ Golden Week = a random week around the beginning of May where (almost) everyone in Japan gets time off and goes on vacation
* Well, almost everything...on our last night in Kyushu, there was a big festival in Fukuoka so there was not a single vacant room in the whole city. We ended up going to karaoke from midnight to 6 AM that night and slept for maybe an hour in the karaoke box. It wasn't so bad though, because I slept the next day on the bus and ferry back to Ehime. :)
** Well, almost without incident...all except for the part when the sidewalk dropped off suddenly and Tyler fell in a small ditch.
*** Really. No one fell this time.
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