What I'll miss about my life in Japan

This is a list I've been compiling for a while. I might add some more in the next week or so if I get access to the internet again.

MISS
my friends!
onsens
100yen stores
my bike
road mirrors around nearly all corners
okonomiyaki
black sesame ice cream
Lawson giant corn
efficient, clean, reliable public transportation
no tipping
quality service
squat toilets
Japanese pine trees


WON'T MISS
odor of burning garbage/plants
cigarette smoke in nearly all public places
smell of squat toilets
futons
changing my shoes all the time
weather reports without radar
tv shows watching people eat delicious food
sake
3.7% milk

WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND
Japanese fashion
Japanese mullet
manga and anime
how no one gets warts from onsen visits
why no one dies in the electric buzz tub in onsens
why it isn't instinctual for most Japanese people to just repeat what s/he just said slower when I haven't quite caught what they said right away (they either give up without any attempt at repeating or repeat it just as fast as the first time they said it)

LOOKING FORWARD TO
dryers
using my credit card
furniture in general
skim milk
bagels
hearty, healthy sandwiches
movie theater popcorn
mac n cheese
turkey burgers
buffalo burgers
cheeseburgers
lean steak
fresh delicious corn on the cob

I'm planning on writing about any culture shock that I have when I get back, as well as commiseration over things I miss about Japan. So this is not the end of my blog! I'll write about the bullfights I watch tomorrow and my trip to Sydney too. Sayonara, for now.

Farewell Parties

I've been to about seven get-togethers that would constitute as farewell parties by Japanese standards. Getting together with two people for dinner after school is still considered a party here. Many of my Japanese friends and colleagues have never had Mexican food, so I suggested the Mexican restaurant in Naruto for more than half of these parties. Everyone liked the food, and I enjoyed their company. I received many really nice presents such as geta (traditional Japanese sandals), indigo dyed coasters, washi (handmade paper, a t-shirt, and a piece of Otaniyaki pottery.

Two of my schools held farewell ceremonies with the students. My favorite school had an entire assembly just to say goodbye to me. It was really sweet. The principal and student leader made speeches, and then I gave a speech in both English and Japanese. Then the students presented two presents to me, geta (traditional Japanese sandals) and a laminated calender decorated by all the students! They had a professional photographer come to school and take a photo of the entire school with me in the middle. They're going to send me the picture once I'm home. I was really touched by all the hoopla.

Another school included me in their closing ceremony before summer vacation. Those students gave me an indigo dyed fan.

And of course the board of education threw a party too. It was the biggest one, and the most fun!
Here I am with my lovely supervisor.This is a family that I've become really good friends with. Here we are after dinner and my last trip to an onsen.
This is silly, but I said goodbye to my plants too. My friend Christine who is staying another year is going to take care of them now.

Typhoon/Earthquake/Tokyo

Last weekend a huge typhoon whipped through Japan, hitting the southern section the hardest. It rained the entire week beforehand, soaking me on my way to and from work. Apparently a few teachers were required by law to stay at school overnight just in case the neighborhood had to evacuate their homes and relocate to the school.

My friends and I escaped on an overnight bus to Tokyo for a three day weekend. The bus was ten times better than overnight bus trips I've been on in the US. There were two aisles on the bus, so each of the three seats in each row were separated. There was a foot rest, fold out desk, drink holder, light, and far reclining for each seat. Once we got to Tokyo in the early morning the next day, we stopped by the Tsukiji Market, a gigantic fish market. It was really dangerous to walk around because there were so many guys driving trucks and carts as fast as possible. I don't understand why it's open to the public. We were able to eat some delicious sushi at a nearby restaurant though.
This guy is sawing cubes of frozen fish.


During the weekend we ate some delicious food: fresh sushi, cheese tofu, avocado tofu, other delicious tofu, Thai food (with the best crab I've ever eaten!), Mexican food (at a restaurant that didn't have any form of beans other than chili beans!?), Indian curry, tempura, soba, and fresh fruit smoothies. We ate a few of our meals with some of my friends who currently live in Tokyo. It was really nice to catch up with them!

We went shopping in Ginza, Harajuku, Asakusa, Shinjuku, and Shibuya. My favorite store was Itoya, a 9 floor stationery and supply store in Ginza. They actually annexed two shops around the corner too. I could spend hours in those stores. Anyways, while we were shopping in one of the department stores we saw peaches on sale for $12 each!
Ginza:
Asakusa:Harajuku:Shibuya:Shinjuku:
And of course we partied in Roppongi:
It rained a lot on Saturday while the typhoon was headed towards us, but by mid Saturday and all day Monday, the weather was pretty nice. I think the typhoon weakened by the time it reached us.

On Monday morning, the earthquake happened in Niigata Prefecture (about 350km north of Tokyo), on the other side of Honshu Island. I was sitting at our hostel's computer when it happened. I felt like I was swaying back and forth, but I couldn't see anything else moving so my perception seemed really off. I asked another guest if they could feel it and they could, so I knew I wasn't losing my mind or getting lightheaded or something. The swaying wasn't continuous, but the random spurts that I could sense went on for two or three minutes! Quite a weird sensation to experience. Once I realized what was going on I worried that either it would get a lot worse really quickly or something really terrible was happening far away. Turns out it was the latter, as you've all heard about in the news. One of my Japanese friends told me that the same area had an earthquake about three years ago. Japan is earthquake-prone, so the cities are set up a little differently and the buildings have been built to withstand some shaking. All the Japanese cities that I've been to are not centralized with a large downtown area with tons of skyscrapers like all the US cities. Everything is pretty spread out.

I still haven't caught up on my sleep since we got back, so I'm staying in this weekend to rest and pack before my next three weeks of traveling start up. My internet service ends on Monday night, so if you want to call me before I leave, call me this weekend! I have a lot on my mind, so check for a lot of updates this weekend.

Update

Last weekend my friends and I camped at a beach on the southern coast of Shikoku. It rained most of the time, so I didn't get very many good pictures. Right before I went to bed, I picked up my jacket and put it around my arm. Then I felt this sharp pain in my left arm. I've never been stung by a bee before so I was afraid I might be allergic to them and that my throat would close up soon. But I continued to be able to breathe and the pain traveled up to my armpit! The pain was excruciating!!! We think I was stung by a poisonous centipede (mukade). I never saw what stung/bit me because it was hidden in my jacket and I lost track of it because I was so concerned with the possibility of dying. Anyways, this might have been what stung me:
It had to have been smaller than that though. Maybe it was a something else. I felt a lot better after about 48 hours or so. Now it itches, so I think I'll be fine. Other than that, we had a nice time! Here are my friends swimming. Actually, I haven't transferred those pictures yet, but I'll add that later.

Speaking of bugs, I had two tiny roaches in my apartment last week. I was trying to fall asleep and I heard something flying into the wall, so I turned on the light and found a tiny cockroach in my bed with me! I threw it outside, but then while I was trying to fall asleep again, another tiny cockroach flew into my armpit! I had to kill that one. Haven't had a problem since though.

There are so many insects out, and I think it's because it's the beginning of the typhoon season. There's a big typhoon coming this weekend. It's headed straight for us, but my friends and I are heading out for Tokyo before it's suppose to get here. It'll rain all weekend in Tokyo but I think the typhoon will lose a lot of steam in Osaka first.

Delicious Food

About two weeks ago I got together with two of my Japanese friends. My friend Toshiko taught me how to cook five Japanese side dishes. We made dashimakitamago (the egg thing), miso soup, harusamesunomono (clear noodle salad), horensounogomaae (spinach and sesame dish), and kyuurigomaae (cucumber sesame salad). I really enjoyed making all the food that I decided to by a Japanese cookbook. This way I can continue to study Japanese and eat delicious food when I'm back in the US. Here we are with the food:
(check out the necklace, Mary!)

In the same day I went to the motor boat races with my friend Makiko and her husband. Makiko got her PhD in counseling in Missouri and counsels students at two of my schools. Anyways, we went to the boat races here in Naruto, but it was an away-race, so we were still able to bet, but weren't able to see the races in person. We bet on one race, lost, and left. It was interesting to see how it's done, but not so thrilling. Makiko's and her husband were interesting to learn about what kind of races are gambled on in the US. So I told them about horse, dog, and pig races!

Instead of wasting our money on the away-races, we went out for a really really nice lunch at a famous sushi/seafood restaurant in Naruto called Arashi. We saw the chefs pull out the fish/sea creatures from the huge fishtanks in the front before they brought us our meal! It can't get any fresher than that! ...or can it? I had thinly sliced raw squid with it's tentacles fried tempura-style:
It's meals like this that make me wonder how THE US got stuck with the "huge portions" stereotype. I could barely finish this meal! Here's Makiko and her husband:

I always enjoy hanging out with Makiko because she is fluent, so our conversations get much farther along, and she's able to tell me really interesting things about Japan. She told me that some restaurants will serve squid or octopus completely raw... as in, still alive. And people eat it with the tentacles still writhing about! The only time I've seen this is in the Korean movie "Old Boy." She also told me that somewhere in Japan you can order a special eel and tofu meal. The eel is still alive on the plate when it's served. Then the eel is lit on fire! It gets scared and runs right into the tofu, getting itself stuck in the middle. Then you eat the tofu with the eel "cooked" inside! That's probably the craziest food story I've ever heard.

Makiko is pregnant, so I've learned a few interesting tidbits about childbirth in Japan. Initially she told me that Japanese women are usually pregnant for 10 months when they have a baby. At first I was like, "How can that possibly be?? Are Japanese people actually a different species???" But as it turns out, they just begin the count from the woman's last period. She also told me that they don't know the sex of the baby (too early to tell, or it's a girl) yet, but even if they did, they wouldn't pick out a name ahead of time. She said that it is customary to take the baby to a name fortune-teller-like person after he or she is born. The specialist takes the number of strokes in the family's last name and the date of the baby's birth into account and comes up with a number. That number deciphers the stroke order (number of strokes) in the kanji character (Chinese character) of the baby's name. Once the parents have that stroke order number, they choose a name out of a list of kanji characters with the same number of strokes.

Mary's Blog Entry

Well, it feels like I’ve told everyone I know about my trip to Japan already, but I’ll try and think of some new and interesting thoughts I’ve had in retrospect now that its been over a month since I’ve gotten back.

I love Japanese food. Seriously, about half of my pictures were of the food I ate. I had really appreciated all the pictures of food that Jane had on this blog before I came because I was most curious about what people eat. The pictures I took of my meals really aren’t any more amazing or appetizing than stuff you’ve already seen on this blog, but they’re still able to jog my sense memory so here’s a couple of my favorites for you (well mostly for me). They kind of make me sad now though, because I miss eating them:

Japanese Ramen (there’s no flavor packet, its just innately better than our ramen):

This was my all time favorite meal from the trip. Its tofu soba. It was delicious.

Here is a picture of me eating it:

And of course the amazing okonomyaki:

I would describe our trip to Japan as a tour of modern Japanese culture, which is exactly what I wanted to experience during our visit. It would have been nice if we had more time to visit more historic ancient Japanese sites, but I guess we’ll just have to go back again some other time for that.

Our modern Japanese tour included: a baseball game, purikura (crazy photobooths), a ridiculous museum (of ramen), onsen spas and shiatsu massage, a day at middle school, shopping at 100 yen stores, getting beer from vending machines, karaoke, going to empty little bars, eating conveyor belt sushi, exploring grocery stores, visiting the peace museum, and arcading. I think Jane covered most of this in her blog already though.

I can’t get over how genuinely nice and hospitable everyone in Japan was. And how all of the bathrooms were clean. And how everyone recycles. And how Jane can speak Japanese.

My favorite part of the whole trip was the time we spent in Osaka. I think I liked it there the most because it was the first place we experienced when we got off the plane. We were immediately overwhelmed by the giant neon city full of great people-watching opportunities. There was good food on every corner and incredible mall/arcades of stores everywhere we went. I’ve always loved cities, but Osaka really made an impression on me as being incredibly unique and totally different from any city I had ever been to.

I’m glad we were able to stay in Japan for an entire two weeks, because it gave us the opportunity to experience everything we wanted to without feeling rushed, or worrying that we wouldn’t have time to do everything. We ran out of money, but I left without any regrets. Thanks to Jane.

Baseball love love

During lunch today, some of my 8th grade female students said this to me, "Baseball 1, 2, 3 (motioning bases), Eddie, love love (motioning a heart)?" There was a lot of giggling and then they all looked at me with faces covered in anticipation. They also made motions about which bases meant what.

From this I gathered that they were asking me how many bases I had gone with Eddie!!!! Of course I didn't answer, but I sure did laugh really hard.

And now I know that baseball bases and stages of relationship progression have the same double meaning in Japanese as they do in English.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone! Per Robyn's instructions, I wore red, white and blue to work today.
It was convenient because it was raining out and these cloths work well for biking in the rain. However, I had to change once I got to school because I gave a farewell speech in Japanese to all the teachers at my high school during the morning meeting. The speech went well. It made me realize that my Japanese has improved despite my lack of dedication to studying. Unfortunately for the students, but fortunately for me I think I learned a lot while listening to all the Japanese spoken during English class! My last class at this school was a lot of fun because it was a small elective class and we wrapped up our monopoly game!

Don't worry Robyn, after my class today I changed back into my red, white, and blue outfit.

Somehow I only have 3 weeks left here! The next two weeks will include my last lessons with all my students. I will attend a farewell party with the teachers from each of my four schools, another one with everyone in my section at the board of education, and then another with all the JETs in the prefecture for all the JETs that are leaving. My friends and I are also planning on going to Tokyo for a weekend, and a bullfight on the other side of our island before I go. On my way back to the US I will be stopping in Sydney, Australia for a week to visit my cousin Joanna and her fiance Tom!

Everything is happening so fast that it's hard to really reflect on my time here. I'll try to post when I can. There are a few things that happened last week that I didn't get a chance to post about, so I'll get those up here as soon as I can.

Have a wonderful time celebrating the 4th of July. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything more than wear red, white and blue. Justin might bring fireworks to the JET party this coming weekend so maybe it will feel more like the 4th of July then. I'm just happy I didn't have to march a bass drum around town today!

Maria's blog entry

Hi Jane's family and friends! First to introduce myself to those of you who don't know me - my name is Maria. Jane and I became friends at Wellesley (as well as being neuroscience colleagues in collaborating labs).

I went to visit Jane for two weeks in the beginning to mid-June and she has asked me to write a blog entry about my impressions of Japan. Although it's quite hard to sum it all up in one entry I'll do my best. I thought I'd try to classify it into the five senses - what I saw, smelt, ate, heard, and touched. So here it goes:

Sight: I was amazed at the cleanliness and orderliness of just about everything - from public bathrooms to subway stations. Even the taxi drivers wore white gloves. When buying things, especially in Kyoto, each item was boxed and then very carefully wrapped in beautiful paper - I was afraid the customs or security officials would make me unwrap them!

There are many beautiful things to see in Japan (I have to agree with Jane that the Fushimi Inari Shrine is one of the best!) I couldn't ever describe the temples and shrines and gardens properly but the landscape made a huge impression on me - I'm not sure exactly what I expected but from the plane you could see valleys full of buildings surrounded by large, steep green hills. On the ground, I really enjoyed staring out the bus or train window at the flat rice paddies against old traditional wooden houses with green hills as a backdrop. Near the end of the two weeks, rainy season began and the tops of the mountains were covered in mist. The closest description I can get is it was like being in a real-life Ansel Adam's photograph - that magnificent.

On a different note, I was surprised how I could ride a bike I borrowed from Jane anywhere in Naruto, leave it outside a shop, and when I came back not only was the unlocked bike still there but so were all my packages in the basket! It was amazing!

Other "sights" was the cash society Japan is - it's very rare to find a place that takes credit cards and finding a post office to withdraw cash can be a big pain as I found out! Finally, I was surprised at the amount of English words - for example, huge "SALE" signs in department stores.

Taste: The food is quite different in texture and flavor from the Western palate. I enjoyed fried food called tempura, thick udon noodles, and okonomiyaki - a cabbage type pancake served with a barbecue-like sauce. The sweets were not sweet enough for me and often filled with a red bean paste which is okay but something I had to get used to. Surprisingly large amounts of fruits and vegetables (that weren't already pickled) seemed really hard to find when eating out and breakfasts left much to be desired - many places actually serve hot dogs for breakfast although apparently the Japanese eat rice and miso soup. Eggs are usually considered a lunch or dinner item.

Jane and I got to try both olive-flavored and soy sauce-flavored soft serve ice cream on Shodoshima which seemed like a real delicacy. :0) One of the best meals I had was something called kaiseki in Kyoto. The closest thing I can compare it to is Spanish tapas - many smaller dishes of different items brought out one at a time. It's a traditional meal and was served while we sat on cushions on tatami floors. The walls had been opened to a garden right outside and we sat and talked and drank sake and ate some really quite delicious and beautiful looking (and tasting!) things.

Touch:My favorite "touch" experience was by far the onsens, or public baths. It's an odd experience at first literally stripping naked and going to bathe with a bunch of strangers but the baths are so warm and inviting. The last time we went, we had hiked up 1346 steps to a Shinto shrine in Kotohira and afterwards found a natural onsen nestled in those Ansel Adams misty green hills. It was amazing and won't soon be forgotten!

Hear:Jane posted about the Takarazuka troupes so you already know a bit about this. I wanted to see a performance of some type but all I really knew about performance arts in Japan was the famous puppet theatre, Bunruku and Kabuki, another type of theatre. Takarazuka is a really interesting type of theatre that I'm thrilled I got to see. It was good we read an English synopsis before because I couldn't understand any of the words but the music together with the rotating stage was a phenomenal performance to experience. The costumes and the ways the women were made up to be their male or female character was fascinating to see.

In addition, I went to see an Awa Odori dance performance that the center in Tokushima puts on for tourists. There's really no way to quite describe the music but I can see how much fun the celebration in August must be - if you didn't look at it - take a look at Jane's videos of the Awa Odori. I guess I really enjoyed this part as well because at the end they invite audience members to go up and dance on the stage with the dancers so I figured - why not? My Rough Guide book says the motto for the celebration is "the dancing fool and the watching fool are equally foolish, so why not dance?"

Smell:On Shodoshima, an island known for its olive trees and fake Grecian ruins, we had a great day running around in a car Jane had borrowed from a friend. Between seeing peacocks and monkeys and the making of noodles, we also went to a great little soy sauce museum and factory. You can smell it as soon as you get into the vicinity. We each got a free bottle of soy sauce with admission and most of the signs in the factory had English translations. It was an amazing little museum for being really out in the middle of nowhere.

The other smell I will miss is the green tea I used to make at Jane's for breakfast. It had this great sweet earthy smell that's hard to describe but it's wonderful to wake up in the morning and drink tea and look outside and think - "I'm in Japan!" So final thoughts - Jane is going to have the best bachelorette pad with neat containers everywhere - she buys these funky containers like an olive drop container from Shodoshima. She will also have the greatest assortment of hand washcloths. In Japan, none of the bathrooms (I didn't come across one!) have paper towels (many don't have soap either!) so each tourist area sells different types of washcloths so that people can carry them around and dry their hands. Jane has quite the collection!

Although I went to school with Jane, I only got to teach in one class. The other classes were practicing for a demonstration class that Jane had to carry out for other English teachers. I was quite impressed by her teaching (and always so proud of her when she would speak Japanese to anyone!). I don't know how I would have handled teaching middle schoolers! So finally LOTS of thanks to Jane for a fabulous experience!

Takamatsu

(continuation of Maria's visit)

We visited Ritsurin Park in Takamatsu. There were a few nice volunteers there who wanted to guide us around the park. They were really just trying to practice their English and they seemed like nice guys so we went along with them around the park. We after about ten minutes, 8 or 9 other guides (men and women) showed up and we were bombarded with facts about the park. We didn’t really get a chance to peacefully look at the park because someone was always talking to us. I’m usually pretty annoyed when I feel like I’m at work when I’m trying to vacation, but the situation was just so humorous that I enjoyed it. I’m not so sure Maria did though. I got to practice my Japanese a little bit, they got to practice their English, and Maria got to practice her Spanish with a guy who supposedly spoke Spanish as well as Japanese and what I call marbled English. One guy kept taking pictures of us with him in the park. We kind of felt like an exhibit ourselves. We did the tea ceremony with the group too. I really love the teahouse in Ritsurin Park.





A few of the guides didn't make it into the picture, so make no mistake... there were more!

Kotohira

(continuation of Maria's visit)

Kotohira is a temple about 45 minutes southwest of Takamatsu. It’s famous because there are over 1000 steps to the top of the temple grounds. You can pay to have two guys carry you up, but there is so much to distract you while you’re stepping that it’s a pretty easy hike up and down. There were shops up to the halfway point and then a beautiful forest the rest of the way. Here were some people being carried up.

The temple…

The views…


At the bottom of the mountain, there was a sake brewery with a giant bottle of sake in the front. We didn’t have time to go through and sample, but we thought the giant bottle was pretty cool.
We ended the short, packed weekend with a lovely drive through the mountains in Kagawa and Tokushima Prefectures and a dip in a real onsen.

Shodoshima

(continuation of Maria's visit)

Shodoshima is the largest island in the Seto Inland Sea, just off of Takamatsu City which is about 1.5 hours north of Naruto. We took a ferry over to this island, not knowing entirely what to expect. We had read about an olive grove and monkey park before going. We really lucked out with the weather. This was our view of the Seto Inland Sea during our ferry ride over to Shodoshima. The first one is Takamatsu City.


First we checked out the Peacock Garden which was a little piece of land full of palm trees and peacocks.

Next we ate lunch at a handmade somen restaurant. Somen are the thinnest Japanese noodles. Lunch was very delicious. The somen was served with ice cubes, green onions, and somen dipping sauce.


Then we wandered around the olive grove, the most famous place on the island. We found this to be the lamest place on the island because of the really fake ancient Greecian ruins, and the fact that it was really just an olive grove and several gift shops. Plus the gift shops didn’t sell any actual olives, only olive products like olive chocolate, olive oil, olive hand cream, olive candy drops, and hello-kitty-in-an-olive-costume figurines and towels. These were the silly ruins.

Next we took a ropeway up through the Kankakei gorge. The view was pretty amazing. We also tried some olive ice cream while we were at the top. It had a faint olive taste. Not too bad.


Then we went over to the Marukin Soy Sauce Museum.

We got a free bottle of soy sauce when we went into the museum. I had no idea how to make soy sauce before coming so I found the museum pretty interesting. First they roast the wheat. Then they add soy beans, mold, salt, and water. Then the soy sauce ferments for a year or longer! Before they ship it out, they cook it to burn off the alcohol and kill the yeast. We tried some soy sauce ice cream before we left. It really did taste like soy sauce, and it was surprisingly not gross. Not exactly delicious, but not bad. Anyways, apparently most soy sauces in the US are synthetic, or in other words, the soy part isn't fermented. The Japanese soy sauces I've had have always seemed much richer in flavor so I guess that would explain it.

On our way to see the monkey park, we saw this massive statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion and mercy. When we got closer we noticed it was a temple.

Sadly we didn’t have much time to spend at the monkey park, but we did see quite a few monkeys while we were there. They were eating ants and occasionally fighting with each other. There wasn’t a real fence around the park, so the monkeys could easily escape if they wanted to. We saw a few hanging out near the road far from the park, but the majority of them stay on the top of that mountain.