I have been duly chastised about my lack of posting. I've been pretty busy with work and such. The cherry blossoms have come and gone, they didn't last very long, but they were beautiful while they were blooming. I went to Okazaki, a town about 40 minutes south of Nagoya that is famous for it's cherry blossoms. One of my fellow teachers lives there so she showed us around a little. We got there in the afternoon and walked along the river until we came across this...

We were walking and noticed that a lot of people were all wearing matching costumes, and there were lots of different costumes as well. As we were pondering what exactly that meant, this video happened and semi-answered our question. Apparently there was some sort of dance concert/competition going on. After we had our fill we wandered to the other side of the river where there were lots of festival stalls and bought some food and booze, laid out a picnic blanket, and got to it. I didn't take a picture of any of the food I ate, but I wish I had. One thing I ate was especially delicious and I keep trying to ask my students what it's called, but first I have to describe it to them. They keep telling me okonomiyaki, but I'm pretty sure that's something different. So, here are some pictures from my cherry blossom viewing (hanami in Japanese).

These are pictures of the trees along the river, the castle, and the festival stalls at night. They hang lanterns in the trees and light them up when it gets dark so it's really beautiful at night too.

Golden Week is coming up really soon (hooray!). Golden Week is 5 national holidays all in a row, so the whole country goes on vacation. Elliott is coming to Nagoya and then we're traveling together. I'm pretty excited about not having to go to work for a week.

Cell Phones

Today was the last day of going to the schools I will be teaching at for my new schedule and it was possibly the worst. It took me and hour and 40 minutes to get there from my apartment. The directions they gave us were hardly adequate. Luckily for myself I decided to leave 2 hours in advance in case I got lost. Little did I know it would just take me that long to get there normally.

So that's my little rant. Now I want to show you what cell phones are like in Japan. (Not all of them, but some...)


So, we have cake cell phone and bedazzled skull cell phone. I haven't actually seen any one's phone look like the cake one on the left, but this was in the display case of Bic Camera (a large electronics store near on the of the schools I work at) so I have to assume some girls somewhere have cell phones that look like pieces of cake. I have seen many bedazzled cell phones though.

My cell phone looks like this...

It has skeleton stickers on the back because one of the days that I had nothing to do at work (no lessons to teach) a teacher had an entire sheet of skeleton stickers that her kids classes didn't want, so we decorated my phone with them. Everyone has baubles on their cell phones here. I think two has to be my maximum. As far as I can tell they all have bells attached to them so they jingle everywhere. I saw one guy's phone with about 80 baubles attached. I don't know how he could stand to carry it around with so many cutesy things hanging off the side of it. Mine are the traditional good luck cat in Japan (not sure what it's called) and a little jug I got from the Hounen Festival that has a surprise inside. It's a tiny golden member. It was the most tasteful souvenir I could find there.

Meieiki Party

Last Saturday one of the schools I've been to a couple times had a party for staff, English teachers and students (who are old enough to drink of course). We met outside the school at 7:30 and then followed the school director to a secret location. It was just an izukaya (traditional Japanese style restaurant) down the street and around the corner, but no one knew where we were going until we got there. Then we had nomihoudai (all you can drink) for 2 hours and the beverage just started flowing. Every time we were in danger of running out, a staff member would appear from no where with another giant bottle of beer.

This photo was taken at the party. On the left is Kate (who I met on the plane to Japan), Yumi giving the double "v" for victory (she works at Meieiki and was supplying everyone with booze), and I guess you the the character on the right.

A few things about partying with the Japanese: At work they are always very businesslike and serious, but when it's time for the work party they really let loose (an izukaya seems to be the only place it's acceptable to be as loud as foreigners). It takes only about 2 drinks to make most of them really drunk. In short, they work hard, they play hard. After the izukaya students and teachers alike stumbled down the street to a bar across the street from the school. It was a little weird to be encouraged to drink with people who are supposed to think of you as a teacher, but apparently that's how work parties go down in Japan.

In other news, this week will not be fun for me. We have entered the gap schedule which means that I won't be a sub everyday anymore which is great, but because of when my old day off and my new day off are I don't get a day off at all this week. We have about a week and a half until the new schedule starts so they fill the in between time with Free Time Lessons (which are 40 minutes and students just come in a sign up for them whenever they want). At least in my new schedule I only have one sub shift day now (Mondays). That's all for now.

Inuyama

Last Friday for my day off I went with a friend to Inuyama, a little town about 35 minutes train ride north of Nagoya. I taught at the school in Inuyama as a sub earlier this week. The school is literally in the station. When we got there we didn't have much of a plan. Sadly we were woefully unprepared, neither of us brought our Japan guide books and we didn't have a map or anything, so when we got off the train we wandered until we found a little international center. We then found a guide book with a tiny map in it in the library section, found what direction the castle was and discovered that it was near the river. The castle there is original, unlike Nagoya castle which got bombed during the war so had to be rebuilt (now it has an elevator in it apparently). We then started wandering the streets of Inuyama (which means dog mountain, in case you wanted to know). We found the river after about 30 minutes of walking and saw the castle in the distance on a hill not long after. The castle is kind of small, but there was a pretty killer view from the top. To go in was only 500 yen. Since it's an original you have to take off your shoes before entering and carry them in a plastic sack. The "stairs" in there were really steep, so steep in fact they border on wooden ladder. But, all the little old Japanese ladies there were climbing them like champs. There were 5 levels.





Left: Inuyama Castle

Right: View from the top.





After the castle we wandered in search of food and ended up at this traditional restaurant with no English menu or pictures. When we came in we were greeted by four business men who were boozing and watching sumo wrestling on the tv. I pointed to something on the menu, said "This please" and asked for 2. It turned out to be a pretty spectacular success.

Looks pretty tasty right? The fried stuff on the left was shrimp, eggplant, fish(?), and a leaf, not sure what kind but I ate it anyway. There was a soft boiled egg and various vegetables in the noodles.

There's also a pretty great museum in Inuyama, but we didn't have time to get there. Maybe next time. That's all for now!

Vernal Equinox

Today was a holiday in Japan. Everyone had off work for the vernal equinox. I have Fridays off anyway, so it wasn't that exciting for me, but the weather was great today (unlike my last day off when it rained the entire day). I signed up for internet, so I should have a real connection in 2-3 weeks. I accidentally and miraculously found a new place in my room where I'm getting a signal right now. I rearranged my furniture and now the internet has deigned to give me a connection while sitting on my couch. Back to the matter at hand, I signed up for internet and had to speak in Japanese a little to them, but only to say "excuse me, internet?" and "English please". Then they scoured the store looking for the employee that spoke the best English. After that we had a little picnic in a park downtown. Then we shopped around in the shopping center attached to that shrine (Osu). This was the most alarming thing I saw there today.

I thought the largest picture size was necessary so you can see the entire scene. Apparently Yoda is putting the moves on Darth Vadar, much to C3PO's dismay. This was the manikin display outside one of the shops in Osu. Disturbing.

After that we found a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It's pretty much just like it sounds and really popular here. You sit down at a table and there's a big conveyor belt that runs throughout the restaurant with sushi and other assorted goodies on it. I'm not big on sushi, but it was definitely an experience. Then they count up how many plates you have at the end and you pay accordingly.

So, on the left we have the strangest dish of the evening (sushi hotdogs?), they won out over Hello Kitty juice boxes. On the right we have the aftermath.





The video is perhaps a little too long, but it gets the job done. It's better than pictures.

You just grab what you want. Ingenious.

Hounen Festival

Last weekend a whole herd of ECC teachers went to a festival in a town about a 30 min. train ride away. The weather was lovely and the shrine was crowded. It was a fertility festival, so there was a parade with a giant effigy of male genitalia. I would post a picture of it, but it might up the maturity level on my blog, then you'd have to sign in saying you're 18 if you want to read it and no one wants to go down that road. Just use your imagination. It was certainly something I will never see anywhere else. There were also traditional Japanese festival things to do, like eat lots of food and catch goldfish. I tried okinomiyaki which was delicious. It's made of cabbage mostly, and has egg and a strip of pork and other tasty things like that. Usually they put mayonnaise on top, but I asked them not to. I didn't try to catch any goldfish because I was afraid they would perish under my care.

This is the man that was making the okinomiyaki.

After the parade people threw mochi (compact rice balls) from the roof of the shrine into the crowd. We were standing pretty far back and a few even came out our way. The mochi is really hard, and there have been more than a few injuries in past years. I got one though because one of my friends (who is over 6 ft. tall, so I think he had an unfair advantage over the Japanese) caught 7 of them. He gave me one.

Supposedly you can eat them. The instructions I got were to rinse it off, microwave it (to make it puff up) and then cook it in butter and soy sauce. Maybe my next day off. I don't think they go bad...

The day was a success, we ended it by eating at Coco Curry house, a Japanese curry chain restaurant. One of our group decided to get the number 10 spicy level. I got the normal amount of hotness (about a 3) and mine was spicy. He was feeling that spiciness for days.

Hello people. There is a marathon going on in the street in front of my apartment this afternoon. People are lined up and cheering. Last night my friends and I went out near Nagoya station (the train/subway station). It was an interesting night. We ended it with karaoke which is completely crazy here. They give you light up tambourines, maracas and a room for 3 hours with two echo microphones. The places are all open 24 hours too so it's easy to stay out really late in here. The karaoke places all have a lot of American music.

Last Friday (my day off) I walked around the city. This is a pretty big shrine just in the middle of the city.

It's also practically attached to a giant shopping area. That place was kind of overwhelming. Also the Japanese are really into flannel plaid right now. I'm not sure about this fashion choice, but my theory is they think westerners wear it all the time so they think it's cool. The stores that have the most plaid are all named things like "western style" or something like that.

In other news I just got my new schedule for the year. I have two substitute days which is fine, but unfortunately one is Saturday. That's kind of annoying because I'll never know what time I have to be up and out on Saturdays. It'll depend on if I have to sub for someone, which will happen much more frequently when we start the new schedules since there won't be so many subs. I have 4 kids classes and 2 junior high classes. The rest are mostly 40 min. free time lessons which is what I mostly teach now. The other day a middle aged fireman in my class gave me a CD after class. It was a little surprising, and the music was bad British pop. I don't know where he got his hands on it. My favorite student so far has been the little old man who used to be a professional magician. He shows me magic tricks every time we see each other. He's really good at them too. In my new schedule I have Tuesdays off which is pretty exciting. National holidays fall on Mondays here so when that happens I'll have Sun. Mon. and Tues. off all in a row. Also my best friend here has the same days off as me so we'll probably get to travel together on our long weekends.

A lot of people I've met here are interested in going to China since we're so close (relatively speaking) so they all get excited that I can speak a little Chinese (emphasis on the little). So maybe I'll get to go back to China while I'm here. I'd like to go to Shanghai and Hong Kong. I didn't get there while I was studying abroad.

I'm afraid my computer may be about to die the death. It has weird lines all through the screen and nothing I've tried to do to fix it has worked. Hopefully it will think about its actions and decide to work properly again.