Thanksgiving

Tonight the JETs had a big Thanksgiving dinner. We rented a kitchen in a place and a room to eat in, and spent the entire day cooking. We made turkey and stuffing, ham with pineapple, garlic mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, bread and dip, green beans with toaster almonds, pumpkin and apple pie. We ended up having about 18 people, we invited a bunch of Japanese friends and it was really nice. I'm exhausted so I don't have the energy to write much else. Take a look:

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By the way, we got the turkey online. They don't have turkeys in Japan. The ovens here are so small, it was quite an interesting experience cooking it.

Finally I've Updated!

I've written a whole bunch of new posts, trying to make up for the last month of inactivity. I apologize for the delay! I've been extremely busy. I'll try to keep up in the future (mostly because I NEVER want to do a marathon photo upload/post writing day again). 

Enjoy!

Halloween

This is a little out of order, but here are some pictures from the Tsukasa school Halloween party. Tsukasa school is an English school near my house where I help out sometimes. 

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More Pictures and Updated Albums

Ichiomiya Festival

More Engrish

Updated Hiroshima

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous 2

Halloween Photos: Unlisted album, because it contains pictures of my students. If you want to see me in a witch's hat being a dork in front of a bunch of kids, leave a comment with your email and I'll send you the link!

Hachiman Shrine

There's a shrine just down the street from my house, I pass the entrance every day, and finally, after four months, I made it over there today to see it. It was a gorgeous fall day today, warm enough for a light coat, nowhere near as frigid as it has been lately. The shrine was very nice. There were some benches so I think in the spring when it's warm again I'll go up there to read or write. 

Hachiman Shrine

Himeji Momiji Viewing

Yesterday (finally I'm more or less up to speed!) I went with my friend Yukako from my calligraphy class, her mother, and Lana to Himeji to see the maple trees in the gardens around Himeji castle. Maple is the symbol of fall in Japan, and right now they're in bloom (or rather the leaves have turned the perfect colors) so for about a two week window, the gardens are open at night and the trees are all lit up. It was absolutely amazing--it looked like the trees were on fire. It reminded me of one of my favorite picture books when I was little, The Twelve Dancing Princesses (which had gorgeous illustrations) when they're going through the forest of jeweled branches. That was what is was like, standing under a canopy of glowing leaves.

After the garden we went to a Italian restaurant for dinner. They had said we were going to have Italian at a really good place, but I assumed it was some little dive they knew. In fact they had made reservations at a REALLY nice place, on the 6th floor of this building, with a private room with a glass wall and a breathtaking view of Himeji castle, illuminated and towering over the city. We had a superb full course meal--prosciutto and figs, pumpkin gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, steak filet in some kind of reduction sauce, and tiramisu and macha cake for dessert. Yukako and her mother treated us, which was incredibly kind of them considering how expensive it was. I felt badly that I didn't realize they had planned this entire evening and meant to treat us. I thought we were just going to pop over to Himeji, see the gardens, grab a bite to eat and head home. It was a really fun evening (although speaking in Japanese all night was tiring!)

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Nagasaki

Last weekend I went to Nagasaki to meet up with some friends and fellow JETs who live in Miyazaki, in southern Kyushu (Kyushu is the southernmost of Japan's four main islands). Nagasaki is about five hours from Yamasaki by train (closer to six hours when you factor in the hour long bus ride to Himeji, where the train station is). I wasn't at all sure what to expect, but Nagasaki turned out to be a lovely city. Not quite as nice as Hiroshima, it still bore no traces of having been the victim of an atomic bombing (except for the various monuments etc.). 

We couldn't find a place to stay before we got there. Apparently, as we learned later, the Pope was in town that weekend (Nagasaki is the Christian capital of Japan). So we ended up staying in a love hotel, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's almost like a normal hotel, except it's designed with a specific purpose in mind. That aside, it's a nice alternative for stranded tourists. It was almost as cheap as a hostel, but much, much nicer. 

We mostly hung out around the city, went out for drinks and karaoke at night, rode a ferris wheel on the roof of a department store (awesome views of the city and the full moon). We went to ground zero, where there's a small park and monument, and some chains of paper cranes. We had dinner as a really good Indian restaurant. 

Monday morning (it was a 3 day weekend) I wandered around by myself a bit, saw the cathedral and the famous megane-bashi (spectacles bridge), before having to rush to catch my train back to Himeji. I got home around 9 pm. It was a good trip.

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Kyoto

Two weeks ago, I went to Kyoto with the other JETs and our Japanese teacher Osaki-san. We spent Saturday and Sunday touring the city. We saw the old imperial palace, which was specially open to the public because it was some kind go culture day, so there were about a million people there. Apparently a lot of it is normally closed to the public, but for a short time it was opened, so people came in droves. 

We saw the famous kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion. It is one of the most photogenic buildings I've even been to. It sits next to a little pond, so it looks like it's floating. We arrived about ten minutes before the sun set, so the lighting was perfect.

We stayed in a hostel near Gion, which is the historic geisha district. At night, you can still see maiko (apprentice geisha) walking around all dressed up to go entertain. 

Sunday we went to a museum of Japanese crafts, which was cool. We went to Heian jingu, a huge shrine with beautiful gardens. Then we went to Fushimi-inari, a shrine famous for it's many torii gates. They stretch up the hillside creating a winding tunnel. You can walk through them as you hike up the hill, it's really cool. 

Kyoto is a beautiful city, and one of the few that was not destroyed during the war. I'm definitely planning on a return trip. Luckily, it's only 2.5 hours by bus!

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Nomikai

A few weeks ago, my school had a culture festival (all the schools do it). That evening after it was over, I went out with all the teachers for a nomikai, or drinking party. It was my second time attending one. We went to an izakaya of sorts, a traditional restaurant, where all 20 teachers sat at a long table on the floor and ate nabe, or hot pot. We chose numbers when we came in. I ended up sitting next to the principal, across from the vice principal and next to one of the third year homeroom teachers, Nio-sensei, who is the next youngest teacher after me, Fukunaga-sensei (the judo coach who's three days older than me) and Yamamura-sensei, the first year English teacher, who's 25. 

There's a certain amount of ceremony involved in these things. The principal or vice principal makes a little toast, then we all do a toast (kampai). But once everyone starts drinking, the formality dissolves rapidly. At "formal" meals like this, no one fills their own glass. It is polite to fill someone else's glass for them. But what's weird is, they don't even wait for you to finish your drink. It could be 3/4 full, and someone will still pop up going "douzo, douzo" and holding out a bottle of beer or sake. Consequently everyone drinks copiously. It's a lot of fun for me because once the teachers have had a few drinks, they stop being shy about speaking to me in English (or Japanese for that matter). At one point the vice principal was talking to the judo coach, they were sitting across from me, and he grabbed the guy's pecs, turned to me, and said "Miriam-sensei, look, he has big muscles" and laughed drunkenly. It's really funny to see my coworkers outside school--it's a totally different atmosphere. 

I was sitting next to the principal, and he kept pouring me sake, so I got pretty tipsy. After dinner we went to a karaoke bar. There, Yamamura-sensei told me she's getting married in February. I was really surprised, she's only two years older than me. I didn't even know she was seeing anyone. I asked her how long they'd been dating, and she said since July. July! I asked her if it was common in Japan for people to get married so quickly. She said not really. In her case (as I think is often the case here) she still lives with her parents, and they won't let her live with her boyfriend until they're married, so she figured why wait? So that was a surprise, but it's quite exciting. 

So apparently when my teachers get drunk they love to sing karaoke. Both times we went for karaoke after dinner. And both times, they made me sing. I wouldn't really mind so much, but they make me sing bad English songs that I DON"T KNOW. Nio-sensei asked me if I knew the Backstreet Boys, and before I knew what was happening I was singing "I Want it That Way." And by singing I mean kind of mumbling, because I haven't heard that song since I was 13. My resolution is to come up with a good song to sing next time they thrust a mic into my hands. 

Michiyo

A number of weeks ago, we met a woman named Michiyo at Jusco (the Japanese equivalent of WalMart). Initially, Lana and Lara approached her because she was standing with a foreigner, and since that was the weekend the school kids from our sister city of Sequim, Washington were visiting, they assumed he was one of them. He wasn't, his name is Gareth and he's here for about six months working at a center for the elderly and disabled. 

Michiyo, as it turns out, speaks almost perfect English, since she studied in the US for a while. She's middle aged and very sweet. She's an artist, and invited us to have lunch some time. About a month ago we went to her house and cooked hot dogs and edamame and spent several hours chatting and hanging out at her place. She has a sister names Makiko who is disabled. She's almost 60, but she can't speak and she has the capacity of a child. She's tiny and frail, but very sweet and friendly. She's really cute, she has no teeth and a neat little cap of white hair, and she kind of totters around and makes little baby noises. 

Michiyo's house is amazing. Her parents built it, by hand I think, and its very, very traditional. Even more so than my house. The front door is a slab of wood with metal fittings and pegs, and along one entire side of the house, there is a wide wooden hallway, the entire exterior wall of which is sliding glass screens which can be opened to turn the hallway into a porch in the summer. It looks out onto the little garden. 

We've gone over there twice now. The second time we went Michiyo started to show us how to do oshie, a Japanese craft. Her mother was a doll maker, so she had all these amazing scraps of fabric we could use. We're hoping to make it a regular thing, visiting and doing crafts.

Fire Festival

A few weeks ago, I went to a fire festival. One of the other JETs was hiking in the woods behind his house, and he came across a little shrine. The old woman who worked there (doesn't this sound like something out of a fairy tale? I can't believe this is my life...) told him there was a festival at night, so we all hiked up the hill in the dark with our flashlights. I was expecting a festival like the last few I went to, with a lot of people milling around, food stands and children in kimono. But this was completely different. It was a small gathering, maybe 50 or 60 people, and they held an actual ceremony (whether it was Buddhist or Shinto, we couldn't figure out). Up some steps off the main road, there was a raised enclosure, fenced off by a red wooden paddock-like fence, at one end of which there were some more stairs that led up to a dais, covered by a pointed wooden roof, where there was incense burning and lots of statues of buddhas and things. On either side of this, there was a steep stone staircase leading up into the hill, and at the top of each side was a miniature shrine. The stone staircases, like the enclosure below, were lined with candles. It was really beautiful. The enclosure was walled in on all sides by dark trees. 

The ceremony lasted maybe 30 t0 45 minutes, consisted of a lot of chanting and was led by a group of men and women in white robes. At one point they formed processions and climbed the candle-lined stairs to the little shrines, chanting all the way. Lined up inside the enclosure were about a dozen braziers, about five and a half feet tall, stuffed with kindling. After the service was over, the priests lit the braziers literally by pouring sake over them and lighting a match, and everyone took these little bundles of kindling wood with names written on them, and put them one by one into the fire. Some women told us that it is to help send these people, who have died, to heaven. They gave us some of the sticks to help put in the fire. 

It was a unique experience. The one bad moment was when we were all standing around before the service started. Some guy came up to us and offered us what looked like shish-kebab, like beef on a stick, and we couldn't very well refuse it. I took one bite of it and thought I was going to be sick. It was gelatinous and covered with some weird seedy jelly. It was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. I figured it was some weird paste, until I overheard my Lee say to Lana that it was raw meat. At which point I really thought I would be sick. Luckily Lana was nice enough to eat mine for me. As it turns out (I only found out an hour later, after obsessing over the disgusting fact that I had eaten raw meat) Lee was joking, it was not meat after all. I was not pleased with him...

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I'm still alive!

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm still alive. I'm sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while, I've been completely swamped with work and life these last few weeks. It has gotten cold and the days are getting shorter, and winter in the inaka is tiring (and it hasn't even snowed yet). Check back soon for updates, I promise!

3 pictures to make you happy

Obama Loves Obama

This story is all over the internet, I think it's pretty cute. Take a look!

Obama loves Obama

Unfortunately, Reuters got the map wrong. There are several Obamas in Japan, but the one that is supporting Barack is in Fukui Prefecture, not Kyushu. This is just like the Irish newspaper that did a report on the violence in Georgia (the country) and had an accompanying picture of the state of Georgia. FAIL.

Obama, Fukui

Also, I couldn't help but laugh, apparently the Mayor of Obama has declared November 4th a holiday, as if Japan didn't have enough of those already. 

Les Misbarack

I told myself I wouldn't let this blog get political, but I just couldn't resist posting this. Enjoy, and then go VOTE! (preferably for Obama :)

Les Misbarack