Youtube Randomness

I happened upon some interesting tidbits on the interwebs. And I thought back to my trip to Tokyo in September. When I was meeting up with Ruriko, we were on the phone trying to find each other and she asked "Are there a lot of people?" We were meeting here.

Stumbling onto Japanese-iness

After the rains of the past two days, this morning the weather was beautiful. I came home from the Halloween party in the morning and after a few hours more of sleep, I went outside. I had been sporadically hearing some traditional Japanese music.

I started walking around, eventually heading in the general direction of the music. I discovered a little festival going on in a bank parking lot. There were food stalls hawking both cooked food and fresh produce. I ended up buying 5 little eggplants for 100yen.

The music turned out to be coming from a stage. I saw several traditional fan dances. Most of them were performed by older women in beautiful kimonos. However, one dance was done by three tiny and adorable little girls. They kept looking at each other for cues on what to do. There were also performers who played and sang traditional Japanese music.

Stumbling on these kinds of things is one of the parts of living abroad that I love.

Foreigners Celebrate Halloween

Last night, the Miyagi JET social group put on a big Halloween party. We rented large cabins where we could be loud and not have neighbors get upset by 9 pm. The people running the event decorated pretty well, including carving a pumpkin (Japan has pumpkins, but they're not orange) and putting up fake tombstones with with the names of things that have recently met their demise, such as a favorite Irish pub in Sendai and the Nova language school.

There were a lot of fun costumes. I went as bad Japanese fashion--wearing several layers including a dress over jeans, leg warmers (which are actually incredibly comfortable), and my hair in a small ponytail right in the front of my head.

I got a ride to the party with Dan. But when I got in his car, I found that it was being driven by Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, as Dan calls him). After we picked up Nathan, who had really greasy hair and a painted on skinny beard, we stopped in a convenience store. I can't imagine what the people working there were thinking.
Here's Santa with a Japanese junior high school student.

The cast of Clue was also there! They brought with them a real incredibly heavy wrench and a length of lead pipe. The knife and candlestick were fake.

Best costume of the night!

Here's a guy from the video game Streetfighter and a washed-up Harry Potter.

While it's awesome to have the opportunity to be living in Japan, it's very relaxing to occasionally hang out in a big group of foreigners. But lest you think this post will be completely free of Japanese tales, I will conclude with an 'only in Japan' tid-bit. We had a tin of Pringles. They were "Ethnic" flavor. Only in Japan can something taste like "ethnic."

Potato Party Pictures

No deep thoughts today. Just a few pictures.

In the place where the little potato garden had been, there was a fire pit. We wrapped all the potatoes in aluminum foil and threw them on the fire. Alternating more sticks and more potatoes. I got to poke at the fire a bit, so that made me happy (I thought of Team Let's Go Camping). And my candied sweet potatoes were a hit.


Showing off the fire. One of the teachers, a student teacher, me, and a student hiding in the background.



Hanging out around the fire.

The school nurse poking at the fire.

Potato Party

Last week, I helped the special needs class dig up their little garden of sweet potatoes. They harvested over 100 potatoes. It was a fun, random, activity. And everyone got to take home one big, fat potato. The rest were set aside for a bbq that the class is going to have tomorrow. I told them that sweet potatoes are a traditional American food, a traditional dish at Thanksgiving. For some reason, this was a surprising fact, even though sweet potatoes are a New World food. I told them that I wanted to make candied sweet potatoes for the class. So the teacher gave me 3 more big, fat potatoes. They're in the oven right now. I hope they turn out well, otherwise everyone is going to think that American food is bad.

My position as a foreigner in Japan whose purpose in being here is to internationalize the students has made me think more about the US. And I view the US in a more positive light than I often did while at home. I routinely answer questions about what we have in America, what we do in America, what things are like in America. I've never really given any thought to what American food is. As a lover of all sorts of foreign cuisines, I've never given American cuisine much credit. But I really love sweet potatoes and other Thanksgiving foods (I'm definitely going to have a bit before bringing them to school...too make sure they turned out okay....) Next month I have to teach elementary school lessons on "American culture" and I'm not sure what I should teach about. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

And I'm going to cut these ponderings short because I have to go check on my sweet potatoes.

Soccer

There is a group that gets together on Sundays to kick the ball around in a park in Sendai. Today I joined for the first time. Just as we're dividing ourselves into teams for a game, a group of junior high girls and their coach come by and ask to play with us.

Our hodge-podge group had never played all together before. Most of the group had minimal (if any) soccer skills. On the other hand, this was an actual team that we were playing against. Japanese junior high students are hardcore about their sports, practicing every day all year long. They had excellent ball skills. We had one single advantage--size. We're full-grown adults and on top of that, we're foreign and therefore taller than the average Japanese. Surprisingly, we won! Though if we'd played on a larger field, they definitely would have killed us. (During half-time, we had some debate as to whether we should let them win so they avoid the possibility of the coach's wrath).

Eventually the coach told us that the kids had to go home. So we ended the game and shook hands with them as is the custom at the end of Western sports competitions and then lined up across from our opponents, bowed, and thanked them in unison, as is the custom at the end of Japanese sports competitions.

After the girls left, we decided to play another short game just amongst ourselves, although most of us had very little energy left. After we'd been playing a few minutes, two little boys (elementary school age probably) came up and asked us to join. So one kid joined each team, and we played on.

I'm exhausted from all that running around. I'm going to sleep really well tonight. And probably won't be able to move in the morning.

I can't wait till next Sunday.

P.S. When did I go back to calling it soccer?

Dinner and a Surprise

Right before I left school today, the 3rd grade English teacher came to my desk and asked if I had any plans for the evening. I said I didn't so she invited me to her house for dinner. I wanted to bring a box of chocolates, as per my cultural traditions, but I don't think Japan has nice boxes of chocolates, so I settled for a bag of nice-looking chocolates.

She lives in a huge house with her husband, two kids, and her husband's parents. I came over and relaxed for about an hour while Obaasan (grandma) cooked dinner. I saw all of her son's soccer medals and her daughter's clarinet.

Dinner was quite fancy. We had oyster soup with oysters from Matsushima (a bay close to here), sashimi (raw fish), Japanese pickles, some sort of potato-salad type dish, yakitori (grilled meat), another dish that had various colored peppers and was therefore happy, and of course, rice. We had three kinds of sashimi--tuna, saury (anyone heard of this fish before?), and squid. My previous experience with sashimi was less than stellar but I vowed to give it another shot next time it was presented to me. I'm glad to report that this time I enjoyed it much more.

The table was cleared and my co-worker's son busted out the board game Othello. We ate some apples and I dominated at the game.

I was asked if I wanted coffee or tea and I felt very culturally at home. My co-worker started taking a log cake out of a box and I was thinking how similar this part of dinner was to home. As she revealed more of the cake, I saw writing that said "Happy Birthday Rita"! They put a candle in the cake, which I blew out and they all sang happy birthday to me. I was not expecting that at all. It was so sweet!

Tea and cake was pretty tasty and then Obaasan and Ojiisan (Grandma and Grandpa) invited me over any time I want, and said that I should come over if I ever feel homesick. Ojiisan said something along the lines of 'even though we don't speak the same language we can communicate from the heart.'

The whole evening was very sweet. Plus the two pieces of mail I got today (thanks Amy and Trina) made me feel like it was my birthday all over again.

Getting Lost Where?

Today Nathan and I decided to go to Izumi, which is the part of Sendai closest to us. Instead of taking the the straight-shot major road that runs right past my house we took the scenic route past nana-tsu mori. Unfortunately after a while it was starting to look like we had missed a turn, so we stopped at a 7-11 to ask directions. Although Nathan asked for directions to Izumi Park-Town, he got directions to Mt. Izumi, so we were still on the wrong path. We were so wrong that we ended up in...



Montana! Montana? Apparently so.

And we weren't the only ones confused about where we were or where we were from, because that Trans Am they had parked outside had a back license plate from Ontario and the front from California.

Turns out Montana is a little kitschy restaurant that serves "sparerib steak", "chili con carne" and "cowboy rice" along with a few other "American" dishes. Bad country music was playing from a speaker (I'm not dissing country music, this was particularly bad). There was also a small shop that sold some fair trade coffees and some trinkets. It was like Crossroads in downtown Bloomington, only much smaller and less cool.

Somehow my first trip to Montana occurred while I was in Japan. Ah, Japan...a magical place where rules of logic and apparently geography don't apply.

Awesomeness

I went to my favorite elementary school today. Here's a brief list of what makes this a sweet gig.

-I taught the first graders and the sixth graders the baby shark song.
(baby shark do-do-doo-do-do/mama shark do-do-doo-do-do)
I figured it was relevant to both classes because I taught the first graders about animals and the sixth graders about family members.

-I taught 2 classes the Hokey Pokey. They thought I was crazy and they LOVED it.

-I played kick-ball at morning recess.

And next time I go there, I'm having a Halloween party with the little ones and I intend on showing the Animaniacs' Nations of the World song to one of the classes.

Nanatsu Mori

The symbol of Taiwa is a set of seven small mountains that can be seen in the distance. These are known as nana-tsu mori or seven forests. A while ago, at my official town welcome party I heard an interesting legend about nana-tsu mori. According to legend, each mountain has a god. And if you climb all seven mountains and pray to all seven gods, you get good luck for life or eternal happiness or something. So this became my new goal.

I had the day off so I took my new car to nana-tsu mori. I drove around for a while (only accidentally turning on my windshield wipers twice) trying to get to the mountains and to a spot where I could park and walk around. Eventually I found a place to park my car and started walking. I had trouble finding any usable trails though. Sometimes I found some trail markers, but hiking is clearly not all that popular around here because the trails were overgrown to the point where I wouldn't exactly call them trails anymore--in other words, they were impassable. At some point I did make it up to a high point of sorts. I'm pretty sure it wasn't an actual peak, but I clapped my hands together 3 times just in case there was a god living there. I also found a nice creek. So although I didn't do too much actual hiking, I had a nice time.

Driving on the Left

I am the proud owner of a little Suzuki k-car!

I bought it from my friend Jenny. We did all the paperwork while squatting on the steps in my front yard.

Now I just have to keep reminding myself to stay to the left. And that the blinkers are on the right side of the steering column and the wipers on the left. Bizarre....