Muy Oishii

Bittersweet Endings, Delicious Beginnings

2008-07-15T15:20:00.009+09:00

Bittersweet. Both sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet, as the song goes. This little vocabulary gem has been creeping into my English lessons lately. I've been making final visits to each of my 15 classes here at Sakai Junior High, telling each of my 452 students that my time at their school is coming to an end, and undertaking the almost-impossible task of explaining how I'm feeling in broken English and even more broken Japanese.

So how, exactly, am I feeling? Even given the luxury of my native tongue, it's hard to put into words. Bittersweet gets close, but isn't quite intense enough.

Yes, leaving is bitter. Very bitter. Right now, I'm in the throes of a series of long, sad, drawn-out goodbyes. I'm pulling off the proverbial Band-Aid very slowly, and it is painful. My heart breaks each time I have to tell one of my classes that this is our final meeting, each time I have to hug a Japanese friend for the last time, each time I have to attend a sayonara party for a fellow JET-turned-ad-hoc-family-member, realizing that just days from now, we'll be scattered across the world all over again.

I don't know when/if I will come back to Japan. If I do, it probably won't be for a long, long time. It's the finality of everything that hurts the most.

But, yes, what I have to look forward to in the future is sweet. Very sweet. On Sunday, I'll be back in Chicago, surrounded by my family and old friends and size 8 shoes and pizza that doesn't involve corn or mayonnaise. And then, very soon after that, I'll be off to begin a new adventure in Mexico, starting what might just be my dream job. (I'll be firing up a new blog, titled GRINGA CULICHI, to share my exploits south of the Rio Grande. Stay tuned.)

So, for lack of a better word, I'd describe it all as bittersweet. But I think my feelings are being intensified by the outpouring of support I've gotten here in Japan. People who don't even share my language are telling me, in their own wordless ways, that I will be missed, I will be remembered, and that they support me wholeheartedly in my move to Mexico, a far-away country that they know little about, other than it's hot and people eat lots of tacos there.

And my tear ducts have opened and flowed freely in each of these instances, like when my little host sister finally addressed me as "おねさん" (older sister) on a goodbye card she shyly gave me this weekend. Or when my students encouraged me with "fight-o!" and "go for it!" when I told them about my new job. Or when my 75-year-old friend and student, Nagata-san, proposed a toast to my health and success in Mexico during a farewell party last week. Or when my students add to the stack of carefully-written goodbye letters accumulating on my desk at school.

A wise man named Dr. Seuss once said, "Don't be sad it's ending, be glad it happened." These words have become my personal mantra over the past few weeks. They're what I repeat in my head, trying to comfort myself as I fight back tears when faced with yet another goodbye. And they're running through my head right now as I prepare to push the "publish" button, thus officially wrapping my little MUY OISHII blog that has so faithfully carried me through my time here in Japan. Thank you, friends and family -- and, yes, thank you mystery readers -- for joining me on this crazy beautiful adventure.

It's sometimes bittersweet, but life, above all, is MUY OISHII (very delicious).

Please visit my new blog at http://www.gringaculichi.blogspot.com/.
Favor de visitar mi blog nuevo en http://www.gringaculichi.blogspot.com/.
わたしの　あたらしい　ブルオグ　わ http://www.gringaculichi.blogspot.com/.

Grandmas are Universal

2008-07-14T15:05:00.007+09:00

A year ago, if you'd asked me what I expected to take away from my time in Japan, my answer would have involved something about better understanding cultural differences: the Japanese language versus English, chopsticks versus the knife-n-fork, "r" versus "l," collectivism versus individualism, bowing versus hugging, squat toilets versus sit-down toilets, blah, blah, blah.

But a year later, I find that I'm more impressed by cultural universals, such as the ability of strangers anywhere to be unbelievably kind or unbelievably mean to each other. Or the fact that, around the world, or at least in Japan and the USA, mothers seem to cry at school graduations. Or the human tendency to talk about the weather when filling awkward silences（e.g. "あついですね" and "さむいですね"）.　

After this weekend, I have yet another addition to add to the list of universals: it seems that, almost everywhere in the world, grandmothers spoil their grandchildren rotten.

My own childhood is filled with fond memories of trips to my grandparents' house in Southern Illinois. When my sister and I were kids, my parents used to leave us there for a week or so in the summertime, creating a win-win situation: Mom and Dad got some alone time, and Susan and I got spoiled by Grandma. Grandma would buy us the sugar-filled breakfast cereals (Lucky Charms!!) forbidden by Mom at home. Grandma would let us eat pie for lunch and ice cream for dinner. And Grandma's cabinets were always stocked with little treasures to foster our budding creativity: mini craft sets, harmonicas and kazoos for ad-hoc rock bands, and endless stacks of coloring books.

On Saturday, my host family invited me to a sushi dinner -– this time, at Grandma's house. But Japanese Grandma's house in Fukui City might well have been my American Grandma's house in Illinois. Upon walking into her tatami room, I was instantly transported into my own grandmother's living room: the walls were plastered with photographs of smiling grandchildren. Another wall bore framed prints of baby-sized hands and feet. A beam near the door was covered with pencil marks, names, dates, and measurements to mark each of her three grandchildren's growth.

We settled into small talk, until I ran out of Japanese and the Ohsakis ran out of English, and then Japanese Grandma produced a craft set from her treasure cabinet -- just like my own Grandma would have done. We spent the afternoon filing away at make-your-own chopstick sets. And when dinnertime rolled around, Japanese Grandma, just like my Grandma, took great pleasure in offering (forcing) heaps of food to (on) her already-full guests, refusing to take 'no' for an answer. And instead of eating herself, she putzed around in the kitchen -- you guessed it, just like my own Grandma.

"There's cake and watermelon for dessert, so I hope you saved room," she said at the end of the meal, sounding like my Grandma. Already having eaten too much, I groaned along with my host family, sounding a lot like my own family at home.

But I really knew we were at grandma's house when my youngest host sister bounded to the refrigerator, dug through a shelf in the freezer, and happily produced a popsicle. This ostensibly was the "forbidden-at-home" food that grandmas are so good at stocking: the Ohsaki children's version of Susan's and my Lucky Charms. Throughout the evening, I observed each of the three children making multiple trips to the refrigerator, digging through the drawers and emerging from the kitchen, slurping on popsicles.

"How many have you eaten?" I asked another host sister, the middle child.

"Eleven," she replied nonchalantly.

My host mom cringed. My host grandma beamed. It was almost like being at home.

Prepare to be humbled...

2008-07-10T17:59:00.005+09:00

I visited the Fukui Prefectural School for the Blind (called "Mougakko" locally) with a group of fellow JETs earlier this week. I volunteered for the visit day expecting to have a pleasant experience, thinking that perhaps I'd help a couple of students practice their English or maybe learn a bit about Braille. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, I was humbled. The students were absolutely brilliant, overwhelmingly kind, and extremely gifted learners. Oh yeah -- and they’re all vision impaired.

While I’ve stumbled over learning basic Japanese for the past year, these Mougakko students have mastered both English and Japanese, along with the Braille systems for both languages, which makes them essentially quadro-lingual. (Is that even a word? I bet the Mougakko kids could tell me.) Perhaps polyglot superstudents is a more appropriate description.

Here's how the day went down: we started with a tour of the school’s massage facilities (many students study massage in addition to the standard curriculum, preparing for future careers as masseuses). Next, we were spectators at a game of “blind volleyball,” which is absolutely grueling when compared to the beach variety (it is played on the floor and involves blocking the ball by listening for it). We then toured facilities for music and art classes, subjects that are apparently these students’ fortes, judging from the amazing ceramics on display and the awesome piano solo from one of the students.

But it was the Braille that blew me away: students demonstrated how they use adapted computers to type in English, Japanese, and Braille, and then gave us old-school, six-keyed Braille typewriters to try it ourselves.

It took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to write my own name (which, you may recall, has exactly four letters -- not that difficult). But 14-year-old "K", our Mougakko-student-turned-Braille-sensei, demonstrated infinite patience. He checked my Braille by running his nimble fingers quickly over the sentences I'd attempted to type: "My name is Sara." "I like sushi." "Braille is hard." K even played it cool when suggesting corrections for my error-ridden phrases.

Yessir, K and his pals are truly superstudents. But they were so unassuming, you’d never suspect it. Once you get past the whole I-know-four-languages-and-could-probably-play-piano-at-Carnegie-if-I-wanted-to thing, they’re really just regular kids. This was evident when we went on a tour of Mougakko’s cafeteria and asked students about the food.

“It’s so-so,” they admitted with a grin.

One 17-year-old boy told us about his heartbreaking struggle to ask a female Mougakko student out on a date.

“She said ‘no,’” he sighed. “Girls are weird.”

“Keep trying,” we reassured him. “Girls are complicated.”

So, the next time I whine about not being able to read kanji at the grocery store, the memory of these Mougakko kids will keep my linguistic self-pity in check.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Walking (home) in somebody else’s shoes

2008-07-02T15:23:00.005+09:00

My blog entries up to this point have been pretty sunny: I've rambled on and on about the kindness of the people here in Japan. They've gone out of their way to guide me by the hand when I've been lost on the subway. They've invited me into their homes and have cooked me delicious dinners. They've smiled and have tried to help when I've asked stupid questions in broken Japanese.

In short, they've taught me that kindness is universal, that there are nice folks all over the world. But yesterday I unfortunately learned that fear -- the dark underbelly of humanity -- is also universal.

My poor little car, still recovering from the mountainous road trip adventure this weekend, broke down again in the grocery store parking lot yesterday afternoon. The battery is dame (bad), but it just has to hold out for the 18 days I have left here in Japan, so I'm not motivated to shell out the yen required to fix it properly. Instead, I'd purchased a pair of jumper cables after this weekend's adventures in auto repair, so I was prepared to remedy the problem. I just needed to find someone’s car to use for the jump.

Now, this scenario may sound familiar because I had to get my car jumped in the same grocery store parking lot this fall. An extremely kind man went out of his way to help me, and, in doing so, reaffirmed my faith in the goodness of humanity.

So I anticipated that I'd have no problem finding someone willing to help me this time around. But I was wrong.

I sat in my car, turning the key in the ignition, listening to it attempting to but failing to turn over. My car was parked between two other vehicles, with people sitting in them, ostensibly waiting for their respective spouses to finish their grocery shopping. Hearing the distressed sounds my poor car was making, they both looked my way. They must've known that I was having car trouble.

I dug the jumper cables out of the back seat, opened my door, and walked to the car parked on my right. A middle-aged woman was sitting in the driver’s seat. The windows were rolled up, but the car was running. I waved, smiled, bowed a little and mouthed a friendly "sumimasen" (excuse me) while holding up the jumper cables.

She looked at me. I almost didn't recognize her expression because it had been so long since I'd seen it.

Fear.

She locked her door, put on her seat belt, and drove away, leaving me standing in the parking lot, jumper cables in hand.

I was surprised at her reaction, but somehow unfazed. I walked over to the other car, the car parked on my left, and repeated the procedure. This time, the grandfatherly-looking man sitting in the driver's seat just stared at me blankly through his window. Then, wordlessly, he started up his car and moved it to another parking spot.

I was starting to feel a bit defeated: I was actually scaring people, and couldn’t figure out why. It was 4 o'clock on a sunny afternoon. As I was coming home from work, I actually looked presentable, dressed in slacks and a blouse. This had never happened to me.

After I approached a third person – a woman walking out of the store, bags in hand, who sharply told me that she didn’t have time to help me before hurrying away – I gave up. I was at the breaking point: I threw the jumper cables in the back seat, grabbed my bag, and left my car in the parking lot (a friend helped me jump it later that night). I walked the 15 minutes back to my apartment, my eyes burning with tears of frustration.

I'm different here in Japan. But my story is no different from those told to me by friends back in Chicago, who have been harassed by police for no apparent reason, refused help when they've had car trouble, or eyed suspiciously when they're walking through certain neighborhoods at certain hours, just because they look a certain way. The blonde woman in a supermarket parking lot in rural Japan is the Middle Eastern man in the security line at the airport, or the African American talking the CTA through the north side of Chicago on his way home from work, or the Mexican immigrant denied service at a restaurant because “we don’t speak Spanish here,” even though she's speaking perfectly good English, just with a hint of an accent.

So I walked home in their shoes yesterday. I got a small taste of what some folks have to go through every day of their lives. And I'm grateful for the lesson.

Road Trippin'

2008-07-02T15:19:00.007+09:00

We had all of the ingredients for your typical American-as-apple-pie road trip: summertime Saturday morning, four good girlfriends, music loaded on the iPod, snacks -- and even the token bout of car trouble.

I digress to tell the back-story here: My car battery died in a tiny one-road village we'd stopped at on one of our many potty breaks. Apparently, the constant uphill climbing on mountain roads was too much for my little Suzuki. (Read: It was rainy and I left the lights on. Doh!) But the four of us were able to pool our individually-lacking Japanese skills and communicate enough to call to get the car jumped. There was also the matter of creating quite a spectacle with the neighborhood kids, who had apparently never seen a broken-down K-car crammed with four giant gaijin women. We shared our raw veggie snack stash with them while we were waiting for the car repair guy to show up. They'd apparently never eaten raw carrots either, and, at first, silently stared at us – and our vegetable offerings – with wide, “you-want-me-to-eat-what?” kind of eyes. But they ended up really digging the ninjin (carrots) and even helped themselves to seconds.

But, this being Japan and all, last weekend's road trip was anything but apple pie.

For starters, our destination was pretty unique: We visited 白川郷 (Shirakawa-gō), a centuries-old UNESCO World Heritage Site tucked away in mountain valley in Gifu prefecture. Shirakawa-gō is a picturesque village of still-inhabited thatched-roof houses, painstakingly constructed against a breathtaking backdrop of towering deep-green pine trees and mountain mist. 'Twas one part Amish community (given the whole stepping-back-in-time factor) and two parts Brothers Grimm (given the whole stepping-into-a-scene-from-a-fairy-tale factor).

Our accommodation was also a bit strange: We slept in a temple-turned-youth-hostel (complete with a 10 p.m. curfew – apparently late-night carousing is not very Zen), run by a very kind Buddhist monk. We tucked into futons spread out on a tatami-covered floor. The earthy smells of tatami, pine and rain (it's still rainy season, y'all), along with the sound of the steady summer shower on the roof, lulled us to sleep. Quite the spiritual experience for a bargain 3000 yen.

Our company was out-of-the-ordinary as well: We caught dinner at a lively local restaurant, complete with Gifu's finest regional fare. Walking into the dining area, where we ladies were greeted with a rowdy “Hellooooooo!” from a table of young Japanese guys, out celebrating their friend's wedding. (In Japan, the bachelor party apparently happens on the night of the wedding. Yeah, we didn’t get it either.) The guys had downed quite a few beers and were quite eager to bust out their English – turns out they'd all met while studying abroad a few years back in California. A couple were actually working as English teachers in real time. But as our 10 o'clock curfew came around, we, being good Cinderellas, excused ourselves from the proverbial “Ball” and headed back to our temple hotel.

I digress again to explain, who, exactly, is “we.” “We” is me, plus three fellow Fukui JETs who happen to be the best pals a gal could ask for. This road trip was our final girl's weekend, a last hurrah before we left the safe, warm blanket that is June and flipped the page to July, the month we will leave Fukui and be scattered all over the world again. When I came to Japan 11 months and 1 week ago, these girls were strangers, but now they are my family-away-from-home, my lifelines, my sanity, and some of my best friends. I will miss them terribly.

Unfortunately on the way back home the next day, we – despite all of our girl-bonding glory -- experienced the dark underbelly of road tripping. The previous night's rainy season shower turned into a full-on typhoon, which made navigating windy mountain roads somewhat daunting in my little blue car. We got lost (of course), wound our way through four different prefectures, ended up in Nagoya, and blew 6000 yen and nearly five hours on toll roads trying to get back in Fukui. Nice.

But I guess that's part of the fun. Typhoons, carrots, cultural heritage sites, temple hostels and drunken J-boys: all the ingredients needed for your typical Japanese road trip.

Taiko Nights

2008-07-02T15:15:00.002+09:00

The majority of my Wednesday nights here in Japan have been filled with taiko, a Japanese style of drumming. I haven't mentioned a lot about taiko (only here), mostly because I feel like I'm the weakest link when I go to the class. It's a bit embarrassing to have claimed to be a percussionist for upwards of five years (I was in drum line in junior high and part of high school, and yes, I've been to band camp -- don't judge me) and then to come to Japan and get yelled at for holding my drum sticks wrong. But, as would be expected given the fact that almost everything about Japan is different than what I'm used to, taiko isn't your average drumming experience.

Our sensei is approximately 137 years old, but keeps beat like a metronome, pounding away at his drum for the whole of our 90-minute class without even breaking a sweat. The rest of the students – mostly other foreigners, with a couple of brave Japanese ladies mixed in for good measure – takes constant breaks to apply Band-aids to their hands when the drumming-induced blisters start to form after about 15 minutes of hammering away. We're such rookies.

Sensei alternates between barking at us and complimenting us in Japanese, which we somehow understand, and then invariably yells at me for holding my sticks wrong. I hold them like I'm playing a snare, which requires tight and precise movement from the wrist, instead of like I'm playing a taiko drum, which requires wild, theatric movements of the entire arm. What can I say? It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. But since sensei is 137 and I'm only 28, he doesn't seem to find that excuse amusing.

We had our last official taiko practice last week, and I brought my camera to document the experience. I'll miss those humbling Wednesday night classes, and my arms will miss the workout – though I doubt my hands will miss all of those blisters.

Dinner with the Small Temples

2008-07-02T15:10:00.005+09:00

I had a lovely dinner last week with one of the guys from my Thursday night class. We'll call him "Small Temple-san," because that's how his family name translates to English. Small Temple-san invited me and a fellow JET (you remember “C” from the deflated chocolate mousse incident) to his house, where he, his lovely wife, and his beautiful daughter had prepared an absolutely breathtaking spread of food: soybean salad, smoked salmon bruschetta, mushrooms, shrimp tempura, sashimi -- even a little homemade ume-shu to wash it all down. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Dinner was served at 7 p.m., and the Small Temples begrudgingly admitted that they'd worked on preparing the meal since 3 o'clock that afternoon. The food was absolutely fantastic, but, ironically, it wasn't the highlight of the evening: the Spanish and the pedicure were the best parts.

During our conversation over dinner, the Small Temples learned that I had spent some time studying in Mexico. Their daughter's eyes lit up, and she excused herself from the table and ran into the kitchen to retrieve a packet of Arroz Poblano (Poblano Rice). Turns out that she had visited Mexico herself a few years back, had fallen in love with the food, and had purchased some souvenir rice to prepare in Japan. It was a great plan, except that all of the cooking instructions on this particular package were written in Spanish. She had been waiting two years to make the rice. Could I puh-lease translate the directions into English for her?

I was thrilled to be able to help with her request – it was the first time in eleven months that I felt linguistically helpful instead of like the non-Japanese-speaking burden that I really am.

Apparently feeling indebted for my translation services, Small Temple's daughter dashed off to her bedroom and brought back a pedicure kit. As I ate my dessert, she applied crystals and flower-shaped stickers to my nasty runner's toes, insisting that my feet “didn't smell that bad” as I was giggling with embarrassment. C even got in on the pedicure action, scoring gold nail polish and glitter on the big toe of his right foot.

I left the Small Temples’ house with a full belly, a take-home bottle of moonshine ume-shu, and sparkly toenails. What else could a gal ask for?

Plan Bs

2008-06-23T16:52:00.007+09:00

Fukui is a rather soggy place. The autumn months found me wishing that I could somehow morph into an amphibian to better cope with what seemed like constant rainfall, and the winter found me digging my tiny car out of large-even-to-a-Chicago-gal snowdrifts that had literally accumulated overnight. So, the past few weeks of springtime sunshine and blue skies have been a welcome respite from the otherwise constantly-crappy weather in our random little corner of Japan.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to learn that this lovely weather was really just a tease.

This weekend, Fukui entered 梅雨(tsuyu), the rainy season, a Japan-wide phenomenon that runs from mid-June through July. Tsuyu translates to "plum rain" because it coincides with plum season (and ume-shu, plum wine, season -- yatta!!). But tsuyu should also translate to "dreary, sh*tty weather everyday."

When tsuyu hits an already-rainy place like Fukui (I guess my prefecture could be called the Seattle of Japan, minus the Space Needle), the results are, well, soggy. For example, 2004’s tsuyu once brought a legendary 11 inches of rain in six hours. Of course I realize that this will likely evoke little sympathy from my fellow Midwesterners who likely spent the weekend filling sandbags along the currently flood-ravaged Mississippi (keep fighting the good fight, y’all!), but that’s a heck of a lot of rain, by any standard.

So, what’s an outdoor-loving, sunshine-worshipping, soon-to-be-leaving-Japan-and-trying-to-pack-everything-in-one-last-time kinda gal to do during tsuyu?

Make lots of Plan Bs.

Which is exactly what I did this weekend after plans for a glorious two days of camping, cycling and otherwise worshipping the great outdoors were altered due to grey skies and lots o’ precipitation.

I’d been looking forward to one last round of camping and inebriated cliff diving at Fukui’s infamous Ono Watering Hole on Friday night. I was optimistic at first: I woke up on Friday morning to blue skies, chirping birds and butterflies, but as the day progressed, the storm clouds began rolling in. All I could do was laugh as tsuyu officially hit just as I was walking out the door at the end of the school day.

Plan B? We organized a little BBQ on a fellow JET’s front porch. The BBQ was more like a mini UN meeting, complete with a couple of Americans, two Japanese artists and a pair of just-passing-through backpackers from Spain. The trilingual conversation was lovely, as were the red wine and butter-soaked, charcoal-slow-cooked mushrooms and corn.

Saturday’s pre-rain plan was to cycle around the Five Lakes of Mikata, an aptly-named series of, uh, five lakes down in the funky “Dirty South” Reinan region of the prefecture. Some of the lakes are salt water, and some are fresh water, and they all differ in depth, so they’re supposed to be gorgeous, all different colors, in fair weather.

Plan B? We road-tripped down to the Reinan in my little car, stopping along the two-lane highway to take in views along the dramatic, rugged Sea of Japan coast. The grey skies actually made the greens of the moss-covered rocks -- and reds of the kitschy, rusted-out crab-shaped signs from long-abandoned seafood restaurants -- all the more vibrant.

We still made it to the lakes, and the rain even held off long enough for us to squeeze in a quick, 20-kilometer lakeside loop on some ancient mama chari bikes that we rented from the train station. We cycled through groves of plum trees, and along roads dotted with little stands staffed by hunched-over octogenarians hawking the corresponding fruit (it's pretty -- see the picture above). Rain soaked but happy, we later perused squid boats parked in the harbor in the little fishing port of Obama (yes, as in Barack), and had an amazing, multi-course dinner at an otherwise-empty seaside restaurant with no menu. All in all, an amazing weekend.

So, as the cliché goes, when life hand you lemons, make lemonade.

When life hands you plums, make ume-shu.

And when life hands you tsuyu, make a Plan B.

Gomi Stress: Part 2

2008-06-15T20:28:00.005+09:00

Remember that entry I wrote about Gomi Stress, way back in August? I was brand-spankin-new here in Japan, and was stressing -- like the other 127 million people in this tiny island country -- about how to properly dispose of my trash. How to sort my papers and glass and empty Diet Coke bottles and tuna cans. Which color bags are appropriate for which kind of recyclables. How to label my trash bags with my name, address and phone number. What kind of stuff I can actually throw away on "regular" trash days without my very observant, well-meaning neighbors returning it to me on my doorstep.

Stress, stress, stress.

Well, times have changed. I've gotten the whole "gomi" system down pat since August, but on Saturday, my friends and I suffered a different kind of Gomi Stress: namely, we weren't able to actually find any garbage.

I will preface this story with a blatant plug on behalf of some dear, dear Fukui friends who are organizing a two-month-long bike ride through Japan to raise awareness of environmental issues. It's called the BEE Ride (Bicycle for Everyone's Earth) and it's pretty darn awesome. Mad respect, A, C and C.

On Saturday, they organized a 60-kilometer "mini" pre-BEE Ride through the rice paddies, over the mountains, and to a little town called Mikuni, right on the Sea of Japan. Our mission: to pick up garbage on up usually-filthy beaches that dot the coast there.

As a hippie-dippie, environmentally-aware kinda gal who once caused holiday drama in her family by protesting the use of live trees for Christmas decorations, I felt compelled to participate. So, I joined the dozen or so riders that chugged along the two-hour route to Mikuni, armed with garbage bags and green dreams, only to arrive at the beach and find that there was...

ABSOLUTELY NO TRASH.

Not even a stray cigarette butt. We cycled further up the coast, desperately seeking the garbage-filled stretches of sand we'd grown so accustomed to, but sadly, still found zero gomi.

Now isn't that ironic?

Turns out that the previous weekend, a group of like-minded folks -- Japanese employees from local businesses -- had volunteered their time and cleaned all of the beaches in the area. Apparently, the old habits learned from years and years of compulsory o-soji, or school cleaning -- time spent on hands and knees, scrubbing down the floors and bookshelves and toilets of Japanese elementary, junior high and high schools -- die hard. In fact, the employees were mirroring a thrice-yearly phenomenon called chiiki seiso (neighborhood clean-up), where hordes of school children, armed with brooms and dustpans and matching white cotton gloves, emerge from the schools to clean their communities. (On the last chiiki seiso day at Sakai JHS, our suit-and-tie-clad principal was outside with the kids, chopping away at some road-side plants with a weed whacker. Talk about hands-on.)

Can you imagine all of this going down in America? Me neither.

Only in Japan.

Our beach clean-up work already done for us, we found ourselves with some extra time on our hands, so my pal "A" and I snapped the bad-ass picture above.

Keep those green dreams alive, Miss A.

The Road Less Traveled By

2008-06-09T18:34:00.011+09:00

Today was made for a long bike ride: day off work, blue sky, puffy white clouds.

I set out with my iPod and a bottle of water, thinking that I'd do a quick 30-kilometer loop to the beach. But I quickly discovered that, while not so bad in a car, the route to the beach is, well, ugly. There's lots of concrete. Semi trucks whizz past at breakneck clips. And it smells bad.

After about 30 minutes of waiting in traffic and inhaling exhaust, I grew discouraged and headed back toward my apartment. This was not what I had in mind.

But, as luck would have it, I missed the turn that lead back to my apartment and found myself completely lost. I followed an unknown road, thinking it would lead me home, but instead, it led my further away, to the base of a mountain. Completely unknown territory. I pulled off to the side to consider my options: I still had the day off work. The sky was still blue. And there were still puffy white clouds in the sky.

I still needed to cycle.

So, with the kinda-clichéd-but-oh-so-true words of Robert Frost running through my head, I decided to take the road less traveled by. And it, of course, made all the difference.

The road wound through an adorable, straight-out-of-a-Japanese-countryside-calendar-picture kind of village with wooden houses separated by rice paddies and lines of laundry flapping in the wind. As the road continued, the houses became fewer and fewer, and eventually gave way to a forest of towering pine trees. I crossed under a covered bridge and then found myself cycling between a river and the base of the mountain. I turned off my iPod to listen to the sound of the running water and the wind in my ears.

No cars in sight. I was completely alone. Beautiful.

I continued to cycle along the river, under two more covered bridges, and then ended up in a second über-picturesque village. Lest the first be too cute, the second one-upped it with fields of wild daisies along the side of the road. Seriously. I cursed myself for not bringing my camera, but was pleased to discover that, this being Japan and all, my cell phone actually takes pretty darn good pictures (see above).

I followed the road to a T-junction, where it split into two intriguing options: right lead to a mysterious-sounding Senko-no-ie "Ancient House" and left would take me to a dam. Though I'd already been peddling for almost two hours, I decided that, having come this far, it'd be a shame not to try to see both places.

So I did. No poetry-for-the-ages-inducing choices necessary. Sorry, Mr. Frost.

The "Ancient House" was amazing, a centuries-old relic tucked away in a village where it already seemed that time stood still. All of the signage was in Japanese, so I have no idea when the house was built, but a subsequent Google search dates it back to the Edo Period (1603 - 1867). It's pretty darn old. The walls were made of thick adobe and the garden featured a still-working water wheel, the likes of which I'd never actually seen in person. Not too bad of a find, considering I completely stumbled across it. And there was nobody there -- not even a staff person -- so I was left alone with my thoughts and my cell phone camera.

The trip to the dam almost didn't happen. I left the house, cycled back through the T-junction and took the left fork, but promptly found myself at the base of a giant, ominous-looking hill (read: mountain). At this point, I'd been on the bike for nearly three hours and, frankly, was feeling lazy. But, being the stubborn gal that I am, I popped down to my lowest gear and chugged up to the top, where my efforts were quickly rewarded: the view was breathtaking. I cycled out across the dam. On one side was a deep-blue lake which was, well, dammed, and the other side was a spectacular pine ravine (see above).

Wow. Wow. WOW.

I was still completely alone, but that's what I said -- out loud.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due:

"...yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

- Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

Getting my Zen on...

2008-06-03T10:09:00.010+09:00

I was up with the sun -- and the Zen Buddhist monks -- this morning.

My alarm went off at 5 a.m. and I was out the door 30 minutes later, zipping through rice paddies and along pine-lined mountain roads, taking in the sunrise from my little car. My destination was Eihei-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple and training center for new monks that's nestled in the mountains right outside of Fukui City. It's one of only two training centers in the world for the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism.

My apartment is only about 30 minutes from Eihei-ji, but I've never properly visited the place (just once, really quickly, on a rainy day with my host mom). It's kind of like how I lived in Chicago for five years, but never made my way up to the Signature Room in the John Hancock. Sometimes, when things are so close, you take them for granted.

But I couldn't let the chance to visit Eihei-ji pass me by.

I'd called the folks at Eihei-ji a couple of weeks ago to inquire about organizing an overnight stay at the temple -- the monks occasionally allow the secular-but-curious public to experience "A Day in the Life" of a Zen Buddhist monk. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons (most of them probably stemming from my poor Japanese phone skills), the temple couldn't accommodate my visit. I was beyond disappointed, knowing that, as my time in Japan is coming to a close, I'd likely never have the chance to visit Eihei-ji again.

Bummer.

But a kind monk named Kuroyanagi took pity on me and offered to personally guide me through the temple and accompany me to the monks' morning services. やった!!

The only trick was that I'd have to meet him at 6 a.m.

Now, those that know me best know that I'm not a morning person. I really don't function before I've had my caffeine fix in the morning. So, to get up at 5 a.m. took some sacrifice -- and some very un-Zen guzzling of Diet Coke during my drive to the temple. But the monks at the temple are up at 3 a.m. every morning, so I really had no room to complain.

My early morning start (and the extreme post-lunch sleepiness that I experienced at school later in the day) were well worth it. Kuroyanagi proved to be an excellent host, chatting with me in perfect English about the temple, the morning service that I'd be observing later in the day, and slightly more secular topics, such as his travels to Los Angeles and his affinity for Disneyland. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we are all more alike than we are different.

We wound our way through the halls of the temple, where robe-clad monks bowed as they hurried past us. Kuroyanagi took me to a large prayer room, where I sat on a tatami mat on the sidelines, taking in the spectacle that was the morning service. Words really can't do it justice, but I'll attempt to illustrate the scene: 100 monks chanted in unison from kanji-filled prayer books as they circled the room in single-file lines. A deep drum kept the pace. Incense filled the room, which was lit only by candles and the early-morning sun. Perhaps it was my sleepy state, but I was mesmerized, almost hypnotized, by the sound and smell. The experience was dream-like -- even as I type this, I can't recall particulars -- and before I knew it, an hour had passed. A monk motioned for me to stand, pray, and burn incense as part of the close of the service.

Energized by the experience, I hustled off to school, where I taught some very enlightened morning classes. Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall after lunch and sleepily snuck out of school over lunch recess in search of more Diet Coke. Very un-Zen.

Perhaps I'll be better able to process my Eihei-ji experience after I've slept on it, but suffice to say I'm glad I had it. 'Twas ichi-go, ichi-e, as the saying goes.

Thanks, Kuroyanagi.

Ink Stains

2008-05-31T18:05:00.007+09:00

Yup, those are my feet, in their nasty, running-induced callused glory.

And, yup, that's a bit of ink on the left one. The kanji read "ichi-go, ichi-e," which roughly translates to "one life, one chance." You might recall how I came to learn these particular kanji at 3 a.m. in an airport waiting room in December. If you don't, the story's here.

I've been thinking about getting the tattoo for a while, since that night in the airport. And now that my time here in Japan is coming to an end, I thought it would be a great way to carry this experience, which has involved many once-in-a-life-time things, with me.

But, of course, even something as seemingly straightforward as getting a tattoo becomes not-so-straightforward when you're a gaijin gal doing it in Japan.

First, there's the stigma. Your average Japanese person is not a fan of tattoos because of their association with the yakuza (the Japanese mob). Members of the yakuza traditionally sport full-body tattoos called irezumi, which are "hand-poked" with bamboo needles. The process is long and painful, and the designs are intricate and symbolic. Those guys are tough. Because of their yakuza ties, tattoos -- and the people they're on -- are often forbidden at hotels and bath houses and public swimming pools. That's all tattoos, even if it's as non-yakuza-looking as, say, a tiny Tweety Bird on your shoulder or, ahem, a Zen Buddhist saying on your foot.

Unless I figure out a way to cover the kanji, it looks like my time days of swimming laps at the Maruoka pool have come to an end. And there will be no wearing of cute sandals at school this summer, lest my students think that their English teacher has joined the mafia underworld.

Second, there's the actual process of finding an artist and getting an appointment. Back home, you could cruise through certain neighborhoods after the sun goes down, walk into any shop on a whim, pick your flash off the wall, and walk out the door with your shiny new tattoo. Done and done.

But here in Japan, it ain't that easy, folks. You have to gain the trust of an artist before (s)he'll tat you. Luckily, a friend was able to introduce me to a lovely guy who did a fantastic job, but I've heard stories of less fortunate folks who have had to wait months -- even years -- before an artist would agree to work on them.

Third, there's the letting go of the Western "customer is always right" mentality. That's definitely not the case here. In Japan, the artist is always right. That means that when I walked into the tattoo shop a few weeks ago and asked for an appointment on my birthday, I had smile and accept the firm "no" I received from the artist (for future reference, the Japanese think birthday tattoos are bad luck). I also had to muster a cheerful "wakarimashita" (OK) when the artist refused to tattoo my wrist (my original choice) and decided where, exactly, the design would be placed on my foot.

With regards to that last point, it was kind of nice to relinquish control and let the artist do his thing. It's fitting, actually: my year in Japan has been a big exercise in letting go. Upon joining JET, I had no control over where I'd be placed to work (I wound up in the middle of a rice paddy in Fukui, of all places). I couldn't control who my friends would be when I got here (turns out I did pretty well -- a group of fellow JET pals presented me with an envelope of cash they'd collected in honor of my birthday, saying it was to help pay for the tattoo). And I've lost count of the number of times that, due to the language barrier, I've had to step aside and let others make decisions for me (try signing up for cellular service when you don't know the language -- the only choice I got to make was the color of my keitai phone). It was a big adjustment for a previously-independent gal who was used to making choices for herself.

But in the end, my year in Japan has been a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And, in the end, I think my one-in-a-lifetime tattoo turned out pretty fantastic, too.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

2008-05-25T16:43:00.012+09:00

I can't tell you when, exactly, I changed.

I can't tell you when I stopped missing my old life in Chicago -- a lovely little life that included readily available Mexican food, size 8 high heels, the various smells of the CTA, and the unincumbered use of the English language -- and started realizing that I had built a new, different kind of life here.

I can't tell you when the people here -- especially my fellow Fukui JETs, folks that came from all corners of the world -- stopped feeling like random strangers and started feeling like family.

I can't tell you when I stopped feeling like half a person -- one who could barely communicate, could barely pump her own gas or buy her own groceries, one who couldn't even eat fruit correctly -- and started feeling completely alive.

(The picture above, taken by my dear friend "S" on a perfect, puffy-white-clouds-in-the-blue-sky kind of day at the Tojinbo cliffs earlier this month, is my best attempt at illustrating what "feeling completely alive" might actually look like. Kind of like the "I'm king of the world!" scene from Titanic. You get the idea.)

I'm not quite sure when it happened, but at some point, this random, rural corner of Japan started to feel like home. The rice paddies. The mountains. Vending machines in the middle of fields. Swerving to avoid bicycle-riding octogenarians weaving in the road. The beeping sound my little car makes when I put it into reverse. The 30-year-old washing machine on my front porch. The stares at the grocery store. Everybody in my business. My local celebrity status. The excessive use of gesturing when attempting to communicate.

I can't tell you when all of this stopped feeling so difficult and strange and started to feel comfortable and, well, normal.

I can, however, tell you exactly when I realized that the change had occurred: it was this week, when I booked my one-way e-ticket to fly back to Chicago. As I pushed the "confirm purchase" button, I felt a strange churning in the pit of my stomach, similar to that slow, sinking feeling you used to get as a kid towards the end of summer vacation.

The party is almost over. The real world awaits.

A wise man named Confucius once said, "When a person feels happiest, he will inevitably feel sad at the same time." Big C speaks the truth: just as I am at the top of my proverbial game here in Japan, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that my time here is limited.

I have only eight weeks left in Japan. That's only eight more Saturdays for long runs through the rice paddies. Only eight more Fridays for laid-back, laughter-filled morning classes at school. Only eight more Wednesdays for taiko drumming and yoga classes. Only eight more weekends for random adventures and waking up in strange hostels in strange Japanese cities.

Time to live it up.

Ch-ch-ch-changes. It's official: the urbanity-loving, anonymity-craving, sarcasm-spewing Chicagoan has changed and now officially embraces the Japanese inaka.

And she will miss it terribly.

Like Schoolgirls...

2008-05-14T17:45:00.017+09:00

J, my buddy from Chicago, left Japan yesterday, bringing an end to a whirlwind 10 days of hosting and traveling. Our adventures were too random and too numerous to post individually, so instead I'll try to synthesize the experience with one word: laughter. Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion induced by visiting the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, or the fact that we spent two solid days temple hopping in the pouring rain in Kyoto, or perhaps it was that we both spent obscene amounts of money paying for Shinkansen train tickets (me) and highly-addictive Starbucks Green Tea Frappucinos (him), but we took the high road in the laugh-or-cry paradox: J and I spent the vast majority of our 4-cities-in-10-days Japanese excursion giggling.

Like schoolgirls.

(See picture above for an illustration of said schoolgirls, taken at Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Temple in Kyoto. These gals peppered us with questions in rapid-fire Japanese while we were visiting the site, which, of course, also induced fits of laughter.)

Granted, most of our adventures were funny in a maybe-you-had-to-be-there sort of way. Like when we both failed to find the deeper meaning in a Zen rock garden called Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, and instead took stupid pictures with potato chips and caught dirty looks from our fellow garden-goers. Or when we ended up in a literally nameless hole-in-the-wall Hiroshima bar with four seats, being served by an already-drunk, Pantera-loving bartender and his four random friends. Or the fact that all of the pictures from the should-be-somber A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima feature me wearing a ridiculous sweatshirt with the words "Chant a Spell: Do-Vi-Do-Vi-Do" written on the front. I bought it for 800 yen at a second-hand shop in town.

Again. Maybe you had to be there.

J and I spent our last afternoon drinking coffee on the island of Miyajima, watching the sun set over a bright orange tori gate set out in the deep blue bay. We laughed and reminisced about our random experiences together -- and lingered a bit too long on the island. We were late getting to the eki to catch the trains to our next stops -- Tokyo for him to fly back to Chicago and Fukui for me to return to work. J got stuck in Osaka overnight, and I rolled into Fukui at 2:15 a.m., only to be up four hours later to teach a full day at school. Oops.

Missed trains? Gotta either laugh or cry. We, of course, chose the former.

Hiroshima

2008-05-14T17:20:00.003+09:00

Manhattan was a project
That projected the worst of mankind
First one and then the other
Has made its mark on my mind

It's sixty years later near the hypocenter of the A-bomb
I'm standing in the middle of Hiroshima
Watching a twisted old eucalyptus tree wave
One of the very few lives that survived and lives on
Remembering the day it was suddenly thousands of degrees
In the shade

And what all of nature gave birth to
Terror took in a blinding raid
With the kind of pain
It would take cancer so many years just to say

~ Ani DiFranco, "Reprieve"

Deflated Mousse, Deflated Ego

2008-05-13T20:56:00.006+09:00

I worked in PR before I came to Japan.

I spent five long years as a "spin doctor," pitching media stories on Harley Davidson (even though I've never set foot on a bike), on sausage (even though I don't eat it), and, in a seemingly strange juxtaposition to the sausage gig, on heart disease (even though I'm not a cardiologist).

I thought I could sell anything to anyone. But turns out I was wrong.

My first failed sale came last Thursday at a dinner party being thrown in honor of J, my friend from Chicago who was hanging out here in Japan until today. The party was organized by the crew from my Thursday night English class, that crazy fun group of adults who have been responsible for my consumption of shirako and other strange foods during my time here in Fukui.

It was my night to teach class, but because J was in town, the gang agreed to practicing English over dinner instead of in the community center. We organized a potluck at my co-teacher's extra-large apartment, with the students agreeing to bring all sorts of Japanese goodies: fresh sashimi for build-your-own sushi, locally-brewed sake, and assorted Japanese salads and side dishes. In return, they simply asked that I prepare an "American" dessert for everyone to try.

The request was seemingly reasonable enough. In most instances, one might bake some brownies. Maybe a small cake or an oh-so-American apple pie. But this is Japan. I don't have an oven in my apartment. All of the ingredients that I need are in hard-to-read kanji-covered packages. And, to make matters worse, I don't even know how to cook.

Yikes.

C, my co-teacher -- and also a friend, fellow JET, and accomplished cook -- suggested that I tackle chocolate mousse (a dessert borrowed from the French, but hey, close enough...), and graciously sent me a recipe that required only basic ingredients and no oven. He even offered up his kitchen, saying that I could come over early to make it before the guests arrived. It sounded like a fail-proof plan.

With J in tow, I trekked over to the grocery store, and, armed with the kanji dictionary on my cell phone, carefully purchased unsalted butter, semi-sweet chocolate, sugar and eggs for the mousse. I went to C's apartment, reviewed the recipe, and then set to work, painstakingly following each direction step by step. I mixed the mousse, finishing just as the last guests arrived, and confidently set it in C's refrigerator to cool as we ate dinner.

As dinner finished, I swaggered over to the fridge, ready to impress my Japanese friends with my delicious chocolate creation. I pulled open the door, spotted the bowl on the bottom shelf, lifted it up, and...

To my horror, the mousse was still completely liquid, too runny to even pass for pudding. There was no way I could serve this. I ran through possible solutions in my head. Could I sneak out to buy dessert at a grocery store? Did C possibly have a stash of Oreos in his apartment somewhere? Should I just apologize and admit my failure as a cook?

I was ready to resign myself to the last option when C walked into the kitchen.

"How'd it turn out?" he asked.

"Uh. Umm. Errr. It's a little runny," I stammered.

C peered into the bowl and laughed.

"They've never had chocolate mousse before. You could just tell them it's supposed to be that way."

We argued back and forth. There was absolutely NO way that I could serve this mousse, I said. I was mortified. But C didn't listen. He pulled some fancy wine glasses off his shelf. He used a ladle to pour the would-be mousse. And then he marched into the dining room and announced that my dessert was ready.

I wanted to die.

My students/party guests enthusiastically passed around the glasses of mystery liquid. When J received his, he shot me a "what-the-hell-happened-to-this?" kind of look, which I returned with a "keep-your-mouth-shut-if-you-want-to-be-friends-after-this" glare.

C raised his glass, explained in Japanese that this was a special kind of American chocolate beverage, and then proposed a toast to ME as he lead our students in actually drinking the mousse. My face was burning as I shook my head back and forth, attempting to avoid both crying or laughing out loud. I composed myself long enough to snap the picture of the kanpai above.

Surprisingly, the liquid mousse was a hit. My students guzzled it down. Even J and C, the two Americans who knew better, drank away. I took a sip. It didn't actually taste that bad. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that I might have actually gotten away with it all.

But after dessert, as we were cleaning up, I overheard one of our female students asking C, in Japanese, why the chocolate wasn't thicker. She wasn't convinced. She was my failed sale.

C had my back, though.

"My refrigerator hasn't been working so well lately," he explained.

Thanks, C.

どこですか??

2008-05-07T14:48:00.014+09:00

どこですか ("doko desu ka") is Japanese for "where is...?"

I used this expression approximately 436 times during the four Golden Week holidays I spent in Tokyo, a city with 12 million people, endless streets of neon lights and a confusing subway system with route maps written almost entirely in kanji. That's, どこですか, as in "where is the hostel?" "where is the subway?" and, of course, "where is my sanity?"

I hit up Tokyo with J, an dear old pal from Chicago who decided to jump over the Pacific to visit the city that inspired the movie "Lost in Translation" a couple of years back. Thus, it seems only fitting that "lost" was a recurring theme in our Tokyo adventure. J demonstrated endless patience and a wicked sense of humor as my crappy Japanese and lack of kanji-map-reading skills resulted in us wandering aimlessly in neon neighborhoods, back tracking on the Tokyo Metro, and stopping dozens of random strangers in the street to ask for directions.

Other things that were lost in Tokyo included the following:

Saturday: Approximately 16 hours of sleep. Despite J's jet lag and the fact that I'd been up since 5:30 a.m. on the bus from Fukui, we stayed out 'til the sun rose on Sunday morning. Our insomnia was due to the fact that check-in time at my "hotel" was 6 a.m. (that, and the fact that Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood has killer night life). While J got to sleep soundly in a private bed on a men's-only floor, I was relegated to an ad-hoc women's "lounge," where I had the privilege of paying 1,500 yen for a shower and 3,000 yen for a scrap of floor. In at 6 a.m., out by 11 a.m., y'all. Capsule hotels are the cheapest places to stay in fancy-pants Shinjuku, but most require a Y chromosome to get in. Thus, my chic-friendly options were limited. Nothing like paying $50 USD for a sleepover with hundreds of strange, snoring women...

Sunday: My sense of fashion. After much effort and "どこですか"s, J and I managed to find Tokyo's infamous Harajuku neighborhood, home to dozens of teenage fashion victims. Bright pink hair. Platform shoes. Applied-with-a-paint-gun makeup. Free hugs and free love flowing freely. Every Sunday, the Harajuku-ites take over a local park to parade around kind-of-cutting-edge-but-mostly-uber-bizarre fashion and pose for hordes of tourists. We got into the spirit of things by trying on some crazy shades, but still have nothing on the real thing (see pics above).

Monday: My respect for Japanese "rapid" transit. J and I trekked out to Nikko, a national park located about two hours outside of Tokyo. It's home to the three famous "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil" monkeys, which are carved on the side of Tōshō-gū shrine, nestled in a misty pine forest on a mountain. Very atmospheric, but hella hard to get to. Our two-hour train turned into a six-hour round trip, complete with getting lost en route to the subway, on the subway, on our subway transfer to the train to Nikko, and on our way back to Tokyo. The monkeys, however, were lovely.

Tuesday: My appetite. We wandered around Tokyo's Tsukiji Metropolitan Fish Market, a place filled with all sorts of creepiness from under the sea. Everyday at 5 a.m., the market comes to life with folks auctioning off giant tunas to restaurants, the mob, and other assorted fish-lovers from across the city. A bit later, the rest of the market opens up, selling everything from sea urchins to tiny shrimp to still-alive crabs. When J and I stopped by, our first stop was to have The World's Freshest Sushi for breakfast. Delicious. Good thing we ate first thing, however, because walking through the rest of the place -- and seeing giant dead tuna heads poking out of blocks of ice, for example -- somehow made me lose my appetite for seafood. Eeew.

Given our adventures, it's not surprising that J, who spoke not a word of Japanese when he arrived in Tokyo, mastered どこですか after about 20 minutes of hanging out with me. But my rants about getting "lost" are, of course, tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes, getting lost is half the fun. J and I got to reflect on this phenomenon while seated at the New York Bar at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, 52 floors up in the sky. We looked down at Tokyo`s glistening, neon skyline as we sipped our respective 2,100 yen glasses of wine (reflection ain't cheap, folks).

It's only fitting that many of the scenes for "Lost in Translation" were filmed at this very bar. And it's only fitting that we got lost on our way there.

Caracoles

2008-04-30T19:57:00.007+09:00

Caracol means "snail" in Spanish.

I've always liked the sound of the word, but found a new appreciation for it when I visited Chiapas, Mexico in 2006 and hung out with some Zapatista rebels for a couple of days. The Zapatistas live in autonomous communities called caracoles. The caracoles are named as such for lots of reasons, one being the fact that the Zapatistas move around a lot. Just like snails, they're self-sufficient enough to carry their homes on their backs -- both literally and figuratively.

So what does this all have to do with my blog on life in Japan?

I spent the weekend being inspired by caracoles of a slightly different kind -- the backpack-clad kind that are trekking the globe simply for the sake of trekking the globe. I've always liked the romantic, wanderlust-y notion of being able to live out of a backpack, being adaptable to enough to pick up and go when an opportunity for adventure presents itself.

(Disclaimer: At this point, I'm sure I'm raising a few eyebrows by drawing a comparison between backpackers on holiday and the indigenous people involved in the Zapatista movement. Those who know me best already know that I have the utmost respect and compassion for the latter, who are forced to move around constantly to escape government persecution. 'Nuf said.)

At any rate, I had a small taste of caracol-ness this past summer, when I was attempting to pack my life into two suitcases to move to Japan. There was something quite cathartic about giving away my furniture, selling my things on Craigslist, and donating bags of clothing. It was nice to get rid of all of that stuff, realizing that I could live a year with the few things I could cram (tightly) into two barely-meeting-airline-regulations-sized suitcases.

But, alas, I'm not much of a caracol after all: I have an apartment here in Japan. A place to hang my figurative hat. And I still have stuff. I'm a poser.

This weekend, I traveled to Osaka and met some folks who put my stabs at caracol-ity to shame. There was "L," an engineer who has a job that's 100 percent travel. She has no home -- just a P.O. box in Chicago -- but a passport full of stamps. There was "P," a Jamaican-Kiwi guy who's been circling the globe for four years with little more than a chess board, supporting himself by challenging people to games of chess in the streets. There was "I," an ex-exec's assistant from Australia, who was backpacking through Asia before heading to Serbia, where she was born, to reconnect with her roots.

Quite the motley crew. I swapped travel stories with these folks until the sun came up on Sunday. It was a fantastic evening/morning.

But perhaps caracol-ity is best embodied by "R." He's a Spanish guy who's been cycling across Asia for the past two years. Across New Zealand. Through Malaysia. Down Mt. Fuji in a snowstorm. That's a picture of his bike above -- and that's all the stuff he has to his name at the moment. Respect.

I met "R" back in Fukui, and, with some friends, joined him for a leg of his bicycle journey -- a 10-hour, 120-kilometer (75-mile) leg of his bicycle journey. The ride was exhausting, but the experience was incredible -- we wound our way through rice paddies, climbed mountains and coasted down to the Sea of Japan, where we cycled through the tiny fishing villages that dot the coastline. I rode past waterfalls, squid boats, and hunched-over octogenarians working in the rice fields. I tasted strawberry mochi and sea salt. And, lest the experience be too Norman-Rockwell-meets-Japan, I saw a woman hanging out with her random huge pet turtle in the road. (Really.)

All of this on a perfect 75-degree day with puffy white clouds in the sky. The pack on my back seemed almost weightless (though the pain shooting through my saddle-sore butt was very real!). Maybe it's fitting that カタツムリ (katatsumuri, or "snail") was one of the first words I learned in Japanese. I may get this caracol stuff down after all...

You say 'hanami,' I say 'hasami...'

2008-04-14T18:15:00.004+09:00

Spring has sprung here in Fukui: my car's windshield is ice-free in the mornings (yippee!); I no longer see my breath indoors while walking through the hallways at school; and, perhaps most importantly, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.

Happy, happy times.

The Japanese are serious about their sakura (cherry blossoms). This shouldn't come as a surprise: the Japanese are serious about nature in general. Remember my tale about the teacher who drove 7 hours to see fall leaves? Add to that dedication to nature the fact that the sakura blossoms last only a week or two, and you have an all-out sakura hysteria. The Japanese say that the brevity of the sakura is what makes them most beautiful.

Each year, the Japanese weather service issues a blossom forecast (桜前線) which shows when the sakura blossom "front" will start in the south of Japan (in late March) and move up to the northern parts (by early May). This forecast allows folks to plan hanami (flower viewing) parties, which involve packing a picnic, setting up a tarp under the blossoming trees, and drinking lots and lots and lots of sake.

On Friday, I went to school, proudly announcing to my colleagues that I would be doing "hasami" on Saturday. I felt so cool. I thought they'd be happy to learn that I was participating in something so Japanese. Instead, my little proclamation was met with stifled laughter and confused stares.

Hasami (with an 's') means 'scissors' in Japanese. Doh!

Turns out my hanami experience was as botched as my attempts to pronounce it. I had planned to meet two friends at the castle here in town, which, conveniently, is surrounded by cherry trees. Unfortunately, Saturday, in true Fukui fashion, turned out to be overcast and rainy. The raindrops pelted away some of the blossoms in the morning, leaving a soggy, cold mess at our designated afternoon hanami time. We met at the castle anyway, accepted a couple of beers from a few die-hard fellow hanami-ers, took a few half-hearted pictures (the picture above is actually from earlier last week, taken in Fukui City while I was walking to my car...), shivered for about 10 minutes, and then called it a day. Oh well.

So my hanami was as short-lived as the blossoms themselves. Hanami, hasami. Let's call the whole thing off.

Seoul & The Skin-Eating Fish

2008-04-07T22:21:00.010+09:00

On my way back to Japan from Cambodia, I stopped in Seoul to catch up with two old pals: a friend from high school who I hadn't seen in eight years, and another buddy from my undergrad days, whom you might recall from my misadventures in Osaka in February. Both work as English teachers in Korea.

It was, of course, lovely to see my friends. We took Seoul by storm, visiting a centuries-old palace called Gyeonbok, climbing a mountain to view the city from Seoul Tower, taking in a healthy dose of America by drinking at a bar near the U.S. military base, checking out the Korea War Memorial Museum, strolling through markets and shopping districts, and dining on authentic Korean kim chi and bibimbap.

However, my most unforgettable Seoul experience came on Saturday night. In what will certainly go down as one of the Top Five Weirdest Experiences of my Life, I voluntarily stuck my feet in a pool of fish that eat dead skin.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I could launch into a list of obvious puns, about how I smoothed my soles in Seoul, or about how a nice pedicure is good for one's soul, but I think that this experience is weird enough to stand on its own, without the lame cliches.

The place was called the Doctor Fish Cafe, a lovely little coffee shop with a menu featuring creamy lattes and cute cakes - and, for 40,000 won ($4), the opportunity to stick your bare feet in a pool of sucker fish.

Is there no better way to bond with old friends?

The fish, as per my extensive research on Wikipedia, are called cyprinion macrostomusare and are imported from the Middle East. They eat dead skin. And they tickle like heck while they do it. So it's a good thing that this cafe also had beer on the menu -- a certain member of our party needed to consume several to take the edge off.

During our "treatment," I chatted with other patrons around the pool, trying to put the steady tingle of little fish lips out of my head. I concentrated on other things when the big fish -- fat from eating loads of dead skin -- attacked my pinky toes. And I tried not to be embarassed when the fish passed up my friends' comparatively-dainty feet to feast on my running-induced calluses. Gross but hilarious.

The post-treatement regiment included an aromatherapy soak in fish-free water (ostensibly to get rid of the fishy smell), coffee and beer at our table, and a piece of complementary cake.

Two days later, my feet are noticeably smoother. But I think I have a fish hickey on my big toe.

Smiles and Tears in Cambodia

2008-04-07T20:41:00.016+09:00

In some ways, Cambodia reminded me of the United States. I used American dollars for all of my purchases, for example. Cars drove on the right side of the road. Lots of folks spoke flawless English.

Maybe I've been in Japan too long.

But I knew that I definitely wasn't in the United States -- or Japan for that matter -- when I woke up at 4:30 a.m. on my first morning. My alarm hadn't gone off early; instead, the folks in the home next to my guesthouse were blaring wedding music through rented loud speakers. I peered out the window to see a dozen or so people congregated in plastic chairs, eating breakfast as they shooed the chickens running through the dirt yard. In Cambodia, weddings last anywhere from three days to a week and are truly all-day affairs. The volume of your party music correlates directly with the amount of money you have (or are pretending to have). Talk about keeping up with the Joneses...

Other than the very early starts on multiple mornings, my spring break in Cambodia was an amazing experience. I sojourned to the town of Siem Reap to volunteer as an English teacher at Anjali, a locally-run NGO (the name means "divine offering" in Sanskrit) that provides schooling for street kids.

Working in a desperately poor country, Cambodian teachers make dismal salaries, forcing them to "tax" their students to supplement their incomes. While this "tax" is usually about 12 cents per day, it means that many struggling families can't afford to send their kids to school. Instead, these youngsters get sent out to work in the street, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Anjali is working to fix that by offering free classes -- and lots of love -- to these kids. As Siem Reap is located just footsteps from the Temples of Angkor, a world heritage site and major hub for tourism, Anjali tutors these kids in English, in hopes to help them score a legit job in the tourist industry when they get older. The kids -- all 80 of them -- were amazingly well-adjusted and eager to learn, despite their rough backgrounds.

As much as I loved my time at Anjali, I was able to play both volunteer and tourist in Cambodia. Already awake at 4:30 a.m., I set out for Angkor Wat at sunrise on my weekend off. Built in AD 800, Angkor Wat is the largest of the hundreds of temples at Siem Reap -- actually it's the largest religious structure in the world -- and is beyond breathtaking. I loved it so much that I returned at noon to photograph it again -- check out the postcard-ready shot of the temple with the three pine cone-esque spires.

You'd think that Angkor Wat would be hard to top, but Cambodia kept outdoing itself. After the Wat, I visited Bayon, a temple with 200 mysterious faces peering out of the jungle, and Ta Prohm, which also served as the set for Tomb Raider a few years back (see: temple crushed under tree roots, above). I covered the 17 kilometers between the temples in a tuk tuk on the back of a motorcycle -- with a fun-loving, Japanese-speaking driver named Heng -- and on the back of an elephant.

Pretty spectacular.

Other highlights included chatting up some Buddhist monks (and scoring a phone number -- turns out they're just normal guys!) at the Wat across the street from my guesthouse; meeting the founder of a land mine museum (a former child soldier of the Khmer Rouge, he planted the mines two decades ago, and now is working to deactivate them); speeding on the back of a motorcycle to check out a village floating on a lake; and dining on Cambodian stir fry with the locals for a buck in open-air street stalls.

Warning: buzz kill ahead. While I've posted smiling pictures and have painted a happy picture of my trip, I feel compelled to balance the sunshine with the truth. Mixed in with all of this fun was a sobering dose of reality. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge-induced civil war ended just over a decade ago, and the economy and people are still recovering. At the Temples, I'd meet tiny children hawking guidebooks who spoke multiple languages flawlessly (if I told them I was from the USA, their sales pitch was in English; my lie about being from Spain was met with a pitch in perfect Spanish; my Swedish friend got the pitch in Swedish; and I also heard them speak pretty darn good Japanese). Had these kids been born anywhere else, they'd be well on their way to going to university and leading comfortable lives. But in Cambodia, they have nowhere to go.

Sadly, even the the kids at Anjali weren't immune from begging: after dinner in town one evening, I was absolutely heartbroken when I saw two of "my" kids -- the same kids I'd taught and laughed with and hugged during the day -- selling postcards in the street. Though Anjali has a strict "no begging" policy, these kids' parents were HIV positive and unemployed, leaving the family little choice but to put the children to work at night. I bought the kids a hot dog and told them that seeing them on the street made me very sad, that they needed to go home, but I know that they're probably back out on the street as a type this, just one week later.

So I guess that's where my Cambodia-United States comparison ends. In the U.S., I'd like to think that driven, motivated kids would have options -- at the minimum, some small chance to break out of the cycle of poverty. In Cambodia, that's simply not the case right now. But perhaps my week in Siem Reap at least made a few disadvantaged kids smile.

All in all, it was an eclectic, unforgettable week -- both inspiring and sobering -- one that pictures and words really can't do justice to. Though I went to Cambodia to work as a teacher, I learned far more than I taught, and I'm thankful for the experience.

Sumo-licious

2008-03-23T20:01:00.005+09:00

As a five-foot-six gaijin woman, it's sometimes hard not to feel like a blonde giant in a sea of five-foot-two, 85-pound Japanese women. Take, for example, the time I went swimsuit shopping and had to buy the only gaijin-compliant XL-sized suit in the store (I'm a medium back in good ol' fatty USA). Or the time when I unsuccessfully attempted to buy new running shoes and found that even men's sizes were too small for my massive feet. Embarrassing.

But I've found a way to feel normal-sized again: It's called sumo.

Those sumo dudes are HUGE. I can attest to this fact because I attended my first sumo tournament in Osaka this weekend. A group of us JETs set up camp in the "cheap" (read: 5400 yen) seats behind the ring and soaked up sumo in all of its fat-rolled glory. There was a lot to take in: the thousands of fans in the stadium, the intricate pre-fight ceremonies, the colorful robes that the referees wore, the practice of throwing salt in the ring before each match to purify it, and, of course, the massive size of the wrestlers themselves.

But perhaps what struck me most was the fact that these sumo wrestlers -- despite the fact that, you know, they weigh an average of 325 pounds -- are really just regular dudes. On our way to the tournament, we saw a robe-clad sumo guy (he must've left his glorified diaper -- or mawashi -- in the locker room) getting off the subway just before us. We ran into another one in the conbini when we were buying drinks and snacks (he was, too). And one of my friends said he saw a couple of wrestlers getting out of a cab in front of the gymnasium just before the matches.

See, they're just like you and me -- 325-pound versions of you and me.

I wonder if they have trouble finding a swimsuit that fits, too?

In Pursuit of the ペニス

2008-03-17T18:30:00.005+09:00

Yessir, that's a picture of exactly what you think it is.

Considering that, up to this point, Muy Oishii has been a fairly family-friendly blog, I warn you up front that this post will dabble in what might be considered PG-13. But, my dear friends and family, this past weekend's adventure -- a trip to the Hounen Matsuri -- was too hilarious not to share. Based on the picture above, I'm sure you can gather, well, the long and short of the story...

Tagata Jinja is a Shinto shrine located just north of the city of Nagoya, and is actually a fairly somber place. It's a fertility shrine where couples can go to pray for conception or to offer thanks for a healthy new baby. But on March 15, all of that sobriety goes out the window (literally-- there's a sake cart involved) as Tagata Jinga comes alive for the annual Hounen Matsuri (Fertility Festival). A giant 13-foot, 620-pound wooden phallus gets paraded through the streets by teams of 42-year-old men (42 is considered an unlucky age in Japan -- maybe this is why?) before it is, err, inserted in the shrine. Afterwards, there's the aforementioned free sake for everyone, plus plenty of chocolate-covered bananas and other appropriately-shaped goodies.

Interesting fact: Because the Japanese love shiny, new things, and, for religious purposes, believe they're more pure, a new 13-food, 620-pound wonder gets carved every year. The wood (sorry) gets blessed at the shrine before carving begins, and the crafter also wears special purified clothes. After the festival, it gets housed in the shrine until the next year, when it is sold to a local family. The word is that the new owner builds a shine for it inside their home -- apparently, a 13-foot shrine.

Wow.

I road tripped to Nagoya (and subsequently got lost and circled the city for 90 minutes) in the company of four other Fukui JET gals, but it turns out that every other foreigner living in Japan had also decided to descend upon Tagata Jinga in worship of the wonder that is fertility. Because the shrine was Gaijin Central, we made fast friends with some interesting characters: some good ol' boys from Wisconsin (I never realized how much I missed hearing The Dairy State accent on a regular basis - braaaaaats, anyone?), a grad student from Azerbaijani, a dude from Syria, a German economist, a Hong Kong-born Kiwi, plus a Japanese hand masseuse. I also randomly reconnected with a friend from Chicago in a grocery store parking lot. Nice.

Nothing like a little ペニス (pe-ni-su) to bring folks together.

Pomp & Circumstance: J-Style

2008-03-13T17:46:00.009+09:00

Today was graduation day at Sakai Junior High School (the Japanese school year ends in March); thus, I got to participate in my first graduation ceremony (1) in Japan and (2) as a teacher. In some ways, the ceremony reminded me a lot of my own graduation experiences in the USA. Allow me to share some universals:

- Moms cry a lot.

- Participants are forced to sit through lots of long speeches.

- Gym lighting makes for weird pictures (see above).

- The school band plays "Pomp and Circumstance" (yup, same song, even here in Japan).

But, this being Japan and all, of course some things are bound to be different. And, as the saying goes, the difference is in the details. Lots and lots and lots of details. In fact, the painstaking attention to detail in a Japanese graduation ceremony make the U.S. version look like, well, a 5-year-old's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

That's not to say that we Americans don't prepare for graduation. When I graduated from junior high school, I had to be fitted for a gown, for example. And I remember meeting my fellow 8th graders in the gym for a quick rehearsal, where the folks in charge showed us where to stand and sit and how not to trip on our walk across the stage. Things like that.

This all pales in comparison to Japanese graduation prep. Sakai Junior High has been abuzz for weeks with meetings, paperwork and rehearsals. Last week, classes were cancelled one afternoon to give students time to get ready.

But the day-before practice is the stuff of legends.

Yesterday I joined ALL the students - not just graduating third years - in the gym for an all-morning (read: 4-hour) rehearsal. The first order of business was bowing - presumably something that any Japanese person has been doing since he or she has been able to walk. Nonetheless, we spent an ENTIRE HOUR rehearsing the bow, making sure all students dipped at the perfect angle in perfect sequence. Next, graduating third year students rehearsed receiving their diplomas. The principal read each of their 150-some-odd names as they practiced walking toward the stage, walking up the stairs, bowing, grasping their diploma one hand at a time, holding it over their heads, and then bowing again in unison with the next student in line. Then, first- and second-year students practiced clapping in unison as their graduating third-year peers filed into the gym.

There was singing practice. There were remarks from the principal and vice-principal. There was a short break when teachers went back to the staff room to discuss what needed to be improved. (Their verdict? Bowing, of course.) There was more bowing practice. And finally, because the Japanese graduate in their school uniforms instead of the ol' cap and gown, there was an appearance check. Teachers made sure that uniform pants, socks and skirts were the right length, buttons were where they should be, collars were pressed, hair was an acceptable length, and eyebrows were unplucked (really).

Wow.

Lest we be underprepared, students then spent the afternoon cleaning the school, raking the lawn, hanging signs, and even clearing small pebbles from the parking lot. The place was immaculate.

All of this for a 90-minute ceremony.

But, oh, what a ceremony it was. I felt so proud as my third years marched into the gym (in perfect unison, of course). I silently cheered as they nailed each of their three zillion bows. I got little goosebumps as they sang their school song for the final time. Despite the language barrier, I got a little misty when a third year homeroom teacher cried through his address to graduating students' parents. And I was flattered when graduating students gave me flowers and hand-written messages after the ceremony, considering I was one of dozens of teachers and friends that they had to remember of their big day.

I'd never seen the third year students look so happy. I will miss them dearly when the new school year starts in April.

So I guess all the Pomp and Circumstance paid off in the end. Just don't ask me to practice my bow anytime soon.

Fire, Ice & Obama Cookies

2008-03-03T20:53:00.007+09:00

Japan is about 7,000 miles from the United States.

That should be enough distance to keep me somewhat sheltered from the pre-election craziness (read: name-calling and mud-slinging) that is capturing headlines in the USA right now. That's not to say that I'm not interested in following our nation's democratic process. Without disclosing my political affiliations here, suffice to say I'm thrilled to see so many of my fellow Americans engaged in this year's election. I, like so many, am ready for big change in the White House. And I'm certainly planning to vote via absentee ballot come November.

But what's caught me off guard is the number of Japanese folks who are also following the election. Closely. I've had lengthy (read: lengthy-for-me-in-Japanese) conversations with my new swimming buddies about the Obama-versus-Clinton race between laps at the Maruoka pool. My fellow teachers at Sakai Jr. High have asked me to shed some light on America's oft-confusing election process. And, last week, a 3rd grader at one of my visiting elementary schools asked me who I was planning to vote for - in perfect English.

So it would seem that Fukui is election crazy, too. But while America's choice for the next president will certainly have ramifications here in Japan, perhaps what's causing all of this interest in my little corner of the world is the fact that Fukui is home to a sleepy little fishing town called...

OBAMA.

Yes. Obama, Japan is a town of 32,000 people at the south end of the prefecture. It's about 2 hours from my apartment by car. Like most of Fukui, Obama's the kind of place that nobody's ever really heard of - the kind of place that Lonely Planet forgets to mention and that comes up black and pixilated on a Google Earth search.

That is, until Barack entered the picture.

Now, Obama, Japan is pretty darn famous - at least by Fukui standards. Or maybe it's that Obama (the man) is pretty darn famous in Obama (the city). The folks there have started selling "I Heart Obama" t-shirts and headbands. Someone even told me that they're making manju, a kind of Japanese confection, with Obama's face on them.

Wow.

Either way, I had the privilege of visiting Obama yesterday, though it wasn't necessarily for the lure of Barack's cookies. I took part in the Omizu Okuri (Water Sending) - a festival that's been going on for 1,200 years. Held at night in the freezing cold, the event was actually quite eerie: Using light from hundreds of torches, hooded Shinto priests chant and bless water at a shrine in the mountains. They carry this water, called kozui, through the forest to a river. After another ceremony and the lighting of a huge bonfire, the kozui is poured into the rapids. Folks believe that the kozui water arrives at the Big Buddha temple in Nara 10 days later, so there's another festival there on March 12.

The hundreds of spectators at this centuries-old ritual get to purchase torches, write their wishes on them, light them, and follow the Shinto priests down the mountain. This seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice, walking through slippery snow with thousands of tiny Japanese folks with torches (read: they held their lit torches above their heads, which, quite conveniently, was my eye level) proved to be quite terrifying. In hindsight, I should have traded my wish for "World Peace" for a wish for some extra medical insurance...

At any rate, the festival was fantastic. The pictures I posted here don't really do the experience justice, so try to evoke your sense of smell as you look at them. Imagine a mysterious mix of pine, smoke, holy water...and Barack Obama cookies.

JSL & The Bird

2008-02-26T21:54:00.003+09:00

Caution: Nerdy (yet slightly funny) linguist posting ahead.

Today I had a unique opportunity to learn a bit of Japanese Sign Language. This afternoon, as I was wrapping up lessons at one of my eight elementary schools, one of the homeroom teachers invited me to observe an after-school clubs. I was absolutely exhausted after teaching nearly 100 1st and 2nd graders (Sara-sensei, can I touch your hair? Sara-sensei, are you eyes really green? Sara-sensei, will you autograph my notebook/arm/forehead?), so the thought of sticking around for a rowdy game of basketball or dodge ball wasn't especially appealing. I was trying to think of a way to kindly refuse her well-intentioned offer, until the teacher said two magic words:

Sign Language.

Now, I've been fascinated by Japanese Sign Language (JSL) since I saw Babel a couple of years ago, so I jumped at the chance to learn a bit. Even if it meant being the token, my-Japanese-is-still-crappy gaijin and not understanding a word.

After school, I joined about a dozen students, a mix of third, fourth and fifth graders. Lead by a deaf teacher, they signed a song by SMAP (a wildly popular J-Pop boy band) for me. Then they taught me how to sign my name. Whereas I'd sign four characters -- S-A-R-A -- in American Sign Language, with JSL I only had two -- SA and RA -- which is reflective of Japanese syllables (hey, I warned you this post would be nerdy!!). Fascinating. So far, so good.

But the fun part came next.

Today's lesson focused on the family - the signs for grandmother, grandfather, mom, dad, and brother and sister. Lest that be too simple, however, Japanese has different words for older brother, younger brother, older sister and younger sister, so this distinction is reflected in JSL as well. Because I barely knew all the vocabulary in Japanese, I had a bit of trouble keeping up with the sign language lesson.

That is, until we got to the sign for onisan, or older brother, which is easy to remember: holding both hands at about chest level, you stick up the middle finger of your right hand and quickly raise it to your chin.

Imagine how hard it was for me to control my giggles when 12 elementary school students solemnly gave me The Bird.

私の手当たり次第の Weekend

2008-02-25T23:10:00.012+09:00

This past weekend found me engaged in the following activities:

- Getting attacked by wild deer;
- Paying $12 USD for a potato;
- Squeezing my way through a giant Buddha's nostril;

- Losing 1,000 yen in approximately four minutes in a Japanese pachinko parlor; and

- Running out of money and being forced to eat at a Japanese Subway Restaurant.

Random? Yes. That's why this post title translates as "My Random Weekend." (I think. Kanji are still hard.)

But what made these activities even more random was the fact that I was accompanied by a friend, a friend -- we'll call him "C" -- from my undergraduate days who I hadn't seen in six years. It's random that we'd meet again in Japan after all this time, especially considering that he is currently working in Korea. C was on a two-week vacation from his gig in Seoul, so we decided to catch up in Osaka.

Randomness aside, it was nice to have a partner in crime for the weekend's craziness.

Osaka

C and I descended on Osaka's Dotombori district on Friday night. Dotombori is an open-24-hours maze of neon lights, love hotels and overpriced drinks. Japan's answer to Las Vegas, if you will. We caught up over a few cocktails and then joined the masses in the street, taking in the sights: endless arcades filled with video games (American games will catch up by 2080 or so), multi-story pachinko (pinball machines - gambling is illegal in Japan) parlors shaped like pirate ships, and parades of literally thousands of teenage Japanese fashion victims, dressed in crazy Engrish t-shirts and mini skirts, despite the February chill (and ostensibly making up for their lack of season-appropriate clothing with gobs of hairspray).

We ate. We drank. We were merry. We lost 1,000 yen in 4 minutes. 'Nuf said.

Nara

Saturday morning found us recovering from Dotombori's sensory overload in a more tranquil setting. We took the train to nearby Nara, Japan's first capitol city, which is now home to 1,200 wild (and -- as we'd find out -- very hungry) deer. Excited to woo some deer for photo opps, C bought some cookies, and, instead of feeding just one or two, promptly drew a crowd of nearly 15 hungry hoofed friends. When the cookies ran out, the cuddly deer pulled a Jekyll and Hyde and started gnawing on our coats. Scary.

Deer aside, Nara's crowd pleaser is Daibutsuden, home of a 437 ton Buddha statue. Legend has it that if you can squeeze through the Buddha's nostril, you'll achieve enlightenment. Lest tourists be climbing on centuries-old statue, temple keepers have conveniently re-created a same-sized hole in a post at ground level. As you can see in the photo above, I made it through, but enlightenment certainly isn't pretty.

Squeezing through nostrils made me hungry, so I couldn't pass up a sweet potato cart outside the temple. However, as I continue to be blissfully illiterate when it comes to kanji, I misread the sign that showed the price for the potatoes. Instead of paying 200 yen per spud, as I'd originally thought when I overzealously ordered a large potato with the intent of sharing it with C, the price was actually 200 yen per 100 ounces. The vendor sold me the largest sweet potato known to man -- a 1,200 yen (almost $12 USD) monster that we couldn't finish and ended up feeding to the deer (which were still gnawing at my coat). Expensive deer treat.

Osaka Again

Sunday found us taking in more sights in the city, via a tour of the world-famous Osaka Aquarium, a trip to Osaka Castle, and a view of the city from the top of the Umeda Sky Building. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

But by the time Sunday night rolled around, I'd run out of money (damn potato! damn pachinko!) and couldn't find an ATM machine that would accept my inaka Fukui bank card. So, C and I were forced to scrape together our remaining yen and dine at Japan's mecca of gourmet goodness: Subway. Not surprisingly, the Japanese subs come with shrimp and all sorts of fresh-from-the-sea oddities. Sadly, Jared is nowhere to be found, but the J-Subway does have french fries! Eat Fresh.

So ended yet another random Japanese weekend. Here's hoping it doesn't take C and I six years to do it again.

おっぱい Pudding

2008-02-17T15:54:00.006+09:00

Yes, as you can probably deduce from the picture, おっぱい means "boobs."

And yes, おっぱい was on the menu -- in pudding form -- at a restaurant I went to with my Japanese tutor, her crazy scuba diving friends, and a few token gaijin last night. At 370 yen, and available in your choice of either chocolate or vanilla, this おっぱい hilarity was too cheap to pass up.

The kicker? The pudding was apparently too racy to actually picture on the menu. As a semi-illiterate but very hungry foreigner living in Japan, I've come to appreciate that most restaurants are equipped with full-color, photo-loaded menus. If you can't read the name of the dish you're ordering, you can just point to the pic of something that looks tasty and smile at the server.

This point-and-smile system is usually foolproof, except for when you're ordering boob pudding. In the case of おっぱい, the picture was highly pixilated -- censored, if you will -- so I couldn't figure out what it was. I thought the blurriness was a mistake on the menu until one of the Japanese scuba crew members noticed it and started laughing. It took some dictionary consulting and gesturing, but I got the joke and decided to treat my interpreter to some well-deserved dessert.

Chocolate, of course.

The Japanese Clean Plate Club

2008-02-15T15:19:00.006+09:00

I'm a picky eater.

My mom already knows this. She spent 18 exasperating years -- the time I lived at home -- attempting to prepare meals that I wouldn't wrinkle my nose at or push around on my plate. Sorry about that, mom.

But now that I'm an adult (specifically, an adult that's trying to fit into a new culture with new cuisine), I'm in the closet. My picky eater status is still (mostly) under wraps here in Japan. Perhaps I've turned a new leaf in the past six months. I've given almost all of the this-would-be-creepy-to-most-Westerners foods placed in front of me the ol' Girl Scout try. I've put these foods in my mouth. I've chewed and swallowed them. I've even forced a smile - or at least maintained composure - when the flavor is so offensive I'd rather spit it out. Included in this latter category are squid-flavored peanuts, fermented soybean (納豆) natto rolls, and, of course, the ever-delicious fried fish sperm sack I so memorably shared with the folks in my Thursday night English class this fall.

Fittingly, it was the Thursday night crew that outted me as a picky eater just last night. They very kindly treated me to dinner at an お好み焼き (okonomiyaki) restaurant the next town over. Okonomiyaki isn't for everyone - it's made of chunks of kinda-scary-looking seafood (think tentacles), mixed with cabbage and eggs, and then topped with secret sauces. It's then grilled at the table before it's topped with more secret sauces dried fish flakes. The flavor is unique, something that my Western palate certainly wasn't accustomed to.

But I like okonomiyaki. The Thursday crew was impressed by this, and asked about other Japanese foods that I liked. Unfortunately, my cover was blown when conversation turned to おでん (oden), a creepy-looking-to-me cuisine consisting of boiled eggs, faux fish cakes and various meats on sticks. These skewers of scariness are a winter seasonal specialty, soaked all day in hot soy broth and sold in big, steamy metal vats at the convenience store check-out counter. Of course, I understand how toasty warm food is über satisfying on a cold winter night. But personally, the idea of buying meat on a stick from a bubbling tub at a 24-hour konbini conjures up images of day-old hot dog water at the 7-Eleven. No, thank you.

When I told the Thursday crew that I wasn't that into oden (I think the word I used was "scary." Oops.), it was as if I'd insulted apple pie in the USA. If wooden chopsticks could make a metallic clanking sound as they're dropped in shock, there would have been a big commotion at our end of the restaurant. Their mouths opened. They audibly gasped and shook their heads in disappointment. And then - this is the worst part - they accused me of not being くいしんぼ.

That's kuishinbo, roughly "good eater." The fact that "good eater" is a part of the Japanese lexicon should clue you in to the value of being a member of the Clean Plate Club here. In a country where people went hungry after WWII, Japanese today are happy to enjoy a good, hearty meal every now and again. Last night, as we sat, stuffed, eyeing the final piece of okonomiyaki still sitting on the grill, I learned that the Japanese believe there is fortune in the last bit of food. Eating it helps makes you kuishinbo.

So long being kuishinbo doesn't require me eating the last bit of oden (or shirako, or natto, or squid-flavored peanuts), we're cool. But in attempts to change the subject, I assured my Thursday night friends that while I wasn't kuishinbo in their eyes, I am most certainly nomishinbo, which is a little Japanese joke I managed to pull off despite my limited language skills. Nomi comes from the word for "drink," so when tacked onto the "shinbo" suffix, makes the phrase "good drinker." The word doesn't actually exist in real Japanese, just in my little confused foreigner speak.

But the faux lexicon got a good chuckle. I'd redeemed myself after the oden incident. There's nothing like a little booze humor to remind us that we're all more alike than we are different. The Thursday night crew is good people.

Nomishinbo. You can decide for yourselves what that means I'm drinking. Suffice to say it won't be hot dog water anytime soon.

Shreddin' (Almost)

2008-02-11T12:18:00.000+09:00

Having already defied doctor's orders to stay off my sprained foot (see my post about my race with a potato truck), I decided to sneak in some snowboarding this weekend. I swaddled my sprain in some amazing Japanese BenGay slow-release miracle bandages, and, foot fully numb, joined some friends at SkiJam, a beautiful (check out the snow-covered peaks in the shot above) Fukui-based ski resort about 45 minutes from my apartment.

My foot was great the whole time.

My performance on the mountain? A little less than great.

While the Ski Jam slopes are slightly less intimidating than the seemingly 90-degree drops I encountered while riding in Nagano a few weeks back, I still spent more time on my a$$ than on my actual deck.

However, neither my bum foot nor my common sense could keep me from attempting to do some off-trail riding. I ventured into a supposed-to-be-off-limits tree-lined pass with a fellow Fukui JET and rode through virgin powder before I lost my momentum and sunk, knee-deep, into the snow. The more I struggled to carve myself out, the further I sunk. You can see my "WTF?" expression in the up-to-my-knees-in-snow picture above as I contemplate my fate. Priceless.

I ended up unstrapping my board and holding it above my head as I hoofed it out of the pass, sinking deeper into the snow with each step but giggling the entire way.

Back on the main run, I sat to the side and prepared to strap my feet back into the bindings, but the board slipped out of my hands and proceeded to fly down the mountain. I chased after it, yelling a combination of all of the English, Japanese and Spanish vulgarities I knew.

You might appreciate that running downhill in bulky snowboarding boots is a difficult task. Running downhill in snowboarding boots with a sprained foot only exacerbates those difficulties. The snowboard got further and further away from me, a purple blur speeding downhill. Further down the run, an extremely kind Japanese skier, ostensibly hearing my multilingual cries for help, reached out and stopped the board with his ski pole. He looked up the mountain, trying to find the source of the renegade deck, only to see a crazy, snow-covered, obscenities-spewing gaijin girl barreling toward him.

I tripped once. I'm sure he saw me. Hazukashi (embarrassing).

I finally met him a good 400 meters down the mountain, gasping for breath and brushing the snow off of my face, coat, and pants. I pulled myself together enough to muster a deep bow (also extremely difficult to do in snowboarding boots with a bum foot) and my most humble "arigato gozaimashita." I expected him to laugh at me -- or at least crack a smile -- but instead he solemnly handed me the board, bowed, and then whizzed away on his skis.

Reflecting on his reaction (or lack thereof) as I type, it actually didn't surprise me that much at the time. He was saving face. (My face, that is.) I also wasn't surprised at the fact that my ski lodge lunch options were limited to curry, rice and sushi. It didn't strike me as out of the ordinary that I could hum along to almost all of the J-Pop songs blaring out of the SkiJam speakers as we rode the lifts. I didn't bat an eyelash at the crazy, straight-out-of-Harajuku fashion statements I saw on the slopes. And I obliged -- just once -- when someone asked to take a picture with me, the token gaijin snowboarder.

Could it be that I'm actually beginning to get this place?

Scary thought. I think I'd better stick to laps at the pool this week.

For the Love of the Spud

2008-02-03T09:33:00.000+09:00

Not more than three hours after posting the whoa-is-me-my-foot-is-sprained entry (see "Busted," below), I found myself sprinting full speed down the street, chasing after a...

POTATO TRUCK.

These days, nothing stands between me and a nice potato. Sweet potato, that is. My family may find this bit of news very interesting, seeing as how I am possibly the only human being on the planet that doesn't devour the amazing marshmallow-topped yam casserole that my grandma whips up at Thanksgiving. I mean no disrespect to Grandma, it's just that I'm usually not that into potatoes.

Until Japan.

There is this amazing phenomenon called the potato truck. A couple of nights a week, it cruises around my neighborhood, with a cute old man belting out "oiiiiiiiiishiiiiiiiiii" (that's "delicious," please see blog title, above) from a loud speaker. You can think of it as the Japanese version of the ice cream truck, except it's more like a jerry rigged pickup with, well, a big pot of spuds in the back...

So I was over at The Best Neighbors on the Planet's house last night when we heard the call from the street.

Oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiishiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...

Like Pavlov's dog, I started salivating at the very thought of a delicious sweet potato, or satsuma-imo, as they're called here in Japan. They're grilled to this state of not-too-tough, not-too-soft state of perfection and are served warm from the back of the truck. The inside is a sweet, carb-o-licious potato wonder. The perfect food to fill your belly on a cold February night.

A friend and I quickly pulled on our shoes and hustled to the road. We caught a glimpse of the satsuma-imo truck disappearing around the corner. If we wanted our potato, we'd have to hurry.

So, putting the doctor's "no running for three weeks" advice out of my head, I began a full-on sprint in the direction of the chant. The oiiiiiiiiiiishiiiiiiiiiii call got louder as I got closer. It was mesmerizing, hypnotizing, helping me temporarily forget about the pain shooting through my foot. Some things are worth suffering for.

Satsuma-imo. Satsuma-imo. Delicious. Delicious. Yum. Yum.

Unlike the slow, steady ice cream trucks of the USA, the spud mobile barreled ahead at seemingly neck breaking clip. It rounded another corner. We ran faster. We finally caught up to it, breathless, waving to the rear view mirror.

The cute old man -- the voice behind the loudspeaker -- tapped the breaks. The truck stopped. A sweet old woman -- ostensibly his partner in crime -- smiled at us as she opened the passenger-side door and waddled to the back of the truck to take our order. These two were driving that fast?

Futatsu. (I paused to gasp for breath.) Onegaishimasu. Two, please.

Oh, sweet victory. Sweet potato.

Busted

2008-02-01T19:56:00.000+09:00

My dear friends, tragedy has struck: I have sprained my foot.

For those who know me best, you can appreciate that this is nothing short of devastating for me. My one daily indulgence -- long, relaxing runs -- has been taken away. It's been more than a week since my last runner's high, and I'm in need of a serious fix. With the quickness.

Ironically, it was running that caused the whole debacle in the first place. Hailing from Chicago, I'm accustomed to braving cold temperatures to go for my daily jog. Like any good junkie, I'll go to great lengths to feed my addiction.

So the little bit of snow on the ground last Wednesday didn't faze me as I headed out for my loop through the rice paddies. I got about halfway through my route when pain began to shoot through my right foot. I must've landed funny on a patch of ice without realizing it. I hobbled home and vowed to take it easy. I've since traded my rice paddy runs for laps at the local pool.

But a week later, my foot was still throbbing, so I decided to seek a doctor's advice. Thanks to universal health coverage in Japan, we English teachers can pop into any hospital to get checked out -- for next to nothing. So, with my insurance card in one hand and my Japanese-English dictionary in the other, I hobbled over to a hospital a few blocks from my apartment.

So, yes, there's a new addition to list of foreign hospitals I've seen. For those of you keeping track, I have gone to a hospital in nearly every country I've visited, thanks to Montezuma's Revenge in Mexico, a busted finger in Nicaragua, a dehydrated friend in Costa Rica...

I limped through the front door. Conversation in the waiting room stopped as all eyes focused on me. Ever polite, I greeted the nurse at the reception desk with a cheery "Konnichiwa!" The panicked look on her face is forever etched into my memory: her eyes widened. She audibly gasped. How was she going to communicate with this giant gimpy foreigner?

Lucky for her, I had already completed the "At the Doctor" chapter in my Japanese textbook. I was all over this one.

"Migi ashi ga itain desu." My right foot hurts, I said.

"Hai. Wakarimashita." I understand, she said.

Yes! The Japanese study is paying off.

Unfortunately, that's where my "At the Doctor" vocabulary ended and my confusion began. The nurse, apparently assuming I spoke more Japanese than I actually do, rattled off some rapid-fire instructions and handed me a new patient admission form written almost entirely in kanji.

Yikes.

She saw my blank look and resigned herself to the fact that she'd have to help me complete the form. So, right there in the middle of the waiting room, the game of charades began.

Do I have any allergies? The nurse pretended her skin had broken out in a rash and proceeded to scratch furiously.

How did I hurt my foot? She pretended to run, trip, and fall to the floor.

Am I taking any prescription medications? She opened her mouth and motioned as if she were popping pills.

An Oscar-worthy performance if I've ever seen one. The folks in the waiting room should've given her a standing ovation.

The next step was an x-ray and a consultation with the doctor, which involved more charades, dictionary consulting and giggles.

Final diagnosis: No break. Sprain only.

But, the sad news: No run. Three weeks.

Looks like I'll be spending some quality time at the Maruoka pool this month.

So, here's the damage:

X-ray, in-hospital theatrics, and take-home gauze: 2250 yen
Daily admission to pool for laps: 300 yen
Knowing that I have another appointment in a week, to repeat the humiliation and hilarity all over again: PRICELESS

Inspiration in unlikely places

2008-01-26T10:17:00.001+09:00

This is my new garbage can-turned source of daily inspiration. The picture's a bit blurry, so let me help you with the reading:

Trash
Resources are limited.
However, there's no
limit to ideas of
human beings.

It's Engrish at its finest, yet another example of the Japanese tendency to slap random, often grammatically incorrect, English on anything - including garbage cans - to make it seem more prestigious. (Why "Engrish"? The "l" in "English" gets replaced with an "r" because there are none of the former in Japanese pronunciation.) The ol' Engrish marketing trick apparently worked on me this time, because I scooped this garbage can right up, even though it was several hundred yen more expensive than its Engrish-free counterparts.

But 500 yen is a small price to pay for daily inspiration, isn't it?

Moving more serious note, one that perhaps shouldn't be introduced with my musings on garbage cans: as of late, my students have been pretty darn inspiring, too. As part of my ongoing quest to teach them that not all Americans look like my blondish, freckled, fair-skinned self, I did a unit on Martin Luther King, Jr. in celebration of the holiday earlier this week.

We tackled the issue of racial segregation - a concept that's really foreign in Japan, because, except for the random gaijin, it's a pretty homogeneous society. I gave students either a piece of black paper or a piece of white paper, and told the two groups to stand on opposite sides of the room. I then told them that because they were different colors, they couldn't go to school together, that they couldn't have lunch together, that they couldn't ride the same train or use the same restrooms or even be friends.

They looked at me like I had two heads because the concept was so strange to them. They'd respond with "Eh?!?!," which translates to "surprise, amazement, the feeling of 'I can't believe it!'" according to my Japanese textbook. I can't describe how refreshing it was to find a group of kids that didn't understand the concept of discrimination - I envied their innocence.

I told them to imagine that the piece of paper was the color of their skin. I asked if they thought that the scenario was fair. It took a lot of explanation for them to get it, but inevitably, they agreed - hell no, it wasn't fair.

Then I told them about MLK, played an "I Have a Dream" video I found on You Tube, and hoped that they were getting something out of the lesson. Turns out I needn't have worried.

The culmination of the class was to write an "essay" - just five sentences - on their own dream, taking MLK's cue. I got the completed essays - 18 classes' worth - on Friday. And wading through the stack of grading - usually a rather arduous chore - was one of the most inspirational experiences of my time as a teacher thus far.

The students wrote about ending war, cleaning up the earth, promoting racial tolerance, tackling world hunger, volunteering, working for literacy, and making people smile. I cringed when one student wrote, "My dream is to be rich," but smiled when he explained, a few sentences later, that he would donate the money to help those less fortunate. Despite their broken English, their message was clear: the 442 student at Sakai Jr. High do have a clue about what's going on in the world outside of their sleepy little Japanese town. Not sure if you'd get the same result by polling 442 random adults in Anywhere, USA.

An essay toward the bottom of the stack had a note for me, written in careful English in the margin:

I have the utmost respect for King.
I will remember him.
Thank you.

Yes, the student really used the word "utmost."
And, yes, the message is pretty darn inspirational.

God, I love being a teacher.

Love Hurts

2008-01-14T11:49:00.000+09:00

I am in love with Nagano.

And, yes, love hurts.

As I type this, I am nursing some wicked snowboarding-induced soreness. This weekend, three fellow JETs invited me to tag along on an adventure to Nagano Prefecture, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics and some "real" mountains (read: not like the glorified bunny hills that I'm used to riding in Wisconsin and Michigan). I quickly learned that while I can hold my own with a snowboard on the gentle slopes of the Midwest, the formidable peaks of a world-class ski resort are another story.

But, oh, what a beautiful place to fall on one's a$$.

My Illinois-born eyes had never seen such powerful, snow-covered peaks and my Illinois-bred bottom had never wiped out in such pristine, soft powder. I spent the vast majority of our two-day adventure pulling myself up out of various spills and crashes, but I loved every minute.

When I wasn't down on the slopes, there were plenty of other adventures to be had in Nagano. We met some fellow Fukui-ites (see photo) in a lodge cafeteria on the first day. We chatted up a professional Japanese snowboarder and a Japanese indie rocker in a pizza pub at dinner. We hung out with an Australian mom and her son, fellow hostel dwellers, who were criss-crossing Japan via rail. We soaked away our soreness at a Japanese onsen (hot spring), where I lost my wallet, but found it - with all cash and contents intact - the next day (the Japanese really are the kindest, most honest people on the planet). And, lest the weekend be perfect enough already, we ate elusive-in-Japan Mexican food for dinner on our last night.

Oh, Nagano. Worth every last bruise and sore muscle.

There's no place like HUG...

2008-01-11T17:27:00.000+09:00

I miss hugs.

My holiday in Chicago - a solid 10 days of reuniting with family and friends that I hadn't seen in months - included lots o' hugs. Airport pick-up hugs from mom and dad. Big bear hugs from my sister and my 6-foot-something brother-in-law. Christmas Day hugs from grandma and the family. Tipsy bar hugs from all of my crazy friends in the city. Misty-eyed airport drop-off hugs...

And, alas, I took all of those delicious embraces for granted. Now that I'm back in Japan, I realize that what I miss the most about home is the nice, warm place that is a hug - and not just because it's cold here in Fukui.

Japanese people don't hug. The Japanese equivalent of the hug is the bow. I've made the mistake of trying to hug a Japanese person before, and the result was like the limp-fish handshake. They're surprised and uncomfortable, I'm surprised and uncomfortable, and the whole thing, supposed to be warm and beautiful, is awkward and culturally inappropriate. Ugh.

But, knowing this, I stupidly still look for hugs. On my way back to Fukui earlier this week, I witnessed what looked like a family reunion at the train station. It was a moment that greeting card commercials are made of: two young boys, on board, spot their cute, tiny, wrinkled grandmother on the platform as the train pulls into the station. The boys wave enthusiastically from the train window. The grandmother flashes a huge smile and waves back - with both hands in that cute grandmotherly way. The train stops, the doors open, and the boys bound out toward grandma...

...and the whole family bows to each other.

My Western eyes were waiting for the tear-inducing, geez-grandma-its-been-years-since-we've-seen-you kind of hug, but all I got was a bow. Don't get me wrong: the scene was still adorable, and the family's love for each other was more than apparent, but it didn't seem quite complete to me without the hug.

So, yes, I miss hugs. A lot. But the Japanese propensity to bow does have its advantages.

I headed out on one of my long rice paddy runs after school yesterday. My running route criss-crosses through narrow, winding roads with country houses scattered throughout. It takes me through the kind of places where people walk out in the street without looking both ways because, well, there's nothing to look for. No traffic. No people. Nothing. Just a crazy iPod-clad gaijin girl trying to work off her rice gut.

I zipped through a tiny neighborhood and almost took out a middle-aged woman. She was walking down her tree-lined driveway, getting ready to cross into the street, and didn't see me. Because of the trees, I didn't see her. We bumped into each other.

The Chicago in me expected an angry reaction from her: some cross words in Japanese, a fist-pump, maybe The Finger.

But instead, she bowed.

And, to my surprise, I bowed back.

We smiled. I mumbled an awkward "gomenasai...sumimasen" and was back on my way.

Maybe the bow isn't so bad after all.

One Time, One Meeting (一期一会)

2007-12-25T15:04:00.000+09:00

It took me 36 hours to get home from Japan.

That included 14 hours of layovers, four trains, three planes, one cancelled flight, a thunderstorm, a subway accident and many, many, many bottles of Diet Coke.

But there was one bright spot in this transportation debacle. It occurred during the time I expected to be the most lonely: my four-hour, pre-dawn layover at Nagoya airport. I arrived in Nagoya at about 1 a.m. on Sunday morning (JST), after enduring the multiple train rides, the thunderstorm and the subway delay, only to find that the airport itself was closed until 5:20 a.m. I'd need to wait on the floor of a cold sitting room, located right outside the main entrance, until the airport opened.

Cold, wet and exhausted, I maneuvered my 50-pound suitcase to a free space and sat down to contemplate how exactly I'd pass the next four hours. Fortunately, that dilemma was resolved for me. Within five minutes, a 20-something Japanese guy approached me.

"Hello. Do you speak English?"

I nodded yes, not sure what exactly I was getting myself into. He proceeded to squat down next to me and showed me a stapled packet of papers.

It was a take-home English exam.

"I not understand question 24."

So, I switched into English teacher mode, despite the fact that it was now nearly 1:30 a.m. We discussed the ever-fascinating subject of English verb tenses until our conversation turned to more interesting topics: why exactly we were both sitting on the floor of an airport waiting room at the crack of dawn. Turns out he was a helicopter pilot for the Japanese service, heading home to Kyushu to visit his one-year-old son for the holidays. He was studying English with hopes of getting a job promotion.

He chatted away, using broken English (him) and broken Japanese (me) and plenty of gestures. After about 30 minutes, our conversation sparked the interest of another 20-something guy (turns out he worked in finance, and was on the way back home after visiting his fiance in Hokkaido). His impression of America:

"I been to Hawaii. Hamburgers is very big."

The three of us talked for the next three hours - about nothing and about everything at the same time. It was "internationalization" at its finest. Among our many topics of discussion:

Fart, hiccup and yawn. We swapped vocabulary words in our respective native languages. They wrote the Japanese down for me so I'd remember. It's he, shakkuri and akubi, respectively, in case you were interested.

The difference between "rap" and "lap." There are no "L" sounds in Japanese, so English words with the "L" sound are pronounced as "R." They asked how I kept in touch with family back in America, and I told them I used a laptop. They replied with, "Rap? Like 'yo,' 'yo,' 'yo,?" The helicopter pilot threw in a West Side-esque hand gesture for emphasis. Hilarious.

They learned about my adoration of all things Mexico and wondered how I could ever love a country that wasn't Japan. "The Japanese are the friendliest people in the world," the finance guy told me. I'd tend to agree, if these two guys were any indication.

Time flew by. We laughed out loud, catching dirty looks from other sitting-room dwellers who were wisely trying to sleep. We compiled lists of new vocabulary words for each other. We took turns buying snacks and beers from the 24-hour conbini conveniently located across from the waiting room. It was, hands down, the most fun I've ever had during a crappy airport layover.

As 5:20 grew closer, I prepared to say good-bye to my two new friends. But before we parted ways, they wrote some kanji on the bottom of my list of new words: 一期一会

Ichi-go Ichi-e. "One time. One meeting." Once in a lifetime.

"THIS is ichi-go, ichi-e," the finance guy explained, referring to the past four hours and our unlikely but instant friendship. He then bowed and walked away.

The extra explanation was kind, but it wasn't necessary. I understood the meaning perfectly because I'd been living it everyday for the past five months. It's fascinating that the Japanese have a term to describe that making-random-friends-in-an-airport, climbing-mountains-in-a-hailstorm, eating-fried-shirako, being-lost-and-finding-your-way-and-yourself feeling exactly.

Once in a lifetime. Random but beautiful.

Merry Ku-ri-su-ma-su, everyone.

Putting Fukui on the map...

2007-12-21T14:56:00.000+09:00

...with my first Japanese earthquake. Yup, that's Fukui Prefecture on the map above, and that big red X shows the epicenter, which seems to be right under Sakai Town. The quake was a 4 (out of 10) on the Richter Scale, which makes it "light" with "noticeable shaking of indoor items, rattling noises," according to good ol' U.S. Geological Survey.

But apparently the U.S. Geological Survey doesn't apply in Japan. There was no "noticeable shaking." There was no "rattling." There was no rolling (sorry, I had to...). Actually, we didn't even feel it.

The earthquake happened this afternoon, while I was at school, smack dab in the middle of cleaning time. When the principal made an announcement in rapid-fire Japanese over the school's PA, a few students paused to listen, but didn't even bat an eyelash. For all I knew, cleaning time was ending early - now that would be exciting! So I asked for a translation.

"Oh, that? We just had an earthquake."

No big deal in a place where there are 100,000 quakes each year.

So thanks, Japan, for going easy on this Illinois-raised earthquake virgin. I'll consider it an early Christmas present.

KFC in the Land of Sushi

2007-12-18T10:14:00.000+09:00

Christmas is in the air at Sakai Jr. High, and it smells a little bit like fried chicken.

As I prepare to head back to Chicago for the holidays, I've been wrapping up my fall term classes with a Christmas-themed lesson. I lead the students through some games, talk about Christmas traditions in the U.S., and finish things up by asking them to decorate an ornament for a big paper tree I've taped up where my English bulletin board is supposed to be. But as much as I hope they learn about my culture through this lesson, I'm learning a ton about theirs.

For example, I learned that KFC is the food of choice for Christmas dinner in Japan.

Yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken. But here, they just just call it "Ke-n-ta-kki." Colonel Sanders is right up there with Santa Claus in the Japanese Christmas tradition. Please know that I'm not trying to judge the validity of the holiday custom - it's just that where I come from, KFC is usually reserved for summertime picnics, Monday night football, or maybe a dinnertime drive-thru run for a frenzied soccer mom, so the contrast is striking.

And what's KFC doing in Japan in the first place? Come to think of it, what's Christmas doing in Japan? Oh, the joys of globalization...

I've yet to visit a KFC here in Fukui (I try to stick to local fare, like sushi, or maybe shirako...). So, mom, if you're reading this, you can skip the turkey and ham for Christmas dinner. Better make it a bucket of Original Recipe. Or maybe some Extra Crispy, おねがいします. And please don't forget the biscuits.

Baby, It's Cold Outside...

2007-12-09T17:54:00.000+09:00

Fukui is cold.

While we've got nothing on the six inches of snow that apparently fell in Chicago earlier this week (there's none of the white stuff here - yet), temperatures have been falling quite steadily. And it's been raining everyday for about two months. Torrentially.

So, it's cold here, and most of the buildings in Japan don't have the central heating that I'm used to back home. But leave it to Japanese to devise some amazing alternative ways to beat the cold. There's this fantastic heated, cushioned floor pad that you can spread out over your cold tatami floor. Or there's the kotatsu, a low table with a built-in heater underneath, which is then covered by a big comforter. And there are big, fuzzy electric blankets everywhere.

Feeling warm n' cozy yet?

But my new favorite way to stay warm is called なべ (nabe). This is a cold-buster that you eat. Nabe involves throwing lots of yummy vegetables into a big clay pot filled with warm broth. You wait a few minutes, then carefully pluck the now-warm, still-yummy vegetables from the pot with your chopsticks, dip them into some even yummier sauce, eat, and be warm.

Yum. (Did I mention that already?)

Nabe is so popular that people have aptly-named nabe parties. And my awesome scuba-instructor-turned-Japanese-tutor-turned-nabe-chef-friend invited me to one last night. The food and company were wonderful.

Of course, another way to beat the cold involves drinking large amounts of red wine. Which I did. And my awesome scuba-instructor-turned-Japanese-tutor-turned-nabe-chef-friend did, too. She's thinking about doing some diving in Latin America next year, and is interested in learning a little bit of Spanish. So, with the wine flowing, we spent a fair part of the evening learning the essential first words of any new language: the vulgarities.

I wrote the Spanish-English translations on a dry-erase board that was conveniently located in our makeshift dining room (we were in the scuba shop, after all), and my tutor carefully translated the English into Japanese. Like the good teachers that we are, we modeled correct pronunciation for all of the なべ guests, and everyone had a lovely time cursing in three languages.

Such fun. I hope it stays cold here 'til July!

SGF? がんばってください.

2007-12-05T18:20:00.000+09:00

SGF. That's Single Gaijin (foreign) Female.

がんばってください. That's gambatte kudasai, which translates to "persevere," or "try your best," but in my experience, it's usually used when the situation is so dire that it's laughable. (You have 200 essays to grade by tomorrow morning? Gambatte kudasai. You want to navigate the Tokyo subway but don't read kanji? Gambatte kudasai. You want to climb to the top of Mt. Hakusan, even though it's hailing? Gambatte kudasai.)

You get the idea.

What do the two have in common? Well, let's just say that the dating scene for a SGF in Fukui is well, uh, lacking. I don't want to perpetuate any stereotypes here, but Japanese women being what they are (read: beautiful), we SGFs have our work cut out for us. The SGMs (that's Single Gaijin Males) are into the beautiful Japanese gals. And the Japanese guys? Well, I tower over them when I'm rocking my heels (or sneakers, or flats, or when I'm barefoot...), so they're into the beautiful Japanese girls, too.

Today, one of my sixth-grade students brought this situation to my attention during our school cleaning time. Cleaning time is bonding time, really. We're thrust out into the hall, where there's no heater, and use cold buckets of water to wipe down the floors and shelving. It's how they'd punish students in the USA, circa 1912, but here in Japan, it's part of daily school life. I speak a lively mix of Japanese and English with the students during this time, usually related to the awful temperature (さむいですね - "cold, isn't it?").

But today, our conversation went above and beyond the usual temperature talk. One of the students noticed a ring on my finger when I dipped my rag in the bucket of water. I've had this ring forever - I bought it while studying in Mexico in 1999 - and I wear it on my right hand everyday. But my student didn't seem to care. The conversation went something like this:

Student: "Sara-sensei, you got married!?!?"

Me: "No, not me." (I show her my bare left ring finger.) "My sister got married, remember?" (My little sister's July wedding has been the subject of past class discussions.)

Student: "Oh." (Her brow furrows, she thinks for a minute, and then brightens.) "Well, do you have a Japanese boyfriend?"

Me: "No...."

Student: "Maybe a Chicago boyfriend?"

Me: "Nope." (I'm feeling mildly pathetic at this point, but am amused by her use of "Chicago" as a way to describe a type of boyfriend.)

Student: (Looking at me like I'm an alien.) "How old are you?"

Me: "I'm 27, remember?" (I've told them all my age a zillion times. They ask everyday, and never cease to be amazed by my oldness.)

The student stares at me. She then conferences with a friend who is cleaning the floor next her. I hear the words "27" and "boyfriend" mixed in with some rapid-fire Japanese. Then they both look at me sympathetically.

"Gambatte kudasai."

Oh, God. I just got gambatte-d by a 12-year-old girl. It's that bad, huh?

At this point I'm beginning to wallow in self-pity as I scrub the cold hallway floor with even colder water. Japanese get married younger than Americans, darnit! I'm normal in America! Don't they know that?!?

Sensing my sadness, the students try to cheer me up.

"Sara-sensei is very, very, very cute!!"

Except the "cute" comes out like "cute-o." It makes me laugh.

At least somebody loves me.

SGF, gambarimasho!

Merry クリスマス!

2007-12-02T13:36:00.000+09:00

Merry Ku-ri-su-ma-su!

For being a country of mostly Shintoists and Buddhists, the Japanese sure know how to get in the Christmas spirit. Last night, my Japanese tutor (yes, the one who's teaching me to read in Japanese with Curious George) invited me to her company Christmas party. But what I haven't mentioned is that my sensei is a woman of many talents - not only is she a fantastic teacher, but she's also the owner of a sucessful scuba shop in Fukui City (and she knows how to rock a pair of reindeer antlers - see above).

What better way to get in the クリスマス spirit than with a room full of Japanese scuba divers?

The party, held at a local restaurant, was a blast. Winning a round of bingo and downing a few glasses of wine helped break the ice for me, and soon I was chatting away (slowly, awkwardly, but in Japanese!) with my sensei's customers and friends. Sensei was kind enough to provide nametags for everyone, translating guests' names (written in kanji) into hiragana (the Japanese alphabet that I can read) and romanji (Roman letters, like we use in English). Because of this, I became fast friends with a Japanese guy named...MAC.

Nice.

But a Japanese party usually isn't just a party - it's actually a series of parties. Party No. 2 was at a karaoke bar, where I belted out "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" with a Japanese guy whose voice could've passed for Bing Crosby's. Party No. 3 was back at the scuba shop, where we had a few more beers n' snacks before calling it a night. Yes, I slept at the scuba shop. (Actually, on a futon in an apartment above the scuba shop, but it's fun to say, just the same.)

Random? Yes. But oh-so-fun.

Merry クリスマス!

A Tale of Two Cities: Osaka & Kobe

2007-11-25T22:26:00.000+09:00

When I wasn't setting off alarms in public restrooms (see below), I passed the weekend bouncing between the cities of Osaka and Kobe. A few fellow female JETs and I took advantage of the Japanese Thanksgiving holiday on Friday to have a long ladies' weekend in urban Japan. Osaka and Kobe are 30 minutes apart, and they're a three-hour ride on the "cheap" train from Fukui.

Our accommodation matched our train: cheap. We stayed in a capsule hotel in Osaka, designed for business travelers and folks who have missed the last subway after a night o' partying in the city. The ¥2500 nightly rate included a toothbrush and a 7' x 7' space to sleep. These small, plastic capsule rooms were stacked on top of each other, but were surprisingly spacious: each room had a TV, mirror, light and radio. Not back for 25 bucks. The capsule served as an excellent base from which to venture out on our various (mis) adventures in the two cities.

Osaka

The tradition-versus-modernity contrast I found in the toilets of Osaka (again, see below) is indicative of the rest of the place. Osaka, the second-biggest city in Japan, is king of preserving the old while building up the new. Our first stop was Osaka Castle, originally built in 1583. While it looks old from the outside, the modern-day "refurbished" version of the castle has a movie theater in the lobby, an elevator running up all eight of its floors, and an amazing view of the skyscrapers of Osaka from the top.

Our next stop was at the National Bunraku Theater. To describe Bunraku as a puppet show for adults downplays its cultural importance, but that's kinda what it is, in a nutshell. A team of puppeteers (dressed all in black so you don't see 'em) maneuver almost-life-size puppets while a narrator chants all of the characters' parts to the tune of a Japanese shamisen (a guitar-esque instrument). My description sounds a bit bizarre, but the overall effect is amazing - so much so that people sit through the five-hour-long performances without batting an eye. Our jam-packed Osaka agenda didn't include five hours for puppets, so we took in "just" two hours of the play before heading off to dinner.

Ah, dinner. Perhaps the most exciting part of my time in Osaka: we gorged ourselves on the "it's-not-quite-Mexican-but-it'll-do-because-I've-been-in-Japan-for-four-months" flavors of El Pancho, Osaka's finest (err...only) Mexican restaurant. There were a few less-than-authentic aspects to the meal - the fajitas had broccoli in them and the salsa included just a hint of wasabi -but overall, the food wasn't half bad. No corn or mayonnaise in sight...

We rounded out our Osaka experience with a fix of the urban nightlife we've been so desperately missing in rural Fukui. We hit up a club in Amerika-Mura (that's American Village), where the guitarist from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was spinning tunes as the evening's DJ. From Lonely Planet: "The best reason to come is to check out the hordes of colourful Japanese teens living out the American dream." LP is right on the mark - our fellow club-goers were Japanese teens and 20-somethings, dressed in a funky mix of club clothes and ski wear, with so much Aquanet in their hair that I feared for their safety in the proximity of their cigarette lighters. One of my fellow JETs (also from Chicago, making the city proud) jumped on the fashion victim bandwagon with a green wig and matching eyeshadow. Her wacky outfit scored us a spot right next to the stage and free t-shirts from club promoters. Thanks, M!

Kobe

Caution: blatant hedonism ahead. While Osaka clings to its traditional roots, Kobe is all modernity, all the time. We strolled to Harbor Land (that's ハーバーランド, Ha-ba Ra-n-do, in Japanese) Kobe's answer to Navy Pier, complete with a Ferris Wheel, overpriced ice cream, and boat tours. While I avoid Navy Pier like the plague in Chicago, I jumped right on the tourist bandwagon in Kobe and - yes - took the harbor cruise. The view from the boat was lovely, and the $4 ice cream was delicious. When in Rome...

Still aglow from the Mexican food we'd eaten in Osaka the night before (or maybe because there were two vegetarians in our group), we decided against lunching on traditional Kobe Beef in favor of more international food. We landed in Kobe's bustling Chinatown, where rows of cheap-crap shops (plastic poop for 100 yen, anyone?) and street-food vendors (mystery fried fish parts, anyone?) beckoned. There's nothing like Chinese food in Japan.

So that's the way Thanksgiving's done in Japan - heaps of food (sometimes it's Chinese), a bit of booze, lots of indulgence, all while being thankful for every last bit. Japan's kinda like America, after all...

A word on Japanese toilets...

2007-11-25T21:26:00.000+09:00

I've blogged before on the tradition-versus-modernity dichotomy that exists in Japan. Nowhere, in my humble opinion, is this contrast more apparent than in the washrooms of this great nation. Upon entering the loo, we're faced with an important question: To squat or not to squat?

The traditional Japanese toilet is a ceramic hole in the ground. You literally squat down to do your business. This style of toilet, found at Sakai JHS and in the various public restrooms I've encountered during my travels in Japan, always leaves me with a slight burn in my quads and a "I'm-camping-in-the-woods-where's-a-leaf-to-wipe-with" feeling.

Contrast these "squatters" with the Western-style sit-down toilets: these state-of-the-art johns come equipped with a heated seat and bidet function. There's a "modesty" option that makes the sound of running water so your neighbor can't hear you doing your business. In fact, there's literally a control panel on these toilets, with rows of buttons all written in kanji. Check out the pictures above. (No, these pics aren't mine - I borrowed 'em from the internet. But the fact that others have actually taken - and posted - photos of Japanese toilets online is almost as fascinating as the toilets themselves.)

The sit-down thrones are great - and are always a special find in a public restroom - but the fact that I can't read kanji sometimes gets me into trouble when it comes time to flush.

Our arrival in Osaka this weekend was no exception. After our three-hour train ride, our group of girls scoured Osaka station in search of a restroom. We were pleased to find a women's room with a relatively short line, and (yes!) sit-down toilets. After doing my business, I pressed what I thought was the flush button - it's usually a big red button at the bottom of the control panel

Nothing happened.

I pressed a few more buttons.

No result.

I searched on the floor of the stall for a manual flush button.

Nothing.

I spotted a button on the wall behind the toilet and pressed it triumphantly.

Finally, the flush...

To my horror, the button did not flush the toilet. Instead, a loud alarm sounded.

Oh sh*t.

Apparently, I'd pressed some sort of distress button. Fortunately, the alarm was such that it couldn't be traced back to my particular stall. So, I exited, waded through the line of women who were still waiting in the restroom (none of whom seemed alarmed by the buzzer going off), nonchalantly washed my hands, and got the hell outta there. There was no way that I had enough Japanese to explain myself out of that situation.

My fellow travelers were waiting for me outside of the restroom. They asked if I'd heard the "fire alarm." I nodded, then burst out laughing as I told them what had happened. We all had to stifle our laughter as, a few minutes later, we spotted a security guard running down the hall toward the women's room.

I stuck to squatters for the rest of the trip.

I Think I'm Turning Japanese...

2007-11-18T16:54:00.000+09:00

...not really, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to the One Hit Wonder that is The Vapors. That song has been stuck in my head since I got here, mostly because someone always insists on belting it out at karaoke...

But I did have an über Japanese day today, starting off with a nice dose of Zen Buddhism, followed by some serious soba-eating and origami-making, and then rounded out with a jog through the 小夜時雨 (sayoushigure, another fun just-for-fall Japanese word that translates to "a light rain shower on a fall evening").

I visited Eihei-ji Temple with my host mom this morning. Eihei-ji is one of the main centers of Zen Buddhism in Japan - about 150 monks-in-training live there today. The "temple" actually consists of about 70 buildings, and some are open for average secular folks to see a day-in-the-life of a Buddhist priest.

And based what I learned today, the life ain't easy. According to Zen teachings, meditation and discipline are the path to self-enlightenment. This means that they're up at 3:30 a.m., after sleeping only a few hours on a single tatami mat. They bathe only once every five days - when the date contains a 4 or a 9. They follow a strict vegetarian diet, eating nothing but miso soup and rice for breakfast and lunch, with a few vegetables at dinner. And they're unfazed by the cold. While my host mom and I shivered through the tour in the autumn rain, the monks-in-training walked around in bare feet and light robes.

Wow.

Eihei-ji itself was gorgeous, built up into the side of a mountain and surrounded by ancient pines and colorful fall leaves. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died at the beginning of the tour, forcing me to take dozens of mental pictures but leaving few to share with you. I did manage to snap the picture above (excuse the glass glare), which shows that the こうよう are still in all of their autumn-colored glory at the temple. My very-prepared host mom brought her camera and had a fellow temple-hopper take the other.

But lest our Eihei-ji experience be too spiritual, my host mom and I were brought back to reality toward the end of the tour. Two older-looking Japanese men walked up to us. One wore a smirk that I recognized as a blend of expressions I'd seen elsewhere in my life: a hey-my-friend-thinks-you're-kinda-cute-and-wants-to-talk-to-you-but-he's-too-shy grin mixed with the half-smile that my elementary school students give me when they're nervous about speaking in English. This guy was the wingman. He got my attention by tapping on my shoulder, and then pointed to his friend, saying "He forget English."

The friend stared at me for a few seconds. Still silent, he took my hand, shook it approximately 512 times, and then flashed a big smile.

"Welcome...to...Japan," he said slowly, enunciating each word carefully.

"Thank you very much," I replied.

The two men looked at each other. They hadn't understood my response. Confused, they walked away before I could open my mouth again.

By this point, my host mom has been with me for a number of these random encounters. She knows that going out with me in public sometimes attracts weird attention. She must've taken extra pity on me this time, because she invited me back to her house for lunch. While were were waiting for the big pot of soba noodles to cook in her kitchen, her daughters taught me how to fold paper to make origami cranes.

Never mind that they were able to create about a dozen each in the time it took me to painstakingly fold and re-fold my piece of paper to create just one. The girls gave me a thunderous round of applause when I triumphantly finished, adding my lopsided bird to their pile of perfectly-formed origami. No, I'm not quite Japanese...

Later in the day, I decided to work off the soba with a nice jog through the rice paddies. It'd been raining all day, but I took advantage of a pause in the downpour to head out. Turns out the 小夜時雨, the "light rain shower on a fall evening," maybe isn't so "light" after all. About 20 minutes into my run, when I was a least 2 or 3 miles from my apartment, the sky opened up, and I got pelted with freezing rain the whole way home.

Nope, I'm definitely not turning Japanese. I'm still not sold on the beauty of this fall weather. Too bad women aren't allowed to become Buddhist monks. I could use some of their discipline when it comes to the cold.

Let's こうよう Enjoy!

2007-11-17T19:32:00.000+09:00

The Japanese are serious about the fall, so much so that they have a special word for autum leaves: こうよう (kouyou). And they go to the ends of the earth to see them: on a recent weekend, a math teacher at my school told me he was driving 7 hours each way to take in the こうよう. That's a little hard-core for my tastes (especially with the hard-core gas prices around here). I told him that I'd be sure to spend some quality time admiring the trees across the street from my apartment. For free. He laughed at my sarcasm. Apparently some gaijin just don't get it.

But this weekend, I caught a bit of こうよう fever. I drove a modest-by-comparison 90 minutes to meet some fellow JETs at the base of a mountain, and then hiked another hour or so to arrive at Karikome Ike, a mountain-top pond. The drive through the mountains to get to the mountain was breathtaking, and the hike was lovely.

Unfortunately, upon arrival we discovered that Karikome's prime こうよう season had come to a close, so the majority of the leaves we saw were of the brown-and-dried-and-crunchy-on-the-ground variety. But the day was crisp, and a pond-side picnic with a view of a neighboring snow-covered mountaintop made the trip all worthwhile.

But the Japanese love affair with autumn doesn't stop at こうよう. They have a "special" word to describe the fall air, one for a light rain shower on a fall evening, a word that describes a fall breeze, and even a word to talk about the way that fall leaves, um, fall and spread themselves over grass.

I'm in linguistics heaven, but my enthusiasm for the language doesn't necessarily cross over to the subject itself: I'm still not so sure about driving 14 hours to see a few leaves. But to each his own...

1st Grade Pick-Up Lines

2007-11-08T16:05:00.000+09:00

Today, I had my weekly ego boost - a visit to one of the eight Sakai-area elementary schools I support with semi-regular English lessons. Since my last "ego boost" entry, I've visited four schools, and all were fantastic experiences. But today's students were especially, uh, hilarious, so I thought I'd share a snippet of my day.

Because each visit marks my first time at the school, I start out my lessons with a brief self-introduction, where I try to get the students excited about English by telling them fascinating tidbits about life in "America" (I'm sorry, I've given up on being P.C. and calling it the "United States" - students have no idea where that is).

For example, I'll show a picture of deep-dish pizza and will explain that each pizza is made with a full pound of cheese. I'll then flash a picture of the Chicago skyline and will tell the students that the Sears Tower is one of the tallest buildings in the world. And I'll show a picture of my sister's wedding and will explain that my new brother-in-law is over 180 centimeters tall, which giant by Japanese standards (a big shout out to D. C. Dubya!).

I then give the students a few minutes to ask me questions. Most are pretty basic, which is OK with me because they're usually asked in Japanese. They typically range from "How old are you?" to "What is your favorite color?" to "Do you like sushi?"

But today, one little boy hit me with the following:

"What's your phone number?"

They're learning pick-up lines younger and younger these days. I took a moment to think about my response. I decided against giving out my Japanese ケータイ number on the off chance that I'd have 40 first graders calling me over the weekend. So, I gave out my old Chicago cell digits. I apologize to the poor soul who inherited that number - you might be getting a few calls. All of the students whipped out their notebooks and diligently wrote it down, asking me to repeat it twice so they'd be sure to get it right.

"Okay...next question, please."

"Where is your house?"

When I told them that I lived in Maruoka, the next town over, they all gasped.

"What?!? You live in Japan?!?"

What I'm thinking: "So you thought I took the red eye from Chicago to teach your class today? Right. My private jet's in the parking lot, waiting to take me home this afternoon."

What I said: "Yes, I've lived in Japan for three months."

(Has it really been that long? Sometimes it feels like three weeks, at other times, three years!)

Next question:

"Are there televisions in America?"

What I'm thinking: "Look, kid, I know Japan is the most technologically-advanced country in the world, but we're not that far behind you."

What I said: "Yes, we have TV in America, just like you."

"WOW! すげい!!"

Apparently, I sufficiently impressed the students with that last one. At the end of the class, they all lined, up, pencils and notebooks in hand, and asked me for my autograph.

はしりましょう! (Let's Run!)

2007-11-03T14:17:00.000+09:00

It takes a very secure woman to post "I-got-up-at-friggin'-6 a.m.-on-a-Saturday-to-run-a-marathon-and-look-at-the-great-tan-I've-gotten-in-cloudy-Japan" pictures online for the universe to see. But I'm convinced that only friends and family look at this thing anyway, and that you love me unconditionally.

So this morning some fellow JETs and I ran the Kikka Marathon in Takefu, a town just south of Fukui City. Japan is a magical place for a runner - not only is it home to MIZUNO, the best running shoe ever made, but it's also one of the only places in the world where you can say you ran a "marathon," when in reality you only ran a 10K (that's 6 miles, plus some change).

My blonde (ish) ponytail stuck out at the start line - I stood a full six inches taller than many of my fellow runners. Despite any advantage that my long legs might bring, Japanese men more than twice my age (and seemingly half my height, and, er, weight) passed me without breaking a sweat. A humbling experience, though I still pulled off a 47-minute race time.

Overall, Kikka was a well-oiled machine. For the 2000 yen ($20) registration fee, I got my name in the newspaper as part of a pre-race article (and, thus, the admiration of all of the teachers at my school: "Sara-san, you're running a MARATHON?! Wow! Gambatte!"), a nice course to run through at the base of Takefu's mountains, and all of the post-race tea a girl could drink. I also scored a gaijin-compliant XXL race t-shirt. Nice.

Another reason Japan is good for runners? You get to do the post-race pig-out at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Back home, I'd nosh on a sandwich or maybe some pasta after a race, but here in Japan, it's raw fish and rice all the way.

Makes the blood, sweat and tears all worthwhile.

Halloween, Fukui Style

2007-10-28T18:49:00.000+09:00

If being blonde (ish) and standing 5'6" in a country of dark-haired, 5'2" women doesn't garner enough stares on a day-to-day basis, try walking alone through a shopping mall in a stupid cat outfit on a Saturday night.

People literally gape with their mouths open.

That's how it went down for me yesterday. I'd volunteered to pass out candy at a children's Halloween Party sponsored by Fukui's International Club (IC). The party was hosted at LPA, a shopping mall on Fukui's north side. But LPA is a very big, multi-floor place, and apparently I missed the memo about where specifically the party was going to be held.

So that left me wondering through the mall, fruitlessly trying to contact my fellow volunteers on my cell phone and forcing a smile as shoppers stared me down. Some were discrete in their gaping, others yelled "kawaii" (or was it "kowai"?) in my direction, while still others literally stopped in their tracks, mouths open, to gawk. C'mon people...

Later that evening, the IC hosted a slightly more adult-focused party at a local bar. Many of my fellow JETs dressed in costumes ranging from samurais to lions to uniform-clad Japanese junior high students. But the talk of the evening was "Steve" (you'll remember him from my back-of-the-bike Brazilian bar exploits) who dressed up like a shower. Yes, a shower.

Steve was kind enough to give me a ride to the bar on the back of his bike, under the condition that I hold his costume while he peddled. So, if I wasn't getting stared at before, just imagine us zipping through the streets of Fukui, Steve in a tank and towel and me in my black cat costume, trying to balance a plastic-pipe shower curtain contraption with one hand and myself with the other.

Thanks for the lift, Steve.

It's Raining Noodles

2007-10-27T15:35:00.000+09:00

In the United States, we traditionally throw rice at weddings.

In Japan, they throw noodles. And sweets. And ramen. And potato chips. But not at the bride and groom - at the guests.

Today, I was a spectator at a "Bridal Parade" in my host family's neighborhood. A neighbor's son was getting married, so the entire neighborhood gathered at the street outside of his house and waited for a fancy black taxi to pull up - inside was his bride, dressed in an elegant red kimono, her hair swept into an impossibly perfect updo with ribbons and beads (I played paparazzi and took tons of pictures, but my host mom cautioned that it was bad manners to put them online). The bride walked down the street, toward the house, bowing to all the neighbors in the process - in essence, we were welcoming her to the neighborhood.

But the best part was yet to come. Once the bride went inside, some men (I might equate them with groomsmen) climbed to the top of a decorated platform rigged up outside the house. From this platform, which was almost as tall as the house itself, they began to throw the aforementioned goodies - noodles, potato chips and sweets - at the neighbors crowded below.

But I must mention that these weren't small portions - they were entire bags of food, which proved to be quite heavy and hard-hitting when flung from 20 feet up. After getting hit on the shoulder by a bag of udon, I decided against taking pictures in favor of protecting myself from the "attack." I took all of this in stride - who else can say they got hit with noodles at a wedding party?

The Bridal Parade wasn't what brought us to the neighborhood, however - the family had decided to throw a party for my host "sister," a fellow JET whose birthday falls on Halloween. To mark the occasion, we made okonomiyaki - okonomi meaning "what you like," and yaki meaning "grilled." Perhaps simpler is my young host sisters' comparison - "it's Japanese pizza."

I worked with my host sisters to mix up an egg-based batter, complete with cabbage and corn. We poured this batter onto griddles and tried not to salivate as it cooked - it smelled amazing. The okonomi part came into play when we picked our topics - mushrooms, seafood, other vegetables - the end result tasted nothing like pizza to me, but was oishii nonetheless. The picture up top is of the family enjoying the results. It was a fun day.

Next time I'm over, maybe we can cook up the udon noodles that assaulted me. In the meantime, I'll ice my shoulder.

Shirako, Anyone?

2007-10-25T22:32:00.000+09:00

In keeping in touch with my lovely friends and family back home, many of you have asked about my culinary adventures in Japan. Have I eaten anything out of the ordinary? Well, boringly enough, I've pretty much kept to standard fare: lots of sushi and sashimi, the ocassional bowl of ramen or soba, sometimes a midnight onigiri from the corner conbini. I've fallen in love with this wonderful snack mix that involves wasabi-flavored rice crackers, and when I'm feeling especially American, will hunt down some peanut butter or maybe some cheese.
But tonight, all that "boringness" changed.

I help out with an evening English conversation course at a local community center twice a month. They're a fun group. Tonight, they organized a "welcome" dinner for myself and the other JET that teaches them. We went to a local restaurant and proceeded to gorge ourselves on an amazing nine-course Japanese-style meal: tofu with sesame-coffee sauce for starters, followed by fresh sashimi, a tuber soup, some sushi, tempura, a seaweed salad, a bowl of soba, and fruit for dessert.

Everything was delicious, except for a little fried mystery that was included in my plate of tempura.

I bit in. It was squishy.

"Nan desu ka?" I asked what it was in the most polite Japanse I could muster.

"Fish."

Hmmm...I took another bite. This certainly didn't taste like any fish I'd ever eaten.

At this point, my dining companions across the table were looking at me. They'd been watching me eat the whole night, complimenting me on my ability to use chopsticks, so I didn't think anything of it.

"Do you like it?"

"Oh, yes. Oishii desu." It's delicious, I said, forcing an enthusiastic nod as I chewed. I had to like everything. It's rude not to clean your plate.

One of the women began scrounging through her purse, eventually produced an electronic dictionary, and began punching away. All the while, I smiled weakly as I choked down a few more bites of the slimy fried wonder.

Ummm, where was the soy sauce?

The woman showed me the screen of her electronic dictionary: 白子

Shirako. The sperm sack of a fish.

Riiiiiight. Not fish, but fish sperm. Big difference.

Oishii desu.

I've Come a Long Way, Baby!

2007-10-25T18:15:00.000+09:00

Today, a group of 18 American Fulbright Scholars visited Sakai JHS.

They were all teachers from the U.S., participating in a special one-week visit to Fukui. Sakai JHS has been abuzz for weeks preparing for them. And as the token American at the school, I finally became useful outside of English class. I was the go-to for all things USA: the principal consulted me on which snacks he should buy for the visitors (do Americans like seaweed flavoring?). A social studies teacher asked me about activities he should prepare for his class (do Americans know how to play karuta?). And a head sensei requested my help in preparing a program book (are Americans interested in student demographics?).

It was nice to feel helpful, but the best part was realizing how far I've come. When the visitors arrived this morning, they fumbled at the door while changing into their indoor slippers. Their bows were awkward at the school assembly prepared for them. And their "ohayo gozaimasus" were heavily accented.

I'm not being critical. The visitors were lovely, and were genuinely interested in our school and the Japanese education system. It's just that these fine folks reminded me of, well, myself about three months ago. In seeing their newness, I realized that I'm actually getting it. It was an exhilarating feeling.

As the afternoon wore on, one of the Japanese teachers entered the staff room where I was working and announced that several of the American teachers had left the building. They'd gone in search of Diet Coke, he said. Was this normal for Americans?

I smiled as I took a sip of the Diet Coke sitting on my desk. As there are no vending machines at school, I've been bringing it with me for weeks, cleverly disguised as tea in my Nalgene bottle.

Rookies.

Sixth Grade Political Humor

2007-10-19T15:06:00.000+09:00

The cynics are getting younger and younger these days.

By now, you've heard that (now former) Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe suddenly stepped down from his post amid a storm of controversy last month. He'd been in office for less than a year, and pulled together a last-minute press conference to announce the news. The resignation made headlines around the globe, and speculation as to "why" has been a hot topic of discussion at water coolers across Japan.

But today, the news hit one of my sixth-grade English classes at Sakai JHS.

The lesson was simple enough: we'd learn the proper use of the interrogative "who," and review the use of "I am," "he is" and "she is." To accomplish this, students divided into groups of three and pretended to interview a famous person, via webcam, using a script I provided:

Student A: "Let's talk with (name)."

Student B: "Who is (name)?"

Student A: "He/She is (insert description here). OK, let's talk."

Student C: "Hello, I am (name). I am (insert description here)."

Simple enough. Some student groups chose the usual suspects for their interviews: we spoke with Mickey Mouse, Sponge Bob, several Japanese anime characters, and even a few Japanese baseball players. For the most part, students were creative in portraying their famous interviewees. (Think: "Hi, I am Mickey Mouse. I am a cartoon. I live in Disneyland. I love Minnie Mouse.") But the real treat came toward the end of the class, when a group of boys presented their dialog.

Their famous person of choice? None other than Shinzo Abe. It went down like this:

Student A: "OK, everyone, let's talk with Abe."

Student B: "What? Who is Abe?"

Student A: "Errr....He's my brother."

(The kid cracks an 'I-know-I'm-a-smart-alec' grin as his classmates erupt with laughter. My Japanese team-teacher and I struggle to keep straight faces. It takes a few moments for the class to settle down, but, hey, they're speaking English, so I'm thrilled.).

Student A: "OK, let's hear from Abe."

Student C: "Hello, I'm Abe."

(There is a long pause as the class braces for "I am Prime Minister of Japan," or "I am a politician." Instead, we get another smart-alec grin and a killer punchline.)

"I'm....sorry."

'Nuf said. The group sits down.

The entire class - including both of its teachers - rolls with laughter.

I'd like to think that three little political cynics were born at that moment, and that perhaps I inspired them in some small way. At any rate, whoever said that the Japanese don't appreciate sarcasm or cynicism certainly hasn't visited English 1-2 at Sakai JHS.

Ho-Hum (?)

2007-10-14T20:38:00.000+09:00

I had my first seemingly uneventful weekend in Japan - no trips to thousand-year-old temples, no hikes to the tops of mountains, no backing my car into a ditch. It had to happen eventually - my Japanese bank account couldn't keep up with the pace of all of my weekend excursions lately. So I kicked it in Fukui this weekend - had dinner with my Japanese tutor and her fiance on Friday, drinks with some friends on Saturday. But an uneventful weekend in Japan isn't the same as an uneventful weekend back home - in Japan, uneventful weekends are still blog-worthy.

Off House
Add this to the list of Things I Love About Japan. This is a second-hand store, and happens to be the only place in town where one can buy a "gently used" pair of pants, sofa, toaster - and, if you really wanted it, a life-sized porcelain chicken - all under the same roof. Off House's companion store, Hard Off (yes, you're reading that correctly) sells used electronics. The Japanese love of shiny, new things means that there are some great deals to be had at these spots - and dumpster-diving gaijin aren't ashamed to shop there.

I visited the Off House/Hard Off Mecca on Saturday afternoon. My mission? To score a cheap snowboard n' fixins before the first snowfall hits Fukui (which, the way temperatures have been dipping lately, could be sooner than later). As I've been blessed with large-even-by-American-standards feet, I was a bit nervous about finding appropriately-sized footwear. But Off House is a magical, magical place. I was able to find a size 26.5 (my feet sound even bigger in Japan!) pair of boots in a lovely shade of lavender. I also picked up a scuff-free snowboard - complete with bindings - to match. I passed on the porcelain chicken, but snagged a pair of shades for a grand total of ¥10,105 - that's just over 100 bucks.

This winter, I'll be blowing all of the money I saved in the mountains of Fukui, which, incidentally, are slightly steeper than the hills of Wisconsin that I'm used to riding. We'll see how long it takes before I'm blowing all of the money I saved on medical bills....

Bug Spotting
The Suzuki and I headed into Fukui City on Saturday night. A shiny, new VW Bug caught my eye on the highway - there simply aren't a lot of VWs in Japan. I stared closer, then squinted - it appeared the driver was sitting in the left seat - something I haven't seen since leaving the U.S. in July. But it gets better: I passed the Bug only to notice that the car also had spinner rims and ground effects, plus TV monitors in the head cushions. I'm sure this kid is turning heads in all of the rice paddies he's driving through...

While we're on the subject of cars, this entry merits a brief discussion on car names here in Japan - they're all in English (sort of), and they're all hilarious. There's the "Friendee," which looks kind of like a toaster on wheels. There's also a model called "That's" and one called "Life" - a friend once told me that he saw the two parked side-by-side in a parking lot and snapped a picture. But my personal favorite - and I've only seen this once - is called "LaPuta." I'll leave you to sort that out with the help of your Spanish dictionaries.

Maruoka Matsuri
In any other part of the world, news of going to a festival would not be included in a blog entry on an Uneventful Weekend. Festivals are loud. They're exciting. They're colorful. But they're a dime a dozen here in Japan.

This weekend, my own little town had a festival. I met my host mom there for lunch at noon on Sunday, stayed to watch the parade with dozens of cute, smiling kids in costumes, and then headed home. A couple of hours later, I got a text from a friend - she was participating in a dance with students from her school. I should come to watch.

So I hopped on my bike, peddled over - and, upon arrival, was pulled into the crowd of identically-dressed students dancing in the street. Just in case being a tall, foreign 20-something in a sea of Japanese middle schoolers didn't make me stick out enough, I was wearing a bright white sweater while they were all in dark blue t-shirts. And, of course, I didn't know the dance steps. But I trudged along with some Macarena-esque moves, tried to keep up with the crowd as they moved up and down the street, and obligingly smiled and waved for the TV cameras that were taping the festival.

And I know people in this town. Classy as usual.

Field Trippin'

2007-10-11T21:57:00.001+09:00

Today was field trip day at Sakai Junior High School. I joined ichi-nen-sei (sixth grade) on a trip to...

...my own town.

Sakai Junior High is located in the aptly-named town of Sakai. I live next door in Maruoka. So today I drove the 15-minute commute to school, only to turn around and take a chartered bus back to Maruoka. But field trippin' was fun!

Our first stop was Maruoka Castle, which I'd already visited, but not with 35 sixth graders. This time proved to be a slightly more exhausting experience, so much so that I was tempted to sneak away, walk the three blocks to my apartment, and take a quick power nap. Instead, I stole swigs of the Diet Coke I had cleverly disguised as tea in my Nalgene bottle.

Our next stop was a soba noodle-making workshop. I put my cooking skills (or lack thereof) to the test as I rolled out buckwheat flour dough and cut noodles. Soba is one of Fukui's claims to fame, prompting some people to link it to the residents' long lifespans (people in Fukui have the second-longest life expectancy in Japan). The workshop folks cooked up our creation and we had oishii soba for lunch. I had two bowls, just to make sure I live to see 2080.

We finished the day at the Echizen Bamboo Doll Museum, which houses, well, dolls made of bamboo. But we got to try our hands at carving our own works of art. I am proud to report that I successfully whittled a block of bamboo in to a fully functional toy helicopter. Mad skills.

Hanging out with my students away from school was a blast, but perhaps the best part of the day was the end. The sixth grade teachers, exhausted from six hours of castle-hopping with 12 year olds, decided to blow off some steam at a happy hour (which, because Japanese teachers work so darn late, didn't start until 7 p.m.). They kindly invited me, but the poor English teacher sitting next to me got stuck with Translation Duty. They'd talk for 15 minutes or so, laugh hysterically, and then my translator/colleague would give me the Cliffs Notes version of the conversation. And by Cliffs Notes, I mean 3-5 words.

Frustrating, but funny. This teacher knows I've had my fair share of Spanish-English Translation Duty, so we were able to commiserate: translation is a royal pain in the 尻. So I guess I better quit blogging and start studying some Japanese. The next happy hour is right around the corner...

Kyoto: City that Never Sleeps

2007-10-08T21:59:00.000+09:00

Kyoto doesn't sleep.

That's because the subway stops running at 11:48 p.m., forcing unsuspecting gaijin to stay up all night hoofing the commute back to their hostel.

And that's exactly how I passed the early morning hours on Sunday, walking the otherwise-deserted streets of northern Kyoto in the company of four friends, all fellow JETs. We'd been out to dinner and drinks and had missed the last train by exactly 7 minutes. Not so thrilled with the prospect of shelling out thousands of yen for a taxi back to our hostel, we opted instead for the two-hour walk back to the comfort of our hostel-floor futons.

Needless to say, my long weekend in Kyoto was an eventful one. Our gang descended on Kyoto, Japan's third-largest city, known for its 2,000 temples and a handful of latter-day geisha, for a much-needed urban fix. When we weren't temple-hopping or geisha-hunting, we kept busy.

Saturday found us taking in the soon-to-be-fall foliage from Kiyomizu-dera, a mountain-side temple built in 798. Next, we trekked to Sanjusangen-do, a temple housing 1,001 Buddhist statues (thankfully, no pictures were allowed, otherwise I would've been there all day). We wandered through Kyoto's alleyways on foot, and ended up at Nishiki Market, home to some of the scariest/weirdest/freshest seafood I'd ever seen, plus thousands of varieties of pickles (pickled eggplant, anyone?). We feasted on free pickle samples for lunch, and then headed to the Gion district, home to Kyoto's remaining 100 geisha. Geisha hunting was followed by dinner, drinks and the aforementioned loooooooooong walk home.

Sunday found us at Fushimi-Inari Taisha, home to hundreds of red torii pillars spanning a 4km walk up a mountain. Next we hopped on rented bicycles and peddled through Kyoto's back alleys, crashed a street festival, took a nap on a temple (ooops!), and then enjoyed some Japanese beers by the river. Dinner was at the ever-authentic びっくりドンキー (Surprised Donkey Restaurant).

Monday - a Japanese national holiday - afforded me the opportunity to do a bit of travel on my own. Armed with my Japanese-English dictionary and notes on how to navigate the train systems between the cities of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe, I set out solo to explore Himeji Castle. The castle was built in 1333, but is still lookin' sharp.

Life in Fukui has its perks, but perhaps the biggest is its proximity to this amazing city. I spent a whirlwind three days in Kyoto but barely scratched the surface, so I'll look forward to visiting again soon - but next time will be sure to either catch the 11:48 or pack some extra Diet Coke.

My Elementary Ego Boost

2007-10-04T15:58:00.001+09:00

There was a school assembly at Ohzeki Elementary this morning.

The guest of honor? Yours truly. But you would have thought I was someone, well, important the way the kids screamed and clapped when I walked in. It was my elementary ego boost, and I relished every minute.

They asked me for my autograph.

They wanted to touch my hair.

They fought over who got to hold my hand.

Yes, I get paid to do this. As part of my role as "internationalizer" here in Fukui, I visit eight elementary schools in addition to my day-to-day role as a junior high English teacher. It's sort of a Clark Kent-meets-Superman existence. The kids at the junior high like me in their own 'tween kind of way. But I'm Superman at the elementary schools. The students oooh-ed and aaah-ed over my pictures of Chicago, cheered when I told them I liked sushi, and flat out screamed when I gave them American flag stickers. Awesome.

But what these students don't realize is that I'm more like them than they think. When I wasn't busy signing autographs, I made a few observations: I speak almost the same level of Japanese as the first graders. We write hiragana and katakana with the same messy, shaky strokes. We hold our chopsticks in the same clumsy way. We agree that kanji are hard to learn.

I fit in perfectly. I think I've found my niche.

I Heart Japan: Random Musings

2007-10-01T23:04:00.000+09:00

I heart Japan. And the reasons why are almost as random as my day-to-day existence here. Take the last 24 hours, for example:

"They came in an airplane! They came in an airplane!"
A few of us from the Nagano (see below) crew decided to stop at a ramen shop on the way back to Fukui yesterday. It was Sunday afternoon, and the tiny restaurant was packed with families and young kids. We added our name to the list and waited near the door, attempting not to visibly drool at the bowls of steaming ramen being carried past us.

I decided to take my mind off of my hollow stomach by striking up a conversation with a fellow would-be diner standing near the door. He was four years old. I know this because I know how to ask "How old are you?" in Japanese. Err, it's the only thing I know how to say. Period.

The kid smiled shyly, held up four fingers, and then ran to his mom, who was seated, to bury his head in her lap. He stole a few stares at us before his family's table was called.

We were seated shortly thereafter and had set to work deciphering the kanji on the menu when we were interrupted. Our little four-year-old friend had walked over to our table to ask us a very important question:

"Did you come to Japan in an airplane?"

We nodded "yes." He ran back to his table, screaming, "They came in an airplane! They came in an airplane!" We could hear him talking about this amazing feat with his family for a full 10 minutes.

His reaction doesn't surprise me. We are, after all, fascinating people.

Curious George: How to Become Fluent in Japanese
I've been working with a Japanese tutor for about five weeks now. Considering the fact that I was illiterate when I arrived in this country two months ago, I'm proud of the fact that I am now able to read katakana and hiragana, two of the three writing systems used in Japanese.

I am, perhaps, not so proud of the fact that what I am reading is children's literature. Curious George, to be precise. And s-l-o-w-l-y.

Tonight, I arrived at my class and was greeted with a big, hard-cover, fully-illustrated Curious George book that my tutor had checked out of the Fukui Public Library on my behalf. She opened to the first page and asked me to read aloud. I spent five minutes staring at the first word: ジョージ

"Jiiii-yo-oooo-jiiii?" "Ji-yooooooo-ji." "Ji-yo-ji." "Georg-ie?" "George!"

It took me a full 20 minutes to get through the first page. I learned that George and the Man in the Yellow Hat went to a parade. I'll fill you in on the rest of the plot when I finally make it to the end of the book in December.

The Kindness of Strangers
I've blogged before on the Japanese people's kindness, and I experienced it again tonight.

My little blue Suzuki died in the grocery store parking lot this evening. The car was $800, so I guess the cliché about getting what you pay for holds true. However, I'm sure last week's trip into the Gaijin Trap didn't help matters at all.

I kept turning the key in the ignition with no luck. I needed jumper cables. And I had no idea how to ask for them.

A guy across the parking lot observed my struggles and walked over to me. He rattled off some Japanese (none of which I recognized from Curious George, unfortunately). He motioned to the driver's seat, sat down and turned the key in the ignition. Apparently satisfied that the car was really dead, he walked back to his truck and sped away.

All of this time, I was flipping though my pocket dictionary, trying unsuccessfully to find the word for "jumper cable." And now, my only hope at getting them had driven away. The supermarket was getting ready to close and the parking lot was almost deserted.

Just as I was giving up hope, the truck reappeared in the parking lot. My friend had come back, jumper cables in hand, and was able to recharge my car battery. Before I could even muster a bow and a "domo arigato," he was gone again.

I couldn't help but wonder if I would have done the same for a strange, bumbling, illiterate foreigner standing alone in a grocery store parking lot back home. I'd like to think that I would. In Chicago, that's considered kindness. But here in Japan, that's just the way things are.

And that's why I heart Japan.

Go Fuuuuuk-yu-i!!

2007-10-01T21:04:00.000+09:00

There's a reason that Nagano was selected to host the Winter Olympics back in 1998: it's always winter there. Or so it would seem after passing a weekend in ice-cold rain while playing soccer.

My fellow Fukui JETs and I left the sunshine and warm temperatures of our fair prefecture to participate in a soggy All-Japan JET Soccer Tournament this weekend in Nagano, a mere 5-hour, 7,000-yen (yes, that's $70 in tolls - one way) car ride from Fukui City. It rained - at times, poured - the entire weekend. And Nagano's location in the "Japanese Alps" meant that rain was darn cold.

But we had fun anyway. Our men's and women's teams were true motley crews. Some had played soccer all through their formative years, while others - the author included - thought that a soccer game involved three-point shots and seventh-inning stretches. The women's team only managed to score one actual goal through the five games we played in the tournament. (Yet we still somehow finished 8th out of 12 teams. Who knows?)

Peronally, my lack of soccer skills was compounded by the fact that the largest shin guards I could find were made for Japanese women and, as such, covered about half of my actual shin. I have bruises on the other half to prove it.

But what we lacked in athletic prowess we made up for in team spirit. We battled through the rain, mud and freezing temperatures with matching red fingernails and creative cheers from the sidelines. And when we were done, we got to enjoy onsen (hot tubs), almost-victory beers and an All-Japan JET after-party in our hotel. Worth every last kick to the shins.

Here's how it went down:

Hotel & Food: 17,600 円

Expressway Tolls: 13,350 円
Post-Game Beers: 1,200 円

Being able to scream "Fuuuuk-yu, Fuuuuk-yu, Fuuuuuk-yu-i" at the top of our lungs: PRICELESS

Gaijin Traps. Doh!

2007-09-24T21:58:00.000+09:00

I am a good driver in Japan.

I have learned how to drive on the left. I've gotten used to turning on the wipers where the blinkers are supposed to be, and the blinkers where the wipers are supposed to be. I even like the beeping sound my little car makes when I put it in reverse.

I am a good driver. I am a good driver. I am a good driver.

So how did my car end up in a ditch this evening?

My little piece of the Japanese inaka has a lot of rice paddies. And those rice paddies need a lot of water. So, the Japanese have built deep cement irrigation ditches that run along side most roads. On major streets, these ditches are covered with nifty metal plates. But on residential roads, like the ones near my apartment, they're wide open. Because Japanese tend to hug the center line when they drive, these ditches aren't a problem. But for Westerners, who have been taught to stay away from the middle of the road, they're trickier. That's why we JETs have lovingly dubbed them "Gaijin Traps" (Foreigner Traps).

And tonight, I met a Gaijin Trap first-hand.

I was on my way to "play tennis with Mr. Nagata" (read: get my a$$ handed to me by a 75-year-old man) and his tennis club when I realized I'd forgotten my wallet. The club charges 200 yen (2 bucks) to help offset the cost of the court rental, so I'd need to pay up. I was just a few blocks from my apartment, so I thought I'd turn around, but there was a car right behind me. So I drove ahead, pulled into a neighbor's driveway, and attempted to back up.

That's where it all went wrong.

Yup, I backed right into the Gaijin Trap. Both of my back wheels got stuck in the ditch. I put the car into drive and attempted to pull out, but no luck. I got out of the car and attempted to straddle the ditch and push, but no luck. I turned off the radio (that's what you're supposed to do in these kinds of situations, right?) and sat in the driver seat, trying to figure out what to do.

I was trapped. I was embarrassed. And my car was completely blocking the narrow street.

So I called The Best Neighbors on the Planet, two fellow JETs who have lived in Fukui for a year, and told them that I was stuck in a ditch. Before I could even continue, the neighbor I was speaking to put the phone down to yell to the other, "Sara's Gaijin Trapped!" I heard some muffled laughter. Then he picked the phone back up and told me they'd be over, with a third friend, to help me out.

I'm sure there was more laughter after we hung up. And I probably deserved it. But in my defense, the inaka is really, really dark, and those ditches are really, really sneaky.

So The Best Neighbors on the Planet helped me lift my car out of the ditch. It only took three of us (it's a really small car), plus one to give it some gas. They didn't even laugh at me to my face.

The Suzuki escaped the Trap with only mild scratches. And I was only a few minutes late to lose my tennis match with Mr. Nagata. All in all, not a bad evening.

For the Love of Español

2007-09-22T23:08:00.000+09:00

I bruised my butt on the way to the bar last night.

It's not what you think - there was no alcohol-induced falling involved. Rather, I was sitting on a rack on the back of a bicycle, holding on for dear life as my friend and fellow JET (we'll call him "Steve") peddled down the streets of Fukui-shi. The rack dug in with each bump in the road, leaving my 尻 a bit on the sore side today.

But these are the sacrifices a girl has to make to be able to speak a bit of Spanish in Japan.

Steve and I share a love of all things Latin. We both speak decent Spanish (Steve's able to rock the Portuguese, too). But we're still Japanese newbies, so communication with the locals has been a humbling experience for us both. We miss being able to, well, talk to people.

But all hope for communication is not lost - Fukui is blessed with a lot of Brazilians. They've been coming here for generations to work, and have created a great community in a town called Takefu, just south of Fukui City. So, we decided that spending Friday night at Fukui's finest Brazilian bars would be fun. Portuguese is closer to Spanish than Japanese is. Plus, Brazilian beer is tasty.

We took the train to Takefu. But upon arriving at the station at about 9 p.m., we discovered that there would be a few glitches in our well-laid plans. The last return train left at 11 p.m, so we'd need to work fast. Unfortunately, neither of us knew our way around Takefu. And neither of us knew enough Japanese to be able to ask for proper directions.

Working in charades and broken Japanese, we drew on the kindness of a a railway employee, a taxi driver, a hotel concierge, and a woman working at a video store to help us navigate the streets of Takefu. By the time we made it to the bar, it was 9:45 p.m. We'd only have 30 minutes before we needed to turn around and head back to catch the train.

So what if that left us time for only one beer? It was a sweet, sweet beer.

The bar was tiny. Five patrons sat around one of the bar's six or so tables, playing cards as Portuguese television blared in the background. When Steve and I walked in, all conversation ceased as five sets of eyes looked us over.

It could have gone very, very badly from here. But it didn't.

One of these "patrons" actually turned out to be our server, who politely greeted us in Japanese. But it was when Steve mustered a Portuguese "hello" that the bar warmed up to us. And when I told them I spoke Spanish, they erupted with a hearty "¡está bien!" We passed a delightful 30 minutes chatting in lively mix of Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, or "Jap-ish-guese," a language we all seemed to speak and understand perfectly, though I suspect that this sudden fluency was aided by the beer.

Our server had lived in Takefu for 14 years. Her cohorts - the guys playing cards at the next table - had all been in Japan for at least a decade. They joked with me in Jap-ish-guese as I observed their game. A few minutes later, a woman and her daughter sat down - the girl was 10 years old and had been born in Japan. She spoke better Japanese than she did Portuguese, though you'd never guess by looking at her blue eyes and blonde hair. Is it weird to be jealous of a 10-year-old's language skills?

As bizarre as this scene was, I loved every minute. Who knew that it would take Brazilian bar in the middle of the Fukui inaka to make me feel at home in Japan?

The beer(s) finished, we made our way back to the train and to Fukui City. As it was still early (11 p.m. trains have a way of keeping the night young!), we decided to meet some other JETs at a nearby pub. Steve had left his bike at the station, so this is the part where I found myself half-sitting on a rack, dodging cars and pedestrians as my bum got sorer by the minute.

So was it all worth it for 30 minutes of español?

¡Claro que sí!

Bring it on, Hakusan!

2007-09-17T22:47:00.001+09:00

After having (barely) survived my 12-hour trek on Mt. Fuji, I'd promised myself a break from mountain climbing for a while. But some fellow JETs invited me to climb Hakusan ("White Mountain") in neighboring Ishikawa prefecture over our long holiday weekend. One of the three holy mountains in Japan (Fuji is also one), Hakusan was not to be missed, they told me. It's smaller and more scenic that Fuji, they told me. We'd take a break from climbing to sleep in a lodge, they told me. Sounded like a great plan.

But there are some things you can't plan for. Typhoons, for example.

The climb started out wonderfully. We couldn't have asked for better weather as we zipped up the "difficult" trail toward the summit. We passed through fields of wild flowers, groves of pine trees and scenic bluffs. We stopped for lunch on a ridge that overlooked the entire Hakusan range. Beautiful, puffy clouds dotted the bright blue sky.

But the higher we climbed, the darker the sky got. By about 2200 meters - too late to turn around and seek shelter - the sky opened up and the rains began. And they didn't stop. The typhoon was upon us. I'd never seen anything as beautiful as the lodge peeking through the sheets of rain at the end of our 5-1/2 hour ascent.

Though we arrived soggy and chilled to the bone, we passed a lovely evening at the lodge. With the typhoon howling around us, we introduced "beer pong" to Japanese guests in the lodge cafeteria and were rewarded with gifts of homemade plum wine and salmon jerky from a guest named Saito-san. We snuggled under layers of fuzzy blankets, lured to sleep by Saito-san's wine and weary muscles from our 2500 meter ascent.

The next morning dawned overcast but warm. We worked our way to the summit shrine, only to find that the typhoon wasn't quite over. About halfway to the top, we were greeted by more rain and more torrential winds. At the top, we dug celebratory sake and potato chips out of our soggy backpacks as the wind howled around us.

We managed to smile for a few pictures, but the celebration was short-lived. We were hit with hail - yes, hail - wind and more rain on the way down. The experience made me long for Fuji, which by comparison, was an easy, hail-free climb. Nearly three hours later, we arrived at our car at the bottom of the mountain. As the clothes on our backs and the clothes in our backpacks were soaked, we hunkered down for a chilly ride back to Fukui-ken.

Needless to say, it may be a while before I complete the Japanese holy mountain trifecta!

Rice is Nice

2007-09-17T21:51:00.000+09:00

Rice harvesting time is upon us here in Fukui-ken. And the paddies near my apartment have been dotted signs of the season. Expensive farm equipment plows through some plots in a matter of minutes, but I've also seen 90-year old women stooped over, harvesting by hand. So the harvest is representative of the many dichotomies that exist here Japan: technology or tradition, East or West, modesty or public nudity...

Yes, public nudity. Well, almost.

On Saturday night, my host family kindly invited me to the rice harvesting festival in Maruoka. The evening started off at their home, with a delicious dinner of roll-it-yourself sushi, complete with fresh cuts of sashimi prepared by Grandma Youko. We sat on cushions around a table in the family's tatami room and enjoyed conversation in broken English and Japanese. Dinner - including the rice harvested from the family's plot - was amazing.

We then headed down the street to the festival. First stop was the community center, where we met with a swarm of people crowding around a sunken stage. This was part of a 200-year old festival tradition. This was also where the public nudity came into play.

Dozens of grown men donned sumo-style underwear (e.g. a white strip of cloth covered their 'parts,' with a thinner strip covering not-so-much of their backsides), along with short white robes on top. They were competing to lift a hollowed-out log above their heads. This fierce competition, of course, involved them bending over to pick up the log, exposing their underwear - and everything it didn't cover - to the audience. In attempting to photograph the competition, I inevitably got a lensful of 尻.

During breaks in the competition, the log became a bowl into which unrefined rice was poured, and the men took mallets and danced around the bowl, pounding the rice into flour. They chanted. The scene was fascinating.

The log competition won and the rice pounded, we headed to the neighborhood shrine and waited for the men to follow. They walked barefoot to the shrine, armed with a basket of freshly-prepared rice balls. Festival-goers were instructed to stand in a circle, and the men walked in the middle, dropping the rice balls intermittently. The crowd dove for the balls like they were money - for 200 years, they've believed that these rice balls bring luck for the year.

And I got one, but not by my own merits. It came complements of my host brother, who apparently is much more adept at rice ball-diving that I. We'll see how much luck it brings in the coming year....

Rock Star Moments

2007-09-16T20:52:00.000+09:00

When I was preparing to leave for Japan, the folks at the JET Program warned me that I might encounter a few "Rock Star Moments" in Fukui. The locals would be curious about me and I might get more attention than I was used to at home. Like earthquakes in Japan, one never knows when these moments might occur. The trick is to always be prepared and to remain calm.

So my first Rock Star Moment occurred on Saturday in the gym of Sakai Junior High School. Of course, I was looking sassy in my pink cheerleading outfit (see the "So Cute, It's Scary" entry). But backstage, I was a little apprehensive. I hadn't rehearsed the dance routine, so I had a small knot in my stomach in anticipation of the humiliation that lay ahead. The skirt on the outfit was too tight for my giant gaijin waist (though it seemed to fit the guys in our group just fine!), so I was having some trouble moving (read: breathing). And the backstage area of the stage was without A/C or circulation, so I had beads of sweat dripping down my face.

Very attractive.

But as the "Pecori Nights" soundtrack started, our group of five teachers ran on stage and 500 middle school students left their assigned seats to run toward us. They were screaming, "Sara-san!!" "Sara-san!!" They cheered and waved even as I completely botched the routine. They gave us high-fives as we left the stage. I laughed the entire way through. It was the best 2:58 of my life.

If only I could get them to be that excited about English.

My second Rock Star Moment occurred just a few hours later, on the streets of Maruoka-cho. I'd lost the attention-grabbing pink outfit, but three girls junior high-age girls spotted me anyway. They ran toward me and asked if I was an American. I smiled and nodded.

What ensured was a full five minutes these girls screaming, jumping up and down, and asking to touch my "blonde" hair. Passerby stopped to stare at the source of the noise. I learned that I was the first American girl they'd ever met. What an honor. They broke out their camera phones and asked for a picture. Of course, I had to reciprocate with a picture of my own.

So, I'm a Rock Star here in Fukui. So what if my biggest fans are 13-year-olds? I'm trying not to let it all go to my head.

So Cute, It's Scary

2007-09-15T00:18:00.000+09:00

There's a reason that the Japanese words for "cute" (kawaii -- かわいい) and "scary" (kowai -- 怖い) are so similar.

His name is Gorie.

Gorie is a cross-dressing Japanese cheerleader with a penchant for pink and pigtails. His hit music video "Pecori Night" will be the inspiration for a dance routine at my school's cultural festival on Saturday. The dancers in this performance include four Japanese middle school teachers ... and, yes, me.

And we'll all be dressed in pink cheerleading outfits. My fellow teachers have assured me that this is all very "kawaii." I think otherwise.

A week ago, one of these teachers/Gorie wannabes innocently asked me if I'd be interested in dancing with them at the cultural festival. I instantly (read: stupidly) agreed, thinking that the "dancing" might involve traditional Japanese music and choreography. And, hey, maybe it'd give me an opportunity to bond with some of my fellow teachers outside of the staff room.

Little did I know that the "dance" would involve dozens of super genky cheerleading-inspired moves and a flamingo-pink mini skirt and cheerleading top that don't fit, despite the fact that they're labeled "men's" size (kind of kowai in itself).

The worst part is that I'm the weakest link. After three hours of after-school practice, I still don't know the routine. And I'm the only one. Apparently, the Japanese are pre-programmed for this sort of thing, as my fellow dancers mastered the entire thing in approximately 7 minutes. So, tonight, one of them lent me the Gorie CD, complete with a step-by-step illustrated guide to the routine. She suggested I practice.

I'm blogging instead.

So, tomorrow morning, I'm bustin' out "Pecori Nights" for the 500 students at my school, their parents, and the teachers who are smart enough to be sitting in the audience instead of dancing on stage. Here's what we're supposed to look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgnvpGEg68

Of course, I find this all hilarious. Sort of.

Kindness & Lucky Poop

2007-09-09T09:30:00.000+09:00

People are very kind here in Japan.

But their kindness comes in subtle ways.

It's in the way that the girls on the Sakai track team were helping me learn Japanese during a break in our workout on Thursday - by drawing hiragana and katakana characters in the sand and quizzing me. I received thunderous applause when I got one right (which wasn't that often!). They were genuinely excited for me.

It's the way that the secretary at school shared her secret chocolate stash with me after lunch on Friday. I'd commented that I liked chocolate (the words are similar in English and Japanese - or maybe it's just a universal sentiment among women!), and a sweet treat magically appeared on my desk.

It's the way that my host mother made time in her busy schedule to take Jess and me to an origami museum in Ishikawa on Saturday. And the way her girls, though they weren't quite sure what to make of the two foreigners hanging out with their mom, darted around the museum gift shop to help me find lucky poop stickers.

Ah, yes - lucky poop. Add this to the list of random things that I love about Japan. The Japanese word for luck, "un," shows up in the word for poop, "un-ko," so the Japanese have this fantastic appreciation for lucky poop. I first became aware of this at the museum gift shop, where Jess and I questioned our host mom about a golden poop souvenir that was available for a mere 500 yen. The shop was also stocked with metallic stickers, featuring unko with smiling faces. Awesome.

I've since noticed a lucky poop icon available on my cell phone for text messaging, and plush lucky poops available for the winning in crane games at the arcade. Poop is lucky, and it's everywhere!

But back to the kindness of my host sisters - the fact that I knew how to say "unko" crossed the large cultural, language and age divides that existed between us (the girls are 9 and 11 years old) and made them giggle. After our tour of the origami museum, we headed back in to the museum gift shop, only to find that it was closing. I had made an earlier off-handed comment that I'd like to buy the unko stickers as a gag gift for a friend, and the girls remembered that. They ran ahead of me, grabbed the stickers, and ran back, determined to help me make the purchase before the shop closed.

Now that's kindness. I'm 150 yen poorer, but infinitely happier for having purchased my very own うんこ stickers.

The Kids Got Game

2007-09-06T20:31:00.000+09:00

Today was Sports Day at Sakai Junior High School.

This morning, I rolled in to work with a green t-shirt (I'd been asked to support team MIDORI - yes, it means "green" in Japanese) and no expectations. Given the language barrier that exists between me and, er, everyone else at the school, I wasn't really sure what was in store. Sure, teachers have been busy prepping for the past few days, and students have been running around with paint brushes and bits of fabric, but in my mind, Sports Day would amount to some cute 6th graders playing tug-of-war.

Turns out it was a pretty big deal.

The day kicked off with the local media arriving, students performing an opening ceremony complete with a torch lighting, and four teams competing for three jam-packed hours of relays, sprints, and, yes, tug-of-war. The senseis (teachers) got to participate in a couple of relays, so the tradition of making an a$$ out of myself continued...

After lunch, the track meet turned into a pep rally, with each team of students performing an original, four-minute cheer they'd written themselves. The cheers were impressive enough (at least I think so - I couldn't understand them!), but the student-made costumes were amazing. Whereas any costume I'd worn as a middle schooler most likely involved a sheet worn toga-style, these kids' threads involved actual tailoring. Turns out those that weren't at English Camp with me had spent their summer vacations creating dresses and capes and pom-poms. As my students say, sugoi (awesome!).

So, for being in the middle of a rice paddy, Sakai puts on a darn good show. I got a bit photo-happy and took more than 300 pictures (these kids are soooo photogenic!), but I'm sharing only a few with you here. Watch out for these kids in high school!

わたしのかぞく (My Family)

2007-09-03T17:49:00.000+09:00

Meet the Ohsakis, the lovely Japanese family that has agreed to take not one, but two, clueless gaijin under their wings. The Ohsakis are my new host family here - we met on Sunday for a get-to-know-you lunch. Pictured here are only three of the family of seven (Mr. and Mrs. Ohsaki have two other children, plus grandma and grandpa live with them) and a fellow JET who's "sharing" them with me (hi, Jess!).

How cute is my imoto (little sister)? Her siblings are 11 and 13 - roughly the ages of the students I'm teaching - so this will be a great way for me to learn what makes a Japanese 'tween tick outside of school (I need all the help I can get, as I don't think I've hung out with Jr. High students since I was one). They're an incredibly sweet family, so I'll look forward to spending time with them!

In the DJ Booth

2007-09-03T17:21:00.000+09:00

Being gaijin (foreign) in rural Fukui isn't easy (if you need this point illustrated, go back and read any of my past blog postings), but it does carry with it a certain amount of perks. For example, if you get lost, everybody in town knows where you live, so you never have to worry about directions. Or, if you're shopping for clothes, the whole process is incredibly streamlined because you already know that you're a size XXXL.

But perhaps the biggest perk is that you're a bit of a local celebrity. Case in point: a group of us JETs got invited to do an hour-long show on a local station called Tannan FM. No pitch, no script, no strings attached - incredibly liberating from my days in PR!

The show was good in theory, but a bit tricky to execute, given the language barrier. We got lost on the way to the station, so we arrived just 30 minutes before we were supposed to go live on air. Word of my past radio experience got a bit lost in translation, so I had to explain that no, I didn't know how to run a "mixah" or actually produce a show. But we finally found our way into the DJ booth.

So, what's a gaijin to do when she has an hour of dead air to fill? Bust out the I-Pod! We Lady JETs talked about our home countries, impressions of Japan and culture shock while we spun music from our favorite artists. Our tastes in music - the Beatles, Lily Allen and Mana (que viva Mexico) - proved to be as diverse as our backgrounds - the UK, South Africa and the USA.

The experience actually turned out to be a blast. We're looking at being regulars on Tannan FM - we'll be rotating with a group of guys for the "coveted" slot of Saturday at 3 p.m. So, next time you're in Fukui, please tune in!

Taiko + Suika = Fun Times

2007-09-01T00:23:00.000+09:00

Taiko is traditional Japanese drumming, which is fun all by itself. But tonight, we got to do taiko and eat suika (watermelon). What else could a gal ask for?

A JET neighbor introduced me to taiko - I'll be drumming every other week as part of a class offered in the community. But today was special: it was the annual watermelon festival, held in a neighborhood just south of my apartment, complete with drumming, dancing and - yes - watermelon.

I arrived a bit late, but festival coordinators handed me a festival robe and invited me to jump right in. They'd set up a pair of drums near the neighborhood shrine, and I channeled my days in high school drumline and pounded away. A second festival area featured yukatta-clad locals dancing in a big circle - sort of the Japanese equivalent to line dancing, but much cooler. There were a handful of JETs who decided to participate - the neighborhood kids thought we were quite the spectacle (they were right!).

Taiko was a blast, but perhaps the highlight of the evening was the dinner - no, the feast - we got to enjoy at the taiko sensei's (teacher's) home. Drumming works up quite an appetite, and we got to gorge ourselves at a table full of delicious Japanese goodies waiting for us at their home - sashimi, noodles, shrimp, bamboo and rice. Sensei is over 70, but looks like he's in his 50s, so maybe there's something to all of this healthy Japanese food...

...or maybe it's the Japanese beer.

...or maybe it's all that drumming. I'll let you know!

School Daze

2007-09-01T00:17:00.000+09:00

Friday was my first day of actual work in more than six weeks - my first day on the job at Sakai Junior High School. These idle hands were getting a bit restless, so it was nice to actually earn my paycheck here in Japan. (Yes, I've been getting paid since I landed in Tokyo in July - what a sweet gig!!)

At 8 a.m., I was in the staff room, delivering my introductory speech to all of the Sakai JHS teachers (in Japanese - I was NERVOUS) , and at 9 a.m., I was doing the same dog n' pony to the school's 600 students (only this time, in English, thank god). A student council representative reciprocated with a greeting for me, in English, which was the cutest, kindest thing I've experienced all week, and hundreds of uniform-clad Japanese middle schoolers welcomed me with thunderous applause. I think I'll like it here.

In the afternoon, students prepared for the all-school Sports Festival, which will be held next week. Today's task was to clean the grounds all around the school, but I missed the memo about bringing a change of clothes to do the cleaning. So, I was outside in my business suit, sweating through the jacket as I hauled grass clippings and weeds to a burn pile with a group of 7th graders. Classy as usual.

In other news, I'm going to be helping out with the school's track team. I joined the team practice on Thursday - the school doesn't have a track, per se, so we run through the rice paddies. I went for a 30-minute jog with the girls' long distance crew and learned some useful Japanese in the process (ikimasho, or "let's go" and gambatte for "try your best").

I also learned that apparently I have a small face.

When they weren't staring at my long, pasty-white, mosquito-bitten (see: Ono Camping Trip) legs or commenting on the sweat pouring through my shirt, the students kept telling me I had a small face. They'd giggle, stare, and then tell me again. I'm not quite sure how to take it, but for now, I'll consider it a complement!

Kanazawa, Baby!

2007-08-29T22:31:00.000+09:00

My little Suzuki Alto made a journey out of Fukui and into Ishikawa prefecture today - and all of the car's passengers (and the car itself) happily lived to tell the tale. Destination: Kanazawa City, a bustling metropolis of 458,000 which provided me which a much-needed urban fix. I've been in the rice paddies too long!

The Alto braved the Hokuriku Expressway, where it topped out at 100 kph (a whopping 60 mph). I cried inside as little old ladies in Japanese Buicks scowled as they flew past me. I cried out loud when we learned our round-trip toll fare would be 3,000 yen ($30). Ouch.

Once in the city, our first stop was Kanazawa-jo. The castle was lovely, but the highlight was a fellow JET's find of a severed statue head in a pile of rocks. Nice work, John!

Next stop was the Ninja-dera, a temple blessed with trick staircases, hidden rooms, ritual suicide chambers and a bit of a checkered past. Samurais used to hang out there, ostensibly "on call" to protect royalty in the temple and at the nearby castle. We, of course, weren't allowed to take pictures of all of this secrecy, so you'll have to visit to see for yourselves!

We visited Kenrokuen Garden, designated as one of the top three gardens in the country. I felt like I'd walked inside a calendar photo - everywhere I turned, well-manicured beauty abounded. We paused to get pictures at a lakeside vista and then headed for dinner at....

....FRESHNESS BURGER.

What excursion to a large Japanese city would be complete without this piece of Americana? Complete with English-language menus and Heinz 57 ketchup, Freshness Burger served up a mean meat patty. I stuck to my veggie-lovin' ways and had a salad and shake, but may have to come back to feed an onion ring craving in the very near future.

Kanazawa, we heart you.

Conveyor Belt Sushi: Why I Love Japan

2007-08-26T23:56:00.000+09:00

'Twas a weekend of festivals and camping trips (read on for details on these adventures). But perhaps the most profound of my cultural experiences over the last few days involved eating sushi off a conveyor belt.

It was deeeee-lish (or "oishii" here in Japan). Until you've tried conveyor belt sushi, you haven't lived. Starving when you walk in? Just plop down, pull some fish off the belt, and dig in. Not finding what you like on the belt? Simply pop your order into the table-top computer, and your wish is the kitchen's command. There's free tea, ginger and a little soy sauce dispenser at every table.

And the best part? Everything at this restaurant was 100 yen (about $1). That means I ate nine plates - yes, NINE plates - of delicious raw fish and spent less than 10 bucks.

Special thanks go to my dining companions, all veteran JETs, for humoring my in-restaurant photo safari. I appreciate their indulging my "newbie" status and not laughing too hard as my flash photography caused Japanese patrons at neighboring tables to stare at us. Their next 100-yen plate of sushi is on me!

Happiness, Love & World Peace

2007-08-26T23:54:00.000+09:00

The Japanese love their fireworks. In the good ol' USA, we get 'em just once a year at the Fourth of July. But during my month in Japan, I've been to no less than three spectacular fireworks shows.

But this fireworks show was different, even by Japanese standards. It was held in the town of Eihei-ji, home to the Eihei-ji temple, one of the "most influential" centers of Zen Buddhism in the world. As our crew arrived at the festival grounds, we were greeted by the low murmur of these Zen Buddhist monks chanting and bells ringing. Dozens of robed monks marched in a procession on the stage.

For a mere 1000 yen (10 bucks), families could purchase paper lanterns, blessed by the monks, write blessings for ancestors on the lanterns, and then release them into a river that flows through town. Hundreds of glittering lanterns floated by us as Eihei-ji hosted an impressive fireworks show on the banks on the other side.

A couple of JETs purchased a lantern and wrote their wishes for the world: happiness, good health, love and, of course, WORLD PEACE!

Ono: Oh Yes!

2007-08-26T23:39:00.000+09:00

Saturday night marked the annual Fukui JET camping trip, where I shared a forest clearing with a couple dozen fellow senseis right outside of Ono City. We enjoyed swimming in ice-cold mountain water and all of the "many natures" that Fukui-ken has to offer.

The setting was idyllic: after a campfire and s'mores, I was lulled to sleep by the chirping of crickets, the babble of the river, and, oh yes, the screams of drunken JETs jumping naked off the cliffs into the water. Nice.

And these are the people charged with "internationalizing" Japanese youth. God help the children of Fukui-ken!

Gomi Stress: I'm a Victim

2007-08-22T10:27:00.000+09:00

Japan is a small island with a lot of people, and, thus, a lot of garbage. This phenomenon causes a lot of "Gomi Stress" (Garbage Stress) among the Japanese. But they're serious about recycling - so much so, that upon arriving at my apartment, I was greeted with a huge, four-color, two-sided poster describing how to sort my various papers, plastics, glass, and metals into color-coded recycling bags. The problem was that the poster was all in Japanese. And I'd already missed one of the only two designated recycling days for the month.

So, for the last three weeks, the front foyer of my apartment has been covered in trash - er, recyclables - as I've waited for today: Recycling Day!!

I set my alarm early - 7 a.m. - loaded my car with the six bags of recyclables I'd carefully sorted, and headed out to the designated recycling spot for our neighborhood. Pleased that I'd arrived on time (I thought I'd done something right for once), I was disappointed when I began to received strange looks as I pulled the brightly-colored bags out of my car: turns out the bags I used were out-of-date. The color scheme had changed. I'd need to re-sort.

So, at 7:15 a.m., in front of my entire neighborhood, I dug through six bags of my own trash to re-sort it according to the new guidelines. Just in case I didn't stick out enough already...

But I still didn't have the correct bag for plastics. I used blue (stupid gaijin!) and needed green.

I didn't have a green bag. And it was 7:47. Recycling closed at 8 a.m.

A kind recycling staffer explained to me that I could buy bags at the convenience store a few blocks away. But time was running out, she said. I'd have to come back in two weeks. I cringed at the thought of my foyer being covered with plastic bottles for another 14 days. So I hopped in my car, sped off to the combini (I'm getting good at driving on the left), played charades with the store clerks to get what I needed, and sped back to the recycling post.

The staff literally cheered as I pulled in. I victoriously pulled the new green bags out of my car. It was 7:59 a.m.

On a side note, actually throwing something away - not recycling - is even more of a process. Trash Day comes twice a week. I pull all of my trash into yellow bags and literally write my name and address on it before I can throw it away. If I've tried to toss something away that I shouldn't, my concerned neighbors will leave the bag on my front step. Now that's Gomi Stress!

Sunrise in the Land of the Rising Sun

2007-08-19T22:17:00.001+09:00

I was among the first people in the world to welcome Saturday, August 18, 2007.

Yesterday, I spent 12 hours - from 10 p.m. on Friday to 10 a.m. on Saturday - on Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan (the summit is 3776 meters above sea level). The Japanese have a saying about Mt. Fuji: "You're a fool if you don't climb it once, but you're a fool if you climb it more than once." I agree: it took us just under 7 hours to scale to the top!

Along the way, we experienced temperature extremes (I started the climb in shorts and a t-shirt and finished with lined pants and a sweatshirt), saw stars in a clouless sky (because we were above the clouds!), and enjoyed some of the most amazing udon soup I've ever tasted (at 3360 meters above sea level at 4 a.m.).

The trail was at times easy (it felt like an average hike through the woods) and at times treacherous (it required me to hold my flashlight in my mouth as used both hands to climb vertically on volcanic rock), but the view from the top made the long journey worthwhile. Pictures can't do justice to a sunrise above the clouds, but I've shared them here.

I carried a walking stick with me through the entire trek - mountain staffers stamped milestone brands into the stick at each rest station along the way, and a Buddhist priest blessed it with a "top of the mountain" brand when I reached the summit.

It took us another 5 hours to get back down the mountain, and it will take perhaps another 5 days to recover from the climb (my legs are soooore), but here's hoping the memories will last a lifetime!

Domo Arigato, Mr. Nagata

2007-08-19T22:11:00.001+09:00

Meet Mr. Nagata, leader of the Harue Community Center English conversation class and my new 75-year-old Japanese friend. Mr. Nagata took me under his wing earlier this week, giving me a guided tour of Harue (a small community next door to Maruoka), inviting me to his home to meet his wife, daughter, and grandchildren, and then treating me to lunch at a local Italian restaurant (great food - pasta with a Japanese touch!). Mr. Nagata is a tennis pro - he plays at least 4 times a week - and is quite possibly in better shape than I am. He also survived WWII and has some incredible stories to tell. I'll look forward to conversing with him in English in hopes that he'll reciproate with lessons on Japanese culture and perhaps life in general...

There's More Than Rice in Fukui!

2007-08-19T21:46:00.000+09:00

As the saying goes, there's more than corn in Indiana. And, there's more than rice in Fukui. Some "veteran" Fukui JETs took us newbies on an lovely tour of our fair prefecture, and I have photos to entice y'all to visit (I even wore my skull n' crossbones t-shirt for all the photo opps)!

Our first stop was Maruoka Castle, which is actually just a few blocks from my apartment. Who can say they live down the street from a castle?!? Built in 1576, it is the oldest standing castle in Japan, pretty impressive considering that means it survived all of the bombing and earthquakes than have hit this area.

We then headed west to the mountains, home of Fukui's finest ski slopes (that's where you'll find me this winter) and the Dai Butsu, the biggest Buddha in Japan. It's, well, slightly newer than the castle - it was actually built in 1987 after a wealthy Japanese businessman died and left his entire fortune to complete the construction. But what it lacks in antiquity (the pagoda has an elevator), it makes up for in impressiveness.

(Is "impressiveness" a word? My English is suffering...)

Fireworks, Cliffs, and Ghosts - Oh My!

2007-08-14T15:02:00.000+09:00

I spent Saturday in the lovely village of Mikuni, one of the four small towns that make up the bustling metropolis that is Sakai City. Mikuni is a charming place. It's situated right on the Sea of Japan, has a cute little beach, and is home to an annual fireworks festival, billed as one of the biggest in the region.

And it's haunted. But more on that later.

We started the day at the Cliffs of Tojimbo, Japan's equivalent to Ireland's Cliffs of Moor. These jagged peaks stretch out into the Sea of Japan and are quite picturesque. Our group scaled down the cliffs and stuck our feet into the sea - it was a nice break from Japan's humid August weather.

We then ventured out to Oshima, an island located just a few miles away from the cliffs. The island is home to a Shinto shrine, a cool pine forest, and great views of the sea.

But while it's pretty during the day, this area has a somewhat ominous feel at night. Sadly, the cliffs are a popular place to commit suicide - and many people that choose to jump are young students who have failed their college entrance exams. A strange tide causes bodies to wash up on Oshima's shores. Some say that the shrine pulls the bodies towards it. There have been reports of ghosts walking the island at night.

Pushing the ghost stories out of our head, we trekked back up to the beach and settled in for the fireworks show - a full 90 minutes of some of the most amazing fireworks I've ever seen. A team of tugboats crisscrossed Mikuni's harbor, dropping fireworks directly in the water. Moments later, the fireworks would explode right up from the sea. You didn't just see the show, you felt it!

After enjoying the fireworks (and a few beers), we decided it was time to go on a ghosthunt. Armed with the light from our cell phones, we headed back to the island, and stumbled back around the trail to the shrine.

We waited. We took pictures. No ghosts.

We continued along the path to the back of the island, where a clearing in the forest allowed room for a lighthouse - and opportunities for killer stargazing.

We waited. We took pictures. No ghosts.

So my Tojimbo adventure resulted in a dead cell phone, several hundred new bug bites, and a mild hangover the next morning. No ghosts, but a great story to tell!

One time, at English Summer Camp....

2007-08-14T14:37:00.000+09:00

August in Japan is vacation time - students get a brief, three-week break from Japan's infamous year-round school system. So, how do many youngsters choose to spend their time away from school? They study! I had the pleasure of working at a two English Summer Camps for Jr. High students last week, and got my first taste of what teaching in Japanese schools would entail.

I started my Adventures in English with a two-day, overnight camp in Fukui City. We slept in a nature center in the mountains, on futons rolled out on tatami mats. Chasing around dozens of junior high students would drain anyone, but coupling that with speaking in broken English while writing and rehearsing skits, playing charades, and singing songs around the campfire really wiped me out. I'm getting old!

But it was the day-long camp in Sakai City later that week that made me realize that I had a lot to learn about life in Japan. Teachers were asked to bring their lunch to the camp, so I stopped by a conbini (convenience store) and bought a package of pre-cooked noodles. When lunch time came, I sat down with a group of students, opened the noodles, and proceeded to, in true American fashion, douse them with the package of sauce included in the box. My students stopped eating and stared. The conversation went something like this:

Me: What!?! Is this sauce bad?
Them: Dead silence.
Me: Can I eat this?
Them: Dead silence. (One student runs to get her English-Japanese dictionary and shows me the Japanese word for "itchy.")
Me: Laughing so hard I cry.
Them: Laughing so hard they cry.
Me: Am I going to die?
Them: Nodding their heads "yes." Then laughter.

Turns out I had doused my noodles in a sort of oatmeal sauce used to minimize the effects of wasabi. If your lips starting burning from the wasabi, you were supposed to rub some of the oatmeal on them - not pour it directly on the noodles.

With my noodles ruined, I proceeded to pull an apple out of my bag. Again, being the unmannered American that I am, I bit into the apple, juice running down my face. Again, my students stop eating and stared.

Me: What? Am I not supposed to eat this either?
Them: In Japan....cut!!!

So, for those of you planning to visit Japan, please remember to first peel, and then cut your apples. It's the Japanese way.

I made a complete a$$ out of myself in front of six 13-year-olds. But I got them to speak English in the process. All in all, not a bad day's work!

Phoenix Festival Pictures

2007-08-13T16:22:00.000+09:00

Fukui is a resilient little city - the Allies bombed it to bits during WWII, and then it was leveled again a few years later by an earthquake. So, it's only fitting that the city's symbol is the Phoenix - it has proven its ability to rise from the ashes. Fukui greeted me with the Phoenix Festival, held during my first weekend in town. Groups of young and old perform impossibly complicated dances as part of a competition - and wear matching outfits. It was a photography heaven - I put my new camera to use and shot more than 100 pictures. Enjoy!

Fukui: Home Sweet Home

2007-08-13T15:37:00.000+09:00

My new home, Mauroka Town, part of Sakai City in Fukui prefecture, is a nine hour bus ride from Tokyo. Our bus pulled away from the neon lights and bustling streets of Tokyo, and chugged through the rice paddies, pine forests, and mountains of Fukui prefecture. The further we drove from Tokyo, the more nervous I got: where, exactly, was I going to spend the next year?!?

The answer? I live in the Mahomet of Japan! More precisely, I live on the ground floor of a two-story apartment complex. My apartment is half "Japanese" style, meaning I sit on tatami mats and sleep on a futon on the floor, but the kitchen and bathroom have all "western" amenities - thank God, as Japanese-style squat toilets are not easy for this American to adapt to!

I'm also the proud owner of a 1998 Suzuki Alto - a surprisingly quick little car that's much more reliable than Chicago's CTA! I had to go pick up the car in Tsuruga, a port town about two hours south of Maruoka, and drive it home through the mountains back home. Nothing like jumping in feet first with driving on the left!

So my apartment and car are quite modern, but the washing machine is another story. The dinosaur sits out on my front stoop, in all its olive green, mosquito-covered glory, and washing, like, a pair of pants, takes a full hour. I put put in the water with a hose, change the clothes for the spin cycle, and then hang them on a line to dry - no dryers in sight! So much for hi-tech Japan!

The view from my apartment? Rice paddies and mountains. Japanese inaka (countryside) at its finest. But, just a few kilometers from my house lies the urban mecca that is Fukui City - Starbucks, pachinko parlors, and all the karaoke a girl could ask for. I'll be okay here after all...

Lost in...Tokyo

2007-08-13T14:42:00.000+09:00

Tokyo: Days filled with JET orientations sessions, nights filled with attempts to navigate the city with broken Japanese and a poorly translated subway map. I braved the streets of Tokyo's Harajuku and Shinjuku districts with fellow JETs, resulting in three days of "Lost in Translation"-esque moments.

Sunday: We arrived, jetlagged, after a 14-hour flight and 3-hour bus ride, to our five-star hotel in Tokyo's Shinjuku district. While the thought of crawling into bed was tempting, the lure of the streets of Tokyo was stronger. I ventured out for dinner with fellow JETs, thanked God for a menu with pictures, and quickly mastered the "point-and-smile" ordering technique. Ironically, my first meal in Japan was much like the culinary delights I'd experienced throughout my college days: ramen noodles!

Monday: After a grueling day of JET orientation meetings, I convinced two fellow JETs that a trek to Harajuku would be easy - just two stops on the subway. However, actually purchasing subway tickets and navigating the sea of people, train lines and vendors at Shinjuku station was a quite a different story. We got lost at the station, lost on our way to Harajuku (we arrived just in time for shops to close and the rain to begin), and lost on our way back to the hotel. All in all, a fun evening!

Tuesday: More meetings, more getting lost on the streets of Tokyo. Orientation leaders organized a Fukui-bound JET dinner at The Lock Up, a creepy jail/funeral themed restaurant. A giant group of gaijin (foreigners) headed out from the hotel, with another Chicago JET and me bringing up the rear. We started chatting, looked up, and realized that we'd lost the rest of the group. After 45 minutes of wandering the streets, creating a sign that said "LOCK UP???" and asking random Japanese on the street for directions (we had to ask for "ROCK UP," accounting for the lack of "Ls" in Japanese), we found our way.

The all-you-can-drink ticket helped alleviate the stress of getting lost, and we rolled right into a 4-hour karaoke session. We got back to our hotel at 3 a.m., refreshed and ready to catch our 8 a.m. bus to Fukui City (a mere 9 hours away). Yokoso (welcome)!!

Where's the Hook Up?

2007-08-13T14:13:00.000+09:00

Dear Friends and Family,

Now that I'm a resident of hi-tech Japan, you'd think that getting an internet hook-up at home would be a piece of cake. Not so - it takes lots of patience and native-like proficiency in Japanese.

Unfortunately, I have neither.

So, thank God for globalization - I'm at my local Seattle's Best coffee shop, sipping green tea-flavored lattes as I scam their free wi-fi connection. My apologies for the delay in getting you all an update - read on for news on my (mis) adventures in this fantastic country. I don't officially start teaching until Aug. 31, so you'll see that I've been doing a lot of "playing" these past two weeks. Hope to be able to update it more regularly moving forward, so please check back!!

Miss you all!!