Nachos & Wild Boar

I wonder if this is how it always works. Right when things start to get going, you end up leaving. I'm finally hanging out more with my teachers... right as I leave! Why couldn't this have happened sooner?! Also this year's first year JETs are pretty awesome (as are the friends I've made in my year); why am I leaving when they're just coming? Yar.

note: not drawn to scale (probably)

Monday night though, one of the teachers came over to my place for a little culinary cultural exchange. She brought me inoshishi, or wild boar, which is something of a local specialty? Or if not a local specialty, it's really common around this area because there are hoards (herds?) of wild boar that live in the mountains. I'm told by some of the other ALTs who drive in this area that seeing them (dead) on the road is a fairly common enough sight. I've yet to actually see one in real life (though it's probably for the better, since I've heard they're fairly dangerous - see picture hahaha). 

still probably not to scale, but who knows.

Really though, I've heard their tusks can do some pretty serious damage. That's actually one of the things they hunt up in the mountains, so whenever I hear gunshots, I generally assume that they're trying to shoot a wild boar (rather than a monkey or something.) I've also heard that they're kind of pests out in the countryside (which is where I am). They get into gardens and crops, rice fields, and other places humans don't want them (mostly everywhere - poor boars). If you need an example of how dangerous they can be, I suggest watching Princess Mononoke. Those boars can do some serious damage. Plus it's the boars who decide to retaliate, and the boars who are demon-posessed and yeaaaaah. Yeah. 

Lookit how freaking cute the baby ones are!
Oh. Em. Gee.

So they get hunted, and in Niimi, my Tuesday/Friday city, they're something of a local specialty (also apparently among the locals here too? For my teacher anyways.) I had wild boar ramen from an instant box package, but never like... fresh? When I told this to my teacher, she decided to take it upon herself to show me; we decided that she would come over and cook some wild boar for me, since apparently she has some from somewhere and it was pretty cheap, whereas going to a restaurant would probably be on the pricey side. It also meant that I got to try a more home cooked version of the wild boar, since apparently my teacher eats it frequently enough with her parents for her mother to not like the taste of it! 

I have no idea where my teacher ever got it though! I've never seen this in the grocery store (maybe I'm not looking hard enough). Or the butcher's. Maybe from a farmer who had to kill one? I'm not really sure. But she came with some pre-seasoned (and with onions) so we cooked some of that up so I could have *fresh* inoshishi. 

It actually wasn't bad. I can't describe the flavor beyond "well, it doesn't taste like beef or pork... but it tastes like... meat." It was kinda chewy though. She said that some people think it's smelly? I could get used to eating that though. It really wasn't bad, and worked pretty well over rice.

In exchange, I made "American"-ish food for her. I made nachos! They're kinda Mexican-American, yeah? Or Tex Mex. Personally, they were kinda crappy nachos since I had to use the cheesy kind of Doritos (I'm a tortilla chip purist hahaha) and the meh kind of Japanese cheese that goes from deliciously gooey cheese to solid plastic cheese in about one minute away from a heat source, microwaved it instead of baking it in the oven (oven gives it that amazing color, but I only have a tiny toaster oven and I never make "only a little bit" of nachos) and Japanese sour cream (which I suppose is better than NO sour cream) that's also kind of... solid. I did make guacamole for her (she said I was the first person she knew whom actually bought avocados at the grocery store) and added some left over jalapenos and hot sauce I needed to get rid of. The guacamole, honestly, on its own is pretty good, and apparently enough to convince people that I'm good at cooking (ahahaha. Though to be fair to myself, a Mexican-American chick gave it the green light, which, somehow validates it as being pretty damn tasty).

Score another win for (home made) nachos in Japan. 

We also talked about the state of marriage currently in Japan, and about how single ladies will often try to emphasize the fact that Oh Man, Do They Love Cooking when trying to net a man. She actually told me that while she does enjoy cooking, she generally avoids mentioning it so that it doesn't look like she's trying to find a man! I found this fascinating. Also, apparently, guys here look for that in a girl; how well she can cook, and whether or not she likes to. The uh, gossip around one of my schools is that one of the teachers does precisely that to try and appeal to men. She also said that they often look at the kind of bentos single ladies bring to school or company or whatever, since a homemade bento (versus a storebought one) indicates one's skill in the culinary domain. Cute bentos = likes cooking. Oh Japan. Personally, I think cute bentos = loads of time on your hands. 

My teacher explained though, that this was part of konkatsu, which means Stuff You Do When You're Looking For a Man/Marriage Partner. So you do things like make your lunchbox every day - yourself - to show the world that Yes You Do Love Cooking because Wow Doesn't That Make Me Look Like Perfect Wife Material. My teacher also claims that she can tell when a girl makes a bento, and when her mother makes the bento. Japanese women also will go to dating events/speed dating setups, or will go to parties in hopes that they will meet Mr. Stable Job And Marriage Prospect. They try to act cuter around guys (since apparently, guys dig that kind of thing here or something). There are dating websites.

Interestingly as well, they also have dating services that will help match people up, a lot like those websites, except with a lot more help. She said you submit your profile and they help match you with someone else. Then, they help you arrange for the first date, and chaperone the two of you for about half an hour before leaving you on your own. Apparently some people she knows met like that? 

Given the context of what women do in Japanese society (don't ask, I'm not sure) and the kinds of roles they fill and the opportunities they have to meet people, I guess this kind of service makes some sense. 

Something else she told me that was pretty interesting, is that here in the countryside at least, men who work at schools are way more attractive (though I'm not sure how much of that was projecting...) because they have stable jobs and can take a little more vacation than your average salary men. On the flip side though... women who are teachers are considered to be too clever and smart, leaving many female teachers as single ladies.

On a different, more food related note, I also managed to make chili in my rice cooker, since I lack a proper slow cooker. Who would have thought! I mean, I've made stuff like meat before in my rice cooker, and I made a stew with it before, but oh man, the chili actually turned out pretty good, and didn't require too many extra things that I didn't have. Actually, I had a bunch of chili powder I had brought with me back from the US, along with some uhhhh I forget the name, something- arbol de molido that basically was like holycow spicy. Really freakin' tasty though. So tasty that I can't believe I didn't make it sooner. Once you get the prepwork out of the way as well, it's a pretty easy recipe.

The only downside is that you can't use your rice cooker while you're cooking the chili, making things like prepping rice for chili and rice, something of a problem. I almost considered buying two, hahaha. #asianworldproblems

Runny eggs, my nemesis

Sunny side ups.

Bane of my culinary existence.

I made breakfast potatoes for dinner; I had a lot of potatoes I needed to get rid of, and I love having breakfast for dinner sometimes. I mean, I love breakfast. The large, lazy Sunday morning type where you have the time (and energy) to chop up potatoes and make some nice eggs and stuff, maybe some bacon to go with.

Eggs, hidden by the potatoes so you can't see the failure.

Japan seems to not really dig these kinds of breakfasts. Most places I go either a) Don't have breakfast or b) Have a "morning set" that comes with toast, a salad, and like, coffee or tea. Maybe some places will have egg salad with that or a sausage or something. But I don't really see eggs and toast for breakfast (otherwise I'd be more inclined to eat out for breakfast!). So it's nice to sometimes make it at home, whether for breakfast or dinner or whatever. Eggs in a basket are my default "oh hm, I need to finish these eggs and/or this bread" go to egg meal.

My default egg-for-breakfast is the scrambled egg, mostly because it's really easy to make, despite creating another dish to clean. Plus they're pretty tasty.

However, I do really like a runny yolk kind of egg, and there's something... happy, about sunny-side ups. They also go quite well with bread.

The problem is I can't make them to save my life. Or anything with a runny yolk for that matter (save the eggs in a basket). Mine always end up too overcooked, or the egg whites aren't cooked enough. I've tried reading about it online and watching videos.

Tonight, I tried to make it by steaming it at first. I don't think I was supposed to add water though. Oops. For some reason, in my head steaming = presence of water. My eggs ended up kind of... soppy and wet. Dripping, even. It was kind of... not so great. Plus the insides were partially cooked, so the bottom part was that pastely kind of yellow that's not so tasty. Sigh. The time I tried to make it before this, the insides ended up thoroughly cooked. Oops.

The second attempt tonight involved trying to baste the egg in oil, or, as the video recommended, butter, nearly browned (oh man, does that smell ridiculously good). It still turned out partially cooked inside though. I think I'm cooking them for too long? It doesn't seem like it's that long... it feels like it's cooking for a minute and then BAM slightly solid insides BAM BAM fully cooked yellow yolk. Ugh.
The basted egg method though... yeah, I was planning on experimenting all tonight with making runny eggs, but after that last one - cooked in butter - my arteries pleaded no more. Right, that's one method I'm not trying again (at least, not with butter. Maybe canola oil or something less fatty).

Tomorrow, I'm actually going to have breakfast! At least, that's the plan.

And if I fail again, there's always breakfast potatoes to make everything better.

Bullying in Japan

It makes me a little sad to say this, but this class of first years is the worst that I've taught so far (out of three different class years).

Don't get me wrong; it varies a lot by school, and at some of my other schools, the first years are a lovely bunch. But as far as kids with Attitude Problems, this year takes the cake. There's always been some students with motivation and attitude issues, especially at the technical schools. Generally (though not always) they're in the non-academic electricity/technology courses, since those are all boy classes (to be fair, boys at my academic school are a little rowdy as well sometimes). And the boys seem to aggravate each other, or one yankee kind of student will influence other students around him to be similarly bad (though this happens with girls too).

Hopefully things will get better though?

As an ALT who works in the countryside though, I've always considered myself lucky because my students have always been really nice, not like some of the horror stories I've heard students from around the cities talk about. No crazy boys punching each other or whatnot.

At least not until yesterday.

It was the first time I saw bullying in full force, beyond the usual taunting and picking on and mocking that will happen occasionally in the classroom. Literally, there were punches thrown and wrestling and forcibly restraining one student from moving and participating in the game we had been playing.

The "My Good Neighbor/Anyone Who/English/Ice-breaker Knock off of Fruits Basket" game can sometimes get a little crazy with students running and diving for seats, but I hadn't expected it to get this out of hand. Some of the students would, when one student stood up, would also stand up and grab the student so he couldn't sit down, and then throw the student away from the seat as they made a dash to grab the empty chair.

It was appalling and shocking. I didn't think the kids were this ballsy to be this mean and obviously violent against another student in the middle of class. In the middle of class. In front of two teachers! But no, they kept on going at it, even after we interrupted a couple times to tell them to play better and despite giving the bullies several warnings. I got so angry that I almost stopped the game in the middle and made them sit in silence and write for the rest of class. But this is Oral Communication class, so there's a part of me that doesn't support doing something they're going to have to just sit and write.

Part of me wanted to just kick him out of class. I wish there were some system like detention here, but to my knowledge, if there is one, it's never utilized. If the bully was doing poorly in school, I think I heard that it's a bit easier to kick him out because it's likely he'll drop out anyways. But this kid... his English grades are actually really good. It might just be that he's simply really bored in class, and taking it out on this kid is his way of alleviating his boredom and is also a kind of performance so that people give him attention. Still though, even if that's the case, it's unacceptable, the kind of things he's been doing in class. It's disruptive and dangerous sometimes. This kid though needed to be disciplined. Badly. It doesn't help either that both me and my team teaching partner are women, since I think men have it a bit easier when it comes to intimidating the rowdy boys into behaving. Those are excuses though.

I just felt so bad for the kid who was being bullied. I talked to my teacher afterwards, and she talked to the class's homeroom teacher to tell him about the appalling behavior of that one kid. His response was that that kid was always like that, and that the kid they were picking on usually got picked on. He's a small guy too. It made me feel even worse, though mostly frustrated because both I and my JTE were unsure about how to proceed from here on out. Both of us were disappointed with how the class with, so much so that we're probably not using that room again in our lessons since it made most of the classes overly relaxed, undisciplined, and quite rowdy (though personally, I think not having a desk and sitting in a circle had something to do with that).

Today though, I was talking to my sister and she suggested that we're just so used to obeying orders that when people - the kids - don't, we get annoyed and want to discipline them with things like "okay you're going to sit and write here for the rest of the class and so help me god I better not hear you say a word." Believe me, I would have loved to either kick the kid out, make the kid sit isolated in the corner of the room (I don't really think he'd listen to me though), give him and the other misbehaving kids a homework assignment where they have to talk about how the other person probably felt and factor that into their grades or something.

If my Japanese skills were better, I would talk to them directly. In my head, I imagine I can speak perfect Japanese and that I give them one helluva dressing down and somehow manage to intimidate them into not bullying this kid any more. Or to somehow make it so they could experience the same treatment they were giving this kid. ...I'm allowed to dream, right? I suppose though, I should dream instead that they realize that hey, they're being mean idiots and they apologize to the poor boy and become good behaved students.

...yeaaah, one helluva dream.

Afterwards, my teacher told me that the bullied student, while he had been thrown on the ground, wrestled, held back, probably punched, and teased during class, had a strong heart so he was okay. But I'm worried that it's not, that he's just putting up a facade. Even people with strong hearts break sometimes though. Some people pretend to have strong hearts around others but don't actually. I'm scared that they'll bully him so much that he will join the ranks of students who become a tragedy and a statistic, another suicide. I don't want that to happen, especially since he always seems so cheerful. Like really, he's a sweet kid. I wish there was something I could do to help him, but short of speaking to the homeroom teachers and designing classroom activities with this in mind (guess who doesn't get to do games anymore) I can't really think of too many ways to work within this system I'm an outsider in, especially when I can't fluently speak the language.

We're taught to mock people who are hikikkomori - shut-ins - because they stay at home all the time; we presume they are wasting their lives away playing video games and that they simply do not want to be social. I heard somewhere (I forget where exactly, perhaps a friend, perhaps a news article) that bullying actually plays a sizable role in the reason why some kids become shut-ins. They don't want to go to school any more. I don't really blame them too, if I was going to get picked on, shoved, punched, tackled, and mocked every day. It's put a new perspective on this hikikkomori thing that's come from Japan; it's a lot more complicated than it seems.

Japanese TV foods

One thing I'm really curious about about Japanese food culture, is when they shoot the food kind of glamour shots. In the states, there have been documentaries about how often the food is doctored, or has makeup artists or how they use glue to make sure the pizza doesn't slide when you cut it. But Japanese shows often go to the restaurants themselves and they'll show how the food is made and then they'll show a shot of the food being picked up with chopsticks, then people consuming it. To me, that seems harder to fake, but then again, I never imagine they would use nail polish to make food look brighter and tastier!

Plus there's this idea, I think, that Japanese food is kind of "pure" in that sense - that what you see should reflect how the food really is. I don't know if Japanese people think the same way, but I do know that McDonald's burgers more closely resemble their ads here in Japan!

This TV show about food... they have this plant that looks like giant brussels sprouts hahaha. I wonder if these shows are like Good Eats (since they're showing where all the food comes from, giving a kind of cultural context for the food, then showing you how to prepare it complete with recipes, commentary, and guests). Ahhh they're showing this beautifully marbled steak rice bowl! It looks so. Tasty. But like I was saying before, they show you a shot of the top sizzling as it's cooking (I suppose you could maybe use a blow torch for that) but they showed a shot of the dish and then someone picked it up and ate it so...

Maybe it has to do with the Japanese aesthetic for beautiful food in the first place? I don't know, but I want to find out!

They're also showing someone's travel diary... It looks amazing! They drew pictures of all the dishes they ate with commentary and I'm so jealous of their drawing skills hahah...

Eeny Meeny Miney Moe~

Catch a tiger by his toe
If he hollers let him go
Eenie meeny miney moe~

What do we even call these things? Counting rhymes? Today in English club we had a fun kind of cultural exchange. The students were talking about counting/deciding rhymes from their hometowns - more on that in a bit - and they asked the other teacher if she knew any, which allowed me to ask them what the heck they were talking about (I thought they were talking about tongue twisters or something). Then they explained what it was and I was like "aaahhhhhhhhhhhh got it" which led to them asking me, which in turn led to me teaching them (and I'll admit, a small bit of showing off how fast I could say the rhyme) how to say the first half of the rhyme.

It was actually a lot of fun! I suppose that's what English club is really about - having fun using English.

I learned something too though. According to my students, each of the areas (generally separated by junior high school) had a different rhyme. Or well, the first half is the same, but the second half is different. I was super surprised! I mean, most of the people in the states I know use some variation of Eenie Meeny miney moe (most commonly the one above, followed by "my mother said to pick the very best one and it is not you" though I know there are more variations on that) but I've never quite heard of it so separated by region like what I heard from my students today!

It really makes me wonder why that happened. Perhaps it had to do with how originally, each of these small junior high school areas were a different village and different region, and how they wanted to differentiate themselves from each other. Why this manifested itself as a counting rhyme... I'm not sure, but Japan sure does like to differentiate each of its regions from each other, what with regional specialties, regional food, regional souveniers and so on. I suppose the US does that a little bit... with the food at least, but I feel like it's not to the same extent as here in Japan.

I mean, I'm from Concord and Berkeley. I have no idea what food we'd be famous for. Berkeley is famous for... I guess Vegan food? Or ethnic food? But that's not quite the same as how Takahashi's food is Yubeshi (and more recently tomato yakisoba or something), or even how Osaka is known for deepfrying stuff on sticks (among other things). I think Walnut Creek was probably famous for Walnuts. Gilroy does garlic. But seriously, that's it. Am I not paying attention or something back at home because I'm used to being there? The students here seem to know their foods though, even if they're from the countryside.

Anyways though, counting rhymes and tongue twisters and English club. We have five new members! ONE OF THEM IS A BOY. HOOORAY. One boy, fourteen or fifteen girls. Yikes. But I'm so happy we have so many members now! When I first got here there were like... not many. Maybe six or something. I forget. It was small though.

Granted, some of the girls in English club... I wonder why they're there, other than because they want to have parties all the time. It was like pulling teeth to get some of them to speak English! I mean, not even hard English. We asked them just to say one thing that they like - and these are third years, so I know they know how to say chocolate and candy. But they didn't want to! Me and the other teacher were like "... this is English club.... ne? NE? NE?!?!?!?!"

Sigh.

That's only some girls though. Others are a little less resistant to it, and some of them even want to speak it more! :) Yay! I've been trying to focus on doing cultural things though, and now that my Japanese is a bit better, it's not so bad. Before though, when I had no idea what they were saying, English club was suuuuuuuper boring because the girls would just chatter away in Japanese.

I'm trying to remember what our high schools do in Japanese club, other than watching anime. I don't think Northgate had a Japanese club. We had an anime club.... but yeah, we watched anime in that. Plus I don't want this to just turn into a movie watching club, though sometimes, certainly, it's fiiiiine.
Actually, my mom gave me this Easter themed movie she thought I could show my students, which was sweet. The movie didn't have Japanese subtitles though... so unfortunately, over half of the students would be completely lost. I thought about showing it to them anyways... but personally, having watched animes and dramas and movies without the subtitles and only a mediocre understanding level, things are kinda like... eh. Not as enjoyable, since you're constantly like, "wtf is going on."

Maybe some day though. Maybe. : )

Wedding Ceremony 結婚式

Today I had the honor of attending one of my college friend's weddings. She was getting married to one of my friends from high school, which is still kind of weird for me. The wedding was beautiful (and felt kinda short, actually, but you won't hear ME complaining about that), the bride gorgeous, the groom handsome. They're really cute together.

It reminded me of a post I had been meaning to write, about marriages. I've spoken to my JTEs several times about this, actually. Or well, one JTE in particular. This year, he sits two seats down from me in the first year section of the staff room at my base school, so it's easier to talk to him (last year, he sat in the third year section, which is pretty much on the opposite side of the room). We talk about a lot of different things, like alcohol, students, English/Japanese grammar, and cultural differences. Since he recently got married, he was telling me also a little bit about how Japanese weddings work, which, as it turns out, is a little different from the workings of an American or Chinese wedding.

Firstly, you don't give gifts. There's no gift registry, no wrapping stuff, no buying things for the new couple. You give them cash instead. And not just like one hundred dollars or however much you would have bought a gift for them for. Oh no. My teacher was telling me you give them a few hundred dollars plus, at least, depending on how close you are. I think gifts can also be average of like, 500 or 600 dollars or something high like that. Japanese weddings, to my understanding, also don't balloon up to epic attendances, as some weddings with large families have the tendency to do (I'm pretty sure mine will be one of them, if I ever have one).

Part of the reason, I think, is due to the fact that the bride and groom usually are the ones to foot the bill for everything - and I mean EVERYTHING. Not just the reception and ceremony and food and stuff, but also the cost of flying/train-ing/transporting their guests out as well as their lodgings. CRAZY. The huge gift makes a little bit more sense.

Also, the dresses. Women usually buy a wedding dress for the ceremony, as well as a different dress for the reception. And not any cheapo dress. Oh no. It's of the same caliber as the wedding dress, from what I heard. Or sometimes they'll do the ceremony in Japanese style, with the kimono and everything, and then have a western style dress for the reception or something. Either way. They're spending loads of money on a dress they will wear once, at most twice. Perhaps it's because they don't have prom to do that on. Who knows.

I'm glad I won't be socially obligated to do that. My extended family on my mom's side alone is around 50-60 people, since that's how many people we cram into our house/will be crammed into our house the day after christmas. I told my students this and they were all like "NO FREAKING WAY" and "YOUR HOUSE IS HUGE" My dad's side also has a lot of people. And that's not even counting friends.

Thankfully, that's not something I'll need to worry about for a long time.

*

Woah, random, but I hear someone snoring through the wall. I'm not sure who it is, but wow. Wow. It's either my brother, my grandpa, or (unlikely) my grandma.

Also, I think I might die a little when I go back to okayama and it's FREEZING COLD. Being at home is making me spoiled. It was 60 degrees today, and sunny. I was able to wear just a shirt as long as I wasn't sitting in one place for a long time. Woaaaaaah.

I've missed California weather. :D

christmastime

I'm still having a hard time believing that I'm in Osaka and am flying out of Japan back to home for a bit (and Christmas) before spending new years with my friend Maxine in the Philippines. It just feels so... surreal. I've finally gotten excited about going back (for the longest time, I wasn't. I'm still kind of like, aww, I miss Takahashi.). And what am I excited for?

Driers.

Man, I feel old saying that.

You know what else I'm excited for?

Elevators everywhere. Now I really feel old. But seriously, two of the five stations I was at today had no escalator or elevator, meaning I had to haul my suitcase up and down a flight of stairs. While I try to go by the golden rule of "don't pack what you can't carry" it's still a giant pain in the rear.

*

I'm actually kind of sad I don't have more time at my schools. Today we were doing christmas lessons in all but one class (we watched Marmaduke in that class instead, which actually wasn't too bad). I wore reindeer ears! They're little clip ons I bought from the dollar store, and they're friggin' adorable. Oh man.

Today was also a little stressful due to the ridiculous procrastination ability I have; I was still packing this morning and afternoon. Plus during 7th period, I went with my JTE to go buy stuff for English club, which was actually happening at my house. I suppose it's good, because my living room was pretty clean for that and was left in an even cleaner state.

Japanese people cleaning = no joke. My students... woahhhh. I mean, my version of clean was like, make sure the dead bug gets swept up, make sure there are no horrible stains or huge crumbs lying around, pick up the house, make sure you can see the majority of the table...

My kids managed to outclass me. Sigh. They came in and the first years, bless their sweet hearts, had nothing to do so they asked where the broom was and they started to sweep around my table and stuff. Every parent's dream - getting your kids to do their own cleaning. I suppose that's what you get when your culture has institutionalized cleaning in education, and doesn't actually have janitors to clean up after you at school. And then they wiped down my table. I felt kinda ashamed. My mother would probably kill me.

But I had thought it was clean with it you know... being picked up and all. Sigh.

Despite the huge amount of stress it added, I'm glad we had English club at my house. I made frosting from powdered sugar (thanks Jessi for the tip!), milk, and vanilla. It turned out pretty good! We used the frosting with graham crackers and the students went about making a gingerbread house with the zillion different candies I had bought for them. It was a lot of fun! I think (I hope) they enjoyed themselves. Sadly, there was no time to eat them, so they put the gingerbread house in the International Room (where I hope many people see it and go, "oh wow, English club is AWESOME I want to join!"

Hopefully they'll eat it soon though. Dunno how long that stuff lasts.

*

Speaking of clubs - I absolutely love my cooking club members. Yesterday I was helping a student out with speech contest practice (pronunciations, stresses, etc) and it took much longer than I expected, cutting in to my club activity time. I don't mind though, because I like doing these kinds of things. I mean, it's essentially what we were paid to come over here to do, so usually I'm more than happy to help students out with that.

But alas, by the time we finished, it was already like... 5:30, so they had finished making their food. As we walked by, the students saw me, flagged me down, and told me that they had left mine on my desk. What sweet girls! I got to my desk in the staff room and indeed, there was a little.

so much love to the students

ONE APP DOWN

New goal for the new year: don't fall asleep under kotatsu as much!

EDIT: this never ended up getting posted for some reason, so I'm backdating this one :)

What time is it?

It's kotatsu time. Winter time. Ugh it's friggin cold time.

Busy time. I'm afraid I won't be able to complete the one entry per day challenge (lord knows I've slipped lots already, but the point was to get around every day... I guess...). But yesterday was a holiday, tomorrow and the day after are English camp, I've had to work on my presentation for mid-year seminar, get my applications done for grad school (one is due in a week... ACK) and on TOP of that, study for the Japanese proficiency test.

Oh, and I've developed a rather bad cough. Coughing kind of hurts right now. I'm half tempted to run down to the grocery store for an actual lemon... but for now, lemon juice will have to suffice. Ugh, I really don't need this right now. I've decided that I can't get sick until I get back from winter holidays in January. Yep.

Can't get sick this weekend, English camp. Then after that, applications are due. Then next weekend is JLPT. Then after that, midyear seminar. Then the week after that, I go home, and hell NO I'm not getting sick while I'm back at home. Then I'm going to the Philippines to visit Maxine (still need to buy the ticket... arg...). Then I come back to Japan. Then it's okay to get sick. But not until then.

I don't care if it's silly. I refuse! THEY CAN'T MAKE ME or well actually I guess they can BUT IMMA FIGHT CHUUUU.

I did have an interesting talk with my teacher today about the hospital. When I told him I was sick, he asked me if I had gone to the hospital yet. I told him, (with surprise) no. He told me that the Japanese people love hospitals. I guess so. I told him that if I went to the clinic or the doctor in the states, they would tell me to get some rest, drink fluids, and then come back in a week or two if I still have a cold or cough.

Hm. It makes me wonder kind of, if the Japanese go the moment they get sick to the hospital for meds...

Though then again, stuff like sudafed and alleve are actually prescribed drugs, so that might explain why. That and we all pay into health care, so might as well use what you pay for, yeah? I wonder if other places with socialized healthcare are that hospital-happy as well, or if they're more hospital-avoidant, which I suspect America is.

Gastronomic Cultural Exchange

Today, my vice principal told me something interesting about Japanese food and Japanese cuisine, which explained a LOT of why it can be frustrating to order food here in Japan.

He explained that when it came to making and cooking Japanese food, a chef makes sure to make a dish that can appeal to all the senses - including a sixth sense which he termed as "inspiration" (his English is really really good). He continued on to say that it was important to make things that taste good, smell good, feel good, look good, (and sound good?) but also go well together. Japanese people are a part of the natural world, he told me, and there's a desire to use natural ingredients and so on to stay part of that world, so the chefs make sure to pick things that go well together in the natural world; all the ingredients must match just so. This ties in to the Japanese idea of "wa" or harmony.

This also lends to the popularity and importance of seasonal and regional foods. Regional foods emphasize the locality and the whole "one with the area around you" thing, and foods that go well together in nature probably occur around the same time and place, so seasonal foods get a bonus here as well.

But because of this emphasis on having the right foods in the right combination, Japanese culture tends to shy away from using substitutes in their dishes, which in turn leads to, in some restaurants where they've got serious chefs anyways, distain towards anyone who wants to customize their dish since they're in essence "ruining" the dish by changing it so that the ingredients aren't in perfect harmony. It's hard for people from other cultures to see this though, since we often don't have that background of "all ingredients must exist in the right proportions in harmony together with the natural world." Instead we place a priority on "I want to have a dish that fits my tastes and by god I'm PAYING for this and I'm the CUSTOMER so I have RIGHTS."

Or something like that.

That's what I thought anyways when I first got here. Maybe not in those words. But I was often confused and annoyed when we went to restaurants that were like "sorry no, we can't 'just not add chicken' to this" or "sorry we can't leave out the peppers" or "sorry we can't take out the tomato for you" even though they were making the dish from scratch and could indeed very easily omit adding in the peppers or the tomato. Instead it was this idea that the ingredients must go together when they serve it (probably) that informed their refusal to acquiesce to our requests.

Actually, it's a lot more along the lines of those infamous Italian or French chefs who also refuse to customize orders that I've occasionally heard of, who go into a rage or a fit when someone even thinks of asking them to make a simple omission, or to substitute tofu for chicken or whatever. Substitutes and omitting ingredients harms the purity of the dish, or in the case of the Japanese, the harmony of the ingredients, nature, and the dish.

How's that for culture clashes and exchange? 

* 

On a more random note, I'm correcting compositions on one of the tests that my academic students took. It's supposed to be between 40 and 60 words but so far... it's pretty dismal. Out of ten points the highest has been a ten, and it's not like I'm being a hard grader. They've just failed epically at responding to the prompt, which was "you met a person at the mall whom you fell in love with. Describe their appearance and what they look like." 

Not too hard, we figured, and we had just done a unit on describing people, body parts, and clothes. So in theory, they had all the tools they needed...

But reading them kinda makes me wish I had a pitcher of sangria next to me. Or a can of beer. Some of them are really amusing to read though. Some students wrote stories about how they met the person of their dreams (and some pointed out that they already had a boyfriend or girlfriend and I was like... how sad! Why would you write that your dream person that you fell in love with had a significant other already!?) like about what they were doing and about their attributes and how they looked kind because they were helping old people or had found the author's ring... 

Part of me feels kind of bad for giggling at this (lord knows my own mistakes are pretty awful and widespread) but some of them are most amusing.

I shall leave you with one of my favorites so far:

"The boy was special face and nice hair. I was surprised it. I think that very very cool. If he is human, it is great."

Precious, precious, wonderful students.

Festivals festivals festivals!

This weekend is a festival weekend, for some reason. I'm going to (or will try to go to, at least) not one, not two, but THREE festivals in only two days.

Three festivals in two days?

Challenge accepted.

This first festival was today. It was my Takahashi technical high school's open festival day (there are also performances and stuff but that is usually on a weekday). They had stalls and cares and a haunted house and displays and crafts or things the students made that you could buy. 

And so. Much. Food.

Once again, I purchased more food tickets than my stomach had room for, because it is so freaking hard to say no to students you actually like (and want to like you). Thankfully for my waistline, the portions were all Japanese sized (that is to say, tiny) so having two cookies and some juice meant having a small cup of milk tea (like teacup size... A small tea cup) and two cookies about the size of half dollars.

Basically, I ate my way through the whole festival, since I lack the desire to not be able to sleep at night (no おばけやすい, haunted house, for me). I could probably be coerced into that if I had a copious amount of alcohol in my system. But I was at school, so I didn't. 

So what kind of food did they have at the festival? There were a lot of repeats from the other festivals...

Yuzu ice cream daifuku (ice cream wrapped in mochi)
Yuzu pound cake
Two country ma'am cookies (country ma'am is a popular cookie brand here, like nabisco)
Oden (I got set A which had daikon, or Japanese radish, konnyaku noodles, and a cabbage roll, which is just cabbage wrapped around meat. The cabbage rolls are pretty tasty. But. It had no chikuwa (fish paste) or the other things I don't like in oden! It also came with this Yuzu flavored pepper paste stuff that was AMAZING.)
Curry and rice
Milk tea
Black tea
Cold green tea
Chocolate churro
Plain churro
Kinako dango (mochi balls rolled in this peanut-y powder)
Azuki dango (red bean paste mochi balls)
Mitarashi dango (mochi flavored with a thick soy sauce and sugar sauce)
Chicken yakisoba

I ate the dango and yakisoba after I got home. But I also bought bread they had made (how could I not!) and an apple pound cake. I'm saving those for later. The bread has cheese and BACON in it. I'm excited.

Other foods they had but I didn't eat:
Frankfurter and juice (despite this being sold by one of my favorite classes, I really don't like the frankfurters here. I really want to... But every time I buy one it just turns out to be a disappointment since the casing is usually ridiculously thick).
Caramel popcorn
Zaizen (I think,that's what it's called... It's mochi in red bean soup. Not the biggest fan of red beans)
Udon
...these pancake things with custard or chocolate or red bean paste in them
And
Deep fried takoyaki (takoyaki are balls of dough with pieces of octopus in them. You should google them if you don't know what they are. But these were deep fried and the line was always at least 30 minutes... So I bought a ticket but ended up giving it to my team teaching partner instead cause I wanted to go home and work on my grad school app)

I also missed out on eating at one of the cafes. THERE WERE THREE CAFES. WHY WERE THERE THREE CAFES?! Seriously... I think they were all run by the design classes. There was one themed around Christmas (there were a lot of christmas themed things... It made me kind of sad...) run by the third years, and the second year's was called Hayabusa, after the... Space thing. They built a model of the satellite and had the movie running. It was pretty.

The one run by the first years had one of the male students (whose english is pretty okay) in a dress and long brown wig. The poor thing looked MISERABLE. Some male students wear drag and girls clothing proudly and seem to be even more excited about wearing a skit and a wig than they do in their own clothes... But this kid was a poster child for unhappiness and embarrassment. I wonder if he lost a bet or dare or rock paper scissors... Or was being punished. But their theme was a manga cafe, so they had a bunch of people,dressed up in cosplay. It was really cute.

Yeah, the design kids usually have amazing things. They also had a life sized model of the wolf from princess mononoke- the one that she rode. Like, you could ride the model if you were a small Japanese person. It was really really good.

Oh I should make a note, that here, juice is sometimes used the same way 'soft drinks' or 'pop' is used or 'cold beverage.' IE, orange juice, soda, cider, calpis, and  sometimes tea are all included in this category. It still throws me off sometimes.

But yeah. That was my school festival. A lot of fun. I think the students were happy I came? They seemed excited... Especially when it came to selling me things lol. 

But now I am off to an all night karaoke... For charity! ALL YOU CAN KARAOKE FOR THR CHILDREN. And tomorrow there are two festivals I will attempt... Providing I can catch the first train back, get at least an hour of sleep at the karaoke place or McD's, change, and get out the house again. One festival is on the way to the station and the other is out in Yakage. Weeeee. Full weekend go! I guess it's a good thing I basically have a holiday on Monday... I still have to go to school, but I have no c,asses. And it's my base school. So yeah. Excellent.

And I mean, I'm doing cultural things, so like... That's a good thing to be out all weekend for, yeah?

Ugh, there was something I wanted to write about... But I forgot. u_u

I wanna say it was something about school, and something I found interesting but I really can't remember.

I spent today practicing the Asian squat for two hours and peeling garlic. Like, peeling, and not "crushing and then peeling." Made things a lot more different. Harder, for one. We were peeling garlic so they could plant the garlic at school to make garlic and herb olive oil. Typical friday stuff.

My hands reek of garlic now though. Sigh. 

Hm, I should write about chikuwa sometime. Chikuwa, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of making its acquaintance, is fish paste in the form of a long, cylindrical tube. It's in the nerimono family, or the 'ground up fish' family with kamaboko. The outside is kind of... Wrinkly. We had it for lunch today in the school lunch, along with hijikigohan, a kind of rice with these small bits of sea weed... not so tasty.

Ah! I remembered! I wanted to write about dolls. Yesterday in the culture class we made paper dolls, 避難人形... Early for dolls day. Doll's day is actually in March, but for some reason we're making the dolls now. The old lady who taught us, supposedly, started making these dolls, so they're kind of like her style or something? They're really cute either way. They're made with strips of hard poster paper and really pretty origami paper. We got to make them with her guidance. Or at least, we tried to make them.

I fail at crafts. 

Somehow I managed to make my strips of paper too long so the finished thing sat kind of lopsided... But one of the Korean girls at my table fixed it for me. They're ridiculously cute.

Also I somehow managed to a) put them on wrong and add too much glue so the glue showed when you looked and b)  reverse the order of the dolls. Oops.

Yeaaaaaaaaah.

I'll get pictures up eventually of them. They're adorable!

Supposedly it's bad luck to display them any time other than March, otherwise you'll never be a bride. Oh no. What ever shall I do. :)

Good things start with C

Like Calligraphy and Cooking Club. :D

(Ack, I've already managed to fall behind... I won't let this challenge defeat me even if it means I have to post twice in one day! I shan't let it fall further behind than that! ...shan't is a fun word to say. Totally going to say it more often.)

Anyways.

Wednesdays are my awesome days, mostly because of what comes after school. School itself... well... Wednesdays are my first year classes at my base school - usually they're so-so. I only have three, so I can't really complain too much about having a heavy workload. It's just that usually, that's the first time we do a lesson (I feel so bad for my class who gets that first lesson... we're usually still working out the kinks). They're good kids though so... usually it goes alright. It's just that sometimes, they're so dead.

The last class of the day is a handful as well. It has the class with the really loud boy hahaha. But it also has the class full of the kinda smart boys; I don't know much about the relationships of the students in the class, but I'd bet that a couple of the kids with glasses who are the eager to please ones are kind of nerds. I think they get teased quite a bit too, or at least, one of them does.

Yesterday, my team teaching partner caught one of the students doing work from another class in our class, so she took it away. The paper was some advanced math homework (like, extra homework) so I'm assuming that the student was one of the good students. She was super angry, and didn't really want to give it back to him right away, since she thought it would mean the students wouldn't take not doing other class's homework in our class seriously. I mean, I was a little disappointed that it was one of the better kids, but I've been there before so like... yeah.

This kid though, I think it was the first time he'd been scolded by her like that, and the math paper was really important. So he was super down the whole class, and I think, actually started to cry during class at some point. I felt so bad for the poor kid! I don't like when people cry. I don't really know how to respond to crying people, whether they're my friend or they're a stranger or acquaintance. Sigh.

But yeah, the worst happened after class when he tried to get his paper back. She didn't want to give it back to him right away and wanted to talk to him but I guess he was crying too much to actually talk. The other students, who had been teasing him before, were also up there telling my partner that she should give the paper back. Since I couldn't hear what they were saying, to me it just sounded like they were trying to butt their heads in and be there so they could watch the other kid cry. So I'm not exactly sure... whose side they were on?

Dunno, if it were me, I'd take away the paper and give it back with punishment. Like an essay or something, since there isn't really detention here.

So that's my last class of the day, one of my academic ones.

The third class (that I have second, right before lunch) is my home ec girls. Boy are they loud ones. But they're super fun and they're always willing to volunteer, so despite how loud they get and how slowly we go in the class, I really enjoy them.

After school though, is what I really enjoy.

Cooking club meets on wednesdays, so I usually join them and have a kind of small(ish) Japanese one portion sized meal early on around 5pm. Yesterday we made gyoza and tenshindon, a Japanese Chinese dish that's basically an omelette over rice with thick sauce on top of it (we concluded yesterday that the sauce reminded us of mitarashi dango, these mochi balls covered in sweet sauce). SO TASTY.

Gyoza are ridiculously hard to fold though. Mine looked awful haha.

I also had this interesting conversation with my partner and one of the students about Chinese history, where we had no idea what time period the other was talking about. They were using kanji, and I was using romanized-via-the-Pinyin-system Chinese names. Maybe I'll write about that next.

Wednesday nights after cooking club, I get a ride to calligraphy class at this old lady's house in Takahashi with one of the other ALTs who actually introduced me to the classes. They're really calming and relaxing (though last night a bit frustrating since I couldn't figure out how to get the stroke right).

Calligraphy, as it turns out, is hard. But at least I get a tangible kind of thing that's made by my own power... unlike flower arrangement where I just have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know why one form is better looking than the other and the teacher comes over and rearranges most if not all of my flowers so they look better.

Jeeze, I didn't know that still bothered me.

Japan! Concerts! New York!

Sunday evening, I went to my first concert in Japan. It was for a group called Rock'A'Trench (these guys). We first found out about them through this japanese drama called 「めいちゃんの執事」 "Mei-chan no Shitsuji" which is about this poor girl who suddenly finds out that she's from a rich family and then goes to a high school where all the girls have personal butlers. It's a fun j-drama; if you like girly kind of things and beautiful men (and Hana yori dango) you should watch this series.

But anyways, Rock'A'Trench plays the opening song for that series. They're a rock group, so the whole concert was a ridiculous amount of fun. Not that I've been to a lot of concerts in the states (or in Japan) but from what I've seen so far, they're pretty different.

We got to the concert around 5:20 since doors opened at 5:30. The venue itself was pretty small; I think it was smaller than the place I went to in San Francisco with Brad, Scott, and Joe and the rest of those people. I liked it, actually, but it also wasn't completely packed. I suppose it was like the size of a bar? It was smaller than the Loft, like if you took away the chairs and made the room a little shorter.  It was also all standing space. BUT. They had LOCKERS, which was kind of awesome. No hauling bag/jackets around.

We thought that the earlier we got there, the earlier we'd be able to get in and the better spots we'd get. Wrong! We actually went in by ticket number - which was crazy, cause we were in the C section but we had bought our tickets within one minute of it opening. And we lined up by number. Getting A seats during the holidays is easier than getting an A spot here!

The doors opened pretty much right at 5:30 and they started letting everyone in. But before you went in you had to buy a drink for 500 yen, which, we figured, alright. They had alcohol and softdrinks at the bar, though mostly only vodka and whiskey. They did have rockstar though, which was pretty sweet.
But all of us were like "PFT if I'm paying 500 yen I might as well get booze" but wow all the drinks were pretty not so great. And in Japan, they pretty much cost the same. Expensive.

We went and got our drinks and bought some swag though. One interesting observation of the night was that not many Japanese people were getting drinks before the show. After the show, loads of people went up to redeem their drink tokens.

The band played for about an hour and a half - straight. There were no opening acts - just Rock'A'Trench, starting strong. And in between songs it was ridiculously quiet, but it also wasn't too long between songs. Sometimes they'd go straight from one song into the other. We pretty much danced and rocked the whole time too, so my legs, already sore from Saturday, are pretty much full of hurt.

After the concert, they were selling more merch again (the band came out in the T-shirts) and I kinda impulse bought one of their *bright hot pink* T-shirts (plus i had a sweat towel from before). They also had this kind of... hit or miss raffle game thing where you reach in and pull a card to see if you can win one of the special T-shirts.

...my friend and I won the only two T-shirts they were giving away. FRIGGIN SWEET YO. The paper you pulled out was pretty awesome even if you didn't win. You had to spend 3500 yen (which was my Tshirt and my sweat towel) and you got to pull a paper out of the box to tell you if you won or not. The band wrote on all the little papers with messages about winning or losing. It was really cute! I wanted to do the contest just so I could have a paper they signed/wrote on. But hooray I won! Maybe I'll be not-lazy later and take pictures of the shirts. They're pretty cool.

Two of the band members also came out to sign stuff and talk to people after it was done (the two guitarists and main singers). THEY WERE SO AMAZING. Plus they're all pretty cute. And really good at singing live. Sadly, the pianist/trombonist, bass guitarist, and drummer didn't come out. But yeah. For a couple of the songs, the pianist busted out a silver trombone with a deep blue horn. That part was friggin amazing. I wanted to tell him his trombone was awesome, but he never came out.

We did talk to the lead singer though - it turns out he lived in New York for five years when he was younger, so his English was really good! He was fun to talk to, plus we were wearing really similar hats (and looking hella boss). I didn't recognize the other guitarist at first, since on the stage he was always really angry looking and had pink hair, but when he came out he was wearing a beanie and didn't look so angry. But I got both of them to sign my T-shirt! I WILL NEVER WASH THIS T-SHIRT~

...which is a shame cause I think it's kind of cute. Oops. I'm pretty sure if I washed it the ink will start to fade. I guess I can handwash the shirt? Mostly I'm glad the Larges fit! :D

But yeah. That was an amazing night and an amazing concert. We got ridiculously close to the band for not getting there really early and stuff. Compared to normal concerts I've gone to, we were standing as far away as if I were standing in the front line at Sungod.

They were so awesome. X) Fantastic live, lockers, cool merch, winning the t shirt prize, *and* meeting the band without having to stalk them? WIN. I want to go to more Japanese concerts!

Village Hidden in the Leaves

The weekend of the 8th and 9th (a three day weekend for us here in Japan - I got Monday off too!) I went with a friend to explore the northeastern part of Okayama, a part of my prefecture that I had never ever been to before. It's not like I've had much reason to go up there. Tsuyama City is the largest city in that part of the prefecture, and getting there is not easy. You can drive there if you have a car, of course, and that makes things a billion times easier. It still takes about 70-90 minutes though, and that's with taking the ridiculously expensive expressway (like a toll road).

But for those of us without cars, we are left with a couple options. One is the bus; I'm sure there's a bus that goes up to Tsuyama from Okayama, and possibly even from Takahashi. Second is the train. There are two trains that will go to Tsuyama. One of them is from Niimi (which, in itself is 30-40 minutes away by train). That train leaves not very often, and takes a ridiculously long time to get there. I think from Takahashi it's at least three hours? That basically goes across the northern part of the prefecture, probably in a one man train. I bet it's gorgeous. The second train requires getting to Okayama, and then taking the Tsuyama line up there. From Okayama it's somewhere between 40-60 minutes depending on if you get the train that skips some of the stations or not, and about 1400 yen, one way. So like, to get there from Takahashi is a little under two hours, if you get your connections right.

However, our destination was not Tsuyama. Oh no. My friend, who's a huge Naruto (a Japanese comic about ninjas) fan, wanted to visit this town called Nagi, since the author of Naruto was born there, and based the Hidden Leaf Village off of his hometown. I was there mostly for support (plus I generally enjoy exploring the prefecture, and I had never been up this way). She wasn't sure if they had anything for the author there, or were trying to capitalize on his success with Naruto and turn it into a tourist destination. Either way, we figured that we would take the train there and, should it turn out that it was just another little rural inaka town that we would bring our Japanese study materials and study at a conbini or restaurant or something.


View Larger Map (B is where Nagi train station is. A is Nagi proper. If you zoom out once, you can also see where it is in relationship to Tsuyama. If you zoom out two more times, you can see where it is in Okayama prefecture. Also, for reference, I live in Takahashi City)

Our first sign that the town, at least near the station, had nothing to do with Naruto, was that we were the only two people to get off at the tiny station, which was basically a small platform surrounded by a vast amount of forest. You know in Narnia (the first movie) how the kids get off at a train station that's really empty and in the middle of nowhere? Yeah. That was Nagi Station. There was the one train track running towards it and away from it.

That being said, the place was absolutely gorgeous. They had pine trees and other trees that we don't have on the western side of the prefecture as much. The train ride was also really pretty. We saw a festival going on... but that looked like it was a good hour walk to get there from the station. We passed it at first and were like 'oh hey let's go to that festival!' and then we just kept going... and going... and then we passed this really pretty bridge and were like 'well I suppose we can walk there since the trains are going to be pretty sparce...' ...and then we kept going and finally, probably about a half hour walk away (so really, not too bad) we got to the station. We were the only ones who got off.

The station itself was in a place that was nowhere near any kind of buildings other than the board of education and a couple of houses dotting the small river it ran by. They all looked empty, and possibly like they weren't in use. Of course, it being the weekend, there was a fair chance they were in use, just simply closed. It being the inaka, there were spiders EVERYWHERE. Those huge yellow and black stripey spiders that get to be amazing sizes had managed to populate the area in the absence of people. It's kind of funny, since I don't actually mind those spiders, so long as they aren't in my house. Usually they just chill up in their webs and they don't really move. I haven't seen them jump or move like... ever. So I don't mind going up close to look at them or take pictures, especially since we have them everywhere in Takahashi as well. My friend though, being from Okayama city, was creeped out by them since they're kind of large, and I don't think they have many of them in the city.

Clearly though, from looking at the map, we missed Nagi proper by about... three hours. Three hours and twenty minutes, to be exact. That's how long it would have taken us to walk to the central part of the city, where presumably, there are things like the post office and maybe a restaurant or conbini, or at least vending machines. Oh well! Can't help that. The chances of us going back there are pretty slim, though, it was really really pretty. If we had a car or something, I'd be down for going back. But yeah. No car.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to do much exploring either. When we got off the train and walked down the steps from the platform, the first thing we did was check the time schedule for trains going back to Tsuyama. The next one was in half an hour, and the one after that was in not one, not two, not three, but FOUR HOURS. From what we saw, even if we walked to the festival, we would still end up with time to kill. And from our minimal exploring, there was no place we could actually sit down and study at, save the station. The station was actually a really nice building; probably the nicest in the area. It had a little bench area, as well as a book area (no Naruto though) and a sign telling you that the nearest thing from the station was about 1.5 km away. Hooray.

Also of interest within the immediate vicinity of the station was a signboard with a map of all the historical sights of the area. More interestingly, there was also a list of the village areas with a household and population count. They weren't very high. I think most ranged from 6 households (16 people) to somewhere around a hundred or two.

Most interesting though, was the fact that not only were these things written in Japanese, but they were also written in English. Clearly, this meant that, at some point in time, there was (and perhaps is?) an English speaker out in that area. I'm not sure why they had a sign in English about historical landmarks near the station, but to me, it hints that people - tourists - come to this area for one reason or another (though I hope for their sakes they come in cars, despite the sign being almost right next to the station). The bigger question is, what happened?

Well, we both agreed that we did not want to wait for the train in four hours, so, despite having just got there, we would leave on the next train in half an hour. Kinda lame but... oh well? It was about 12:30 when we got there, and we were expecting to be able to find like... something where we could at least get food. I don't think I even saw a bathroom around the area. We hadn't eaten lunch, nor had we brought anything with, which was kind of stupid of us. The next train left around 1 o'clock and the train after left around 4:30. It was going to take an hour to get back to Tsuyama (and thus, food). So we could either eat around 2 o'clock... or around 5:30, unless we happened to get really lucky and somehow stumble upon food (chances were looking pretty slim though). Taking this into account, it wasn't that hard to decide on the earlier of the two trains, since we were both pretty hungry. We had left Okayama sometime around like... 9:40, which meant that I had left Takahashi that morning sometime around 9 o'clock (though, that morning I had been really really dumb and missed the 8:10 train and had to wait for the 9:05 express train to get there on time). Needless to say, we had eaten sometime around then and were reaaaallly hungry. That part, we hadn't really thought about until then. Oops. Had I the chance to do it again, I would have made a point to bring something for lunch, even if it was just stuff from the convenience store.

With that time frame though, we pretty much had only time to wander around close to the station before we had to wander back again. Missing that 1 o'clock train was not an option. I wanted to walk to the bridge, but alas, no time.

That's basically the story of our really really short trip to Nagi Town. The outskirts of Nagi town, anyways. We eventually made it back to Tsuyama, where our priority was getting food. One of my teachers is from Tsuyama, and we had talked about how Tsuyama had lots of 'B-Rank' restaurants.

B-Rank restaurants have nothing to do with the American restaurant hygenic rating system (though, I'm willing to bet that the majority of B-Ranks here would get like... a B or C from that). Instead, B-Rank restaurants are like... one step below fast food restaurants. They're not fast food places like McDonald's, since you can't always take things to go. Usually, you eat at the restaurant. But the food is ridiculously fast, sometimes faster than the fast food service I've received!) And what's more, it's really good, and generously portioned. These are places like the ramen restaurants, or rice bowl (donburi) places like Yoshinoya or Sukiya, or like the okonomiyaki restaurants that Hiroshima and Osaka are famous for. You get your food really fast, and generally, you don't take that long to eat it. That's what a B-Rank restaurant is. Chipotle would probably be a B-Rank restaurant, though I'd wager that most Chipotles are larger than even normal restaurants here. For some reason, places are just really really tiny (even in the larger cities).

Anyways, Tsuyama is supposed to be famous for those kind of restaurants. The city, next to the station, is kind of grungy, and well... my teacher said that the city really comes to life at night when people are out drinking (and going to these B-Rank places after/while drinking beer) and during the cherry blossoms bloom. So we started to look for these places.

ホルモン焼きうどん、Grilled Horumon Udon

We found a couple places all advertising that they sold the B-Rank food Tsuyama was famous for: Hormone Udon ホルモンうどん。 Hormone is... well... Hormone are a mixture of organ meats that are supposed to give you more stamina. Typical ingredients include things like the heart, the liver, tripe, kidney, and stomach. Mmm. I've tried a couple things, like heart and tripe and stomach, but generally, I found out what they were after. Some of them aren't too bad either. So like... I'd advise trying it before you ask what it is. Seriously, it's how I get through Japanese meals sometimes. Generally if you try it and don't like what you eat, people will let you alone without giving you too much of a hassle. I promised my teacher that if he took me to a hormone udon place, I would at least give it a try (especially if there was beer to wash it down with).

Needless to say though, with just me and my friend there (and I tend to be one of the more adventurous eaters in my friend group here), we decided to forgo trying Tsuyama's famous B-Rank foods. Instead, we walked to the Tenmaya store (whose sign we saw from the street) across a bridge (with these HUGE fish! You could see them quite clearly from where we were standing on the bridge, a couple stories above the river), and into the building, hoping for food within the department store. I think we failed at finding stuff, because we could only find one family restaurant and the things they sold in the grocery section of the store. Oh, and a bakery. Eventually, we ended up eating at the bakery, since they not only had sandwiches (ham and blue cheese~! SO DIVINE) but also savory breads and things like (smallish) Japanese pizza slices that weren't that bad. I also ordered minestrone soup (which came from a bag), and I kid you not, it tasted like I was eating spaghetti-O's, minus the pasta. Really really weird. They also had a gelato place we hit up after that. Japanese gelato places are super fun, especially since they have things like matcha (which, as gelato kind of tastes like sweet grass) and seasonal foods like sweet potato and chestnut.

Yeah though, we didn't see too much else there so we decided to go back in to Okayama instead, where there were things to do (and eat).

We also went to the gardens that weekend, but I think I'll save that for a post when I can add my pictures in too!

Autumn Flavors & Oden

Fall = Grape Season

While it's definitely not as cold as winter proper during December, it feels like fall has already come and gone. My house is a nice 20 degrees Celsius right now, but outside these nights have been dropping to 12 or 13 degrees (around 53-55 F). ...so I guess that's not too different than actual fall weather. I don't know why I'm feeling so cold then! Today hit a high of around 16C/60F... which is still warmer than San Francisco is in the summer! Perhaps it's on account of me just sitting here and the fact that when I ride my bike it gets ridiculously cold from the windchill (and the fact that everything is downhill so I don't work nearly as hard as I do on the ride back home).

But fall seems like it's rather short this year, and that it's getting colder faster. Maybe last year was just really warm for a long time. Probably. I don't know why I'm complaining though; I like this cooler weather - as long as I can wear a jacket!

With the full arrival of fall, the fall flavors and dishes are out in force in restaurants and grocery stores. This means chestnuts (kuri) and the seasonal fish (aji...maybe?) (of course though. I feel like there's always a seasonal fish). OH. And mushrooms. Mushrooms are really really popular, though they tend to come more towards the end and middle of fall. The inclusion of any of these in a dish automatically gives it a kind of autumn feeling, according to my Japanese co-workers. I went to a restaurant for a welcome to Japan party for this group of Aussies who are doing an exchange program with my base school, and they had this amazing rice that had chestnuts and mushrooms in it. The irony of it all is that when I came to Japan, I really really really didn't like chestnuts or mushrooms (or sweet potatoes, but that's a winter food). But now I don't mind them, and I even kind of like chestnuts. What's happened to me?!

Chikuwa, or tube fish cakes

Konnyaku

The cold has also brought back oden, a kind of.... Japanese stew. But it's more like slow cooked soup than stew in that it's mostly liquid. I'm not sure what the soup base is, but I'm like, 80% certain it has dashi (fish stock) and soy sauce in it. It has a ton of different ingredients (namely, what ever you want) but popular things to throw in it are those tube fish cake things called chikuwa, large daikon (Japanese radish) coins, fish balls, konnyaku (Japanese jellied devil's tongue - it's kind of... solid and chewy. It's very... interesting, but kind of lacks its own flavor, even moreso than tofu does), mini frankfurters, boiled egg, and fried tofu. There's a bunch more but I'm not the biggest oden fan so I don't know the full extent of it. Basically though, you throw the ingredients in the oden pot and you just kind of... leave it there and let it stew. For a while. You can keep it like that the whole time. Like seriously, you can just keep letting it stew and chill in the pot. The flavor won't change. Oden is basically a "boiled to hell in dashi and soy sauce" soup that's ridiculously popular and is available as long as it's cold. They sell it at convenience stores, but people also make it at home. The nice thing about oden is that you can often pick which ingredients you actually want to eat. Oden also doubles as a cheap hand warmer.

Actually, I think oden is more popular and more commonly eaten than sushi is. Sushi has become this kind of... global beast, though I suppose at its roots it will always be Japanese (though, I've shown my Japanese co-workers and students the pictures of the different rolls from the states like the catepillar roll and gotten quite amusing responses). Like seriously, you'll find a person who doesn't like to eat shrimp before you find someone who doesn't like oden. It's that widespread. Plus it also uses a bunch of ingredients which I think are really really Japanese; konnyaku, chikuwa, boiled egg (though maybe that's just Asian since I know Chinese dishes have that in it too... I think), daikon. Like seriously. It's just missing mushrooms. This might be why with foreigners it's kind of hit or miss on liking oden. It also has a very distinct... smell. Not the same as natto but... it's definitely... one of those Japanese foods.

Oh, also grapes, like pione and muscats, are finally in season! HOORAY!

Hand for size perspective

Grapes in Japan are special. They're not normal sized like the ones we have in the states; they're MONSTERS. See picture to the right. Technically that's from last year, but seriously, LOOK AT HOW BIG THOSE GRAPES ARE. They are literally bigger than my eyes. No joke. I think they might be as big as if not bigger than my actual eyeballs too.

They also come with a monster price tag usually, especially if you don't live in a grape growing region! At the super market, one bunch of grapes (roughly large enough to sit in someone's smallish hands) sells for somewhere around 600 yen, though if you can get it directly from the people who grow it, they go for as cheap as 200 yen!

This is where it's really awesome to be at schools who grow grapes and stuff.

One thing that foreigners notice when Japanese people eat grapes though (other than the monster size and the price) are the manner in which Japanese people eat grapes. Because they don't just down them like candy like we do in the states, popping one after another into their mouths. Rather, they take the time to peel every single grape one by one. As in, peel the grape, pop into mouth, discard skin. Peel grape, pop in mouth, discard skin.

When I first got here, this completely baffled me. Why on earth would you throw away the skin? It tastes pretty good, and it's probably where all the nutrition is. And like, seriously, why would you create more garbage for yourself when there are less trash cans to begin with in Japan? I guess it makes it last longer, but it took me ages to (grudgingly) accept that peeling grapes was probably for the better.

While not all Japanese grapes are the same, the kind that are popular to eat (and the ones pictured) have a really really tough skin. It's thicker than normal grapes (kind of like how Japanese hot dogs/sausages have a thicker casing). So they're actually pretty easy to peel without completely squishing the grape. The skin comes off pretty easy. But, what really sold me is the fact that this skin is usually really really bitter! Like, do not want kind of bitter. The grape actually tastes way better when you peel it because you're not eating the bitter, hard to chew (and probably digest) skin; all you get is sweet juicy grape flesh. Mm. Grape flesh. Grape meat? I'm not sure what you call it.

So yes, if you come to Japan, if the grape seems like it has a thick skin, please try peeling it because it will ultimately improve your grape eating experience.

Tokyo Game Show

This past weekend was a three day weekend for us, starting on Saturday and extending until today, Monday, September 29th. The holiday we were celebrating was "Respect for the Aged" day, which is, when you think about it, an interesting holiday to have. I doubt it would be possible to have such a day in the US, but since Japan's cultural values originally stemmed from the Chinese confucianism... I suppose I can't be too surprised. 


Anyways.


This weekend was also Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, where the video game industry showcases and unveils new games in Chiba, Japan (the same place where Tokyo Disney is, which isn't technically in Tokyo proper). Basically, it's a giant video game convention and expo, with days for the general public as well as days for people who are in the industry only. Nintendo never goes, but several other big names, like Sony, Sega, SquareEnix, and Konami have exhibits and booths. Sometimes they announce new games and have them available to try out if you're willing to wait in a Disneyland-on-a-holiday-sized line. Or they'll show trailers or give out free stuff. It's kind of like comicon, but for Japan and video games. 


And since we were a) in Japan and b) on a three day weekend, a couple of us decided to go up for TGS and to hang out in Tokyo. I mean seriously, when else am I going to have this opportunity? 


We left on the night bus (which was not made for gaijin sized people, nor people who can't sleep anywhere/on buses/without moving) and made it up in time to hit up the show on Saturday. Holy wow the line was long. The line pretty much had us walking around the entire convention center, which is at least as big as the one in LA I think. 


Once we were in, it was like... woah. Woah. So many video games. So little time. They had demos and trailers of Final Fantasy 13-2, as well as Street Fighter Cross Tekken (which looks absolutely AMAZING). There was a giant dragon (for Dragon Dogma) and, of course, a bunch of Monster Hunter stuff. SquareEnix had a store that sold expensive stuff for the 25th anniversary of Dragon Quest. There's also a store in Shinjuku (that we failed to get to on time by ten minutes) which had more... reasonably priced things and didn't involve waiting in a long line. 


Japanese cosplayers at TGS put pretty much all the other cosplayers at any kind of convention, from the small Fanime ones to Anime Expo and Comicon to SHAME. SEriously. The costumes people had were nothing short of amazing. Except one. There was an... anime-ish version of Link someone did and the face was just.. creepy. Like those cabbage patch kid dolls. That kind of creepy. 


I was very pleased to see The Behemoth (creators of Castle Crashers) had a booth there (and a giant flying chicken) with demos and merch. I was not pleased to find that they sold out of EVERYTHING (for sunday included) by the time I visited them. Because ohmigod. They had figurines and cell phone charms that were AMAZING. I'm still kinda sad I didn't get one.


They also had free schwag; I got this tote that freaking lights up. That's my favorite, probably. There were also a lot of folders, and even more fans (since it was ridiculously humid and hot that day, those were pretty popular). I got a Ragnarok CD and a couple more things.


The game show itself though, is split up between three buildings, with different areas for each exhibitor to set up shop. There was a store dedicated to music from SquareEnix games. That took willpower (though the fact that for one CD, the asking price was around 3,500 yen or ~$35, was a good deterrent too). The cosplayers usually hung out in between buildings, where occasionally, you could catch a breeze.


I didn't have the patience (or the interest, for those with a shorter wait) to wait for any of the games (also, I heard that for the new portable sony device, the PS Vita, had to start turning people away at 10:30. The show ended at 5.) I did play one game though; in Japan it's Dynasty Warriors 6, but in the US we're on DW 7 already.  I kinda embarrassed myself at first because I forgot that on the Playstation, the buttons mean kind of the opposite things. So I was pressing circle or whatever button was on the bottom to confirm at the main screen, and it kept going back to the title screen, and then the lady came over and told me which button to press.


It's been seriously too long. I should get a PS3, heheheh...


The graphics for the characters were kinda sexy, which made sense since it was a PS3 game. I waited for 70 minutes to play that game, and then when it came down to it, ran around killing things before getting locked out of the gate. Then I wandered around and had no idea what to do... But the move sets were awesome~ I didn't even get to do the musou powered up moves (I had forgotten how). But ohhhhhhh man. Oh man. So much fun. I definitely can't get that game in Japanese though... too much information is conveyed rather... quickly, or only by ear. My Japanese isn't that good yet (maybe someday though). KT, the people who made the game and who were running the booth had this promotion going on where if you played three games, you got free schwag. But the other games that looked cool all had long waits, and the ones that didn't were still at least twenty minutes. One of them was this "fab game" (like literally, that was in the title) on the DS, and another was a horse racing game for the kinect. You had to pretend like you were riding a race horse for that game.


My dignity was worth more than the free stuff I could have gotten, I think.


I didn't get into the squareenix store, nor the music store (and besides, the CDs are ridiculously expensive). I did linger around the Street Fighter x Tekken booth. That one looks pretty freaking awesome. Shame I'm not better at fighter games.


One of my favorite things at TGS was this booth area where they had people draw things on post card sized transparent sticker sheets, as support for Japan kinda (or a message about TGS). They were doing a charity for the Tohoku Earthquake; I think the general gist of it was Play video games and be genki, or happy. I forget the precise message. But we drew things and added them to the other hundred on the wall. Some people (re: lots of Japanese people) are ridiculously talented at drawing. It makes me a little jealous sometimes, haha. But then I remember that I'm not actually awful at drawing, and then I have to shut my mouth. 


Either way though, Tokyo Game Show was pretty freaking awesome. We only went for the saturday, but one of my friends went for both days. Instead, we went to Kamakura, but I'll post about that some other time. I kinda fell asleep in my contacts; waking up being able to see, while nice, is really really not a good thing. 


Oh and it's raining now. I guess fall has finally decided to grace us with its presence. Last night when the taxi dropped me off, the nice driver drove all the way up to practically the door... of the apartment building next to where I live. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was the wrong building, so I just got out there and waited at the door until he was out of sight before going to my own house.