Okinawa Part II (& the Great Teacher Shuffle)

Okinawa Part I in case you haven't read it yet. :)

The second day we got up and hit up the local Family Mart on our way to the car rental dealer, OTS. Oh my god. Family Mart has these amazing rice balls that are pretty much like spam musubi - but they were spam rice sandwiches. Spam and egg (some with miso) sandwiched between rice and nori. Oh my goooood amazing. Anyways, after our foray into the convenience store, we headed on over to the rental place and sat down with the lady, who helped us - with our limited Japanese and the occasional assist from the lady next to her who spoke a little English - and managed to get ourselves a car for cheaper than the coupon price. I'm still not entirely sure how, since they told us that it was high season so we couldn't actually use the coupon. But I'm not complaining.

Our car was a bright blue... car. I forget the model. Hyundai? To be honest I didn't really pay attention to the model. My friend, the lovely Miss Melody has a car in Kibichuo (cause it's like, super boonies and puts my complaining that Takahashi is small to shame) so she, bless her, offered to drive us around and stuff. The plan that day? Aquarium and the Pineapple Park, both of which were near the city of Nago, north of Naha.

A word of advice for anyone who goes to Okinawa: if you intend on leaving Naha proper (which has pretty good public transportation), rent a car. Your life will be a billion times easier, since there's a bunch of stuff around the island that you can't reach easily via bus alone. There's a bus that goes to the aquarium, but if I remember correctly, it takes about three hours (by car it took us about two-ish hours), and it doesn't go to the Pineapple Park, which is on the way back to Naha.

So anyways. We hopped in our car, stopped at another convenience store, and were on our way! It's amazing how fast time flies when you're in the car talking to good company. I'm afraid I wasn't the best navigator, since we missed our turn a couple times since I was reading the wrong turn on the iPhone GPS. Sigh. The GPS that came with the car was really cool though! It had an automatic gas/parking lot/conbini locator. Couldn't quite figure out how to input places though, since the system was all in Japanese. Either way, all of us really liked the car -- especially our driver, since she was used to driving a small K-car that doesn't have much power (and has a top speed of somewhere around 80 km/hr). It was pretty nice.

As we drove up, we drove along the coast and maaaan I forgot how much I love living near the ocean! Clear blue the whole way up - gorgeous colors that made me nostalgic for San Diego. We stopped at a 道の駅 「michi no eki」Or station of the road, or in just English, road station/rest stop. They sold a bunch of discount tickets for the places around there, so we picked up tickets for the pineapple park since the rental car place had sold out of those.

Then it was off to the aquarium... after a quick stop for lunch. We passed this crazy spiral structure along the way (I don't remember what we theorized it was, but it turned out to be a "dream" house or something and was supposed to have a field of orchids, though I don't know if they were in bloom) and right outside of it was a place we thought specialized in vegetarian food (we also passed a taco rice stand on the way). Though it didn't actually specialize in vegetarian foods, they were able to make omurice vegetarian (Okinawa, as it turns out, is much more vegetarian friendly) and Mel and I crossed our first "Okinawa must haves" off our list:

Soki soba and papaya tempura

Soki soba is an okinawan specialty (though I'm not sure if it's the same as okinawan soba). The noodles are a bit thicker, the kamaboko was a bit tougher (and huge) and it was served with delicious pork and soba. It was alrightish; I much prefer taco rice. I think I could eat that stuff all day and night! But the papaya tempura was delicious. I think it was made with a non-sweet kind of papaya or something (didn't know they had that) because normally I dislike papaya (it reminds me of vomit) but this was amazing.

Anyways. Bellies full, we went to the aquarium (where I promptly lost a hair clip I had just purchased. Sigh. This is why I can't have nice things.) and wandered through it. They had a touch pool with loads of sea cucumbers and a couple of chocolate chip starfish. Those were cool. Sea cucumbers are so squishy, which is weird because they aren't like that at all when you eat them.

These are my favorite. ^_^

The aquarium at Okinawa, the Churaumi Aquarium, is really really huge. So freaking awesome. The main attraction is a giant tank that holds not one, but two whale sharks along with a number of giant manta rays. God I love giant mantas. They're so graceful and powerful when they swim. ^_^

There was also a pretty cool exhibit about sharks, and they had a bunch of shark jaws and stuff, along with preserved sharks and other interesting tidbits about them. Outside, they had a manatee tank (manateeeeeeeeeeeees!) and a sea turtle enclosure that also had a makeshift mini beach for the turtles to occasionally go up on. That was pretty cool. I got lots of pictures of turtles. They're one of my favorites to take pictures of.

Right as we were leaving, it started to rain, lightly at first. As we neared the car, it started to come down a little harder, until by the time we were out of the garage in our car, it was downright pouring. Crazy, how good our timing was.

Our next stop was the pineapple park, a place that grows pineapples and takes you on a tour in these crazy pineapple cars. The tours were pretty informative, even if they used very uh... scary pineapple dolls and had a video of these very unhappy looking/bored girls doing this pineapple dance. Sadly (or thankfully) there are no pictures of this frightening scene, because they prohibited cameras past a certain point since they took your picture there in order to sell you the creepy pineapple mascot picture later on. It still makes me kind of shudder.

So the pineapple fields were really interested and they had a whole bunch of different plants other than pineapples (plus a bunch of different types - I had no idea there was more than like... one kind of pineapple...) but what I wasn't expecting was what we saw after the tour had finished.

A room full of seashells. All sorts of seashells. Like holy wow, that's a lot of seashells. There were gorgeous conch shells, and lots of different colored scallop shells, and abalone shells, and other shells I don't know the name for. Some would twist and turn, while others shone brilliantly, and even more had spikes or holes. Personally, I really enjoyed that room, but it was really random hahaha.

The pineapple park also had an omiyage or souvenir area with a wine cellar and sweets (and also vinegar, which was kinda random). The best part about this part... that while the restaurant had already closed (wtf) the gift area included about a billion stations to sample things before you bought them. Like pineapple wine, both reds and whites as well as dry wine and sweeter wine. The passion fruit was my personal favorite (and also the most expensive, so I bought some to ahem, celebrate my parent's anniversary with when they visit).

Seriously though, that place had more samples than costco, and the best part was, the people would sometimes encourage a second or third sample (to help you make up your mind of course...) The guy who was serving the wine cake (super rich and delicious, btw) was like "HERE HAVE TWO~" Who am I to refuse that? hahaha.


We finished up the omiyage place and I arranged to have some of the wine and heavy things sent to my house (very convenient, that. Much better than having to take it on the plane with us... which I did with another wine haha) then enjoyed a completely fantastic cream puff with pineapple chunks.


Man does Japan know cream puffs - or shuukuriimu (shu cream), from choux à la crème. They're a billion times better than the cream puffs we usually have in the states (you know, those small soft things). In Japan they're quite large and sometimes have a crunchy almost exterior (at least on the top) and ohhh they ar delicious. Actually desserts in general, they're really really good at. Parfaits especially. Mmm. Waffles. I never thought of waffles as dessert until I came here. Belgian waffles. Oh god, they do them better than Americans do. But it makes me giggle to think that every time I have waffles for breakfast, I'm actually having dessert. Heheheh.


Right. Anyways. We finally left around the time the park was closing (they closed the shop at the front that sold boba... I wanted to buy some so I was super sad). After we thought that maybe we'd be able to get to fruits land and they wouldn't be closed, but alas, they too had closed. Their shop hadn't though, so we went in and browsed around (and sampled things) and I picked up an amazing mango soft cream before we finally left to head back towards Naha.


Before we went back to Naha though, we decided to make a pit stop like... somewhere along the coast. So instead of taking the express way all the way back, we got off a bit north of Naha and headed towards a place that looked like there were a lot of restaurants (at least it said that on our map). We got a little lost (I pointed the wrong way to turn... oops), but eventually we saw this giant, brightly lit, colorful ferris wheel and decided that we were going to head to that place.


Turns out that place was American Village, a place that had as many lights as the Vegas Strip almost. Everything was brightly lit, and we quickly parked our car (thankfully the rain had stopped) and walked over. There were loads of marines there as well (I mean, with a name like that it should have been a duh) and some of them tried to join our conversation about how cold it was but we just kind of... ignored them haha. We stopped first at this store called American Depot, because I had left my jacket at the hostel and was actually kind of cold (it had gotten really chilly).



We spent some time in the store, me hunting in the men's section for a sweater or sweatshirt since even though this was American Village, this was still Japan, and my friend hunting for something for her boyfriend :) They had a bunch of like... sweats stuff and like, comfy loungey sweatshirts that you wear when you're at home alone or having a crap day or something that I almost bought. The sweatshirts were all kind of expensive (as sweatshirts/sweaters are wont to be). Thankfully though, it being Japan, I found this really cute looking polka dot sweatshirt that zips up super high and is just pretty cool overall. According to Mel, my style is casual sporty cool? lol. I hadn't thought of it like that, but I guess that's pretty accurate? I don't really do girly, since I don't really have the figure for that, and generally it's been too cold (recently anyways) or too hot (I sweat enough to drown, which is not the best for things like skirts and dresses. Ugh.). That's just me kinda complaining though haha.

There were so many delicious places in American Village (like curly fries and chili fries! OH MY GOOOOD) but we eventually decided on a Taco Rice place (did I mention I LOVE taco rice?) and that place did not disappoint. The food was amazing. Like seriously, I think I could eat Taco rice every day (and be ridiculously fat).

After feeling like we were going to explode (yet still wanting more taco rice) we walked around for a bit before deciding that we were tired and that the hostel seemed like a rather attractive place (oh and that we'd have to get parking, which was kind of a pain but there were loads of parking lots all over).

Day three started with us retrieving and returning the rental car, which happened to conveniently be located at the ferry port. Catching a ferry out to one of the local islands was pretty easy (though slightly more expensive than I had imagined) and we luckily were there right as the 10 o'clock ferry was taking off. We grabbed a quick lunch from the conbini (did I mention how awesome the pork sandwiches at conbinis are? Well they are.) and it was off to the beach we went!

The island we went to was called Tosomethingshima, and it was a suuuuper tiny place in the Kerama archipelago. Not so tiny though, that there wasn't a bus waiting at the docks to take us to a tiny white sandy beach named Aharen Beach (which also had a small port area). Since it was so tiny, it basically was also going to come back once - some time around 3, so that we would be back in the port in time for our return ferry. The weather was kinda cruddy though; cloudy, kind of chilly water, but occasionally the sun would peek through for a nice treat. There was a really nice (if slightly pushy) old man who kept trying to sell us hot showers after we were done with our time on the beach. There were also a butt-ton of stray cats around the area that kept mewing at us for food.  


We passed the other beach - named after the island - and wow, just wow. It was absolutely gorgeous. Probably should have picked that beach, but there were also far less shops/potential kayak/snorkle rental/scuba places around there. I really wanted to go diving, but I kinda got there too late... so I settled for snorkeling instead (which turned out to be super fun anyways).


When we first arrived to the beach, there was hardly anyone else there, so my friends and I lay out our stuff and they prepped for a nice relaxing sun bathing session while I went up and rented snorkeling equipment and asked around about kayaks. They said the kayak guy was out on a tour, so I went down with the snorkel stuff back to where our things were...


...to find that many people had since returned, including a really loud group of teenagers who set themselves up literally right in front of us. The swimming area at this beach wasn't actually that big (and the water was actually a tad chilly) so I wasn't super comfortable taking off my swim shorts (I had a two piece on but yeah, my legs could be used as a source of light in a dark room). Instead I sat with my friends and enjoyed what sun there was until the kayaking man returned. It was really funny, because I tried to ask him in Japanese about renting a kayak and he actually asked me if English was okay and I breathed a super huge sigh of relief at that point haha.


I kayaked out to the small island in the bay (which was pretty much the only place I could kayak, since he warned against kayaking to the eastern part and northern part of the bay as well as behind the small island) and beached myself there, dragging the kayak up the little hill of sand well away from the water. It was like a mini pinnensula and bay there, and I was stupid enough to land near the edge, which meant that waves were washing up to the beach from behind me AND from my side. Not helpful in trying to get out of the kayak without completely flipping. Somehow I managed though. The bay was a much calmer place, so I stripped down to my bikini (in blissful privacy, since I was the only one on this small island and I couldn't blind anyone but the fish) and went out snorkeling into the small bay.


Wow. Just wow. I wish I had bought an underwater camera. There was an amazing amount of fish in that small bay, and I spent nearly an hour just swimming around there. It was interesting too, since there were small pockets of warm water that (thank god) fish tended to be found around so I was able to watch fish while staying warm. Conversely there were pockets of ridiculously cold water. Those sucked. There were decently large fish down there, brightly colored pastel fish (I think parrot fish?), large ones that looked like the Hawaiian state fish, small, brilliant bright blue fish that lived in the coral and rocks, hidden fish, sea cucumbers (oh god so many sea cucumbers) and loads of other fish.


My favorites though, were: 1. the weird four armed starfish I saw. It was a periwinkle blue. 2. The angelfish I saw swimming around in pairs. So very pretty! I was like EEEEEE GILL~~! 3. The clownfish I saw. They weren't your movie clownfish (they only had two brown stripes) but they were chilling in this jungle of sea anemone arms that looked like something out of a postcard/national geographic picture. That was freaking awesome. 4. The... abalone? Clams? I don't know what they were. I think I knew but right now I can't remember what they're called. Giant clams? They were kind of small. But they came in such bright mottled colors - purples, greens, blues, and I even saw an orange one - and they would shut any time I tried to get close. Their colors though were absolutely glorious.


I really love the underwater world. It's so beautiful, and every time I go diving or snorkeling, I feel like I've entered into a completely different world than our own, and I'm stunned and awed each time by places that have preserved this beauty. When I was diving in the philippines, it felt like I was swimming in a national geographic video or something. It was beautiful, mysterious, and I don't think words can sufficiently express how much awe I felt in looking at the coral shelves from below them. Or well, here's my best approximations: "Woah.... This is Nature."


Brilliant, I know.

Oh right, I forgot, I haven't actually typed out the Philippines yet (working on that...) and that I'm talking about Okinawa! Right. So. The rest of our day was fairly uneventful though - we got ice cream, went back home, showered, went out to the Kokusaidori street. Went towards an izakaya we had heard about from our hostel, but decided to go somewhere else instead. They had amazing amazing food. We also looked around this book store with the most amazing English section I've seen in my LIFE. They had academic books! Like, two giant rows of books with books on English on both sides! Manga in English! My neuroscience textbook! MATH and science texts! A used book section! Oh right. So that was kind of eventful.

We managed to knock everything off our "to eat" list at this izakaya restaurant. They had avocado pasta for our vegetarian friend, so that left me and Mel to go through the meat. Oh god we ordered so much. We got kaarage (Japanese fried chicken, which is really different than our fried chicken) that was as big as my palm. They were HUGE.  We got agubutu (agu pork) which was my favorite favorite favorite. Rafute pork, which was super tender and fatty pork. SOmething else... uh, I don't remember. Really good fries. They tasted like curly fries! Mm. Curly fries. A tomato and something else al fresco kind of thing that was also delicious and had tons of avocados. I think there's a small chance I raised my cholestorol and blood pressure that night and added to the likelihood that I'll die from a heart attack, but the food there was soooo good. They also gave us some goya champuru which - I found out later - is tofu stir fried with veggies (in this case goya, or bittermelon. It's really really bitter unless you cook it the right way) and pork that was probably spam (or some knock off). It was super tasty. NOMMMMM. I love okinawan food.

After that night, we did a it more omiyage shopping, and then went back to the hostel and woke up and did last minute omiyage shopping haha before heading back to the airport. I grabbed a few more pork sandwiches - and some taco maki (taco rice in sushi form!) for later that night/as snacks and found out my friends were going to the conbini for their lunch. I was super hungry though, and there were loads of awesome looking places, so we went to check them out. Sadly they didn't have many veggie friendly things - but there was an A&W (actually, there were a lot in Okinawa!). And it had CHILI CHEESE FRIES AND CURLY FRIES. OMFFGGGGG. Yeah. Needless to say, I got that for lunch haha. Dude, A&W is super tasty. Why don't we have more of them?

Our flight back to Takamatsu actually got delayed a bit, so we had some time to kill at the airport (which was fine - none of us were in a rush and we were still well earlier than our last trains). Other than that, the rest of our return trip went smoothly and uneventfully (especially since the bus didn't leave the airport until most of the passengers had gotten their bags).

Oh, there was giant plastic udon on the conveyor belt at the airport (since that's what Takamatsu is famous for). That was... interesting. And different. But kind of a nice quirky touch to the end of a fantastic trip.

Okinawa was super awesome though. Definitely want to go again!


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On a different note, right now is the time when teachers change schools: The Great Teacher Shuffle. I've yet to find out what my situation is like at my Niimi schools, but most of the teachers I like (whom I teach with anyways) are staying at my schools. However, I'm not teaching with the same lady as last year at my visit school, and we don't know yet at my base school. Oh also one of my favorite teachers is leaving to participate in a teacher exchange program with Southern Australia. SUPER SAD FACE. He was the one I talked to the most probably, and who was the easiest to talk to since he was super laid back and also his English was super. Plus I taught with him the first academic year I was here, and he's constantly explaining things to me about Japanese (and I explain things about English to him - or at least, try to). So I'm really sad about that, but I guess I'll be moving on in less than half a year anyways. As the Japanese say, "しかったがない" or, "it can't be helped."

This also didn't get posted as soon as I had wanted it to, so I'm sitting here in a BRAND NEW SPANKIN' DESK. They actually had four extra new desks (all the third year teachers got new desks) so since I'm now sitting in the rows that are touching the 3rd year desks.... I got an upgrade! (Honestly though, I was kind of annoyed that like, I had to change desks because I liked my old one and I also liked the fact that I didn't have to empty out all of my drawers!) The teachers were all really surprised with how much crap is in my drawers... and the funny thing, is that a lot of it isn't actually mine (really, I should just chuck them, but I can't help but feel that one day they'll come in handy or something, or that my successor can use them for ideas or use them or something).


Also, I swear, my entry about the philippines will probably happen around the time I actually get those pictures uploaded.

KARAOKE~~

Today... has been a long and eventful day. I feel like I've done a lot of traveling. Okayama, Kurashiki, and Yakage... all in one day.

I think I'll be staying home for a while. Yep.

Last night/this morning was all-you-can-karaoke, aka all night karaoke. For charity. We got two rooms at this karaoke place, one for English and the other for Japanese and I bounced back and forth between the two rooms for a bit before settling down into one, since I could sing *some* Japanese songs (and figured why not try) and some of the songs in the English room I didn't really know.

Or well, I could sing some Japanese if they PUT FURIGANA ON MORE KANJI. Furigana are those small hiragana characters above kanji that show you how to read it. They're kind of a huge crutch when it comes to reading Japanese, both in the good and bad sense. Good, since if you don't know how to read a kanji, you can use that and sometimes you'll be able to recognize a word once you know how it's read, and therefore, you'll know the meaning. Also good for when you're trying to sing and you get to a kanji you don't know how to read. Instead of going "... :D " you can read the furigana instead! The downside to furigana is that it's really hard to NOT read it... so you end up constantly reading just the furigana without actually learning the kanji. If the furigana gets taken away...

Destruction.

Anyways, last night, we started around 8pm and there were a good number of us. I wanna say somewhere around 10-12 people... perhaps more? But around there. And we started to sing, and around 11 to midnight, people started to leave to go to bars or catch last trains back. There was a bit of confusion on whether or not we actually had the rooms until midnight or if we could stay there later, since at first they told us midnight (since the place was kinda busy) but we went and asked and they told us we could keep one of the (larger) rooms. Fine by me. But a lot of people left by midnight. I think after that, there were maybe... seven of us left? Two more left right after that, so then there were only five of us. And then that number dropped to four. And by one or two am, there were only two of us left. We had the room until five.

At that point, we could have gone home. But where's the fun in that? It's not like we had to pay anything extra for the room - we had already paid for it. And we only paid 1500 yen, which is somewhere around the neighborhood of $15. For nine hours. And we sang it all.

Karaoke is one of my favorite things here in Japan (if you couldn't tell). It's really fun, once you get over the shyness and embarrassment of singing in front of people. Some people are AMAZING singers. There's a couple of JETs whom I can think of... and a couple of people overall who have the voices to hit them high notes in songs sung by the like of Utada Hikaru (her vocal range is amazing) and Mariah Carey. They're brilliant to listen to.

Everyone else, it's all just fun. A lot of the songs I like to sing tend to be slower... or like, R&B songs or love songs (or Disney) so sometimes if it's a larger crowd it's a bit embarrassing to sing them or I feel like it's a mood killer. Yet last night, we managed to find a ton of amazing songs, and when it went down to just the two of us... yeah, we busted out all the crazy and embarrassing songs.

We sang a huge range of stuff; we had a Goo Goo Doll power period, Train, Sugar Ray, BBMak, Ghostbusters, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, girl power songs, heaven, raining men (which was ridiculously fun to sing)... among other things, and we ended with Queen's "We are the Champions." It felt rather fitting, considering that neither of us had dozed off during the entire marathon and we had lasted until the very end when they were gonna kick us out. Plus we still had most of our voices (though clearly, we did something wrong?)

Ahhh, in retrospect, we should have sang "Just the Two of Us" hahaha. That would have been fun.

I don't know what it is about karaoke that makes it so much fun, but it makes me really happy that karaoke is really cheap here.

I did get some sleep though. After we got kicked out at 5 am, I caught the first train home (achievement unlocked) and stupidly didn't go to sleep until 7, despite getting home around 6:40. I slept until about 9:20, so I got about an hour and a half of sleep... plus the thirtyish minutes on the train I slept that morning. So I got like, three hours today.

Then I woke up and went to Takahashi's festival, kind of. I wanted to go for longer, but I found out really last minute that my friend was performing taiko in Yakage's festival (which was like, 40 minutes from me). I was planning on showing up to that later in the day, around 12:30. But then I found out she was performing around noon, and the train I had intended on taking wouldn't get me there in time. Instead I had to take the train that was 40 minutes earlier, cutting in to my festival time. I had originally planned on chilling at the festival in Takahashi until I had to leave for my train, but since I had to shower and get ready, I didn't get out of my house until rather late; twenty minutes prior to my train. It was hard - did I stay at this festival, or go out to watch my friend?

The festival looked rather interesting too. The people who did calligraphy class were there (one of the students was the emcee for the event) and they had tables selling stuff as well as food and performances on a stage. They were really cool! I was really sad that I couldn't stay for longer. the festival was for like... health or something? I'm not entirely sure.

The other festival in Yakage was the daiyamo festival, where History Is Remembered in the form of a parade with people dressed up in period costumes. The ALTs in Yakage get all dressed up as well, so we got to see our friends in period costume and several pounds of make up.

Slowest. Parade. Ever though. They were slower than a wedding. And worse, there was no music. But it was really interesting to watch; I got several good pictures that I swear I'll get up one of these days.

We didn't stay til the end of the festival, since that would have been until approximately 4 or something and the parade still had a ways to go when we left (though, we ended up leaving around 3:10 anyways...). Instead, we stopped by kurashiki's AEON mall to grab some bread and make a daiso and subway run. Yay not having to cook tomorrow!

Ah crap, I forgot I was supposed to do the laundry with my new laundry bags. The washing machines DESTROY clothes here... so laundry bags are supposed to help with that. Also I dunno why but I cannot get my clothes to smell clean for the life of me. It's kind of concerning. I miss washing machines and driers in the states. Sigh.

But yeah. Today we also agreed that laundry, cleaning, and uhhh, studying kanji were all categorized into the "futile" category since you're always doing them, and you can't really win (though maybe at kanji you can get close... or at least think you're close). Everything else... you clean, it's nice, but then you have to keep cleaning or it gets dirty, and even if you do a little bit here and there, it's still a kind of futile task.

If only clean things weren't so nice and relatively bug free.

OH. THAT REMINDS ME. I think I'm getting better at dealing with insects. Today as I was getting ready to go out, I was getting changed and had pulled my pants from my drying room into my bedroom since there's a full length mirror there. As I went to pick up my pants, a freaking kamemushi (these potato bugs that are really really stinky if you squish them) fell from them.

And what did I do?

I didn't scream. I was surprised and I gasped... but I didn't scream. That's like, a first for me. Normally (especially before I came to Japan) all bugs terrified me. Surprises got screamed at. The girls in the dormitory next to me have heard my screams from bugs before.

I even managed to get rid of it myself, though I couldn't bring myself to kill it. I was lucky in that potato bugs aren't very fast moving, and generally don't jump at you or fly... that I've seen. So I got my broom and dustpan and coaxed it into that and then chucked it outside. If I had squashed it, a) I would have squashed it straight into my bedsheets (gross) b) it would have let out an awful smell, and c) that increased the chances that it would have moved or something.

But yeah! I got rid of the bug all by myself. Wee~

Watch, next thing you know, I'll be touching them. lols.

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!

Nerd Day

This weekend was pretty awesome, I gotta say. It had the right amount of active and nerd in it. :) I already talked about Sunday's whitewater rafting adventure, but Saturday was a lot calmer and hurt far less.

Saturday was my nerd day with a fellow JET in Okayama city. ♡ I came into the city on Friday night and stayed the night at her place. I actually came in that day so that we could study at Coco's, one of my favorite family restaurants here (it's seriously fukken delicious). Our reasoning was that because they have a drink bar, we could just stay there and utilize the drink bar as long as we wanted to and study Japanese. Their drink bar is pretty nice; it has a coffee machine as well as loose leaf teas. ♡ loose leaf! It was a very productive night.

We did come to the realization that yes, we were studying Japanese on a Friday night (and not only had looked forward to studying on a friday night, but were also having fun doing so). Kinda lame, I know, but ♡ nerds I mean, we also chatted, but a lot of what we did was study (after dinner, of course). The place was close enough to her house that we were able to take advantage of it not being disgustingly hot outside for once, and walked back to her place.

The next morning, we were back again at Coco's for their morning "baikingu" or viking or buffet style breakfast. Yeah we were there probably less than twelve hours ago, but I mean come ON breakfast foods! ...not particularly like, gourmet breakfast foods, but they did have tasty curry and tasty breakfast breads and jam. And the drink bar. And it was all only 700 yen. ♡

After that, we decided to walk over to the Oriental Museum, since they were having an Egypt and mummy exhibit going on (which was the ultimate reason I had come into Okayama). First though, we stopped at the prefectural library, one of my favorite places in the prefecture. ♡ You can check out books from the prefectural library via your local library (or in my case, my high school library) in the interlibrary exchange program. It's pretty awesome. But you kind of have to know what you're looking for sometimes. That's why I like to browse when I can, and since we were passing by and had a bunch of time to kill...

I swear we hit the jackpot. Or I hit the jackpot. They had back issues of Bon Appetite (though fat lot of help that does us here in Japan where we can't get half the ingredients), but more importantly, their English language selection is pretty vast and really varied. They have a really decent social sciences section too; lots of stuff on gender studies, but also an impressive collection of academic books about food and culture. Hell. They even had the Food and Culture reader by Counihan. It was massive. I practically wept with joy; as it was, I became a library fangirl almost instantly.

Either way though, I found enough literature to keep me busy until probably at least december; and that's if I'm constantly reading everything I check out in a timely manner.

The first two books I picked up were Afternoon Tea and Foodways and Folklore (Thursby 2008). Afternoon Tea is a cute (short) book with lots of pictures that briefly talks about the origins of tea and then primarily focuses on the origins of tea customs and practices in the West (ie, England mostly). It was a very interesting, if short read that I finished when we decided to kill more time after visiting the museum at a cafe, reading and drinking tasty tasty tea. ♡ The other book is pretty interesting as well. It's a bit longer, and is more academic. There are countless numbers of articles and books I can grab references from, and it's interesting to read. It focuses on the food and foodways of mostly America, which, at the moment, I find incredibly fascinating. My views of what American food is (and isn't) has changed a lot since I've left for Japan. I used to mock the way Americans, in Japanese manga and anime anyways, are portrayed as always loving hamburgers (and sometimes fries, shakes, and apple pie). I only agreed with maybe one of those things as American - apple pie. To me, before, American food was ridiculously complex and near impossible to define because there were so many variations, so many immigrants, and so many regional differences that there was no one or two things that could be defined as "American food" (turkey, apple pie... and maybe BBQ style foods were the only ones I could think of).

American food is complex in that sense; that there's a lot of people who make up "America" and defining one thing over the other is really hard to do. However, after spending more time here in Japan, American food - to me - has come to mean "stuff that you can eat only in America and can't really eat anywhere else and also is pretty popular plus foods that lots of people eat and that the rest of the world thinks we're weird sometimes for eating plus stuff that people in America have eaten for friggin ages"

American style breakfast is, I think, pretty unique. Proper breakfast anyways. Slow, weekend breakfast. A full breakfast I guess you can call it. The British have quick and not so quick breakfast too, but the contents are vastly different. Here in Japan... some students have told me they have miso soup and rice for breakfast. Others have natto, and still others will have just bread (pastry bread from conbinis) or rice balls for breakfast. Sometimes, I too have rice balls for breakfast from the convenience store. I don't actually know if people eat pancakes or waffles for breakfast here (though waffles, often with ice cream or fruit and whipped cream, are a popular dessert). The closest thing I've seen to an american breakfast is the "breakfast set" some cafes offer: toast, salad, and coffee or tea and maybe eggs. Maybe not eggs. Oh yeah, salad for breakfast is a thing here (and sometimes, french fries are too).

It's funny though, cause yesterday in the car ride home, to stay awake I talked with the driver and we pretty much made ourselves ridiculously hungry by talking about the foods that we loved to eat. We went through like, top three desserts, top three chocolate bars, top three cakes, top three ice creams, top three savory foods, top three burgers, foods for your last meal, top three people you'd eat your last meal with, where you'd eat your last meal at... yeah, we were pretty much starving by the time we got back. We even stopped at a rest area because my friend had such a huge craving for chocolates (he has a huge sweet tooth to make things worse). This is sometimes a downside of talking to me.

Anyways. The museum exhibit was pretty cool. There were even things in English that we could read (I think the exhibition came from London) and they had two mummies and a couple sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) on display. It was freaking RAD. They also had these gorgeous Egyptian style dresses, but those were kind of expensive (about 14,000 yen, or ~$150 which... isn't actually that much compared to a formal style dress). They had this area too where you could smell frankincense and uhhhh... something else. Some kind of wood - not sandalwood but uhhh... something else that was really earthy smelling. I forgot. But I sweartogod I've smelled frankincense somewhere else - and not at a funeral home or crematory.

After, we killed time at a cafe and read for a while until it was time to go to a Book Exchange that someone in AJET was starting. Brilliant idea. If only I hadn't just gone to the library. So much reading to do~Good thing classes haven't started yet. I meant to go back home earlier, but a couple of new JETs came and I was like ahhh I want to say hello since they both live pretty close to where I am. I totally meant to go back and make swedish meatballs. I'm doing that today, actually. I ended up eating dinner hella late (omnom curry from Coco Curry House~) so I wasn't hungry at all by the time I got back home, and so ended up not making them. I get tired kind of early now. But yes. That 24 hour block was kind of amazing. Like I said, saturday (and friday night) was like, my nerd day. ♡

You need slow (but still productive) quiet days like that sometimes, I think. Recharge the soul and the mind!

Festival Prep

I meant to take pictures of us doing beef teriyaki skewering here in Concord. Oops. I forgot. Or well, I was too busy actually skewering and catching up with people to pull out my camera. We must have skewered for ages though. 31 tubs of meat, and our beef teriyaki skewers aren't just meat like the Japanese gyuugushi/meat on sticks. We're, y'know, healthy. Kind of. Between each meat slice there's a green bell pepper. Totally healthy. Yep.

Actually, I should really bring this back to Japan since bell peppers are actually cheap, and if I just use the thin sliced beef it won't be too too expensive. Just need to make the teriyaki sauce and figure out the best way to make it - oh wait, I have a grill. Hopefully it won't explode into flames again. Like literally. The last time I used it, I got a couple of fireballs that blossomed from the grease that was falling down. Very pretty. Probably not safe.

But preparations for the Concord (California) Diablo Summer Festival, our Japanese-American summer obon festival, have been going on for the past week, so I've been popping in to help out in between running around taking care of business and seeing friends and stuff. Helped cut the bellpeppers. Sliced the shrimp. Skewered the beef teriyaki. Will probably be working tomorrow in beef teriyaki and inside at calligraphy. Just what I want to do right before I leave. Of course. It's fun though, working at festival and being part of the Japanese/Asian American community out here in the suburbs.

It's awesome though, because I get to go from one festival straight to another, since Matsuyama Odori will be happening when I arrive back in Takahashi. YAAAAAAAY.

I'm excited. I also have mixed feelings about going back though. I missed California a lot. I'm worried about my grandma. I missed my friends. I missed the food. I think I might be good on that front though. Maybe. But the weather here... is amazing. It's been cool, even cold in some places. I've been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt sometimes. Can you say heaven? So... I'm not looking forward to going back to the humidity. But it's Japan! And Takahashi! And bugs! I'm afraid to come back to my house lol. Mostly I'm terrified that the bugs have taken it over while I've been away. And that's actually a valid concern. I left it clean... but I'm paranoid I forgot something. And that the spiders will take over.

Takahashi has become home for me though. I have home in two places: Concord and Takahashi. This time around, it doesn't feel like I'm off to Japan on a grand adventure (even though, I am) but it feels kind of like I'm leaving one home for the other. I suppose that's a good thing. :)

I leave on Sunday morning though, at 11:30. gahhhhhh. I'm not packed at all (of course)! I have so much to do I don't know what I have to do before I leave. It's kind of ridiculous. I've also been scheming how I can get a deli sandwich from Genova - this amazing Italian deli near where I live that makes amazing sandwiches - to take with me on the plane. And what I'm going to do for 11 hours, since my laptop battery will definitely not last that long, nor will my soon-to-be-disconnected-iPhone.

iPhone. Smartphones. It was beautiful having you again. Perhaps I made a mistake in not waiting for you in Japan, but I regret nothing. Being connected somehow for not all my money was kind of important.

The past two weeks have been a complete whirlwind of activity, food, and friends. My trip has only reminded me of what amazing friends I have not only on both sides of the pacific, but also around the world, as everyone continues to scatter to the four winds. It's also reminded me that I'm old. I met up with one of my friends from elementary school (Elementary!), a couple middle school friends, college friends, Scholar Ship friends, basketball friends, and soon, I will be traveling back to my Japanland friends. I've been quite lucky indeed. Eventually, (maybe) there will be pictures. :) I keep saying that. Eventually it will come true... right?

Right?

*

A Thousand Words to Explain a Picture

I think I'm going to try something different with this blog. Maybe. Hopefully, it will make me more diligent about actually posting, and hopefully, less whiny and more interesting!

The plan: Post a picture. Explain picture in ~1000 words. Or something like that. :) It provides an elaboration on a picture that I've probably either put on facebook or in the newsletter, but has a longer version of the story to go with it. Or more complete. Or untold parts. Or something. I'm trying to make everything as... independent? from each other as possible, so hopefully, this accomplishes that and turns this blog from "jessica's wine-fest" into "hey awesome." Hopefully, it will also help me remember the smaller things that happened that day.

And now, the story.

Hiroshima, 18 September 2010
We were sitting on the curb not because our feet were tired, but rather, because it was in the shade and relatively out of the way. Our group was waiting in Hiroshima's famous peace park (which is, in fact, very peaceful), just outside the museum, for people to regroup so that everyone could go to lunch. Since we had all split up to cover the park in our own time, people were trickling back in small groups; we were waiting for two more people. Girls. British. They had chosen to do the peace museum after touring the park area.

Me? I did it first so that I could get it over and then walk around the park and contemplate. Originally, I wasn't going to go to the museum since a) I had done it already 5 and 6 years ago b) I didn't want to go a third time and c) It's really really really depressing. Somehow I managed to convince myself that this was a good idea because I was older and theoretically wiser now.

Anyways, we were waiting for these two girls, one of whom gets rather emotional over things like this so... we weren't entirely sure when she'd get out of the museum. Others were getting impatient, since it had been a while since any of us had eaten.

Finally, the majority of the people waiting decided that food was really important and split. Three of us from that group chose to wait for the other two. I mean, we're adults and everything (gasp) so it wasn't like we had to eat together for everything. Just that waiting seemed a little more polite than just up and leaving the poor girls after they walked through that depressing place.

So instead of having omurice (which is super tasty), our group went on an adventure to find this okonomiyaki area in Hiroshima that was particularly famous. We actually walked by the building without being able to find it haha. It was weird, because this was the same place I had eaten 5 or 6 years ago. I remembered it... kind of. It looked so familiar. Not in the dejavu sense, but in the "oh shit, I know I've been here before and I can remember doing these things.." sense. It was weird.

We almost didn't go to this place either, since I was in charge of picking where to eat since I had made the mistake of uttering "oh this looks familiar." I chose the place with the giant okonomiyaki sign outside of it. Or rather, building. We were so confused. No idea of what to do. There were stairs, and an elevator. The other girls took the elevator up, while Will and I actually took the stairs. Unfortunately... we kind of didn't talk to the others about where they were getting off at, so we wandered up the stairs in search of food, not knowing where they were getting off. Yeah. Poor planning on my part. BUT. We discovered that every single floor pretty much, was a cluster of okonomiyaki grills with bar seats. Freaking amazing I tell you. There had to have been at least 20 different places total in the building. We made our choice by who answered "can you do vegetarian?" since one person's a herbivore.

Our choice was a good one though. That okonomiyaki was so freaking good. It had a layer of crepe, cabbage, noodles, bacon-like pork, garlic, and mochi in it. Mmmmmmmmmmmm tastiness.

One Day

It's finally starting to hit me that I'm leaving for like, a year (or more!) and that I won't be able to hang out with people the same way when I get back as I did before I left. And it makes me a little sad, but people move on with their lives, we make new friends and find circles to hang out with and do stuff with. Life goes on. With or without you.

I will miss the RPG club parties in particular. They were always fun, and I always felt welcome and -I don't know if this is the right word- safe. Like I could just relax, since there was never this feeling that I needed to impress anyone or conform to anyone. I could say anything and do anything and I would simply be accepted for that. Parties were always fun. I always wanted to stay longer.

But today was my last day of hanging out with people, and it's made me realize that hey, I'm leaving, and hey, I have pretty awesome friends down here (and in general). I'm going to miss everyone. It hasn't quite felt like I was just packing up all my stuff and shipping off to a foreign place until now. O.A.R. does a song called "One Day" that epitomizes the fear that I've been trying to push away by not thinking about how I'm up and moving my life to somewhere new. The people who I know will help pick me up again if I fall, they'll be thousands (thousands!) of miles away where all they can do is listen, if that (thanks to time differences). I know JET has a fantastic support network. And I'm sure I'll make friends. But the thought that this chapter of my life is ending, and the characters I've met and befriended in this part may or may not end up in the rest of my story makes me want to go "Hey wait! Pause! I'm not done with this part of the game yet! I haven't done all the sidequests and I want our friendship to stay the same!" A naive, and wishful thought.

As my room slowly empties, it gets harder and harder. It is as if each thing I pack is literally packing away my precious memories of this place, my friends, and everything that has made me love San Diego. Cause I'm not going to lie, but this place wouldn't be the same without the people I've befriended. It almost makes me wary about returning to here after we've all dispersed (or well, probably not all but a lot of us).

Here is to you, my friends, for a kickass awesome five years. Thank you for the memories - and may we make more of them in the future. I will miss you.

Love, Jess