Hello there rainy season and bugs

Ahh, things have gotten so busy as of late! Where does the time end up going? I suspect those boring moments in life steal them away from the more interesting ones.

I have a plane ticket back, though one slightly different than the one they approved me for. I suppose that's the problem with allowing us the freedom to choose our own flights and dates and times; we need to get it approved by a whole slew of people, taking something that's better done with a couple phone calls and making it more difficult. First we need to give the proposed flight quote to our supervisors. Then, it moves up the chain to the vice principal, and then the principal (at least that's how it works at my school). Then it gets faxed or mailed to our Board of Education - in my case, the prefectural office. Then they approve it, and fax it back. Then we're supposed to buy our tickets. But it needs to wait on at least four people - four people who are generally pretty busy.

Yet somehow, when we faxed the paper to the board of education in the morning, by the evening the flight on kayak.com was no more. thankfully though, I was able to find A similar flight - the same times even, on the same airline for the first leg - for just a little more money. Sooo I bought it, and I'm really hoping the board of education will say alright since it's only a little more expensive. Pain though, to use my American credit card when I'm getting paid in yen. It means I have to transfer more things, which honestly, I think is a huge pain in the rear.

It's why I haven't really sent money home other than physically bringing it back and selling it to people in the states who want yen.

On a completely different note, it's gotten disgustingly hot and humid. I've already turned on my air conditioner. As far as I'm concerned, summer officially started when they turned on the AC in The train and stopped automatically opening the doors at all the stops. Yet still, there are days - like today - where for one reason or another it's just really freaking COLD and it throws me off because I have no idea what to wear ahaha.

Humid, (and the occasional rain) means also that the bugs have returned in full force. It's kind of disgusting. You can't ride a bike anywhere without getting pegged by a couple bugs. Bugs up the nose, in the mouth (despite trying to ride with my mouth closed), in the eye (despite my small eyes lol). Ugh. But worse... is that the bugs have invaded my house!

They're also pretty fast. D:

Last week I had not one, but TWO centipede visitors.

One of them was this bug, called 'gejigeji' in Japanese. They're generally 'good' bugs since they eat other bugs and don't really bite or sting. Their name in English is "House Centipede." They're kinda non-aggro hahaha.

The other one...

I had another mukade in my house. D:　Longer body, black color, a little on the skinny side, and shorter legs. Yuuuuuck. Seriously, I was looking for pictures, but then I stopped because it felt like I was somehow going to summon another one just by trying to look for pictures of it.

I looked over and saw something moving out the corner of my eye, and it turned out a mukade had decided to crawl into my backpack. Nearly grabbed a lighter to burn it, but that would have destroyed my house maybe. Boiling water was not an option either, because I had electronics in my backpack.

Thankfully, I still had some of the kill-by-freezing bug spray that goes down to like. -82C I think? Sorry, -85C, or -121F. It took about a minute of panicked hyperventilating and spraying nearly the whole can for it to stop moving. Still in my backpack. Right up against the lip of the bag too.

Removing it... yeah. So you know that non-harmful one earlier? It was in my bathroom while I was taking a shower. I waited for my friend to come over to my house, and she helped me kill it by drowning, and then did what I couldn't; removed it with disposable chopsticks. Bless the woman, she also removed the dead bee that's been sitting on my window sill for a good month or so.

So yeah. Removing it was a challenge. I thought about vacuuming it up, but the irrational fear part of me was like, "WHAT IF IT'S STILL ALIVE? WHAT IF IT'S JUST IN A CYROGENESIS KIND OF SLEEP WHERE IT'S BODY IS HIBERNATING?" also the reason why I was like, nooo picking it up with chopsticks.

Eventually, after much shaking with my Mt. Fuji walking stick (nice and long) it kinda came to the edge of my bag, and I grabbed a broom and kind of swept it into the dust pan, put on my shoes, went outside, and hurled that thing far away from my house. Retrospect says I should have dumped it in the river.

I suppose I'm getting better at killing bugs, even if I still scream at them. Even then, I think that's gotten a bit better now too. I don't scream as loud... sometimes. I still hate being surprised, so when I'm surprised by a bug in close proximity to my person, I'll still jump and scream. But like, it's better than before, I suppose.

Yesterday at school, I had an interesting conversation with the teachers at one of my school, how there were a tooon of words to talk about rain. And that rainy season was finally here, with yesterday being the first good rain. It actually dropped the temperature by a good... 8-10 degrees Celsius. Which is a big difference, something I keep forgetting. 19 is a bit on the chilly side, especially if you don't bring a jacket! Not just any jacket though, because it was still humid, so the rain jacket I brought with me stuck and clung and made me feel kinda gross.

I did make a soup last night. Chunky and creamy tomato potato soup. Nom. Relatively healthy too, I think, in addition to being really filling! And when you add a little bit of feta cheese... ah, heaven. I think this is why I love the autumn and cool weather, and I don't mind winter too much. Soups. Hot foods.

That being said though, I love cold foods too hahaha. Actually, I bought some zaru soba (I think that's the cold stuff? Maybe? Ha! I don't actually eat it that often... maybe this is my second time) that's matcha flavored, so I'm excited for that.

Queen of Bad Luck

Well, that was the worst string of bad luck I've experienced in a while. I guess I'm lucky that it was only bad luck for like... getting back home and not something worse like losing my wallet, or bad luck with my graduate school applications (which, I am very happy to announce, I have finished applying for!). I mean, I guess that's pretty bad luck anyways... but as they say... it could've been worse. I could have broken something or not healed as fast.

But yeah. I got discharged from the hospital Monday... but my journey didn't end there.

So, I wrote that entry at the hospital on Sunday night/early monday morning because I had very little to do. It was actually a good thing I was awake that late and writing because they came in to take my blood pressure, heartrate, and temperature while I was writing that. At 2 am! Crazy. But when I woke up in the morning, my fever was actually not as bad - practically gone. Breakfast was this congee/jook stuff that wasn't too bad, since they used like... actual chicken soup or something. And! They actually gave me a couple pieces of cantaloupe. This was big, since fruit was on the forbidden list. My stomach didn't make too many weird noises either. The doctor came back and told me that it was possible for me to get discharged that day, and that the customer service downstairs would help me get everything in order and rebook my flight and stuff. I had to pay an extra hundred dollars because they weren't able to find the same booking class I made the reservation in, but at that point it was like... ugh, I just want to get back.

So they made my reservation for the same flight I had missed: the 1am flight on Tuesday. This meant I was going to get back sometime around Tuesday afternoon. The whole morning was spent in correspondence with my prefectural advisor and emails to my teachers and supervisors and family and friends (one of whom kindly called my supervisor for me, since in Japan, monday was a national holiday... so nobody was going to be checking their emails until Tuesday when it was too late.) So people knew what was going on. I had to deal with things for insurance and stuff, with getting paper work. Once they knew I was going to get discharged, things like medication and paper work started to slowly but surely trickle in.

One of our family's friends who was working and living in Thailand came to visit me with his driver and stuff. He kindly offered to give me a ride to the airport if I could leave that afternoon when he visited, but at that point I didn't have all the paper work I needed, and they said taxis were fairly cheap so I just opted to take a taxi to the hospital since there was a protest happening near his wife's workplace, which was going to back up the traffic for two or three hours. Super sucky.

Before he arrived though, I had the chance to eat lunch and shower. Lunch was a chicken patty thing with two potatoes (I think that's like... one of the only main dishes I had those few days) and also pork wonton soup, which, to my surprise, was actually really freaking tasty. They gave me fish sauce to add to the pork wonton broth (which was like all the broth I had before, which is to say, it tasted like water). But the fish sauce? Oh my god. It was like magic. IT MADE IT TASTE AMAZING.

Showering was more interesting, since I was still attached to the IV drip at that point. I had to call the nurse in to ask her how I should shower, if she could just disconnect the IV drip from the bag for a little bit and then... she disappeared. I got super worried, because I thought she was going to take the IV out of my hand and then put it back in when I finished. I don't think I could have done that again, put the IV back in my hand. I mean, I had a hard enough time doing it when I was half conscious and sick and kinda in pain already, but now? I was like, no way.

Luckily for me, when the nurse returned, she told me that I didn't actually need the IV anymore, so she just took it out for good. It left a huge bump in my hand, and is still a little sore when I press on it now or stretch my hand. I also have a little dot there where it went in. My bruise from where they drew blood has finally disappeared too. I think I almost passed out when they drew my blood, cause I could feel myself get lightheaded and start to do that ah-ha-ha-nervous-laughter kind of thing after they were pulling blood for a few moments. Part of me panics a little, but usually I'm able to keep it under control unless they pull blood for too long.

The shower was really really nice though, since I hadn't showered since I left the Philippines (though other than being sick, it's not like I really did anything...)

Eventually, I got all my paperwork that I needed for insurance stuff - it turns out that we JETs *are* covered when we travel abroad, through both the national insurance as well as an additional JET insurance, which is good, because my bill was *not* cheap. I was also told that my hotel was not one of the cheapest hotels - er, and by hotel I mean hospital, but inside kinda felt like a hotel. People spoke English there and it was super clean and nice. And there was the clinic visit, the ER visit, the hospital food, the room itself, the doctors, the ambulance... yeah, thank god for insurance.

Right though. So after I got discharged, I went to the airport since they said that I wouldn't really have much time to explore the city on my own, plus at that point I was more concerned about getting home than I was about looking around. Plus, I decided that it probably still wasn't a good idea to eat like... street food with my stomach, so I elected to stay at the airport after checking in. Read or something.

I did get to hang out with my friend though! She actually came to the airport to visit me :) That made me super happy. She also helped me go on a manhunt for my baggage, since we weren't sure if it was in Thailand, Beijing, or in Osaka since it had been checked all the way in theory. Eventually, after being let back in to baggage claim, we managed to find it and they brought it out for us. THank goodness! We had dinner together (and I got some pad thai, which she pronounced to be not actually pad thai but hey, I wasn't super picky at that point) and waited until I could check in for my flight before parting ways. She was one of my friends from my study abroad program, The Scholar Ship. I hadn't seen her in five years, so it was a super special treat to be able to see her again.

At 1 am, I boarded my plane from Bangkok to Beijing and decided I was going to sleep for most of it. ANd sleep I did, when they weren't serving us food (which actually wasn't half bad). But when I woke up, we had landed... in Taiyuan, about 6-7 hours away from Beijing, where we were supposed to be. Nobody knew what was going on, but eventually, my seat buddy, who spoke Chinese and English, found out and then passed along that we were unable to land in Beijing due to "fog" (I don't think it was just fog...) so we were going to chill there until we got cleared.

So we sat there. For three hours. THREE HOURS. They gave us these biscuit cookie things... but they weren't letting anyone off the plane. By the time we were actually cleared to leave, we still had an hour of travel to do. By the time we got into Beijing, it was already 11:30 am.

My connecting flight to Osaka was supposed to be at 8 am.

We got put at the very end of the terminal... and holy christ, Beijing's airport is HUGE. There are actually two (or three?) terminals, and I was lucky in that I was in the same terminal... but I swear, it's like a half mile to where the transfer area is. I almost ran to the international transfers counter, where they told me (after having to wait ages behind this really slow couple) that my plane had already left a while ago. I was like, wtf.

They rescheduled me for another flight, one that left at 4. I really should have asked them, or someone, if I could reschedule my flight to the one that left two hours earlier. I went to the gate to see if there was anyone, but I only saw that the flight was delayed an hour and there was still nobody at the gate, an hour before it was supposed to fly. So I decided I would get lunch since that'd at least probably boost my mood, and send off a few more emails and check train times.

Lunch was really tasty. I didn't have Chinese food... kinda. I had suejiao, or boiled dumplings. They were pretty tasty :3 and I had lasagna, since who knew when I was going to get that again. It was hella small though. And they had a charger area as well, so I was looking up train times and emailing people while I killed time. I figured an hour difference wasn't too bad, though my flight was going to maybe not get me back in time to take the last train to Takahashi.

After lunch, I went to check the boards again since I had no idea where my gate was and started walking towards there.... and then I checked the board again closer, only to find out my flight had been delayed an hour as well.

I started to panic. I pulled out my computer and checked the train times again... only to find out that now, instead of missing the last train back to Takahashi, there was a very real chance I would miss the last train back to Okayama. And the flight I was thinking of asking to transfer to was in its final boarding call, so basically, I couldn't make that flight.

I think at that point, I got really down because I was like, what do you mean, I can't even get back to my home prefecture? We were slightly delayed in getting off the ground as well because a couple people were late and also I don't know what.

We landed in Osaka and I practically ran off the train and to get my bags and everything and through customs. By the way, bringing cans of food and oatmeal in to Japan? Totally doable. Worth hauling a heavy suitcase everywhere. Now the problem is... do I hoard it, or do I just eat it whenever I feel like it? Decisions.

But I got out and ran to the train station and decided against buying a shink ticket since I wasn't a hundred percent sure when the train left and all, or if I would have time. I decided on taking JR for some stupid reason, and got on the first train that left there since it was cheaper.

It wasn't until I was on the train that I checked the times and stuff. I had come in a couple minutes too late for the subway line that would have gotten me to the shink station in time, so getting back tonight was kind of impossible. The trains that I could have caught wouldn't actually get me to the station in time. One train got in two minutes after the train left. There was only a train that went back to Himeiji, still a good hour and a half away from where I was.

So knowing this, I decided to look for a place to stay, and messaged the people on our Okayama AJET group asking for suggestions and found a place that wasn't too far from the train station for a not ridiculous price. They had free breakfast too. I decided to go there and decided that I was going to try to catch the first train back, which would have gotten me back to school actually on time for work, maybe.

By the time I got to the hotel and checked in, it was already like... 00:45, but I was feeling super gross so I decided to take a shower after getting a little settled and sending off some emails to people so they had an update on what was going on. When I got out of the shower.... I discovered that the water was stuck or something, and it wouldn't actually turn off. It wasn't a small trickle either. I'm talking like, gushing water. It had two settings. Gushing, or torrential gushing downpour. Not the kind of thing you want to keep running, so I contacted the front desk and they told me that I would have to change rooms. At 2 am. By the time I actually got into bed, it was 2:30, and at that point, I was like, no way am I going to be at the train station by 5:45 to catch the 6 am train. I actually tried to wake up at 6:30 to catch the next train... but I woke up and then decided that sleep was a better idea for my body, and went back to sleep.

The trip back to Okayama, thankfully, was rather non-eventful. I'm okay with that. I got back, ate lunch, and then went in to work since I had to talk to some of my teachers and get stuff sorted out.

Longest. Trip. Back. Ever.

So, if you count the days I was sick, from when I was supposed to be back...
I was supposed to get back to Takahashi Sunday around 1pm. I didn't get back until Wednesday around 1pm. It took me three extra days to get back.

Hot damn.

Never flying through Beijing again though, if I can help it. It's not worth saving that much money to get dicked over that hard and for that much stress. I'm not overly fond of Air China either and their old planes.

I'm just happy to be back.

Oh, also I turned in my paper work for my recontracting. In a way, it was kind of easy since I had already made the decision to apply to graduate school a long time ago, and the deadline for the papers was long before I would find out any results.

Bittersweet. It feels like I have a limited amount of time here. It makes me sad though, because the people here are just so... awesome.

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.

The best lessons

Blogger changed their layout; I got kind of distracted by this and thus forgot what I was going to post. I'm remembering in bits and pieces, but maaan I wish I just posted first off to begin with. There was a title that went with it and everything. Oh well. 仕方がない, or shikataga nai~ as they say. Can't really do anything about it. So forward I go.

Today was ridiculously warm; it's been like that for the last few days, actually. Last week seemed like something of a dream. Fall was teasing us, badly. I had the pleasure of biking to the station and actually feeling cold monday morning - like, "hm should I have brought my jacket?" kind of cold. It was wonderful.

Now it's hotter than sin, and I can't sit without sweating. It's kind of disgusting. Temperature wise, my school's temperature monitor clocked the temperature around 32.something-high degrees Celsius, which in Fahrenheit, translates to roughly 90 degrees. That's hot, even without the humidity. And then you add the humidity, and the never-ending moisture that exists on your arms and it's just like grooooooss. The last class I taught was absolutely dead, and I don't blame them. They had PE right before English (never a good idea), and I was ridiculously tired myself (knocking out early last night with my contacts still in and waking up at four to take them out and go back to sleep had nothing to do with that, probably). I can only imagine how they felt.

When the end of Monday came, I got a message that Tsukimi, or the moon viewing event, was happening in Korakuen, one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan. It was around 4:30, so I could get off work, but I had to bike home to get my korakuen pass (25 minutes), then take a train to Okayama (an hour) and then another 20 minutes to get to the gardens themselves (ish), so like, easily over three hours commute round trip. At that point in the day, when it was blazing hot, not attractive. Plus I was tired. I think I had started to whine to my teachers about how hot it was. Bless their souls for putting up with me.

Instead, I decided to head to Polka, the local... super...market department store? It's like a really small department store. It's only two floors, with a smallish supermarket, a couple of restaurants, and a bunch of other small stores (including a softbank and daiso/100 yen store). I mean, I wasn't hungry at that point, but I figured that if I wanted to, I could buy food to either cook or take back with me, and maybe find kakigori (shaved ice). At the very least, I could kill time and wait for the sun to set so that the bike home wouldn't be as awful hot. So, as a tentative "maybe-but-probably-not" I biked the short distance to Polka.

Despite the five minute or less ride, I was exhausted when I got in. I went to browse the super market area for pre-made foods I could take home with me, or sales on meat or other food products. The meat section was having this "three things for 1050 yen" special. Pretty rad. I like the days when they do this, because I'll stock up on stuff and put it in my freezer for later. They have decent things, like 250 g of cut beef stuff, which works well for things like gyuudon (beef bowl) or curry. They have (thinnish) pork cutlets for tonkatsu. They had chicken filets. But it was still early, so I decided, after walking through the place, that I wanted to get shaved ice before I biked back because I still felt disgusting. A quick survey found no shave ice on the first floor (or maybe I wasn't looking too hard), but one of the few restaurants did have soft serve ice cream, and it was one of the restaurants where a couple of the girls I made friends with work at. Plus the old people who run the restaurant are super nice. It was right next to the grocery place. So I decided to go there.

Neither of the girls (both Chinese) that I knew were in; they were probably at the university or like, not out in the sweltering heat, hopefully. But both the old people were. So I ordered soft cream and chatted a little with the old man who was running it.

The soft cream in Japan is kinda interesting, in that the machines are really different. In the states, soft serve ice cream - not that I've seen the behind the scenes machinery, but I'm pretty sure this is the case - has one big thing and comes in large batches that I'm guessing either make their own soft serve after you add in the right things, or they have a giant source that they pull the soft serve from. I dunno, I've never run one. But either way, when you want a soft serve, you pull the lever on the machine, and it comes out the nozzle and you have to attempt to get it all in the cup; some people can make this look prettier than others. Either way, you can add as much or as little as you want (or, in the case of restaurants, as much as the person serving feels like).

In Japan though, especially at smaller places, once you select your flavor, the staff pulls out this cylindrical block of ice cream in a cup thing. It looks kind of like the cup you use to freeze the cylinders of ice in. They look kind of like hockey pucks, but roughly with the diameter of your palm. They put this into the machine, and *then* they crank out your soft serve ice cream. You get as much as was in the hockey puck container.

Anyways, I got it and paid for my soft serve, with 20 yen off from the 240 yen price ($2.40ish for soft serve! T-T *weeps*), aka, "service". The first time I heard "service" being used, my mind went to uh, not so savory and polite places. I was like, seriously, service?! It sounds so... dirty. I suppose only as dirty as you make it though. But I've gotten used to it, using "service" as a way to signify when you get stuff for free or a discount or whatever.

...Actually, I can't think of what we'd say in English. Maybe "discount"? Oh wait, just kidding. We say "on the house." Major English fail.

So after I got my ice cream, I sat down and started to read/study Japanese. I happened to notice though, that the old man had finished the flower arrangement display he had been working on in the back, and was placing it on the main table.

It was absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. The main body of the arrangement was composed of these dark, chocolate colored branches that twisted this way and that; there were three of them. The secondary flowers were some kind of fall-like flowers. Red maybe? And white? I don't remember all the way. But the small flowers opened up in a kind of spray towards the center of the display, with the whole thing shouting "FALL IS GORGEOUS" but in a much quieter, more subtle way. And once again, I started talking to the old man.

He commented on how these flowers, this arrangement was specifically for Fall (which led me to ask when fall was, since, as far as I and the weather are concerned, it's still summer). This in turn led to us talking about why they do ikebana displays in the first place, and what you're supposed to feel when you look at them. He told me that your heart is supposed to become quiet, that you're supposed to feel a kind of inner calm. 落ち着く、or "ochitsuku" translates into, "to harmonize" or "to calm down" or "to restore presence of mind" The seasonal displays, along with the specific seasonal foods, and the flower displays and everything, are done with the goal of just that - to quiet the heart and the mind, and to restore the soul. It's why Buddhists meditate, he told me.

That's why I think Japanese culture is absolutely beautiful. Cause you know what? Looking at the display, taking in its beauty and its simplicity, my heart did exactly that. Where I was feeling grumpy and irritable and restless before (mostly due to the heat), the flower arrangement filled me with a serene sense of calm and peace, as corny as it sounds. That, and I was able to understand about 70-80% of what the old couple was saying (meaning counts for a lot, right?) probably helped too.

After finishing my ice cream, it was late enough to where it wouldn't be ridiculously hot on the ride back, so I packed up my things and said goodbye. I had the pleasure of discovering that my grocery store was now stocking frozen spinach again (it hadn't for a good two months or so), which also cheered me immensely. That, and I swear half of my third year home economics course was shopping in Polka. I saw so many of them! And they either said hello, or stopped to chat for a bit in the curry and canned goods aisle. One girl asked why they had seen me walking to work that morning, since usually, I ride my bike. For some reason, this made me feel pleased.

When I left, it was with a feeling like I could take on the world and all its heat, and that perhaps the bike ride back home wouldn't be so bad after all.

Typhoons

My base school's culture festival was this last weekend. It happened to nicely coincide with the typhoon that blew through western Japan and Shikoku - like, literally, it went straight through Shikoku, then up to Okayama and Tottori areas. In the whole of Okayama, apparently, Takahashi was hit the hardest and got the most rain. Yippee. The river rose something like, 10 feet; it was almost right underneath the bridge here. A couple of bridges, not in Takahashi, got swept away.

Pretty freaky when you think about it. Typhoons are pretty much hurricanes in the pacific basin - to be specific, it's "a tropical cyclone in the pacific north west between 180 and 100 degrees E." Here's an interesting fact for you: Japan doesn't name its typhoons like how we name our Hurricanes. This typhoon, for example, was simply "台風１２号" (those are the kanji for typhoon, or "taifuu" in Japanese). However, news reports from the internet and stuff were calling it "Typhoon Tyson". I guess Japan is just like "meh, get these all the time. What's this, the 12th one? Alright dudes. Let's bunker down. You know the drill."

One of my JTEs also observed that a lot of the really destructive typhoons have female names. I wonder what he was trying to say. -_-

This typhoon went straight over my prefecture though, coming from the south to Shikoku, then up through Okayama and to Tottori. A bunch of prefectures around the area had lots of flooding due to the storm - so much that they closed roads, there were landslides, and they stopped the trains for an entire day. A lot of us were worried that businesses weren't going to be open, but it turns out I was wrong in that aspect (thankfully). One of my friends in Takahashi came and rescued me from my house and we went to eat lunch at the 24 hour place. The entire area outside my door was flooded! It even flooded where the bikes were, so my back door step looked like a small lake.

It was freaky to see the river that high though. It made me really thankful that I live up a hill for once. I figured too, if the canal outside my place overflowed, I could just go up to the school and pray there wouldn't be a landslide.

Hm. So I'm going to go on a random tangent about food. For thinking-aloud's sake, I'm going to type everything out here. This is for buying a meal at the conbini (pasta) versus making it myself at home. Since I'm curious to see which actually costs more - making my own food, or buying conbini food.

Now first, let's talk about portion size. Obviously, making your own will yield much more than the conbini will; I actually, sometimes, will buy the pasta plus another thing (like a sandwich or riceball) since the pastas are just so... tiny. I mean, they're probably the size of one portion (not like our american portion sizes) but then, you'd probably augment your pasta with soup, or salad, or both. So for the sake of comparison, I'm going to use two of these pasta things. Each costs about 300 yen, so altogether, it's like 600 yen for two. Not too bad.

Second, let's talk about what's actually in the pasta itself. It uses rigatoni noodles - which you can't find in the supermarkets out here, not in Takahashi anyways (and not at Polka... dunno about youme town, but that's a good bike ride away). So I'd have to go in to Okayama to the import store. But let's not take transportation too much into account, since I go in to Okayama at least twice a month (or, usually, more). Plus, I could probably use other noodles and it'll be just fine.

The pasta has broccoli, bacon, cheese, and uses your basic tomato spaghetti sauce. I think that was it? If I was back in the states, there would be no question that a home cooked one would be cheaper, plus probably wouldn't take too long to make. Here in Japan though... liking import foods can get a little pricey.

Broccoli here is expensive. For a single head of broccoli, it's around... 200 yen for a single head of broccoli? 198. This is for a small to medium sized head of broccoli. I would probably use two of them to make a casserole (if I was back in the US) but in the pasta, it's kind of like a garnish... so one head should be plenty.

Bacon (the sad, limp kind) is meat, so that makes it more expensive... I haven't bought bacon here for ages because it just makes me sad. Plus I'm not overly fond of it. Let's say it cost between 200 and 300 yen for a package of 4-5 strips of bacon. And then the cheese. Now, there's not so much cheese that it'll use up a whole (or really, not even most) of the bag. But A bag of cheese cost about 400 yen for a smallish bag of shredded mixed cheese.

The spaghetti sauce, if I'm being lazy, I can get from the import store in the Ragu or Bertollie or however it's spelt brand. Those cost between 300-500 yen (I don't remember). You do get a giant can though, which is nice considering the price you bought it at. Of course, you can make your own spaghetti sauce since it's not too hard to do - canned tomatoes run about 100 yen for the cheap brand, and I already have basil. I haven't been able to find a general kind of 'italian herb' mix, but basil and garlic usually works fine for me. So making it cost about the same as buying it from the store, after you take into account the prices and everything. Making it is probably slightly cheaper, but not tooo much to the point where it's more efficient to make than to buy. I suppose you could also just be lazy and buy those bags of sauce they sell at the grocery store too; those are cheap, running from 150-200 yen.

Right, so the pasta costs around... 1300/1400 yen plus the cost of the noodles, which, for those, are at least 250 yen, so like, 1500/1600 yen. This yields way more than a single serving though; I'd say at least three - maybe four if the portion sizes were smaller. THen you could take them and stick them in the fridge and eat pasta for another two days.

So it's roughly 200-300 yen cheaper to make the pasta myself, if the prices for the ingredients are accurate. So it is a little cheaper. However, you don't take into account the money you spend for gas to cook the food, and water to cook and to clean up after. I don't think I need to mention it takes longer and requires more forethought and planning, whereas the conbini meal just depends on if you're there before it's sold out or not.

That being said, I'm willing to pay for laziness so that I don't have to ride my bike outside the house to buy fresh food sometimes haha. I'm so lazy~

I did though, bike out to youme town yesterday. It's the further larger department/grocery store place, and they have a vegetable stand outside of it that closes around 6 and sells vegetables for really cheap! I think I could actually make food cheaply with those vegetables - I would just have to use those veggies. They're way cheaper than the regular vegetables (and fruit) I've found in the supermarkets. Like this giant eggplant? Only 60 yen. Two red bellpeppers? 120 yen. YESSSSS. That's cheaper than ONE red bellpepper! One is like, 200 yen at my grocery store. Yeah though.

The weather has been so nice because of the typhoon. Yesterday was so nice, I took a spontaneous bike ride. I actually rode past youme town at first - all the way out to Nariwa. It's absolutely gorgeous out there. Like, wow.

Sometimes I really do love living out here in the rural countryside. It's seriously gorgeous, even if there are a bajillion bugs constantly waging a war to get into my house and into my mouth when I walk.

Replacement Fridge!

Today, after much "Jessica must locate obscure piece of paper with the refrigerator contract on it" hunting, the electronic store people I'm leasing the fridge from finally came around 2:30 today.

But first I had to find the paper. I am so very glad that I did not throw that away. I was actually going through all my papers and didn't know that was it until my supervisor told me to "look for the B4 sized paper with lots of japanese on it" and then I was like "hm, I have no idea what this paper is and it has lots of Japanese on it" and he was like "aha! That's it."

Yeah. They were supposed to come today at lunch, so I quickly ate everything and went to wait at home. Yeaaaaaaaah. They didn't come. I suppose some things don't change? And then when they were supposed to come later, they were late. My supervisor actually commented on that, and how in Japan punctuality was really important (but no company).

I think it was something wrong with the power cord. Either way, they took my old fridge and gave me a temporary replacement.

It's about a third the size of my old fridge. I mean, this thing is TINY. I'll get pictures up sometime. The freezer... is meant to hold like, maybe a pint of ice cream, one ice cube tray, and maybe some frozen veggies. The fridge is also tiny. I kind of laughed when I saw it. But I mean, a tiny fridge is better than no fridge, right?

I'm sorry I ever had smug thoughts at having a big fridge.

Also, apparently, according to my teacher summer has not come yet. It's still the rainy season. But today was soooo friggin' hot and humid, so I don't know what she was talking about. Yarg. I'm not a summer person.

My goal is to try my best at reducing the amount that I complain about it being hot. Yep.

Juiceboxes & Trash Schedules

Alright. Halfway through the day. Two and a half hours of sleep under my belt. Two coffees - have I mentioned how wonderful the vending machines here are? I feel much better now than when I was coming to work in the morning. Sometimes I'm a morning person. Today, I was not. There was a guy at the conbini at the station who, as I was grabbing my coffee, stood in front of me to grab his, thus forcing me into line behind him. I was kind of like, wtf dude. You make me late for my train, I will not be happy, since the train will not wait. And as he got up to the register, he wasn't just buying coffee, but he also bought a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes. Agonizingly slowly. I was starting to worry about whether or not I would make my train.

I did, for the record.

The weather is really starting to heat up, but then again, it IS June after all. June, the rainy season in Japan, where things start to get humid and not-so-great weatherwise (though mostly it's because I can't stand the humidity; it makes me irritable). Back home, sometimes it would start to get hot in May. Those were not so fun times. There was condensation on the floors though from all the humidity.

Carrying around a hand towel/sweat towel has never been so important. Or those face/freshener wipes. I carry around both, cause sometimes the towel isn't enough. Thank goodness you can get all this cheap at the 100 yen store.

I'm dreading going home a little though. Today was trash day, but because I was a train wreck this morning and totally not together, I completely forgot to take out the trash today.

Japan has a special trash system that varies from city to city and housing complex to housing complex. There are specific days you're supposed to put out your trash (so the wild critters don't get into them) and certain days for bottles and stuff. Not so different from the US. At first.

It's the degree you have to separate things here that makes it seem really crazy. Things that you can make into a merry fire go in one pile (burnables), while things that don't go into the un/non-burnable trash. This includes things like plastics and whatnot. Some cities make you separate even further: milk cartons from plastic from styrofoam from paper from wood from metal from glass. Bottles (pet bottles), cans, and glass bottles (bins) usually get separated as well. Some places make you remove the cap and the plastic wrapping from around the bottle (which usually comes pre-perforated).

I live next to the school dorms, so they told me it's okay to not separate as much, for which I'm super grateful. Especially since I just threw out a whole bunch of food. That is sitting in my house. Roasting. In the heat. Because my refrigerator is broken and last night it seemed like a good idea to clean out at least the rotten meat from my freezer.

Yeaaaah. Home is gonna reek when I go back. I'm praying very very hard that there aren't cockroaches. Sigh.

Guess I'm eating out for a bit though. That or having tuna pasta. No leftovers. Or rice. But yeah, pretty much everything had spoiled in the fridge when I checked it last night. REALLY EFFIN LAME.


But oh yeah! What I wanted to talk about. Juiceboxes. And Japan's LOVE for them. To me, juiceboxes are things for small children and elementary school. Once you graduate to middle school and especially high school, it's can or bottle. But here, there are actually vending machines that sell juiceboxes and more! For it's more than just juice that comes in these small boxy things. They also have milk. Instead of milk cartons (they have that too) they have milk boxes. Flavored 'au lait' milks. The strawberry one is fantastic. One of my teachers bought me one and I was like OMG, MY CHILDHOOD. I love(d) strawberry milk. :)

But. They aren't cheap like I thought they'd be! Sometimes they cost as much as the stuff in the cans! It boggles my mind every time I see it, since it seems like it's not as much liquid for the same price... and in a carton. Maybe the boxes are more expensive here? But my students seem to like them a lot! They're tasty, but I feel like I'm a child again when I drink them.

Achievement Unlocked

Slave to consumerism and pokemon-collect-em-all-ism.


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Today, I rode 9 km to get McDonald's coca cola glass because I had heard that they're actually ending the promotion in a couple days (for these colors anyways). The closest McDonald's to my place is 4.5 km one way; you can either take the bus for 100 yen (one way) and it comes once an hour, or you can bike there. I biked there since I figured, if I was going to eat McDonald's I might as well burn the calories before I gained it all back. My legs hurt in the good way. :) This is a googlemaps of my town :D My place is near "B" and McD's is at yumetown where "A" is.

Oh, did I mention that it was raining decently hard the entire time? Yah. Not the smartest thing I've ever done. It was probably not-so-safe either. But it's alright cause I made it back intact and only slightly damp. My fingers did prune a bit though. I also looked like a hobo cause I was wearing these pants that I thought were waterproof (they weren't) and a regular t-shirt, so it was like I was going to the gym or something, or rather, it looked like I just came BACK from the gym. Very not glamourous. Of course, I ran into my students too. ~_~

Sometimes, I marvel a little bit at my stupidity. But the boxes have Japanese on them! They're really cool looking! They're real glass! And all you need to do to get them is upgrade to a LL set - Large drink, Large fries. I just got iced tea, so the L sized drink wasn't like it was that bad. The fries though, yeah. Yeaaaaaaah.

I was gonna pick up milk too, but all the grocery stores in the area seemed to have gotten rid of their nonfat milk; they only have lowfat and that's STILL enough to make my stomach not-so-happy. ._.;

Japanese CMs

So commercials, or CMs as they're called in Japan, are pretty... interesting in Japan. Most of them, on the interesting scale, I would put up there with superbowl commercials. Some of them you're just kind of, wtf?

However, recently, due to the earthquake, many companies have actually pulled their advertisements because they don't want to be running them in the midst of a national crisis. I don't blame them. This means that there is pretty much only one company that's been running commercials - AC Japan, or Advertising Council Japan. They do things like public service announcements on tv. Breast exams, cancer screenings, so on.

At the end of every commercial they have this little jingle that, due to the fact that ALL the commercials are AC commercials and that there's a LOT of them, pretty much everyone who has even looked at a TV this past month knows it. They've also been running this あいさつ (aisatsu) greeting commercial for kids that basically teaches you the different phrases to say like "itadakimasu" or "ohayo" and combines them with animals.

You can watch that video here.

Since practically everyone knows this commercial, if you make a reference to it, there's a 98% chance that people have heard of it. This can lead to some pretty awesome things, especially if you have a super genki class full of boys who like to speak (even if it's not in English).

In my technical high school, we have a listening exercise at the beginning with this multiple choice section where they have to listen to the tape and circle the correct word and the correct meaning to match the word (it also uses, I swear, the cheesiest background music ever, and part of me dies a little every time I have to hear it, which is four times a day). Naturally, some of these answer combinations include A. Some include C. Some, though a little rarer, happen to be A and C.

So what did the super genki/energetic/talkative boys in my electricity class do?

We have the students volunteer to read out the questions and stuff, so they raised their hands and shouted quite energetically for us to pick them. Unwittingly, this past monday, we chose one of the kids thinking "isn't this great that they're volunteering?"

Little did we know how great it was going to be.

They *sang* the answer (AC) in the form of the AC jingle. So. Effin'. Hilarious. We had to stop for a minute or two because everyone was laughing so hard, us teachers included. Seriously, I think that's been a highlight of my teaching so far. The second most amusing time was probably today, when we played the Telephone game and instead of "I like to eat red fish with rice for lunch" one row answered "I like to eat red fish and Jeshika" for lunch.

I corrected them on my name and we told them what they had actually said in Japanese. Hilariousness. I felt kind of bad for laughing, but only a little.

Some spoofs off the AC commercials are pretty awesome too. So while the song is incredibly annoying since it gets stuck in my head (constantly) and I can now sing the entire jingle,some of the side products have been quite amusing.

On a more boring note, it's raining, but supposedly, rainy season hasn't actually started yet; this is just the rain from some typhoon somewhere. Le sigh. I don't mind the rain as long as I don't have anywhere I have to go, but oh god, the humidity.

I can't wait until summer. Not.

Crap, I totally have the AC aisatsu song stuck in my head now. And whose fault was that?

Golden Week

So here in Japan, there's this thing called Golden Week when a couple of holidays fall really close together and pretty much all of Japan decides to travel at the same time. This year, it started on April 29th (Friday), and we had the 3rd-5th of May off in addition to that Friday.

This meant that technically, we all had work on Monday and Friday.

What the heeeeeeeeeeeeeeck Japan.

Lots of people took those two days off and went places, but my original plans - volunteering up in Tohoku - fell through because they actually had a huge amount of people who wanted to volunteer and our logistics were giving us a little bit of a problem. Plus none of us had camping gear (cause seriously, who brings that with them over here at first? I mean, I haven't been like, CAMPING camping either like... ever.) and because (more importantly perhaps) none of us had cars. Transporting tents, sleeping bags, food, water, and clothing (the basics) was proving to be difficult, especially since I don't have one of those backpacking/hiking backpacks.

So instead, I had a pretty chill Golden Week. Didn't travel anywhere, unless in to Okayama counts. Mostly, I did UFO machines, karaoke, and hung out with friends. We watched j-dramas (YEAH MEI-CHAN NO SHITSUJI~) together, what few of us were left, ate out together, spent the night at friend's places, ate taco salad (YEA-YUUUUUUUH), improved on said taco salad during round 2 (different day, but I decided to buy a cheap hamburger steak that was mostly hamburger and added that to the taco salad to make it Really Freaking Awesome), had lots of quesadillas (for Cinco de Mayo) and spent (or wasted, depending on how you look at it) a lot of money on UFO claw machines (I even won things though), racing games (woo I have an Initial D card and Mario Kart Card now), and pelicula. Oh man. I love photo booths over here. They're SO MUCH FUN. X3 And they're cheap too.

Though, while we were in Joypolis, the huge Sega arcade in Okayama, we came to the realization that the silver coins we were putting into the machines were not quarters, actually, but they were 100 yen coins, which was like sticking a dollar coin into a machine each time. And to think that I used to believe 75 cents for a game was expensive. Ha. Ha ha ha.

I did, however, get out of the local area for a couple days. On tuesday, a bunch of other ALTs and I went to a beach on this island close by called Shiraishi and camped out, drank, and generally relaxed. Met some pretty chill people. Oh, I got to kayak too! I got this amazingly painful sunburn from that. My shoulders hurt so much right now. No joke. They hurt way more a couple days ago; wearing clothing was physically painful and very very uncomfortable, but now it's just kind of itchy. Sigh. Not looking forward to that part of being sunburnt. I have nobody to blame but myself though, as I stupidly did not put on sunblock.

Kayaking made me remember how much I miss kayaking as a form of workout. We kayaked to a nearby island and wooow my arms hurt so much after. The water was gorgeous though. I wanted to go for a swim but I kept seeing small jellyfish floating in the water and thought that those were best avoided. On the island too, while everyone went on a short hike around the island, I went over and talked to this Japanese family from Okayama city who were fishing off the rocks. They were super nice. I learned a couple of words too - あさい　ふくい which mean shallow and deep haha. Also the names of fish. This one fish they had caught was called kisu (which sounded like kiss to me). It was really nice to just relax and casually talk to them in broken English/Japanese. :D Makes me motivated to continue my studies in Japanese more! (Speaking of, I did buy a couple of books for studying Japanese for the JLPT - the Japanese language proficiency test - we'll see how that goes)

Stupid me though, I have no pictures from this holiday excursion. Sigh. I need to get better at that, especially since I saw this really cool looking starfish that was black with a splash of red at the center. It was so cool! X3 There were also a bunch of sea anemones, a couple sea urchins, and even a couple fish that we saw while over there. We managed to get low tide and walked out to the little island. It was super awesome. X3 I totally want to go again. The people on the island are really friendly, and there are two foreigners who own this bar on the beach called Moo Bar (it's cow themed!) and they're super chill and really nice. :D The drinks are tasty too, but man, I've gotten really bad at remembering to drink water/non-alcoholic liquids when I drink here. >_< Working on that though.

Yeah though, today was nice. Yesterday I went into Okayama City (again) and spent the night at Jessi's place (again). We went to Joypolis (I sank 1,000 yen into a pokemon UFO claw machine trying to get audino/tabunne but ended up winning two other pokemon, one which I gave to Jessi cause I'm not a bug type fan and the other to Gemma since she asked). So I suppose it's not that bad? >_> I made up for it by buying books to study with. Sigh.

It's finally starting to get warmer though, so I'm kind of like uuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh spring is rapidly turning into summer where it's muggy and I want to just live in water. >_<

I am totally not a warm weather person.

I am also totally not a bug person.

It's getting muggy and hot. It's supposed to be up in the 80s.

Warm weather basically means that the bugs return. I've already heard the cicadas, gotten smacked in the face/cheeks/eye by at least five bugs on the ride back home, found two spiders in my house and one giant moth on my bike basket, and my continuous war with the small spiders over the handlebars of my bike has begun anew. Sigh.

Hooray for spring indeed.

Let's NIHONGO~

Unhappy snowmen :(

Today has been one day of that miserable stuff they call sleet. It's, as one friend aptly put it, the worst of both worlds. It's cold, wet, not as pretty, and makes everything just a little more miserable. I swear, it's colder here than it was in Tokyo or Sapporo even, though that may have to do with the fact that houses and buildings up there are properly insulated and you're generally walking around a lot if you're outside. Here, I sit in the not-so-well insulated house and freeze, hiding under my kotatsu and layered with sweatshirts and hoods and stuff cause I'm too cheap/lazy/wary about kerosene and it's general stink/unhealthiness. Small wonder I guess that I feel colder here. The heater was always on when we were on vacation.

Ah vacation, how I miss you.

It did snow for a little bit though, during classes. It was pretty to watch the fatty snowflakes fall to the ground and stick (though I did get feelings of dread that this meant it was colder). But later it just kinda petered out to sleet. The weather today even had pictures of sad looking snowmen; I guess this is for the snow that doesn't stick cause the snowman has his sad face on.

The past week I've been putting in miles and trekking across Japan by plane, bus, cab, and train. It's been a crazy, crazy week, and it's taken some time realizing that I'm going to have to go back to work tomorrow. This past week did not help the feeling that I was pretty much in Japan on one big holiday.

It was a lot of fun though. I got to meet some new people, try some new foods, walk a lot of places, get lost a lot of places, and check a couple things off my "to do" list. A lot happened, and I hardly know where to start. I suppose I'll have to get my pictures uploaded so I can throw up a picture with each entry or something eventually. But yeah, seriously, where do I start.

Day 0: Kobe

Kobe, really, was mostly just a place where I could kill time before our flight the next morning. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8 am. Eight. AM. Early. It takes 30 minutes by shinkansen (roughly) to get from Okayama to Kobe. Therefore, it takes me an hour and a half to get to Kobe from Takahashi. Assuming the least amount of time to go through security and get tickets and stuff, that would mean that I would need to leave Takahashi at 6:00, which would get me there with 30 minutes to spare. This isn't even accounting for the fact that there were four of us who were traveling together and we had to check in together (since one person bought the tickets).

So yeah, we all decided that it would be better to stay the night in Kobe and just wake up early in Kobe and go from there. The other three (two British girls and a kiwi dude) had English camp beforehand, so I decided to head out to Kobe a little bit earlier than everyone else.

I don't think I could list the reasons why I love Kobe. It's a beautiful city, not so big as to be overwhelming, but still with plenty to do and a lovely kind of personality. And the shopping. Oh man, the shopping.

The hostel we stayed at was super chill, close to the train station (both Sannomiya and shin-Kobe, kind of) and I got to walk around a part of the city I've never been to before. It was really interesting, and it killed me that it was on the first day we were there. I wandered down around Tor Street, bought some Crispy M&Ms and bread, and then wandered around Chinatown and bought more food there.

Basically, I ate my way through Kobe. It was wonderful. Chimaki (like zong zi but filled with mushrooms and meat, sadly), nikuman (like char siu bao), xiao lum bao (soup dumplings of delicious) and tasty bread that I can't remember. It was also great, because I didn't have to feel bad about eating meat since my vegetarian friend (bless her) wasn't there yet.

I mean, I don't mind when other people are vegetarians, it's their choice or whatever, but it just gets kinda tiring when my food options (without incurring guilt anyways, since she sometimes offers just to get fries at places like mcDonald's, bless her heart) get limited to pasta and pizza. Swear to god, I've had so much pasta since coming to Japan. Hell, I probably eat more pasta here than I did back at home.

Either way, I digress. I did learn something though, from my visit to Kobe. Or well, some things I guess.

1. They sell pepsi in the vending machine near the hostel we stayed at in Kobe. Apparently, it is hard to find regular Pepsi in Okayama/Chugoku region.

2. It is a bad bad bad idea to go to places where you will want to buy things on the first day of your trip before you've even left for the airport.

3. Kobe has loose leaf puh-er tea. It's ~45,000 yen away by train, 35k by bus. WIN. Kind of expensive to pay for tea, but YES PLEASE.

4. Apparently, being in the city for a couple hours longer than your friends makes you an expert on finding the hostel from the train station that you did not come from.

5. "Will get there around 7 in time for dinner so wait for us" means that by the time we walk back to the hostel and check in and dump your stuff, it will be nearly 9 (or after) and people will be tired and won't want to travel far. If the restaurant you want to go to (ahHEM, Old Spaghetti Factory) is further away than a 5-10 minute walk, go on your own.

Brrrr It's Cold (In Here)

I said there must be some playas in the atmosphere~

Please don't hate me for making that reference. I already kinda hate myself for it. But haters gotta hate. :<

I've been really bad about typing/journaling/making newsletters/blogging lately. At the start of the new year, I told myself, "Self, it's a New Year. You should write at least one post a week."

And have I done that yet?

No. No I have not. So I'm going to try to be better about that. And not just posts like this one about how "oh, I'm bad about posting" but actual stuff. Starting now.

I've never lived in a place this cold before. Even when I was out traveling, I don't think Shanghai or Hong Kong ever was this cold when I was there during TSS. Other than that, I've lived in the bay area or San Diego. Sometimes I visited Tahoe, and I was in DC when it was snowing, but it's never really felt as cold as this. It's definitely... interesting, to say the least. My electricity bill is SUPER expensive. It's stupid. But how else am I supposed to stay warm? I've been using this reasoning to justify paying for my trips into Kurashiki or Okayama; at least then, I won't be paying to keep my house warm.

I'm sure forgetting about my kotatsu and leaving it on does not help at all.

Oh, speaking of that, I forget that before I came to Japan, I had no idea what a kotatsu was. Basically, it's a table with a heater underneath (that never gets hot enough to actually burn you really, with most models) and a removable top (so that you can put a blanket underneath it).

It looks a little like this picture:

Note, that's not actually my kotatsu, but I don't have any good pictures of it right now. Maybe I'll put some up later or something. but it keeps your bottom half/legs sooo warm and sometimes I like to crawl in underneath and lay on my belly with my head poking out. So freaking warm. It's quite lovely. I might get a better, thicker kind of carpet/blanket thing to go underneath if I keep doing that. I've fallen asleep under it quite a few times as well haha...

Right now I'm huddled under a blanket with three layers, sitting at my kotatsu. I'm thinking of crawling in sometime soon, cause it's what... about 7C in my house. Cold. T-T

Hm, also today, I got to use the observatory at my school for the first time. Yeah, my school has an observatory on top of it. It's actually in quite a good position; the school is on a giant hill, so it overlooks most of the city. The view from the observatory is absolutely wonderful, just as good as if not better than the view from the hike to Bitchu Matsuyama Castle since there are no trees to obstruct the view. The observatory has a giant telescope and can rotate (!) and they finally got it fixed. I noticed that the observatory was open when I was wandering around campus, so I wandered over to where the observatory was and the sensei in charge was kind enough to let me look around and told me to come back at quarter to six, when it actually was darker.

So I did, and wow. It was so cold! BUT IT WAS SO COOL. They had fixed the telescope and were looking at Jupiter; you could see Jupiter even during dusk because it was so bright. When I looked at it through the telescope, you could actually make out a couple of salient features, as well as the four Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa). I even had a student tell me in English about this. :) It was sooooo amazing. I was practically dancing as I left the observatory. That's probably one of the coolest things I've done in Japan, and it makes me like my base school that much more.

Seriously, if they split my position up again into its two original ones... Niimi and takahashi, I'd have a damn hard time picking where I wanted to live. I used to be bitter about having to commute to Niimi all the time since the trains suck and it takes an hour and a half to get to Okayama (and there are so few trains to begin with). But, I love being at Kenko no mori and Niimi South campus, AND they have kyuudo. I love going to kyuudo club. The kids there are so awesome.

On the other hand, Takahashi High school isn't that bad. The teacher are really cool. I know more of the teachers there. I'm part of cooking club. Most of the kids are nice. There are monkeys. Wild monkeys. And an observatory.

It would be a difficult choice. Thankfully, it's not one I have to make, though admittedly, when I first got here I was really frustrated with having that many schools and being split between two cities.

I'm alright with that now though.

Current feelings about recontracting: 65/35 staying/going

Food club

There's a FOOD CLUB here! OMG~ I'm so excited! :D :D :D :D I am slightly worried though, that it will conflict with the English Club, which is my priority club since really, I'm here for teaching English and so on and so forth. Plus Suga sensei is the main one on that.

Also on the note of food, I need to really start bringing my lunch more often. Or I should. Cause I'm spending a good 500 yen every day on buying lunch at school which, I suppose, isn't too bad but still. I feel bad about buying my lunch all the time. One of my super-pred (since I'm assuming it wasn't Andrew) left me a bento box buuut I think I'm going to throw that away. I wish I knew where there was like, a goodwill or something here.

That being said though, the food that we can order through school is pretty tasty. Your standard range of foods: bento boxes (which I don't care for very much) yakimeshi (fried rice), curry, yakisoba/udon, udon... but I'm sure I'll get tired of it eventually. It's just that it's way too hot to cook right now. And bento boxes are small. Like seirously. The teachers next to me all pretty much bring their lunches and they're so tiny! I'm like, I would need to eat FIVE of those to not feel hungry. Maybe when it cools down, I will attempt to bring my lunch to school every so often.

It's been super hot lately, to add to the misery that is muggy humid weather. I don't hate much but this is just awful. That, and heat attracts bugs. Yesterday, on top of the excruciating humidity, the temperature was 37 C, which is about 98 F. 98 F is hot on it's own but then you add in the fact that you feel like you're being smothered by some intangible yet tangible thing out there every time you step outside... Oh and the sweat. It just doesn't stop. It's disgusting. I live in fear that someone will try to shake my hand (gotta love bowing) or touch my arm or shoulder or back or something (doesn't matter where) and they'll be all "EW GROSS IT'S ALL WET."

Yay humidity.