Not Just Ninjas

So they feed me lunch for free in the junior high schools, but I don’t have any choice as to the menu.  I eat with all the other teachers, so they can see exactly what I don’t like and how much of what I don’t choke down.  When we’re finished, the leftovers go into all these special compartments… used rice in one bag, other uneaten food/soup in another, flattened milk cartons in another, other miscellaneous trash somewhere else, wipe off the trays and clean our chopsticks.  I feel like I’m at summer camp again.

Usually the food is decent, and that’s about it.  But at least I get exposed to food I may not have discovered otherwise… like the strange pumpkin filled fried thingy they fed me the other day.  Today’s particularly tasty vittles included:

corn chowder
fried fish with mayonaise
sauteed broccoli and carrots
a croissant
half a kiwi
whole milk

Someone pinch me and remind me what country I’m in again?…

I was on pipsqueak patrol this week for the first time, and aren’t they just the cutest? We sang, we laughed. Thankfully, no one cried.

Elementary school visits are kind of a tough gig, because I only visit each one like 3 or 4 times a year. This means I never really get to know my students or teachers. Also, because English is not mandatory in elementary school, the teachers don’t necessarily know much English either, which can be a stumbling block when trying to co-plan your lessons in the 5 minutes you have between classes. However, the kids are pretty forgiving, and are just excited that this weird new person is there that they can pull on and yammer to.

The fifth and sixth graders are pretty with it (English wise) and no one’s told them yet it’s uncool to answer questions in class, so they’re pretty enthusiastic and responsive.

I had to figure out some prizes to give out at the 11th hour, so I brought all these small neon colored post it notes from home, with a stamp, and made up these little notes to give out, which say “great!” on them (complete with a thumbs up)… I had to come up with something cheap and pretty to give out, because I have like 120 new students every day. I thought it was pretty cheesy, but the kids loved ‘em, and even came by after school, asking me to stamp special papers they had brought with me. I am such a superstar!

After school, I was invited to the Japanese Tea Ceremony club, where we took turns kneeling on tatami and frothing up tasty green liquid for consumption. It was a pretty fun and interactive introduction to this elaborate ceremony.

That night, Chris and I checked out this new restaurant which had been recommended by another JET. The chef speaks decent English, and he has studied cooking in Canada, Scotland, America (where he hitchhiked for like 6 months!), South America, France, and India. India! I can’t believe we can get authentic tasting Indian food in tiny Noshiro! It was the first time I had tasted something actually spicy (besides wasabi) since my arrival in Japan. In addition, he special orders Newcastle beer from Tokyo, so it’s the only place in town with tasty beer. I’m afraid to ask the bottle price. Still, what a welcome treat!

We asked this guy to just cook some stuff up for us. Some of the treats we sampled included:

• fish fries. these fish were a couple inches long (french fry size!), and fried up whole. I was a little displeased to see a plate of whole fried fish in front of me, but they ended up being pretty good. Couldn’t taste eyeballs or bones or anything. ;)
• basashi. raw horsemeat, which is a speciality of this region. My students have been telling me for weeks how good basashi is, so I swore I would try it ONCE. And it tastes just like sushi or carpaccio… raw but tasty. It comes with loads of ginger and garlic, so how can you go wrong, really.
• samosas. Fat fat fatty, but oh so delicious.

On the way home from our culinary feast, we spotted some familiar faces gathered in a little house, including our neighbor and local sashimi supplier. So we popped our heads in to say hello, and got roped into the gathering. Apparently, all the guys from the neighborhood get together once a month to eat and drink and just hang out. After giving Chris the largest bottle of alcohol we’ve ever seen (late birthday present?), they made us promise to come back and hang out next month.

So ends the best day ever.

Yesterday we held our second English Club meeting at the high school… both the students and i have this unspoken understanding that it’s not really English Club, as no one really speaks much English or wants to (trust me, I tried). What we all agree on is that we want to eat tasty food… which basically means I get to make 15 high school girls cook me whatever I want, all paid for, as long as it takes less than an hour. Yes!

Yesterday we did a macaroon/s’mores double whammy. If I have my way, these girls will never be hungry again for dinner on Tuesdays. We were missing an electric mixer for the egg whites which go into macaroons… so the girls took 2 minute shifts and whipped those puppies up by hand for like 20 minutes. THAT is dedication, my friend. I wasn’t sure how the macaroon thing would work out, as we kinda had to wing it… but in the end, everyone agreed we had achieved tastiness. The language of food…. is universal.

The s’mores were a big hit too, although less so the song (in English) that I tried to teach them to get them to feel the summer camp vibe. ;) Extra bonus: many Japanese marshmellows (which are tiny and incredibly cute… they’re like the size of a nickel) have a delectable fruit center, which added an extra dimension to the smores extravaganza. I think we all learned something new from the experience. Me? I learned that roasting marshmellows on chopsticks over a burner is an excellent approximation of a stick in a campfire.

Later that night, Chris and I were wandering around Jusco, our grocery store, and were graced with a surprise visit by 3 of my girls… I don’t know their names or what school they were from (I have like 1,000 students all together!), but we jumped on the opportunity and asked them for help shopping. We were looking for ingredients to make shabu-shabu, so we asked them if we had all the necessities… we were trying to find chicken stock, but the best we could come up with in Japanese was “chicken water”. Needless to say, this resulted in mass confusion, and no chicken stock was found. Instead, we ended up with some dubious looking dried kelp (seaweed?), which we are supposed to soak in water to make a basic broth. We’ll let you know how that works out.

Talk about your win/win situation: the girls get to teach sensei something, and I end up with dinner. Thanks for the help, y’all!

Yes, the neighborhood guys actually came through and did manage to hold a shindig for Chris’s birthday last Sunday. We’re not sure about the exact details; we know that we were supposed to have a party by the park at 5; we passed our neighbor on the way there (“hello”); we sat on the curb by ourselves for like 6 minutes; then he came driving up in a rush (from his house two blocks away), and told us that the party was now at his place at 6…. This all reeked of last-minute realization, but this didn’t really matter in the long run, because we ended up having such a rollicking time.

At first it was just us, and our neighbors, a family of 5. Our hosts fired up a number of goodies on an outdoor grill, which was lit by a 9 year old with a propane torch. Quite a sight to see.

I played volleyball with the kids out in the street, and cheered as Sakiko showed us her bright turquoise unicycle skillz. We played catch with Teppei, the youngest boy. When the ball went onto the roof of the tax office across the street, our neighbor lifted his 7 year old son right up there to go get it. Awesome.

We learned how to eat edamame “the right way.” We tried more sake and shochu. Chris graciously accepted a pot of little orange gerber daisies. We ate tasty veggies picked fresh from their front yard garden. I tried some crazy shellfish that you stick on the grill, then just pull out of the shell and suck down. We ate pork liver (earthy!), and the tastiest home wok’d noodles ever. I explained to the kids about toasting marshmallows until they’re puffed up and black, and then sucking them down while they’re still hot. We learned that you can write messages on the asphalt with sparklers.

Then the party really began. A few more guests and kids from the neighborhood joined later in the evening. One man brought a fish he had just caught that day, and he fixed us fresh fresh fresh sashimi, which everyone gladly devoured. Chris got more presents: a winnie-the-pooh towel, some hello kitty charms, and a japanese headband (hachimaki?), all 100% AWESOME.

We’re lucky to have such great neighbors who go to such extreme efforts to include us in their community and make us feel welcome. Thanks, y’all! We love you!

Brief cell-phone video of a Japanese ice cream truck driving by the house. No colorful pictures or bad electronic music here; just an alarmingly straightforward recording of a guy saying, in random order: oishii (tasty), ringo (apple), suika (watermelon), meron (honeydew). For some reason this evokes a low-level deep terror within me.

Sweet mother of all that is holy, thank GOD the temperature has finally dropped to something resembling reasonable!

So, even though I live in a boring little town where there’s nothing to do, somehow we’re always off doing something. Such is the glory of small town life. There’s always a little league game or a speech contest to attend. Or something tasty to eat, yum! Melon ice cream anyone? I’ve convinced myself that it is necessary to eat as much of this as possible before the weather gets nasty.

It’s kind of remarkable how regional and seasonal Japan is. Every season has it’s specific activities and food. Summer and winter are for festivals (I believe they’re supposed to make you forget how miserable the weather is), and then in the fall and spring you go view the leaves and cherry blossoms. Every region (maybe even city?) has it’s specific handicrafts, culinary specialties, and festivals. I always thought of America as a pretty diverse place, but I don’t think we have this kind of specialization… (I ask you, what is Escondido famous for?). I had expected Japan to be a pretty homogenious place by comparison, but this focus on region-specific goodies totally took me by surprise. It’s hard to explain. I’ll show you when you get here. ;)

Last week we attempted to get pizza delivered to our house, which was an adventure to be sure, but also a communication disaster and did not result in said pizza. At this point, I was tired, i was hungry, (was I was poor too?), and I went out in a huff to get something ANYTHING to sate the hungry tummy. We were on our way to some restaurant, when these guys hanging out at the local park start yelling at us to join them. We walk around the chain link fence to find our neighbor and several guys from the neighborhood having a little picnic. They clear seats for us at the table, and explain that it’s a little neighborhood festival, as they stuff us full of gyoza, yakitori, yakisoba, edamame, watermelon, and cucumbers. Oh yes, and of course the essential ingredient to any social gathering: liquor.

It was pretty dark at this point, and our neighbor pulls us over to the field where he and the kids (and us too!) light some little fireworks and run amok. Afterwards, we chill at the table some more, make a short speech in Japanese, and even do a little impromptu kareoke (why did someone bring a microphone to a picnic?) Some of the old men even get up to demonstrate traditional dancing with towels on their heads (not sure if that part is traditional or just a bonus). After some intense questioning, it was discovered by the group (okay, maybe I told them) that Chris’ birthday is this weekend on the 27th. At that point the guys are like “PAAAAARTY!”, and swear to throw Chris a birthday party the following week, especially since he’s the new guy in town.

You will of course be the first to know if this party Goes Down.

No matter how long it feels subjectively, we haven’t been in Japan all that long. It’s been about three weeks since we arrived in Noshiro, and in that time we’ve been busy investigating the food options in this medium-sized town.

Many JETs are placed in towns so small they don’t appear on maps, and others are in big cities with dozens of other gaijin to hang out with. The small towners tend to be local celebrities known by everyone in town. One person we met a couple weeks ago lives in a town of 6,000 and is surrounded by farmers who bring her fresh vegetables from their fields. Conversely, the big city folk are surrounded by places like Starbucks and Italian restaurants and shops that sell foreign foods.

Noshiro is an unfortunate middle ground. As Steph put it, “big enough that no one cares were here, but not big enough for there to be anything to do.” The central core of town is amusingly lifeless. There’s one big “shopping street” which has a string of mostly small restaurants and shops. We’re gradually covering this street from end to end and trying a couple of new restaurants each week. Most Japanese restaurants are intimidating because they have no windows so you can’t look in and get an idea of whether it will be any good. Unmarked doors sometimes lead into lovely little places, and grand entrances may equally well lead into dirty places selling fish guts.

One of the places on this “shopping street” is Bamboo House, which we thought was just a bar. Indeed that’s all you see when you look in the window (already a point in favor that it has a window), and all the JET gossip says that Bamboo House is a great place to drink. But we didn’t want to drink; indeed, we were just looking for some Chinese food one night, and the Bamboo House bartender looked friendly so we stopped in to ask. He said there was a second floor restaurant that had some dim-sum like Chinese food. It turns out that Bamboo House has a restaurant upstairs which had never been mentioned by all the JETs enthusiastically talking about drinking. But good thing we found it, because it’s definitely the best place in town for us world travelers. We knew we were in the right place when we were sat at a counter facing a wall with a huge statue of the Hindu elephant god Ganesha (thanks Google!) right in front of us. It turns out this place has all kinds of great food, including Thai and Indian curries, pastas, Chinese dim-summish things, and really (really) big beers. The tandoori chicken we had was fantastic. And the atmosphere is perfect (unusual in smaller Japanese towns) — bamboo blinds, rugs hanging from the ceiling, lots of warm wood and fun stuff on the walls. We find we are having to consciously keep ourselves from going there more than once a week…

We thought “shopping street” was all there was to Noshiro until we got bicycles and were able to expand our horizons. And that’s when we discovered the wonder that is Route 7. About a mile south of town, this is the big non-expressway road (think route 66) that connects all the major cities of Akita. As you would expect it’s littered with big discount stores and fast food restaurants; much as I hate to say it, I feel right at home down there.

Former Noshiro JETs had urged us to go to a place called Gusto (gasuto) on Route 7, which is legendary among American locals for its — wait for it — FREE REFILLS. And great burgers, apparently. So last Friday we decided to give it a try. Gusto did not disappoint. The drinks were indeed bottomless (and serve-yourself — choose between various kinds of coffee, soda, and tea) and the cheeseburgers were… not bad at all. I would say they were on a par with Denny’s, which is about as good as can be expected. The rest of the menu actually looked pretty entertaining. There was all kinds of Japanese junk food on there, as well as various kinds of entertaining hamburger patties on plates surrounded by interesting-looking ingredients. We weren’t feeling that adventurous that night, but maybe next time.

Across the street from Gusto is Japan’s McDonald’s equivalent, Mos Burger. We haven’t eaten there yet but it’s on our list. A poster in Mos Burger’s window shows “burgers” which look to me more like a cross between a taco and a pita.

Strangely, Italian food is everywhere. Many of the department store-style restaurants (with plastic food displays out front) have pasta dishes with tomato sauce and varying approximations of cheese and ham. My theory is that these are so popular since noodles are already a comfort food here.

We’re still on the lookout for some honest-to-god teriyaki and taro boba tea, which don’t actually seem to exist in Japan. But we’re thrilled to have begun discovering the good places to eat in town, so that when y’all come visit we will have lots of tasty options!

I am slightly hung over this morning, because… we had a night of carousing with another Noshiro JET last night! We finally connected with the other new guy. His name’s Francis, and he’s from England. He’s had two summer jobs in America; one in Indiana, and one in Utah, which means he’s spent more time in the middle of my country than I have.

He:s only been in town for a few days, so we introduced him to Bamboo House, which is the swankiest joint we’ve found so far. This place is pimped out with a huge golden Vishnu and they serve tasty goodies from all over the world, so it’s a great place to go when you need a respite from ramen, udon, and sushi. They’ve also got the cheapest and largest beers we’ve found in town so far.

And yes, you can get beer in vending machines here.

We took him over to our place after dinner… my predecessor left a prodigious supply and variety of sake, so we decided to have a little informal taste test. And I’m still feeling the repercussions. But I’d do it all again, no regrets. :)

This last weekend was kind of mellow. Chris and I tried to court adventure, but she declined our advances. We hopped on a train to check out the coast North of us. The plan was to check out a beach like area, and then proceed farther north to some huge bizarre water-wheel thingy that is some sort of tourist attraction.

Stop number one was Hachimori. The day clouded over, and didn’t exactly scream “beach party”, but we got out to look around anyway.

I think maybe there’s a reason why you never hear much about the Japanese beaches. What we found was a black sand beach (cool) with driftwood and detritus all over it (uncool). The whole area just had a generally unwholesome air to it. The spot was supposed to be famous for its sunsets, but as there was no sun, we didn’t get to verify this feature.

So we return to the station to find to our dismay that the next train through does not actually go much farther north, and falls several stops short of our next destination.

A quick note about trains here. Taking the train until this point has been so easy, cheap, and enjoyable that I had been lulled into thinking of the rails as a substitute for the subway lines I am familiar with back in the States. However, the lines run irregularly, so that there are huge swaths in the middle of the day when the trains just don’t run for a few hours at a time. There are also several speeds of train which run on the same tracks. Which means that a $4 trip on the slow train can all of a sudden become a $12 trip on the fast train. Then trains may just stop and turn around, even though there is more track and you had plans to go farther.

So…the JR train… not a subway.

Sunday was more chill. We went to the numerous Buddhist temples and cemeteries by our house to check out Obon festivities. this holiday is kind of like Day of the Dead, only without the candy skulls. everyone visits the graves of their ancestors to clean themup (the graves, not the people) and offer some flowers or food. Buddhist monks were going around to individual graves to pray over them. one could hear little bells ringing throughout the graveyard, or the rhythmic knocking of sticks together. it was a very contemplative environment.

Later that day we headed to Futatsui, the next town over, to explore. we were delighted to find a beautiful path along the river, which runs through some very lush green land. it was hot as horses though, so we kept our exploration short. Later we discovered that Futatsui has a set of city bikes. You can borrow one for free and go cruising around town. Very excellent.

In the absence of internet access at home, I have travelled an hour by train to our prefecture’s own Big City, the capital Akita.  The best internet access I’ve found is in the lounge of the Akita View Hotel, which is comfy and close to the train station.  I probably won’t do this every day, but I had to try it once.

The lounge people seem happy to let me sit here with my laptop for hours as long as I order something.  I was considering lemonade when I noticed that beer is actually cheaper.  And that’s nothing compared to grapefruit juice which is $8.

So anyway, it looks like it’s going to be another week, and possibly two, until we have internet access at home.  Now that we’ve figured out the internet access situation in town, posts here should be a little more regular (although posting pictures to Flickr is probably going to have to wait, unfortunately).

It is festival season here like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think you could avoid attending a festival if you tried in Japan in August. On Saturday, we took the one hour train ride to the closest big city, Akita, to witness the famous Kanto festival. On the train ride on the way over, we happened to run into fellow JETs Nick and Nou, also commuting to the event. How fun to run into people you vaguely know when you’re out and about in Japan!

Most of the day Chris and I spent trying to complete errands. The two bank ATMs we tried rejected our Washington Mutual cards. Subsequently, we discovered the Post Office ATM works just fine for converting dollars to yen. Weird.

Then began the cell phone saga. (Chris takes over writing.) I’ve been itching to get fancy Japanese cell phones for both of us ever since Steph got accepted by JET. I had all the bells and whistles and plans and models picked out in May. So now that we had our hanko (official signature stamps) and our alien registration card proof-of-application papers, we thought we were all set. So we walked into a phone shop in Akita and started the process with a very nice woman who knew about 10 words of English. Pick out the phones, easy. Choose the plan, not quite so easy, but simple enough. At this point Steph had leave so as not to be late for meeting our friends at Starbucks as we had earlier agreed. Figuring it would only take another 20 minutes or something for the phone stuff, I would come over when I was done. Little did I know. Filling out the forms went quickly enough (Japan is apparently known for its labyrinthine forms), and then the clerk told me it would take “about 14 minutes” for some process to complete, and then I would be on my way. About half an hour later, she called me over and apologetically told me that without my Alien Registration Card (ID that every long-stay foreigner in Japan has to get) we couldn’t get some specific part of the plan we had wanted. This started a long back-and-forth process about what changes we want to make, etc, etc, etc. Great, everything is okay now, please wait another few minutes. Here, please talk to this English-speaking representative on the phone.

To make a very long story shorter, each time I thought I was done, there was one more thing that couldn’t be done without the Alien Registration Card. I talked to the English speaker on the phone about four more times (she asked pretty much the same questions every time). In the end we weren’t able to get phones at all without the card. The entire process took (wait for it) THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Surely this national mobile phone company has had to deal with this situation before and could have told me right up front that my attempt was futile. Fortunately Steph and the other folks gave up waiting for me at Starbucks and came back to the shop after I didn’t show up for an hour and a half. At least we got two Disney table clocks out of the deal, which the phone shop gave to us for our trouble.

(Steph returns.) The cell phone ordeal wasn’t all bad, since we had all afternoon to kill anyway waiting until the evening festival. We grabbed a seat for the evening parade. The premise of this festival is that men go by with like 50 lit paper lanterns stung up on a huge bamboo pole balanced on various parts of their bodies. Cool, right? Also part of the parade are tons of drummers who go by on little mini floats… almost all of which were female. Rock on!

We ditched out of the parade pretty quickly… after 20 minutes, we felt the law of diminishing returns kick in. So we retreated a bit to the tasty food area, where we scored some okonomiyaki (this crazy everything and the kitchen sink noodle dish) and some kind of fried shrimp/green vegetable balls, both of which were pretty tasty. From this venue, we could easily see the lantern matrices ebb and flow up and down the street. What really surprised me was the abundance of hot dogs. I can’t believe how many hot dogs I’ve seen since I’ve been in Japan. The best manifestation I saw was a dog wrapped in a wonton like wrapper and then deep fried. How hard core! Lots of the street food is deep fried, and I’m trying to use moderation, so, I promise, I’ll try the deep fried dog next time.

Tomorrow is Noshiro’s day to shine, festival wise. May my town revel in it’s fantastic float pulling glory.

(We’ll be posting pictures on Flickr when our internet access situation gets settled.)