Not Just Ninjas

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• Bandung
• Solo
• Borobodur
• Jogjakarta
• Tokyo

I haven’t quite had so much fun in forever. Autumn in Japan is positively riddled with 3 day weekends. Which means we celebrated Culture Day last Friday by getting out for one last pre-snow huzzah. Chris went down to Tokyo on Wednesday for work related happiness (and, I later found out, to buy a 1kg block of cheddar cheese). Meanwhile, I joined some JETs in Takanosu for some nomihodai carousing.

For the uninitiated, a nomihodai is an all you can drink per given amount of time sort of thing. A usual deal is about $20 for 2 hours, during which your job is to drink all the colors of the rainbow. I got through yellow, blue, green, and orangey-purple before my time was up. Nomihodai in Japan is lovely, because you can order all sorts of pretty and frufy drinks, instead of shots of tequila or some equivalently horrible hooch.

Afterwards, we hit the karaoke bar down the street, during which I discovered the karaoke song I was meant, no born, to sing: “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Everyone needs one of those in their repertoire. ;) I sing in a dusky alto voice so no one ever suspects the fussy classical soprano hiding just under the surface.

Several of us retired to Futatsui to crash until the alcohol fled from our systems. We employed the marvelous services of the daiko, a brilliant Japanese innovation. Imagine a taxi containing two drivers: one for you and one for your car, which also needs a ride home. Thus the magic of the daiko. We prattled on and on to our driver in broken Japanese, hopefully entertaining rather than annoying him. The only true moment of communication I recall was when he found out we had been karaokeing, and asked us what our favorite Japanese songs were. We were all stumped, and could only answer by humming a few bars of a) the local festival music or b) the local department store music. Both of which were amusingly familiar to the driver.

Once home, we laughed, we cried, we drank tea. And then at 3am, an insatiable hunger struck all 4 of us at once, and we made a midnight walk to the 24-hour Lawson convenience store, where they made us “fresh” fried chicken. A better midnight snack I cannot name. We discovered that one of the health tonics sold there contains nicotine, as much of the drug, we calculated, as 3 packs of cigarettes. And with that intellectual itch scratched, we headed home in near-freezing temperatures to finally fall asleep on the floor with full bellies at 4 in the morning.

Saturday morning I was off in my car to Tazawako (Japan’s deepest lake! Go Akita!) where I would meet Chris, who was simultaneously Shinkansening up from Tokyo. We found a beautiful lake free from crowds, where we could enjoy the last gasping throes of autumn.

We had a brief confusing encounter with the Tazawako hostel owner. Upon arrival, she shooed us away, claiming (we thought) that the hostel was down the street. We left and searched and asked around, but everyone kept pointing us back to the same building where we began, the one with the discrete Youth Hostel sign. Frustrated and bewildered, we ended up back at the youth hostel, where we finally realized that she had only been asking us to move our car to the next lot over. So much for my steadily improving Japanese language skills.

The hostel was definitely a bare bones arrangement, and not exactly worth the exorbitant price (only in Japan are the hostels $50 a night!). However, everything was Japanese style, so this was fun in its own way. The baths were public style. We slept on futons on a tatami floor in an unheated room, save for the space heater we desperately huddled around. We thought we were going to freeze, but no, everything ended up being nice and cozy. The owner’s granddaughters were frolicking around the joint like mad, running wind sprints outside to keep warm. They were fun to talk to and added to the general familial atmosphere. We were the only foreigners in the joint. As a matter of fact, we didn’t see any foreigners for days, which was kind of exciting. This happens in Noshiro too, but I know where all the gaijins live, so it doesn’t seem quite as exciting.

The next morning we found, to our delight, a little honey shop complete with creampuffs and all you can drink expresso. The all you can drink phenomenon has not widely caught on here, so this was a huge find for us. We had planned to do a bunch of hiking around the lake that morning, but this doesn’t seem to be a big option at Tazawako. So after making the trek to a famous golden gal, the big arches, and mirror rock, we hightailed it out to Kakunodate, where we stopped to stroll awhile down cherry tree lined samurai streets.

That evening we crashed in Akita at a Comfort Inn, where the concierge spoke the most startlingly fluent English I’ve heard in quite some time. Her English is better than the English teachers I work with at school! She would throw out colloquial phrases like “Just kidding!” whenever she made a mistake. I was thrilled. No, enraptured. I wanted to sit and monopolize her all night, and we almost invited her to our Halloween party, but eventually left the poor woman alone.

The hotel was remarkably a reassuring and comfortable place to stay (at the same price as the hostel!). I never really thought I cared much about bathroom set up before, but now that I’ve been in Japan for 3 months, I realized what a relief it was to get in a bathtub that’s just the right depth. I mean, the Japanese ones are fun too… much deeper than the ones you’re used to at home, fill it up to your neck until it takes a little extra effort to breathe and then let the water run up and out over the side onto the floor and into the drain because you can! Wheeeeee! But familiarity is fun too. And, it was an absolute pleasure to find that the toilet was in the same room as the shower, that I didn’t have to watch myself bathe, and that the bathroom mirror was larger than your average book. Simply thrilling.

And then, the next day, I saw Vishnu in the form of chana masala for lunch. Akita City has Indian Food and they will even make it Spicy for you. I could not contain the happiness I felt as I consumed the closest physical manifestation of bliss I could imagine. It was that good.

We rounded out the weekend with an ikebana exhibition in Akita, to which I had procured free tickets. I wish I had known more about the ins and outs of the trade, because mostly I just saw crazy flower arrangements. I’m sure they all represented the samurai’s plight in the x-teenth century or made striking commentaries on the fleetingness of life or something. But I had to settle for thinking “ooooh. pretty…”

They should call it land of the setting sun, as that is all I see when I get out of work these days. I never thought I would say this, but boy do I miss Daylight Savings Time. Wind and rain are becoming more of an issue. Festival season is long gone. And all the exciting details of living life in another country have now become a comfortable routine. Winter is almost upon us, and I’m trying to scrape together a warm work wardrobe out of the thrift stores in town. Noshiro isn’t exactly the pinnacle of the fashion world, so I’m having a rough time of it.

So I’ve done the research. I’ve asked around, and both experienced assistant language teachers (ALTs) and other Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) agree that my Japanese teacher is coming from left-field regarding the home arrest after class scenario. Which makes everything a little easier to deal with; instead of picking a fight with an entire country, it’s now down to the very manageable size of an interpersonal issue. So, hooray.

Chris and I have been chasing reports of stunning fall foliage all over the ken, with minimal success. We’ve found a particularly picturesque area called Juniko (12 lakes) just north of us, where the waters are unsettling colors of blue and green. We found a dam, and a few waterfalls, a really tall tree, and a zillion Shinto shrines, but the breathtaking I-am-one-with-nature foliage has remained elusive. We had to settle for merely pretty, which is great by me, as this is my first actual fall with leaves turning colors and everything.

Fall seems to have abruptly come to a close, though, as wind and rain have been whipping through Noshiro for about 48 hours now. And we’re not talking breezy crisp cute fall weather here. We’re talking about wind that rattles all your windows until your desk and computer are gently swaying back and forth. We’re talking about insidious howling and creaking that invades your dreams and gives you sleepless nights.

Last week I began teaching the first of a 10 part series at the community center, “Better know a Dialect”, otherwise known to the Japanese community as an English class, or eikaiwa. I had been a little nervous, as I’d never had my own academic class before. What will we do? What will we talk about? How can we possibly fill 2 hours? Everyone told me to chill, and I just took their advice and decided it would all work out. And so far… it has! My class is filled with mostly older women, all of which have great English accents and are adorable and willing to learn. This is such a relief in contrast to school, where I have to pull teeth to get my students to say… pretty much anything. The eikaiwa is much more my element, where I can hang out with people who actually want to learn. Plus I get to teach whatever I want however I want. A girl could get used to this.

Last Friday I got out of school early, after a stressful and unsuccessful day of being observed and judged by teachers from a nearby town. It was raining and miserable. The only logical thing to do next was take our contraband car to the next town north of us for some ice cream. Ice cream definitely tastes better when you’re eating it in the rain and supposed to be at work. Hachimori has the strangest ice cream flavors around. So far we’ve tried wasabi, lavender, sweet potato, and rose. And I just keep going back for more.

Saturday morning my boss drove some papers over to our house so that sweet lord hallelujah, our car is now legit!!! We drove for an hour and a half through the miserable weather to the Oga Peninsula’s Aquarium to celebrate our newfound freedom. When Tohoku gives you rain, go visit the fishies, that’s what I say. I had low expectations for the “fish zoo” (as I like to call it with my limited Japanese vocabulary), but we found an excellent vertical wall of fish, complete w/ sea turtles and sharks. There were a few exhibits on strangenesses I’ve never laid my eyes on before, as well as some old favorites from the Japanese dinner table. There was also this great 3-D adventure… it’s not a Tohoku park w/o some crazy non-sequiteur game w/ flashing lights in the middle of everything… where you can sit down in a theater with these 3D glasses, where a polar bear is lecturing to fish. It all seemed to make sense at the time. Anyway… the sea mammals kept us entertained (polar bear, penguins, seals). And you can’t beat the aquarium location, nestled in a nook of jagged rocks right on the Sea of Japan. I mean, really.

Sunday was also stormy, which made it the perfect day for … a British Tea Party! We got together w/ some of the English folk in town and our favorite Japanese friends to have some “cultural exchange”. In other words, eat sweets until we were positively nauseous. Mission accomplished.

Monday we also got to go out and play, since it was a national holiday of sorts. We just drove up the coast to Aomori,and took in whatever weird wonderful sites presented themselves. This included a large defunct wooden waterwheel, and something called WeSpa, which involved a tram up a mountain, castle spires, carrot ice cream, windmills, a glass studio, a train engine, and hot springs. How all this fits together, I have no idea, but it was fabulously strange.

The last day of the semester at the high school was Monday, which means… it’s sports week! Between terms, instead of taking a few days off like we do back in the States, the high school students participate in a 4 day long sports festival, in which the various classes and a teachers’ team all participate in bracketed sports competitions. It’s really pretty cool, in a way, because the focus seems to be more on participation than competition, so everyone plays, whether they’re personally sporty or not, and everyone gets lots of support from their teammates. How better to fuel the competitive athlete than with the pizza and donut I ate for lunch. You gotta take one for the team.
Unfortunately, the one sport in which I have any modicum of skill, volleyball, is scheduled for Thursday and Friday, when I am off at other schools. :( However, somehow I am on a basketball team. I’m sure all 5’1″ of my towering hulk will be a huge asset. :) I was also drafted for softball, even though I protested several times that I was unable to hit, out of deference to my long standing back injury. I had my doubts, but the game ended up being quite enjoyable, and I even caught a fly ball! Hot damn! After an hour of play, we ended up tied with the seniors. We settled the game with rock-paper-scissors (janken), if you can believe it. Where the Japanese school system would be without janken, I can’t imagine. It would be sheer chaos.

Yesterday everyone surprised me by coming to the office in suits; the equinox was on Saturday, and I guess it’s like Labor Day, in that it dictates an unofficial clothing calendar. Autumn to Spring equinox: suits and ties are required for the teachers. I get a little more slack, cause I’m a chick, and our wardrobe is a little more flexible. I think I recall the story of another JET who dared to wear short sleeves and a skirt before the Spring equinox. Even though it was humid and beastly hot, there was still a big scandal.

So, who wants to hear about our field trip to a mine on Sunday?

We went with the folks from our Japanese language class at the community center. Transportation, which is always the main stumbling block, was magically paid for. I guess this class does some activity together once a season. There is a real sense of camaraderie between students, because most of the class consists of family members who have recently moved to Japan. This also means that there are kids constantly running around like crazy, which adds some… “atmosphere”. We all piled in 3 minibuses for the 2 hour trip out to Kazuno, east of Noshiro by the Iwate border.

I had an awesome time climbing through tunnels, and just soaking up the weirdness that is Mineland Osarizawa. How often can you visit a mine which has been operational almost continuously for the last 1,200 years? Well, if you lived in Kazuno, Akita, everyday! The mine was closed in 1978, and now it has been abandoned and turned into… an amusement park! Wheeee! It was kind of like Disneyland, with animatronic miners, and a weird ride where you go through space and get to shoot aliens. Oh, and let’s not forget the traditional Japanese dancers by the entrance. I LOVE this type of crazy stuff. Ok, the price was a little steep considering the payoff. But sometimes you just have to bite the bullet in Tohoku and just suck up the B rate tourist attractions. It’s not ALL about pagodas and temples.

This last weekend was a long one, due to “Respect for your Elders” Day. Since we have no elders here to honor, Chris and I took advantage of the holiday and fleeting good weather, and made the drive to Sendai, on the east coast of Japan. Here are some pictures if you want to follow along.

Renting a car in Japan is way, way easier than it should be. We expected a mountain of forms and hassles, but really you just show someone your passport and licence, pay in cash, then off you go. Well, first they sit with you in the running car and explain the air conditioner, radio, gas tank, seat adjustments, and turn signals, then stop traffic for you as you pull out, and THEN off you go. :)

We made the trip in about 4 hours, burrowing through central japan’s mountain ranges via tunnel on the expressway. I had been expecting something dramatic, like crossing the rockies, but no. Just massive 4 kilometer-long tunnels.

We stayed in a cute little youth hostel, where you take off your shoes at the entrance, and you use public baths. Perhaps now is a good time to go over bathing protocol for those of you planning on visiting. Men and women go to separate bathing areas. In the first room, you’ll take off your shoes at the entrance, and strip NAKED, leaving all your belongings in an unlocked cubby. Towels most likely won’t be provided, so bring your own. Then you go through this door to the group showers… keep in mind that the door will slide, not swing open. This doesn’t sound very important until you are naked in a room full of Japanese people frantically pulling in vain on this door that refuses to open.

So you go through, and there are open showers next to each other, with a nozzle placed about chest high. There will be stools for you to sit on while you bathe yourself. Once you are totally clean, then and only then should you get into the public hot tub, perpendicular to the showers. This is for soaking, not cleaning. The group nakedness is supposed to help facilitate conversation, so don’t freak out if someone wants to talk to you (although i pretty much stick to the speak when spoken principal here).

The public baths sound scary, but they’re actually pretty nice, especially when you have the whole room to yourself. I hear that the Japanese onsens (hot springs) pretty much follow the same procedure, though I haven’t actually tried one yet.

So, what does Sendai, the largest city in our region, have to offer? Well, to a certain degree, one big city is just like other big cities. Mostly, Sendai offered Chris and myself food unavailable in Noshiro. This included mexican food, all you can eat cake, some beer variety, Balinese food, and some honest-to-god coffee. We also managed to find a lovely glass museum, which was easy to enjoy, because the art form kind of transcends language. I can see it’s glass, what else do I need to know? :)

There are some very “Japanese” sites that make a good day trip from Sendai. We went to Matsushima, one of the THREE most SCENIC spots in Japan! Wow! It was pretty scenic, I have to say: on the ocean, with tons of little islands dotting the bay, and red arched bridges connecting some of them. Some of the islands have temples, and you can tour the bay in a dragon or peacock boat. Noshiro doesn’t really have any geishas or pagodas or any of the flashy traditional Japanese stuff (other than a few temples), so mostly we just had a good time walking around Mastushima and feeling the whole Japan vibe.

On the way back home, we swung by our own local scenic spot, the Oga Peninsula. This area didn’t disappoint, and was full of drop dead gorgeous scenes of cliffs and ocean and all of these crazy demon creatures. We even found an aquarium nestled amongst the cliffs, which we’ll have to attend another time.

So now it’s Tuesday, and it’s good to be home, even though the clouds refuse to go away, and I hear that a typhoon’s a comin’ tomorrow. I hope I can still bike to work, as my car ownership papers are still in the works. A typhoon doesn’t sounds like the best time to take out your contraband car, but I may have to do it.

The Day I Have Been Waiting For has finally arrived and passed. If you’ve been following our story, you may remember the Cell Phone Saga of two weeks ago, in which it took three and a half hours at the Vodafone shop to discover that I couldn’t buy a phone without my Alien Registration Card (even though I had been assured I could use the “proof of application” form as a stand-in until the actual card arrived in two weeks). Well, two impatient weeks finally passed and I awoke in an eager mood just like I used to on Christmas morning. The sun was shining (and if was f-ing HOT as usual) as I made my way to the city office to pick up my alien card. They had given me a one-week range in which I should pick it up. Of course I was going on the very first day of the range, so I wasn’t sure it would actually be ready yet. (Never mind that I had gone in a week earlier just to see if it was done then. City officials couldn’t understand why I would appear outside the allotted time.)

My relief was profound when I was handed our shiny new cards. Of course I immediately headed back to Vodafone to complete the deal. It was much easier this time because I already had all the completed forms from the previous attempt. In 20 minutes the paperwork was done and the shiny new phones were in front of me. Unfortunately some mysterious process (I think it was charging the phone up and activating it) required one hour, so I went and had lunch while I waited. I walked out of the store at noon and immediately went home and devoured the manual.

(Aside: Japanese cell phones are super cool, but Jesus, the plans are expensive. For about one hour of talk time per month with no extras, it’s about $40. Text messages and other data stuff are more on top of that. Back home I got unlimited nights and weekends and about 7 hours of weekday talk time for $35. Weird.)

We both have phones (this marks the first time Steph has ever owned her own cell phone) and they point toward our different priorities. Mine is a big heavy clunker (although it’s a metallic purple clunker) which I chose because I just couldn’t resist the technology. It has:

• amazing high-resolution screen (640×480 squeezed into a cell phone!)
• camera with optical zoom (in fact there are two cameras, one facing the user and one facing out)
• GPS app with knowledge of train schedules and toll roads
• wireless transponder thing that can do credit card-like payments by holding the phone up to a special receiver at certain shops
• Bluetooth for using wireless headset and also acting as a computer modem

All that for $70 (and a 2-year contract. Hope Steph re-ups!).

Steph’s phone was free with the 2-year deal and is the sexiest piece of technology I have ever held in my hot little hand. It’s apparently the world’s thinnest phone — it’s thinner than the bottom half of my Mac laptop, if that gives you an idea. We’re looking forward to finally being able to communicate when we fail to meet up for whatever reason (more on that later).

I forgot to mention: Steph was not around for all of this because she had run off to Akita City for the two-day prefectural JET orientation. I was due to meet her at the end of the day in the big city for a party at some German place, which sounded enticing after two weeks of ramen and questionable meat products. I got the phones about noon and was due on the train at 4:00.

What I didn’t expect was the giant thunderstorm that hit around 2:00. It had rained and thundered a bit at 5 in the morning but it was all gone by the time I got out of bed. Having to leave for the train in an hour, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there without getting soaked. So I was relieved then the rain cleared up just in time for me to hit the road. I biked as fast as I possible could to the train station and made it there with 20 minutes to spare.

Now, as you probably have heard, Japanese trains are just about the most reliable thing on the planet. So I was surprised when I was directed to get on a bus to East Noshrio (the transfer point we always have to go through when leaving Noshiro). I assumed they were working on the track or something and that I would get on the normal Akita train at East Noshiro. But no: it turns out the trains simply weren’t running. The electronic schedule signs were all three hours out of date and the station was brimming with sweaty school kids going home for the weekend on a Friday night. The tiny air-conditioned station room was nice and cool but boy, was it smelly. So my train that I was supposed to board in 10 minutes didn’t arrive. Buses occasionally pulled into the station, but (of course) none of them were labeled with a destination and my shallow understanding of Japanese assured me that none of them were going to Akita either. I was somewhat shaken as I had taken it on faith that these trains were supposed to be the most reliable thing, after death and taxes. Fortunately I am used to Amtrak and its system of falling an hour behind for every two hours of actual travel, so I had patience.

Now would have been a great time for both Steph and I to have cell phones. Unfortunately I had Steph’s brand new phone with me too so it wasn’t particularly useful in this situation. But at least I was able to dash off a text message to our new friend Claire, who may or may not have actually been within shouting distance of Steph at the time, but it was the next best thing.

In the end, I had to wait around that station for an hour and half; it felt like a lifetime of alternating between muggy outside and less muggy, more musky inside. I still don’t know why the trains weren’t running; the only unusual thing that had happened that day was the thunderstorms. But this country had thunderstorms all the time and other JETs have verified that they’ve never shut down the trains before. In the end, I got a decently swanky charter bus ride straight to Akita Station, not stopping at the stations in between, which made it shorter than the equivalent train ride would have been. I got to play with my new GPS toy along the away. I have to admit, it never occurred to me that all the cool functionality of my phone would be hidden behind Japanese user interfaces. My Japanese reading ability is going to go through the roof just because I want to use all the cool stuff on my phone.

I arrived in Akita with half an hour to spare before the party started. I was ravenous and wasn’t sure what I was going to do about dinner; I also didn’t know exactly where the party was, except that it was near the Washington Hotel (which took me an extra minute to find because the building said ワシントンホテル instead). The party was at a place called Platz (already promising) and I was wandering around looking for it when I spotted a big group of white people being herded around. I fell in with them and we were there in one minute. The restaurant showed promise already because it had big beer-brewing vats in the window. I was thrilled to find out that they served food as well, so I went in and had a joyous reunion with Steph.

The party was great, and I had a quite decent (though very small) bowl of potatoes, broccoli, and “bacon” (I would call it fatty, fatty Japanese ham) smothered in glorious, glorious cheese.

At the end of the night (a nice late 9:45), Steph and I headed back to the train station with two other Noshiroids (both coincidentally from mid-northern England and great fun to listen to) and discovered that, amazingly, the trains to Noshiro still weren’t running after 8-9 hours. We were ushered outside the station to the taxi stand, where the four of us received our own postage-paid taxi delivery back to Noshiro — over an hour away. The taxi fare ended up being over $200 — which we got for our sweet 950 yen (about $9)-each train tickets.

So ended my biggest day so far in Japan. We’re officially documented with our alien cards, we have phones, we had decent beer, and we have witnessed the rare event of the Japanese train system going out. Oh yeah, and we both have bikes now so we can actually explore Noshiro more thoroughly. Sounds like the foundation for a lovely weekend.

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.

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.)

Wednesday was kind of a freaky day, as I prepared to say goodbye to my little Tokyo safety bubble. The stark reality of JET started sinking in, as we started splitting off into smaller and smaller travel groups.

At least I got to spend a little quality time meeting my fellow Akitans… the night before, the new JETs from our prefecture went out for a night of kareoke/all-you-can-drink madness. But I thought it was much more fun to fall asleep at 9:30, so I was meeting everyone for the first time today. We went to a little regional airport instead of Narita, and had like 4 hours to kill until our puddle jumper took off.

There’s plenty to peruse at the airport, because there’s this huge souvenir (omiyage) industry here. Whenever you go on a trip, you are required by Japanese etiquette to bring back stuff for your family, people you work with, etc. Ideally the omiyage will be a specialty of whatever region you have just visited.

Also, on the top floor of the airport, was an open rooftop spot for congregating, where you could watch the planes take off. This spot was right next to an “American Diner”, which tickled me pinkish.

I’ve been lugging my cane from Ghana around with me (just in case I need it here later… also good for educating about Ghana :) ). I was very impressed… I took it through airport security, and they had to x-ray it. Imagine my surprise when I was offered a replacement cane to cross the x-ray threshold! How terribly thoughtful! Maybe they do that in the states too, I don’t know… cane users out there, let me know.

The other surprise was onboard our flight. When the flight attendant came through the cabin, I was offered orange juice, green tea, coffee, or *beef bouillon* as a refreshing drink. Awesome. I am told by my seat-mate that it was surprisingly refreshing.

Once we landed, I was met by two Japanese men from my district, who drove me the 40 min. or so back to Noshiro. Chris was a big surprise for them… apparently they had planed a welcome dinner at a hotel, where they had booked me a room for the night, while Chris meanwhile had successfully taken the bullet train (Shinkansen) to Noshiro and was waiting for me at our new house with my predecessor Nate. My hosts had to scramble a bit, but recovered beautifully. Chris joined us for the welcome feast, and they got us a hotel room for two.

The hotel, i have to say, was pretty ghetto, Motel 6 style. Perhaps they were trying to make us feel at ease by booking us in a Western style hotel, but all I felt was depressed. If I fly halfway around the world to be booked in a ghetto hotel, at least make it Japanese-style, yo! At least we were provided yukatas, the cotton lightweight answer to kimonos. See video: Noshiro Dance

The next morning, we partook in the complimentary hotel breakfast, where we found, lo and behold, the infamous natto. This is the dish that all westerners are required by law to try when they come to Japan. Natto consists of fermented soybeans, which appeared in this case, to have a fine film of rubber cement on them. This stuff is gooey and sticky like you wouldn’t believe, which makes for difficult eating in polite company. We both decided to have a small bite of natto in the safe confines of the hotel eatery, where we would offend no one with our reactions. Chris was a more enthusiastic experimenter than I; I simply put two beans in my mouth and washed them down as quickly as possible with coffee. But the end result was the same for us both: dame (no good, forbidden). Now we could, in good conscience, refuse natto for the rest of our sojourn here.

The rest of the day we spent running efficient errands. We were accompanied by Sakura-san (english speaking female) and Sato-san (non-english speaking male). First we picked up some passport photos in an automatic vending machine (awesome), then stopped by city hall to file for our alien registration card. Also visited were the water department, the gas department, and the electric department. We also stopped to get our personal seals made for signing official documents (called a hanko). I guess most Westerners will approximate the sound of their name with kanji, and get these for their stamp. Chris loosely translates to “meringue learner”… so he broke with tradition and just picked the kanji for “learning person”. I ripped off my AIM screen name of nomadicsiren, and got the kanji for “traveller” and “singer”.

And then the landlady. Here are the stats, I kid you not. She lives 3 doors down amidst a little hooverville made of blue corrugated tin, is missing her front teeth, has a mentally challenged son who handles the money, and has 2 blind cats that ooze stuff from various body parts. Totally disgusting and creepy. For some reason, cats here don’t seem very happy or healthy…. not sure why, as I have yet to see any free roaming animal other than crows… anyhow, I hope the landlady doesn’t play too large a role in our time here. On the way out of her place, Sakura-san leans over and says, “Yeah… watch out for her.”

Then we returned to the office to do… nothing for 2 hours. Well, everyone else worked but I didn’t have anything else to do (hence this blog).