Back from Sapporo

So we just spent the past few days in Sapporo, the fifth biggest city in Japan, and the biggest city in Hokkaido. Don mostly had meetings and I mostly went shopping and sightseeing. We had one late night out on the town that started with all you can drink at a beer garden, led to karaoke, and ended with green ice cream all over my shirt, chocolate ice cream on my pillow, and Don being lost for about 30 minutes. There are a few more galleries to look at. There are some pictures of the city itself, some of the botanic garden. I know, shocking, I went to another garden and took a million pictures.

We also finally finished the gardening in front of our house, so there are some photos of that, some pics of the town, and just a few of the funny small cars we've seen. (I promised my brother). I'll ride around on my bike some time soon and snap a couple pictures of the town. I really want to take a video inside of the grocery store. It's chock full of little old ladies bustling around me, while I hold my basket above their heads, with this crazy spastic techno song playing, always the same song. Luckily you can only hear the radio in the produce section, but I almost always have that song stuck in my head.

$5 Lunch

So today I ran out into the rain to pick up a lunch to bring back to my hotel room. It was 495 yen (about $5) and here's what I found in the box:
1 salmon filet on a bed of rice
1 small portion of fried noodles
1 shrimp tempura
1 octopus and onion tempura
1 side of steamed and seasoned veggies/tofu, and something that looked like jello made from seawater (tasty)
1 small portion of sweet beans

Only $5 spent and I'm stuffed. If I wasn't so hungry and didn't scarf it down I would have taken a picture. By the way, I purchased this little box-of-deliciousness at a 7/11. Forget slurpees, give me seafood!

To call the Police dial 119.

Yesterday: we were at a nursery buying plants for our house and in walk in three undercover police officers completely out of the blue. They ask for our passports and of course I left mine at home. They take down Chrissy's info and ask if they can come to our house to see my passport. We said sure we live almost two miles away and were planning to hire hire a cab to deliver all the plants we bought, "How 'bout you three coppers take the plants to our house and we will meet you there?" "OK." so we helped them put the plants in their cars and hopped on our bikes. They followed behind us the whole way home. The last three blocks are up a steep hill and we jumped of the bikes and walked up with the cops going one mile an hour behind us. What a wird ass scene that was. Long story short: leaving my passport at home saved us a $20 cab fare. I already have this town wired!!

The better half is sleeping.

This is Don this time. i don't think i can do as good of a job as Chrissy (sorry only two pictures) but here it is. Tokyo wasn't so fun a few weeks ago. All I saw was the inside of the hotel. Nice hotel though. I think you already know about the toilet.

Rumoi: we are now in our home in Rumoi and I have been going to the office everyday for the past two weeks. I sit at my desk in the corner of a big office filled with 32 people who don't speak English. It helps that I have absolutely no work to do right now. The students are on summer break so I am not sure what anybody else is actually doing either. I sit at my desk and make flash cards and read a million different Japanese language books for hours on end. NO INTERNET ACCESS. NO EMAIL. Lunch gets my blood going though. We order our food by going to a vending machine and getting a ticket which we hand to the lunch ladies. Since I can't read Japanese I never know what I am getting. Most days I get lucky and the food is really good (except for the bowl of cold noodles soaking in what looked like human spit [not joking]).


This week they threw us a curve and invited us to an "enkai"- or work party. They took Chissy and I out to a what we think is their version of TGI Fridays. It is thier big chain restaurant that is in every town and has a large American style selection on the menu. We had a great time. The men were all trying to drink really fast and commented a lot that gai-jin "are strong for alcohol." I think they wanted to test their metal. They sat us with the bosses and they pounded their first three or four beers before we even had food served. We think they chose the place in honor of us because it had American style food but we ruined their plans and ordered sushi anyway. Next came out a huge bottle of sake for the big boss' birthday (who introduces himself as "boss"). For the first time since we have been here we were really able to communicate because they sat us with a former English teacher who translated for us. It wound up being a lot of fun.

After dinner most of us (including all of the bosses) went to a karaoke place. We sang "We Are The World" as a group!! They sang a lot of Japanese folk songs that put me to shame (Chrissy always holds her own though) and they had bottles of whiskey on the table and a a matron who sat and drank with us that kept filling our glasses. We were fine before we got there but with her filling our glasses everytime we looked away the bike ride home was was dangerous. We made it home OK and our first night out in Rumoi was a success! Next morning, show up to work, me and my 32 new friends go back to ignoring each other for 8 hours like nothing happened. Weird.

Our House

Here is a little tour of our house. when you walk in the front door, you are in the genkan. There is a toilet room to the left and an inside door ahead of you. It opens up the living room with the dining area and two tatami rooms straight ahead, the kitchen to the left, the couch area and patio to the right, and the office area around a corner to the right. Our appliances are pretty funny. We have to use gas heaters for the kitchen sink and in the shower. We don't have an oven under the range, instead our microwave is also an oven. Our washer is also a dryer!

Our house gets lots of light and a nice breeze. We have big closets in the tatami rooms, but they were for futons so Don put a bar in for our clothes. There are tons of cabinets in the kitchen too, but they are overhead so you can't really see them. Once we fix up the front yard a little more I'll take some pictures of it. It's a little sad looking right now.

I'll let Don post about last night's enkai later. Very fun!

Festival

the pics with the little gray "movie" box are videos. click on the slideshow to go to picasa and watch them.

Mashike

Welcome to Rumoi

YAY! We finally have internet, kind of.

So we have the internet working on one computer, the one that isn't a pc and isn't running vista (ahem). So far our two weeks here in Rumoi have been interesting, funny, and at times, a little frustrating, We REALLY need to learn more japanese, ASAP. At least we have the hiragana, one of the 3 syllabaries, memorized. This means we can sound out written words and then look them up. The kanji is impossible though, and on everything. They are borrowed chinese characters and are hard to remember. At least I have figured out how the washer-dryer, microwave-oven, and the rice cooker work. I'll post a slideshow with some pictures of what we have been up to. We have mostly been cleaning and fixing things around the house. Our yard was a jungle, but I convinced Don to buy a little push-mower for the grass.
This past weekend we went to a town a little south of Rumoi called Mashike and saw beautiful orchards and buildings, but did not get to sample their famous salmon sushi - maybe our next visit. We also witnessed our first festival Saturday night. There were tons of huge lit-up floats, dancers, drummers, and fireworks. We even lit off a few of our own to celebrate. My favorite purchase by far is my bicycle. We each bought a used one for 5,000 yen (about $50) and it has come in very very handy (like when I'm lugging a giant bag of groceries up the giant hill we live on the top of). Wheels are good.
I'll get some photos up soon, but I have to get ready for the big enkai tonight - that's a drinking party. This will be Don's official welcome party and from every story we here from fellow gaijin, there's lots of rowdiness and lots of drinking. I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow!

Sorry we haven't posted

We have successfully made it to our house in Rumoi. The town is really cute, like a beach town. We've been cleaning and shopping and running errands, but unfortunately we don't have internet yet and it may be another week or two until we do. As soon as we get that set up, we'll post photos of the house and town.