Silver Week

We had another crazy weekend, followed up by an amazing nature-filled trip so this is going to be a loooooong one. Sorry for saving it all up!

Our weekend-o-adventure: Jim from Obira, and his girlfriend, Emily, came to stay with us on Saturday. We had snacks and some sake and the guys got haircuts. Then we had some curry at one of our favorite restaurants, Zion Curry. This place has some delicious spicy curry and great Rasta-inspired decor, along with a continuously-playing drumming video. Dave joined the four us and so the party began. As we payed for our meal we noticed a poster advertising a Reggae event at All Genres Bar (the one with the trance music). We laughed and asked the waitress more about it and she made a dancing motion. We were sold. Back at our place we did some more damage to the sake and strategized. Ping-pong was first on our list, so we got fired up with a little healthy competition. Once we started hitting each other with the ball more than the table, it was time to move on. Our next stop, before we lost our nerve was All Genre's Bar.

At the bar, we were greeted by half a dozen patrons and some loud reggae/hiphop music. We got our beers and took over the dance floor. Everyone in our group was cutting loose while the japanese patrons stared. A few of them were dancing too, so I took it upon myself to instigate a dance-off. Obviously I won, but it was a good battle that involved a lot of stepping, swaying, gyrating, thrashing, and a LOT of sweating. Since I burned most of the calories I ate that day and then some I called for food as we left the bar. We walked around the bar area looking for something open. A ramen shop looked closed but the lights were on so we stared into the windows until they gave us the OK sign and let us in. I don't really remember what happened after that except for a bowl of delicious pork ramen, a lot of laughing, and Jim falling asleep. Somehow we made it home and Don made us all take 3 Advil with some water before bed. The next day we woke up, made a breakfast feast, and then went to play park golf. Don got a hole-in-one, and Dave got a ball-in-ocean. Don't worry, the ball was saved.

Our nature-trip: So, this week we had a few days off and decided to head over to the largest national park in Japan, Daisetsuzan, and check out the tallest mountain in Hokkaido, Asahidake. Dave came with us and provided the necessary comic relief. We headed out east in our new-old Honda Civic (named Betty), from Rumoi very early Monday morning. After some successful navigating we found ourselves in the middle of beautiful mountains, lakes, and traffic. Evidently, everyone else in Hokkaido had our same idea, but we kept cool and eventually parked, bought gondola tickets, and carbo-loaded for our hike. Despite the number of people, everything ran really smoothly and I kept thinking to myself "if this was happening in New York . . ." So the gondola is is like a giant bubble that holds about 100 people and carries them silently up the beautiful mountain side. During the ride you can see for miles in either direction and the looming Mount Asahidake ahead. On the hillsides the leaves were changing and the bright white birch trunks stood out against the greens, reds, and oranges. Even though we like to be proud and say that we climbed this giant volcanic mountain, the gondola actually did most of the work. We got off, took one look at the giant mountain, and decided that come hell or high water we would make it to the top. The path was rocky and gravelly and there were vents a hundred feet away spewing sulfurous fumes. Somehow Dave was able to gallop upwards while Don and trudged. A few times I thought about abandoning ship, my back hurt, my legs hurt, breathing wasn't as satisfying as it normally is, but Don kept encouraging me and once we were more than halfway, I decided it was best to finish. I also felt like an giant wimp for even considering giving up when I saw 60 and 70-year-olds coming down from the top with smiles on their faces. At the top it was absolutely breathtaking and serene. The Earth actually looked round and the effect of being taller than everything else was dizzying. Mount Asahidake is an active volcano that at 2,300 meters is the tallest peak in all of Hokkaido. It was amazing and humbling and terrifying. Unfortunately we had to go all the way back down so we ate our prize for finishing (some dried fruit) and headed back down. Walking strenuously downhill might not be hard on your muscles but it does a number on your knees and feet. Again Dave, who I'm thinking might be part mountain goat, zoomed and skipped downward and ended up waiting about half an hour for us. I tried his running approach for about 5 seconds until I fell and slid on my butt. I contemplated just sliding the whole way (but there were giant boulders in the way) using Don as a sherpa, or calling for a helicopter. This sounds silly, but anyone who has hiked a steep downhill area for over an hour knows what I'm talking about. Eventually we made it back down and Don rung some bell to announce it and we walked a little trail on our way back to gondola. We spotted some wild foxes, smelled some berries, bought hot tea in a can, used toilets with bacteria that digest the human waste, and headed back down to our car and hopefully a clean warm hotel room. We stayed in a ryokan, a traditional guesthouse, and it was crowded so we didn't get the okay to use the bath and shower until very late but we were already half-asleep in bed. The next day we had to explore Asahikawa, second biggest city in Hokkaido.

The most famous attraction here is the zoo. It was made popular by a Japanese movie, but I don't know the name of it. We got suckered into paying for parking 100 yards away from the free parking lot. Oh well. Since this is the holiday week, there were lines to see certain things. Yes, lines. At the zoo. It was pretty typical as zoos go. A couple of cool things: an all glass tunnel that goes through the penguin pool, a giant outdoor open-air trapeze for an orangutan that ended up throwing a ball into the crowd and hitting a little girl on the head while we watched, a few bubble-dome things that popped up in the polar bear and wolf habitats so that you could get a prey's view of the animal. Many of the large animals seemed sleepy and bored, and I don't want to get into the reason I don't normally ever go to zoos, but a little excitement came when a lion that was chilllaxing in the grass let out a roar that gave me goosebumps and shivers. If I was in the jungle and heard that I would definitely need new underwear.

After the zoo we did some exploring and shopping and commenting on the large number of gambling joints. There were some cool shops and a giant used-goods store with everything from musical instruments to tires to snowboards to clothes. We ended the night with some very-bad-for-you fast food and headed home. Definitely a city we will go back to. As so ends this long post. Hope you enjoyed reading it and hope you enjoy the slideshow. There are some really funny videos. I promise not to write so much next time!

Where did I put my socks?

If you never sock wrestled before here are the rules:
1. unlimited competitors- battle royal style
2. no time limit
3. no weight restrictions
4. objective 1- remove opponents socks- winner is the last one with a sock on
5. objective 2- don't lose to a guy who carries the same purse as your wife
6. objective 3- don't get kicked in the face

We went camping with a bunch of other people in our program who live in our region last weekend. The organizers had a "special olympics" set up for us. Chrissy competed in the marshmallow eating contest and eliminated three men along her way to second place. The big guy in green on the right won, Christine conceded the match after learning he stuffed 39 marshmallows in his mouth the week before.




I competed in the sock wrestling contest described above. I am embarrassed to say, but I failed on all three objectives. I took second place too. My prize was two nice abrasions on my nose, pain in my sinuses and front teeth all week, and a jammed thumb. The video of the wrestling is below. Courtesy of our Canadian buddy Dave. Sorry, its pretty long. If you look closely during round 2 the reason I walk out of the frame is because I just got kicked in the face real hard.

My Daily Schedule . . . prepare to hate me.

So, for those of you who are wondering, "Chrissy, if you aren't working, what do you do all day?" here's your answer:

8:00 i wake up, kind of. stay in bed, thinking about stuff. read a book.

9:00 get out of bed and make myself a beautiful fruit salad (breakfast #1). eat breakfast while i check email, facebook, and the news (perez)

10:00 do approximately 1 hour of yoga or other exercise.

11:00 shower and eat cereal (breakfast #2)

11:30 do various chores in the house like laundry, vacuuming, etc.

1:00 cook myself a delicious lunch and eat it, maybe watch some japanese television and laugh.

2:00 take a nap

3:00 do any chores that involve leaving the house like grocery shopping, mailing things, picking up or dropping off dry cleaning, etc.

4:30 come home and begin making a delicious dinner for me and don.

5:30 eat dinner and discuss my day with Don and listen to funny stuff that happened to him while teaching.

6:30 check email and stuff again while Don washes the dishes. maybe shop online for a while. hopefully practice my japanese (this is very hard to make myself do)

10:00 read my book in bed for about an hour until i get sleepy

Now, this isn't set in stone. Sometimes I have to get up earlier to take out garbage or see Don off if he is going to be gone for a few days. I also have some tutoring that I do, and two chat clubs, one that meets at our house every Wednesday, so that shakes things up a little bit. Once I get more clients I will have to spend more time planning lessons and activities than I do now, and less time thinking and napping. And of course there are also the things that we get invited to every week like volleyball or veggie picking. To bring this post to an end, this is the most relaxed I have ever been in my life, and probably ever will be until retirement. Life is good.

Do Not Go Into Bars Playing Trance Music!

I don't know why we were the least bit surprised about the end of our night on Saturday. We wanted a crazy/fun night out, and we got one. We started the evening off at our house. Dave came over, Don made pizza from scratch, and we all had a few drinks. We then headed out to investigate the bowling alley, which looked like every other bowling alley in American. Dave had the best scores, but Don and I didn't do too badly. Then we played some pretty heated ping pong, Dave again had the best game. This whole time, we were pretty much the only people in the whole place. Wanting more adventure and curious about all of the little bars on the side streets of our town, we jumped on our bikes and road away like maniacs towards the bars. Dave seemed to remember a bar called "All Genres" with a picture of Bob Marley on the sign that he wanted to see. We heard trance music coming down from the 2nd floor bar and against our better judgement, walked up the stairs. (I kind of wanted to laugh at people dancing to this) We had to pay $5 cover, but we got a CD of the horrible music. Don's is already in the garbage. There weren't many people in the bar, but we were immediately accosted by two tiny girls who were screaming broken english at us, telling us that they loved us. After a few drinks, some half-hearted dancing, and some conversation, the girls got a little personal. I'll just say this - to avoid too much embarrassment - there were many questions regarding our bodies, our private parts, and our body odor. There was also some touching and blocked attempts at touching for size comparisons. Instead of becoming more modest in their questions once they found out Don and I were married, it only made the situation worse. The funniest part about this was that all the questions were being shown to us on a cell phone that translated for the girl. In Japanese their version of "it" is used all the time to refer to people, so we were shown questions like "it leaves when it finishes drink?" (silence of the lambs anyone?) My sides hurt from laughing so hard and from constantly deflecting grabs from these girls. Don and I decided it was time to go, before this got any weirder, and bid farewell to Dave and our two new friends. We promised them we would come back on the 19th for some event at the bar, but I don't think we'll make an appearance. At least not without some protective padding.

It's Been a Busy Week!

After traveling all last week, we have finally settled back at home and gone through all the pictures and videos. Here's a run-down of the events.

Last weekend we played park-golf with an international-exchange group. Park golf is somewhere between regular golf and minigolf. There were three Americans (Don, me, and Jim), one Canadian (Dave), one Nepalese man (Raju), three Chinese girls who work at a factory in town, and a bunch of Japanese people. We had a feast afterward and played a game that involved ripping a newspaper. A picture of me golfing ended up in the town newspaper. That night we hung out with 2 coworkers of Don's and went to dinner, then to see some live music. There was an opening funk band whose name sounded like "Brown Panties," but I'm hoping we heard wrong. The main act was Madame Guitar. She was really fun to watch. For both, though, it was better when they were singing in Japanese because when they sang in English their accents were so thick that the funny-sounding lyrics were distracting from the music. It was still a really fun night, and it's always good to hear live music.

Monday night we headed up to Horonobe, about 3 hours north, through hilly farmland. It was a beautiful drive along the coast and through the countryside. Horonobe is a very cute town. It has a nature museum, a reindeer farm, a calligraphy museum, and a nuclear disposal research facility! They're drilling 500 meters into the Earth to see if they can safely dispose of nuclear waste there. Don't worry, we're not growing extra limbs yet. I met a woman here at the park and she took me around town for a little tour and brought me into the elementary school to see an art exhibit. She even came back to the junior high, where I was waiting for Don, to give me a present. I stayed for lunch at the junior high and ate with Don and students in one of the homerooms.

That afternoon we headed south for Teshio. This was a much smaller town with less to do. Luckily the teachers invited me to come for the whole day with Don, and I got to see him teach and arm wrestle. The students were very shy and there was near-constant giggling as we walked through the hallway.

Afterwards we headed further south for Enbetsu, where we stayed at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese guesthouse. We slept in a small tatami room. There was one squat toilet on our floor. The showers and giant bath were on the ground floor. Now, the way the ryokan works is this: you arrive a the hotel and you shower and clean yourself, then you take a dip in the huge scalding-hot bath tub, then throw on your yukata robe and head to a homemade dinner in the giant dining room. Same sexes commonly bathe together, and the water in the bath is only drained at the end of the night. This may sound gross, but you are supposed to clean yourself before going in, and that water was so freaking hot I'd congratulate any microbe that could stay alive in it. Dinner here was amazing - crab, sushi, fish, porkchop, soup, salad, pickles. . . By the way, we are eating meat like it's our job here. #1 it is delicious, #2 it's everywhere, #3 it's hard to explain the vegetarian-but-fish-is-okay thing, #4 it's DELICIOUS! Back to Enbetsu, the high school here is an agricultural highschool so the kids are under less pressure and generally more fun and outgoing. Don played soccer with some boys and did a great job as goalkeeper. He also taught the staff what TGIF meant. The school here was gigantic and new and beautiful.

We headed home that night and collapsed after the long week, that wasn't over yet.

The next day we had a cooking club in the morning with Alaina, a woman from Washington that married a man here and now has 3 kids. She does a lot with the community, including this cooking thing where she connects farmers with people in the town and introduces new foods and recipes. We made tacos from all-fresh ingredients except for the Kraft shredded cheese. They took pictures of my taco and said it would be in the next newsletter. I knew I would be famous in this town! That night we went to a BBQ with the man selling us a car and a younger kid we met at a sushi restaurant. This was a real meat-fest, beer-fest, sake-fest. It was awesome. We had some really great conversations with the people there and then I convinced them all to come to karaoke afterwards. Don must have really had a lot to drink because he sang more than me! And he did a great job! I was very proud. They sent us home with a bag full of vegetables and two watermelons.

Sunday, Don hung out with Dave at a open-air market in town while I hung out with two women from the chat club, Kayoko and Ikuko. We made tempura, ate it, drank coffee and talked. I can't wait to make it again. Our little informal cooking club will meet again in October and I will show them how to make hamburgers.

This week should be a little more relaxing. We don't have to travel anywhere! We'll be far from bored though, with volleyball games, dinner invitiations, dance recitals . . .

I recommend clicking on these and going to website b/c there are quite a few videos and a panoramic picture at the end.