Best Farewell Gift So Far

Don is very excited about this!

Notes From Don's Students

I have to agree with Wakana, but I'm wondering how much English she learned if that's what she was paying attention to.

Matsuri Outfits!

Here are some of my students in their festival outfits!

Bonus Pics!!!

Enjoy!!

Shiretoko #2

Some more pictures of our adventure!

Second Anniversary!! Shiretoko, July 2-5 Album #1

This is the trip we took for our second anniversary.  We were so excited to go because Shiretoko is a place we have wanted to see since we first arrived.  With time winding down it was looking like we weren't going to get the chance to go but we made it!  Yay!  It was an amazing experience.  We saw so much nature!  Bears, deer, foxes, dolphins, waterfalls, mountains, sunsets, birds.... it was great.  Shiretoko is a World Heritage Site preserved because of its untouched nature.  Most of the park is closed to only advanced hikers with special government permits.  For us novices there are tour boats that take you up and down the coast which is where we saw the bears and some of the most amazing cliffs and rock formations that we have ever seen.  Amazing waterfalls too.  I don't think we did much talking during the trip, mostly oohhed and  aahhed and told each other to "look at this," and "holy crap, look over there!."  We took a million pics and are finally getting more skilled at getting better colors out of our shots with the new camera.  We took too many pics for one album so a second post is coming soon.

Rebun & Mt. Rishiri

We have been staring at Mt. Rishiri obsessively since we got here.  It is about 80 miles away but it is so big you can see it on a clear day from our town.  I always look for it when I take the bus up the coast.  It is usually too hazy to see it but it is stunning when the weather cooperates.  It has a smaller sister island called Rebun which we headed to first.  We took a quick hike and saw some beautiful cliffs.  We then took the ferry to Rishiri, met up with Jim and Dave at the campground and stayed in an awesome little cabin.  It was perfect, two sets of bunk beds complete with clean sets of sheets and down comforters.

The manager of the campground was excited to meet gai-jin and offered to take us to the convenience store to buy food and water for the hike.  He saved us a bunch of time and money in cab fare.  He also told us the best time to head out for the hike would be at first light.  3:00AM!!!!!!   So we bought a lot of instant coffee!  We got up at 3 but made it out around 4.

Chrissy was convinced that she was only going to do a little of the hike and then turn back.  But once she got started my awesome wife couldn't give it up and went all the way to the top!!!  6 hours later I was super impressed and very happy to be sharing the view with her at the top with her.  We ate a quick lunch, took some pics and then headed back down.  It got really crowded up there.  We were so excited to be heading back down but... it still took like 4 more hours to get to the bottom. We took a well deserved soak in the hot spring at the base of the mountain, had some ramen and then took the ferry back to Hokkaido.  Then we struggled to keep our eyes open on the 2.5 hour drive back home.

Shout-Outs

So, the end of our Japan adventure is getting closer and closer and we are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. I am excited to see my family and friends, nervous about getting back in the classroom, and heartbroken about leaving the friends I've made here. Like we did on our last radio show, I would like to give some shout-outs to the people that have made my time here special:

Ikuko, I will miss our hilarious and sometimes serious talks, and the fact that when Don teased you, you actually thought it was funny. I will miss your super-fast driving in your silent hybrid car and our Wednesday lessons. Thank you for teaching us so much about Japan and for spending hours with us cooking that turkey! I promise I will get that taco recipe to you soon! I love you!

Atsuko, you always had wonderful and wise things to say at our chat club. I will never forget your braveness, whether it was doing charades at the Halloween party, or getting lifted up into a tree! I will miss your subtle sense of humor, your sweet voice, and of course, the delicious treats you make.

Kayoko, you will be my crafting inspiration for as long as I live. I will miss your advice and your recipes and all the times you made me laugh. Thank you for inviting me to many many activities, for helping me get my classes started, and for researching anything I asked you about. You have taught me so much! I will miss the knitting club and nature club and our conversations. Good luck with your new job!

Murasan, I wish we would have met sooner! Our "japanese lessons" were always a treat every week. I really feel like I learned a lot about Japanese culture from you. Thank you for all of the delicious food and tea, and for helping me with my terrible Japanese. I hope you are able to travel to Spain this year, and to New York in the near future! I will miss your laugh and your independent spirit!

Alaina, how I loved our long conversations and your lattes! Thank you for all of the reading material, the recipes, and inspiring me to grow my own food! I hope to invite you someday to my own little farm. Good luck with your all of your hard work in Rumoi. You are doing great things here - the city is lucky to have you, and your family is lucky to have you!

Miki, you have been like a sister to me. I don't even know where to start...our movie nights, our karaoke nights, volleyball, kinball, studying for your exam, booking hotels, translating emails, yoga, snowboarding...I don't know what I would have done without you. I will think of you every time I hear or sing "a whole new world." It's our song! Or maybe "girls just wanna have fun" is more appropriate! I will never ever forget you, your smile, your honesty, and your friendship!

I really really hope to see all of you in New York some time soon...Ok, I'm going to start crying, so I'll end with this. To all of my friends here in Japan:

どうもありがとうございました！

Beautiful View

Don and I went for a walk the other day because it was so nice out and we needed to get out of the house. Our walk down to the ocean is usually more beautiful than the ocean itself. In the distance you can see the mountains in Mashike, still covered with snow. They look like they're hovering like a spaceship to the right, because of the fog and clouds. To the left by the wind turbines are the yellow rapeseed fields of Reuke Farm. Beautiful!

Forgotten Potatoes

Spring In Japan - After Golden Week We Did a Bunch More Stuff

This is another hundred and something pictures of things we did this spring.  With everything in bloom and the snow melting we spent a lot of time outdoors.  And that means we have a lot of nature shots and close ups of plant and bugs for all of you lucky viewers!

This album includes a few different Hanami Parties (Cherry Blossom viewing parties), which is really just a BBQ under or in the vicinity of a Cherry Tree in bloom.  There are also some shots of the mountains in our town and some amazing yellow plants called Rapeseed which is where they get Canola oil from.  They are the brightest yellow and almost blinding.  Then we finish up with some shots of Chrissy chewing on octopus and more sparkler maddness!!!  We have developed a new tradition that whenever we BBQ we light a bunch of sparklers after and take pictures.  This time there was a casualty, i lost a bit of hair and burned a whole in my scalp (a burning chunk of sparkler fell on my head when I was running down the street).  You can see the bald spot in the last picture!  Also, I accidentally hit the camera with a sparkler when Chrissy told me to throw it towards her.  Sparklers fly much further than you think, I almost burned her face off!

Golden Week In Southern Hokkaido and Northern Honshu

We are really behind in updating the blog.  Here are over a hundred pictures of what we did during Golden Week, the big holiday season in Japan.  We took a road trip to the southern potion of Hokkaido and went to Hakodate, the 2nd biggest city in Hokkaido.  We didn't stay in Hakodate but we took a ferry from there to the main island (Honshu) where we went to Hirosaki Castle and looked at the cherry blossoms.  Then we went on to Lake Tazawa and stayed in a bungalow and had a BBQ.  If you go to the supermarket after 8:00pm they mark all of the meat and fish down 50%.  We bought this huge platter of BBQ meat for about $12!!! It was a great deal and we were stuffed afterwords.  It was also Chrissy's birthday dinner and she loved it.

Next we went to Osorezan which is at the very Northern part of the island and is believed by Japanese to be the Hell.  They believe that when you cross the river and enter this area you leave the world of the living and are literally in Hell.  The area is filled with volcanic activity and hot springs and horrible smells coming from the ground but it was really cool, colorful, and beautiful.    We camped near here for a few nights and then took the ferry back to Hakodate where we spent some time with my supervisor and his wife before we headed back to our home in Rumoi.  We put a few thousand miles on the car and had a blast!!!

Last Full Month

I know we haven't posted in a long long time. But here is a summary of some recent news:

• my plane ticket has been purchased (July 26th is the date) but I will not be flying with Don, unfortunately. We don't know any of his flight details yet.
• my wool-felted brooches are on SALE at a local coffee shop! Woo hoo! Too bad on the cute little card, that each brooch is attached to, my katakana-ized name is spelled wrong and instead sounds very close to their word for "shit"... need to fix that ASAP.
• we are looking for teaching jobs in Queens, if you can help, please do!
• last night during a karaoke session I ventured into Celine Dion territory and it was pretty awesome. Thanks for your help Miki!

Who Loves Nature?

We do! We do! Today we went to our first official meeting of the Rumoi Forest Support Club in the mountain park nearby. We took down fences around fruit shrubs and reset the logs for a mushroom-growing area. Luckily there were many shitake already growing on the logs so we picked a bunch, along with some other mountain vegetables (things you wouldn't think you could eat, like fern fiddleheads). After washing these off at home we made tempura - delicious! Oh, and the best part, in the leftover batter, we dunked some snickers bars and deep fried those too. It sounds disgusting, and it was, but it tasted really really good.

In the spirit of spring, after I digested the foods above, I made a sakura (cherry blossom) brooch. The cherry blossom season is just starting (late) here in Hokkaido. It looks a lot like the one I made for my mom, but for this I added some yellow beads for the stamens.

Stuff around here is finally looking less brown and more green. . .come on spring, I'm running out of patience!

Making Pizza at a Cooperative Farm & Goofing Around

Yesterday we had a lot of fun doing what I think we both love most about living in Hokkaido, meeting new people and enjoying the great natural beauty of the island.  Now that the snow has melted we have limitless options in terms of hiking and adventure and we are trying to pack in as much as we can before we leave.  After an intense game of Monopoly on Friday night (which was interrupted by our friend Jim who crashed at our house after a night of drinking in town [more on that later]) we got up early and went to a cooperative farm to make pizza.

All of the ingredients we used had been harvested on the farm, even the flour for the dough and the sausage and bacon topping.  These guys even dug clay out of the ground and made there own clay oven.  It was a really cool place and it was difficult to get Chrissy to leave.  After making and devouring a million pizza pies we took a tour of their farm and saw their pigs, chickens, and goats.  Pigs really are kinda cute, I can't say I have much affection for chickens though, and one goat wouldn't stop smiling at us.  We played with our friend Alaina's children which made us miss Gianna and Marco even more than we already do.  We can't wait to get home and see everyone!!!

After the farm we took a drive through the mountains where we saw a fox that looked like he was spawned from hell.  Creepy looking animal, all grey and muddy with these dead grey eyes... kinda unnerved us a bit.

Then we wondered over to our buddy Jim's house where we helped him discover the "tattoos" Christine wrote on him when he was passed out drunk on our living room floor the night before.  Thankfully he wasn't too mad!  We took Jim along on the last part of our journey and goofed around in a campground near his house.  We are excited to camp there when the season starts because it's on the top of a high bluff overlooking Jim's town and the ocean.  It is clean, close, and beautiful.  We snapped a bunch of fun pictures there and even practiced some sword fighting.  We have a great shot of Christine that should be the poster for the next Karate kid movie.

Okinawa In Pics!!!

We really had a great time visiting Okinawa and we were really lucky to be able to go.  This year has really been amazing!!  As you can see, even though the weather wasn't great we did find some sunshine.  Okinawa is really beautiful and the water was the most amazing color of blue I have ever seen.  The snorkeling was awesome - we saw a sea turtle!!   The island itself was pretty densely populated and the cities thriving.  They were a little tourist trappy though, with store after store selling the same cheap souvenir stuff, but there was a great pottery district in Naha that had some beautiful stuff inspired by local traditions and customs.  Here are the pictures Christine promised.  Oh, and the aquarium was crazy!  I want to be the guy who scubas down in there and feeds all the animals.  Dream job.

Spring!?

We're back from out trip to Okinawa and settling back in to our routines. We had fun in Japan's southernmost prefecture, though the weather didn't exactly cooperate. Lot's of pics and videos coming soon! It was a pleasant surprise to come home to significantly less snow, although some mounds are being stubborn. We did some spring cleaning and are making some plans for the rest of our time here. Only 4 months left!!! There are still so many things we want to see, and there's a week of holidays coming up (I know, it's like we're on a year-long vacation) during which we might drive to the south of Hokkaido to see cherry blossoms. We're also trying to decide what to do about jobs and housing when we get back. On top of that, I have some fun knitting/felting projects going on. I'm planning on making more brooches like the one in the picture, to sell at a flea market in June. And I'm drinking 3 cups of coffee a day.

left: flower brooch I made for my mother; center: cherry branches from an orchard in Mashike; right: Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) peeking out above the clouds on our plane ride back to Hokkaido

Success!

I finished knitting this a few weeks ago but just recently mustered up the courage to wash it. It was a smelly experience. Now I just have to block it and add a zipper!

Goodbye Winter, Hello Okinawa!

Don and I have happily booked a 4-night vacation to Okinawa in early April. We'll be trading in snow and wind for warmth and sunshine. We can't wait!

Sounkyou Hyobaku Matsuri

We had a really amazing day last week a few hours from our house.  We started out by taking a huge gondola ride to the peak of a mountain (almost the peak), tried to snowshoe to the top but got freaked out by how steep it was, and then hiked part of the way down.  We had a lot of fun playing in the snow and goofing around.  Next we had found a true double trouble delight.  We found a place that sold a combo platter of a big bowl of ramen and a bowl of curry rice.  We thought that we were going to have to decide between the two but this place had a sweet deal.

Next we went to an onsen and soaked in the natural hot spring baths.  After that we drank a beer while sitting in some kick ass massage chairs and relaxed before we went to see the village made of ice.

The Hyobaku Matsuri (ice village) was amazing and beautiful.  We had a great time going into all of the structures, going down slides, eating festival food, and watching the fireworks.  (I especially enjoyed almost throwing a Japanese guy off the top of a structure after he shoved Christine out of his way and she almost fell)

Enjoy the pics!

Busy Busy

In case you were wondering, my life is no longer the relaxing thing it used to be. I'm not complaining, but just don't want you to think I'm lounging around reading and thinking, and napping anymore. So what happened?

Well, I started teaching 2 english classes, and I'm tutoring two children, one teacher, and one friend privately, I have my day time chat club and a night chat club every other week. I play a crazy-fun game called kinball almost every Friday for a few hours, as well as volleyball. I meet once a week with a woman for help with Japanese. I also occasionally meet with a friend for crafting stuff, or with people from the chat club for traditional Japanese experiences. Thrown into this mix is taping our radio show and taking adventures around Hokkaido. AND, although Don is making a lot of efforts to help out more now, I'm still playing housewife.

Not all of these things are new, but they've slowly been adding up, and I'm really starting to feel it now. Really it's teaching the little kiddies that is the most time-consuming. For them, I have to do a lot more research and make a lot more materials, and it takes a LOT of energy to entertain them. I totally have a new respect for elementary school teachers and anyone that is trying to teach a child to read.

To wrap up this rant, I don't have as much time to myself anymore, but that's probably good. I just have to remember to have fun and enjoy all of the experiences!

Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) In Sapporo

Last week we went to the annual snow sculpture festival in Sapporo called Yuki Matsuri.  There were several massive (like 3-40 feet tall!!) sculptures made out of snow and a bunch of 8-10 foot ice sculptures carved out of clear ice.  They have this festival every year in Sapporo and the different sculptures are sponsored by different companies and organizations.  Disney does one every year (this years was a little lame, just Micky and Minny).  The coolest one by far was the one sponsored by the Asahiyama Zoo (its in the other big city in Hokkaido, Asahikawa).  This sculpture had an awesome leopard that looked really scary, a polar bear and two cubs, a huge orangutan, and a bunch of other stuff.  They looked amazing and it was not hard to fantasize about them coming to life and running loose all over the park (I watch too many movies).  We also saw some live music by a corny Japanese boy band.  They did some N’snyce covers and some other lame stuff.  Chrissy loved it though.  They also had a lot of tasty food in an outdoor international food court.  Every country had a booth and a few shared.  Don’t ask me how they go together but Mexico and Greece teamed up together.  I could see Mexico and Spain or something but Greece??

We opened the day by shopping at COSTCO with our buddy Dave and we bought another trunkfull of staple products and some flavors from home: peanut butter, cranberries, pasta, tortilla chips and salsa, a package of hot dogs (you can make fun, its alright), kosher dill pickles, mixed nuts, hash brown patties, granola cereal, beer, and shampoo (smells fruity but don’t eat it).

We ate some great ramen in a place called Ramen Alley- they have a million ramen shops one after the other on either side of a four foot wide alley.  It was tough deciding which one to eat at but we were happy with our choice. 

All in all it was a really fun day.  We walked around a lot in the snow and had a lot of laughs.  Look out for Matsui getting eaten by Godzilla in the slide show- I loved it.

What the hell does Don do all day?

Well, this probably should have been one of my first posts but better late than never.  While Christine’s daily activities have been well documented, what the hell do I do all day?  For starters I teach Tuesday through Friday and sit in the State BOE office all day on Mondays.  The only work that I have on office days is to complete a quick summary of the classes I had the week before.  This takes about twenty minutes and then I have the res t of the day to myself.  They don’t ask me to do a damn thing.  I usually study Japanese and make lesson plans for the week coming up.  The rest of the week I usually hop on the 8:00 bus and go to one of my schools.  The trip takes anywhere from a half hour to three hours depending on where I am going.  If I am going to a school in my town I just ride my bike (even in the snow). 

There are four schools that I go to about once per month, another school that I go to once every two months and then the other 18 schools I only go to three times each the whole year.  For the most part when I get to the school it is a big day for them.  I am like a special guest and they treat me like a celebrity.  They are so thoughtful and kind it can be really overwhelming.  I get all kinds of little gifts from the students and the teachers love to ask me a bunch of questions.  It’s a lot of fun but I always feel like I have to have super high energy for them because they only get to see me a few times so I need to be my absolute best.  It can be tough to get excited sometimes because I usually don’t know where I am going or what I am doing until I get there and even then I don’t really know because some teachers don’t speak any English.  I find that just acting happy and confident goes a long way though. 

I probably have the most fun going to elementary schools.  It doesn’t matter what I say or do, the kids love everything.  They freak out and laugh and scream if I just say hello to them.  They love to play games and try to say words in English.  They are adorable.  I always have fun at elementary schools.

I'll post more later about the middle and high schools.  

To Do. (update)

Well, I'm happy to say that I'm actually accomplishing some of the things on my previously-posted list.

1 - sweater is getting close to finished. I've already attached the sleeves and I'm starting to decrease now up to the collar. Yes RR, this the same sweater you made from purlbee. It's so much more fun to knit this thing when I can actually see it taking shape.

2 - japanese is not one of the things, yet. :)

3 - teaching classes started last week with a group of elementary school students and their tiny little brothers and sisters. It was very cute and I was very nervous. We danced around, sang songs, played games, and no one peed their pants. Success! I even got to use a little rabbit puppet that I named "Judy," after my aunt. My Brooklyn teaching style (mean and scary) wasn't going to work with these little sweethearts, so I thought about how my aunt would teach. She's the nicest and most-patient person I know, and probably the only person I know who would be excited to have a puppet named after them. I'm adding an adult class this week, which should be fun too.

Snow Cave

So when I woke up this morning, the room was much darker than usual, and when I opened the curtains I found out why. The snow on the ground is about half way up the window now, but that's not a new development. The snow sliding off our roof from the heat in the house has stopped falling and is now just curling under into this weird lip thing. Out of the bedroom window (top pics) there are about 4 inches left between the roof snow and the ground snow. In the living room (bottom pics) there is a little more space, but not much. It kind of feels like being inside the mouth of giant whale.

Lost In Translation

Ok, sorry, I had to post this one too. I don't think anyone would buy these leg warmers if they understood what was written on them. But I'm not sure what is worse, the "girlly loose" part, or the fact that they "age flesh."

Lost In Translation

I feel like I should have titled this entry Great Expectations. Either these really are the most amazing notebooks, ever, or the advertising people just didn't feel like being subtle.

"It is our hope that this item will become your good friend and help to make your life enjoyable all the time."

"This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time."

Don's First Snowboarding Experience

I don't know about you, but I think the best part about this picture is his hat.

Ask Don.

I posted something about this on facebook, but not everyone has it, so please, the next time you talk to Don, ask him what he thought about eating COD SPERM SOUP.

To Do.

As it blizzards outside, I am rethinking my new year's resolutions. Originally, like every previous year, I said that I wanted to exercise more, lose weight, blah blah blah, but now I'm editing. There are other things that I want to accomplish that are probably more important than how my clothes fit. And anyway, if I keep myself busy doing these things, I will spend less time eating all of the chocolate that people cruelly gave us for Christmas.

1) finish knitting my sweater. (I started it 2 years ago!) I will probably never have more free-time in my life, and the weather here certainly is conducive to staying indoors.

2) learn more Japanese. I am now visiting a woman in town once a week to work on my Japanese. Her English is really good, so we mostly end up bullshitting, in English, but having a set day to talk about Japanese, even for 30 minutes, makes me feel more responsible.

3) get my English classes started. I am going to be renting out a classroom in town two days a week to hold English conversation classes, but I'm procrastinating. The problem is advertising myself. It's ridiculously expensive to do it in the newspaper, so I'm relying on our radio show plugs and word-of-mouth. It costs money to rent the rooms, so I want to make sure I have enough people there to at least pay for the rent. But I am excited to start. I really miss teaching, and I'll finally have an excuse to wear all the teacher-clothes I packed!

Maybe #4 should be blogging more frequently, but I'd like to keep my list at 3 things. It is the magic number after all.

To Stay or Not To Stay

That is the question. I think I hear the music from Final Jeopardy playing faintly somewhere. . . the suspense continues.

Fun with Fabric

A friend of mine here is always making me things like hats, bags,
pins, pickles, etc. She is the crafty-est person I have ever met. She
knows how to make just about anything. When I first showed her the
knitting needle case I made a few months back, she whipped out her
measuring tape and started writing numbers down. However, right before Christmas I asked her if she had made it yet and she surprisingly
hadn't even started. So I told her not to bother and to let me make
it. I bought plenty if fabric so I made a lined zipper pouch to match.
I hope she likes it and I hope her expert-seamstress eyes don't look
too closely at my seams.

It's a New Year

We just wrapped up the holidays here and are settling back in to our normal everyday lives. After sorting through and labeling the hundreds of pictures we took since late December, I've made these two photo albums. The first is our Christmas experience in Rumoi, which includes making mochi (basically pounding steamed rice into goo), cookie decorating with my chat club and the English club in Rumoi HS, and a gift exchange with Jim and Dave. It was really fun, but both of us felt a little homesick, having to open presents on skype with our families.

The next slideshow is of our Tokyo and Kyoto adventure. This really made us feel like we were in Japan. So many beautiful, crazy, weird, and hilarious things! This is a long slideshow, and the captions explain a little, but here were our highlights:

• lots of women in kimono
• beautiful temples and shrines, all of which have been burned down at least once in their lifetime
• eery bamboo forests
• scary statues of gods that we're sure moved when we looked away
• the biggest buddha I will probably ever see in the biggest wooden building (50 meters high) I will probably ever stand in
• sushi on a conveyor belt
• quiet cobblestone streets with little bridges to doorways of tea houses where geisha might be entertaining
• ridiculously-detailed roofs
• a whose whole second and third story are covered in gold plating
• hilarious signs everywhere
• several people pushing dogs in strollers
• transvestite being photographed by a homeless man with a disposable camera
• a rare sighting of Mount Fuji