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!

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.

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.

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.

Festival

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

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!