Japan-tastic!

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Alrighty, sorry I didn’t post for so long. I was enjoying some much needed time off, but of course now I have a ton of pictures backlogged!

This week it was back to work. It’s pretty hard getting used to waking up early when I’ve been staying up so late during my vacation time, but I found out that I won’t be starting lessons again until next week. I also discovered, upon entering the faculty room my first day back, that the morning meeting was already fully in swing and that the teachers had failed to tell me the meeting started 10 minutes early! I was less than pleased, to put it mildly. It not exactly the way you want to start off a new term. But, as I said, no lessons for a week, so at least I don’t have to rush around in a bad mood today.

So, you’re probably wondering how our holidays were here in Japan, so let’s start with Christmas. I had planned all kinds of outings and things for Christmas weekend, but we didn’t end up doing too much, which was just as enjoyable after working so hard last term! We were invited to our pal Matt’s place (he’s from DeKalb, so we get along well!). We went down south to Yoshino, almost to the end of the train line, to join him, a few of his Japanese friends (including this older Japanese lady that was pretty hilarious), and other ALTs. Matt put on old classics like Charlie Brown’s Christmas and The Grinch. We ate sashimi (raw fish, my favorite now), drank ume-shuu (an awesome liquor flavored with plums), ate some more, drank hot cocoa with Bailey’s, ate more, and had some hot sake (heated over the stove as you can see.)



Anyone see a theme here??

I can’t party as hard as the other JETs, but this was a really chill, nice time.











We stayed the night, along with our pal Chetan (from South Africa) and the next day continued to watch Christmas fare, drank spiked cocoa, and ate. Here's Chetan lickin' his fingers while partaking in the holiday-eating goodness!
















Matt made homemade okonomiyaki. He made veggie ones from Chetan and myself and meat-lovers for him and Steve. Steve was in awe of his okonomiyaki!
















We also just chatted and lounged all day. Matt showed us this great trucker's cap that an old Japanese townie had given him!



Southern Nara is considered the 'hillbilly' area to hip Osaka city-folk, but the countryside has a lot of color!









That night we caught the last train home and although I thought we might go to an onsen or hop out to Kobe on Christmas day, we decided to be lazy and lounge around. I slept in and read all day. Ahhh, I was nice! I regret that I never did get my Christmas caki, though! Steve brought this cake back from (I forget where), so it turned out to be our only Christmas cake!












I got Steve me an mp3 player for Christmas, which is wonderful because its to keep me from getting motion sick on the crowded trains. He also gave me a little bobble-headed guy that's so cute! There's all kinds, but this one is probably for students who are studying for exams because the little guy is reading, the sign says 'certain victory', and there's a little daruma-doll sitting next to him.

I bought a daruma figure for myself later when we went to Tokyo. They are these (typically) red, round faces that represent a historical figure in Buddhism that meditated in a cave for six years and supposedly lost his eyelids, arms and legs during that time! Now people get them at the start of the year, make a wish or resolution, paitn in one eye and then paint in the other when it comes to pass. I'll take a picture of my figure sometime and post it.

I brought Steve some tabi boots, which he loved! They look like ninja shoes, but construction workers here wear them and they're steel-toed as well! I had to take a day off and go to the blue-collar area of Osaka to get them!




On the 26th, it was back to work, but at the end of the week we were off to Tokyo. We took the overnight bus from Osaka. Just before we left, we found this little Turkish restaurant across the street from the bus stop.



The place was so great we decided we’d stop back there on our way home!


The bus was fine, though I can never sleep when I’m moving like that, so I was extremely tired when we arrived in Tokyo station at 5:30am. Also, I was very, very surprised to find that the bus didn’t have a toilet on board. This meant we had to stop every 3 hours- another reason sleep eluded me. At least we got to eat, though, and see some Japanese rest stops, which intrigued Steve. One of the stops had this odd design on the flower beds outside (yes, there's still flowers in bloom around here).

I don’t have a flash on my cell phone camera, so it’s a bit dim, but it looks to be a woman wielding an ax while she rides a wild bear in front of Mt. Fuji.

Can’t say there’s anything that cook at US rest areas!



After we arrived in Tokyo, we had to hop on the train to go east of the city into Chiba prefecture, where we met up with Steve’s cousin Corey and her family. She was born in the Philippines and her husband, Rich, is from Arizona, but they’ve lived in many places and been in Japan for several years. Here they are in a warm family moment, gazing at pictures of us they just took on their keitai (cell phones).


Rich teaches (although he’s not a JET) so he could sympathize with my situation. It was really great to hang out in a warm family atmosphere for the New Year. We met some of their neighbors and people some their church. Everyone was very friendly and we had some great times and great food! We went to a Korean bbq, and I order salad! Haha! I did try the meat, though and have to say it was pretty darn good. We also went to a sento one day as well, which is set up like an onsen, but doesn’t use actual sulfur water from the mountains. This one was hidden away in a huge strip mall! You’d never know it once you were inside, though. It was a really nice place. Outside the bathing area was a place to eat and sit and even (I can’t believe I forgot to get a pic of this) a long bench with a hot foot bath under it to soak your feet- right in the middle of the room! Once you entered the bathing area, the inside had several baths, along with a little pool for two where you could lean back and get a massage from the hot jets. Outside there was a tiki torch one regular hot bath, another bath with green herbal water, and a series of flat stones you could lie on that had hot, steamy water pouring across them. It was wonderful, but I have to admit I totally forgot to ask if it was ask for me to enter, since I have tattoos and although it may have been my imagination, I think I may have gotten a dirty look or two… (I'll explain more on onsens in my next post when I finally get around to that wekend in Mitsue!)

We went to church with the family the next day and it was interesting to see a Christian service in Japan (Christians make up less than 1% of the population, last I heard). There was a ton of singing, which Steve loved of course, and everyone was very nice.

On the second, we all went to Narita Temple and the place was packed! They had vendors and shops lining the street down to the temple.



I wish we would’ve had more time to look at everything, but Steve hates the crowds, so it’s probably just as well we didn’t linger.

Here’s signs for hot, roasted chestnuts! Even though we sing about them at Christmas, I can’t say I’ve ever seen them in the States, but they are everywhere in Japan!

This is a sign for unagi, or eel, which Steve and I both love. If we’d had time, I think this is the one thing we would have stopped for (ok, I would have stopped to look at the shopping too, but anyway…).











The temple was huge and I can’t say I understood the layout, even after taking so many classes on Buddhism. A side note, temples are always Buddhist, shrines are always Shinto (the native Japanese religion),. If you have trouble telling them apart, you’ll know it’s a shrine if there’s a torii gate in front. Also, if there are graves or a cemetery, it’s a temple, since Shinto doesn’t surly its hands with funerals or burials. (This temple had a large, important-looking cemetary right on the hillside leading to the upper-part of the temple complex.)


This is why some Japanese people joke that they are born Shinto, marry Christian (the popular ceremonies nowadays are based on Christian ceremonies, but usually not at all religiously-affiliated), and die Buddhist.
The shrine we went to had so many different buildings, I have no idea what they were each used for. It urked me that I didn’t know after so much academic study. We made out way to one of the main buildings to view the service. First, I tried to waft some incense over me, but I nearly got trampled squeezing into the crowd to get to the huge incense burner. People were shoving you all over the place. We managed to get up near the main building, looked inside, then wandered around some more.




A lot of people were getting their fortunes from the temple, but the lines were a bit too long for me to bother. After you read the fortune, you tie it on a tree or, here, one of the panels provided. I might be wrong, but I think if it’s a good fortune you don’t always do this. (Anyone out there know?)









There were also panels with these wooden plaques, which have prayer written on the one side.


Again, I don’t know as much as I should about these little, daily elements of the temple. Most of what I studied was big, religious principles, which almost seem useless in the face of these visits, where the ritual seems more important than the principle behind it.



There was also a long wall with writing all over it, which we thought might have been prayers or something at first, but upon closer inspection turned out to be the names and messages from various businesses that support the temple.






And, of course, there were more vendors within the temple complex itself- complete with the "traditional" Hello Kitty cotton candy on hand!

After our hectic temple visit, we went back to the house, picked up our luggage, and headed out to our hotel in Tokyo city. Because the scale of the maps is soooo much smaller than in the States (Chicago in particular, since we had the small problem in New Orleans), we overshot our hotel and got a little turned around. I stopped in a 24hr curry place and asked around if anyone knew the place and this guy ended up showing us the way when he realized I couldn’t understand his Japanese directions. He really helped us out and was the nicest person we met in the city. We thought we’d go out on the town, to the Roppongi party district maybe, but it ended up getting late, so we just ate locally. There was barely anything open for food, so we ended up at another 24hr joint near our hotel. It was pretty good food, though and we splurged! I got a black sesame chiffon cake. I was temped to try one of the stranger desserts, though, and almost wished I had. I mean, how often can you try tomato ice cream with aloe gelatin??












The next day we went saw as much of Tokyo as we could, which wasn’t that much! Since it was still shortly after New Year's, many of the businesses had these bamboo stands out front.

I asked one of my teachers later on and found out they basically mean 'welcome' and are just put up for the New Year. ( It's the Year of the Boar in the Chinese zodiac as well, so there was boar-themed stuff everywhere too.)

I was set on hitting the shopping districts, so we went to Ikebukuro first, where I went to a string of anime stores. It wasn’t as great as I’d hoped. I had planned on going to the anime stronghold of Akihabara, but the stores in Ikebukuro were supposed to cater more to the Girls’ comics, so I went there hoping to avoid the drooling fanboys of Akihabara. This meant missing the Maid Cafes, but since there’s some in Osaka, that doesn’t matter much. Actually, I didn’t see much I couldn’t have found in Osaka anyway, so now I wish I’d gone to Akihabara after all. There’s always next time. I also still want to see Tokyo Tower and the *huge* fish market, as well as the temples. I’d also like to get to nearby Yokohama (right on the bay, and has a large Chinatown) and historic Kamakura (has a huge Buddhe statue, but still not as big as the one in Nara!). Oh, and Steve wants to climb Mt. Fuji!

We ate lunch in Ikebukuro, at a new Indian place that Steve had discovered. The nan bread there was outstanding! Afterwards I took Steve to Harajuku. We hadn’t been impressed with the fashion in Tokyo and I was hoping this crazy shopping district would offer more. It did, but Osaka fashion is still way better. If you really want to see great, crazy Japanese style, go to Osaka, because *everyone* there is stylin’, not just in the trendy districts like Tokyo.
Anyway, I wandered, my shoe broke, and I didn’t find any Gothic Lolita shops until Steve called me and directed me to them (we’d split up so I didn’t have to subject him to my shopping habits). He found a great used store and I splurged on 3 lolita dresses. Of course, there’s also a good used store in Osaka, so again this isn’t something totally unique to Tokyo. One thing I think is interesting that most people probably don’t know about Japanese fashion is that Vivienne Westwood is THE name is punk clothing in Japan. Anywhoo, I ended the night happy and we ended up back at Jonathan’s 24hrs place for dinner. By then I was broke and the atms didn’t open til the next day (plus, my banking branch was back in Osaka!), so I was more conservative with this meal! However, we did buy the hot sake available from the hotel vending machine! Gotta love it.
The next morning we woke up early to go to the Dali exhibit we’d seen advertised on the train.




We actually went there the day before, but the line was terribly long, so we decided it was better to go early in the morning, and boy were we right! No line at all! I’d never seen any Dali in person, so I was blown away, even thought he exhibit didn’t have any if his master works (which are so large I’m guessing the would be terribly difficult to ship, especially to an exhibit that won’t be in one place for long). It was the last day of the exhibit, so we really lucked out!

Afterward we picked up our luggage from the lockers at the train station and headed back home. We took the bullet train (shinkansen) back to Osaka, stopped at the atm, then went back to the Turkish place for dinner. We were happy to be back in Osaka, where people are more friendly, dress better, and the food is superior!

Yep, we’re all about the Kansai area! Incidentally, there is a big rivalry between the Kansai (or Kinki) region, which includes Osaka, Nara, Kobe, etc., and the Kanto area, where Tokyo is located. Tokyo people tend to think Kansai folk aren’t as sophisticated and that their accent sounds very countryside, while Kansai people think everyone is Tokyo is kind of snobby. You could like of Kansai kind of like US South- there’s Southern hospitality, but maybe people are seen as a little rough around edges. Tokyo would be more like New York- they think they have the best of everything and can be rude sometimes.
Steve and I are very happy to be in Kansai! But we still have so many place we want to visit in Japan! We want to hit somewhere on all the other 4 islands, plus go to Hiroshima. There’s just not enough time! We really have to plan where to go because I don’t get that much time off.

So, that was the holiday!


I should note that before we left, Steve had a gig with his jazz band at a nearby café (which is awesome! I’m going to try and go there all the time because its very cozy and very difficult to find a real ‘coffee house’ atmosphere here in Japan.) Everyone came out and it was a really good time. Here’s Kati and Keiko.

Kati had brought going-away gifts from everyone. She got Keiko a little bottle of Estonian liqueur and gave Steve and I hand-knitted Estonian socks, which are yummy-warm! We hung out at an izakaya afterwards, although Kati and her friends (students at my school) were too young to go with us. Here’s Steve lookin’ happy at the izakaya! I had ume-shuu again. Good stuff.

Poor Kati, she left for Estonia on Tuesday. We got to hang out a lot before she left, though. Steve and her scaled our local mountain and then went to a live show that her friend was playing at and had a good time. Steve’ll have the pics up soon- some of the bands were pretty hilarious. I hung out with Kati while Steve cooked dinner, but I didn’t get to go to the other events because I was exhausted from coming back from Tokyo and also had some work to finish before school began again. *sigh*. Then on Monday Keiko drove us to kaiten sushi (conveyer belt sushi) to meet up with Kati again. She was tearing up when we had to part and we just kept giving her hugs because she really, really, wanted to stay in Japan! Funny enough, I met up with my friend Emily later that day and on our way home, who did we run into but Kati! She discovered she had a little extra room in her luggage and went out to get some matcha (powdered green tea) and a few other little things that she could fit to bring back with her. I seriously want to go visit her this summer and I really hope we can fit it in.



We miss you already Kati!

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