I Made it to the Ocean!

After months stuck inland in Morioka, I finally fulfilled one of my Japan bucket list items... I made it to the ocean!

While Dan was visiting we took the train to the town of Miyako, which was about a two hour ride. Miyako was hit by the big tsunami four years ago, so it was very interesting when we drove through the town to see how the rebuilding was coming along. There was still a lot of construction happening, even this long after the event.

We took a bus to Jodogahama Beach, which was awesome. It's known for its blue water and its big rock peaks. And you can go swimming! The beach is still a big draw for lots of tourists, which is great to help Miyako's economy as it continues to rebuild.

We went swimming there, and then had some lunch at the little cafeteria area next to the beach. Tyler got curry rice, and the rice was made to look like the rock peaks at the beach. Pretty adorable, and delicious!

As the day ended, we took a quick jaunt to the top of one of the bluffs near the beach, for this lovely view of the water. 

All in all, a great day! One of my favorite trips from Dan's visit. Look at these happy campers soaking up some sun!

Morioka Sansa

The first four days of August were a big deal in Morioka - it was Sansa! Sansa consists of four nights of parading, including a traditional dance, drumming, and flute playing. Morioka's Sansa festival is the biggest drum parade of its kind in the world (called Taiko drums), and was even awarded a Guiness World Record in 2007!

The reason behind Sansa is thus:
Morioka lies in Iwate prefecture. "Iwate" means "rock hand." It is named because of a legend that says (to roughly paraphrase due to my limited understanding of the story): There was once a demon terrorizing the area that is now Iwate. To be specific, I think he was maybe eating a lot of people. A good spirit of some kind bound the demon to these three big rocks, and scolded him for being so rude and eating people. Eventually, the demon came to see the error of his ways and pressed his hand print in to the rock as a promise that he wouldn't do evil and terrorize the good folks of Iwate anymore. And on the day that the demon denounced evil and left the area, the people of Morioka celebrated (for four days I guess). That's Sansa, everybody! Roughly.

The parading was beautiful. I attended three of the four nights, and although I didn't stay for the full three hours of any of those nights, the atmosphere was awesome. There were soooo many people lining the streets, and food vendors, and beer, and people selling other cool stuff.  But mostly there were just tons of people, all having a good time! The first night Tyler and I went with my coworkers. The third night we went with our friend from college Dan who is visiting, and on the last night we went with Dan and our neighbors Claire and Jesse! A fabulous time was had by all, despite the oppressive heat (those poor dancers looked like they were melting).

The lovely lady in pink is one of five Miss Sansa winners. They were like local celebrities, and led the parade each night. They had an all-female entourage of drummers, singers, dancers, and floutists who were all very talented and graceful.

Besides beautiful dancers, singers, drummers, and foutists (of all genders, in the dance groups that followed), there were also mascots in the parade! (And a few floats, not pictured). The Wanko Brothers (these bowl headed dudes) are the mascots of the Iwate prefecture. Each major city  has its own contents in the bowl. Morioka's is soba noodles. There is also a tofu brother, an uni (sea urchin) brother, a Japanese grain brother, and a bean one of some kind. They're on everything from buses to signs to store fronts, and I love them!

This teapot-head guy was a little scary. He had a mesh see-through gold spandex suit, with a small black speedo underneath. And, of course, that big-eyed teapot head.

Also, as there should be at any good festival, there was great fair food. I've been seeing people walking around with these beautiful potato spirals on a stick forEVER, and finally I got one of my very own! It lived up to all of my expectations. Plus it was fun to eat and pretty!

Lastly, here's a video compilation of some of my favorite moments of the three nights of Sansa I attended, so that you can get a real feel for the music, dancing, and the power of the drums! Happy Sansa!

The OASIS Team

Next week, we will have a new teacher starting at OASIS. But for most of July, it was only one other teacher (Michi) and I at the school, along with our very sweet boss Ryoko-san. One day last week I walked into the office to find these three hard-boiled egg representations of the three of us, done by Ryoko-san. She's in the middle, Michi is on the left and I'm on the right! It was super cute.

Also, I learned that in Japanese culture telling someone that they look like an egg is a good thing. One of the students told Michi that she had an egg head and Michi and I cracked up (no egg pun intended). While "egg-head" in rather insulting in our cultures, I learned that in Japanese comparing someone to an egg means that they have a nicely shaped head and beautiful smooth skin. What a fun fact!


Also, I'm very much enjoying a week-long vacation right now!

Tokyo

Oh yeah, Tyler and I spent a day in Tokyo right before I flew back to Alaska. Here are some of the highlights: 

We stayed next to Ueno Park, home to Ueno Zoo, which was awesome. Here's me with this adorable little plant-panda.

We visited Sensoji temple. It was great, because we got there pretty early in the morning before there were so many people around. The old style Japanese temple buildings were gorgeous, and the whole area was beautiful with little bridges, creeks, and ponds full of colorful fish.

Then for our more modern architecture, we visited the Tokyo Skytree. We didn't end up going up in the Skytree, because it was kind of expensive and the line was really long. But I'm sure there's a great view of Tokyo from up there!

At the Skytree there was a very cool aquarium that is featured in my Animals of Japan post video. Here's Tyler pretending to be a garden eel.

And that's Tokyo, folks!

Matsuzono Festival

My apartment is located a little ways outside of downtown Morioka, in a region called Matsuzono. I especially like this name because it makes me think of the Mat-Su Valley in Alaska, so it's the perfect place for me to call home here!

A couple of my students at OASIS also live in Matsuzono. A week or two ago they informed me that there was going to be a tiny festival in Matsuzono. They translated the schedule of events for me and everything, which was really sweet. So last Sunday, that's where I spent my day! During the day it was ungodly hot, so I took a quick look around then retreated to my apartment until evening hit and it cooled off a little. There was great fair food, and I got to see a performance of the traditional Japanese instrument the shamisen! There were tons of adorable little Japanese children running around in yougata, the summer kimonos. Tyler and I hung out drinking beer on the lawn. Then, at the end of the evening, there was a great fireworks show! Tyler pointed out that the whole thing felt like a Fourth of July celebration, which we never really got to have. It was a nice day in our neighborhood, although I didn't end up seeing any of my students there, which was too bad.

A parade of children from the local schools.

 Street of food vendors. YUM.

In the evening when we returned, lots of delightful lanterns lighted the way!

Excitedly watching fireworks!

Incidentally, here's how I celebrated the actual Fourth of July:

Life and Death

"I had an axolotl named Rosie. She died! She died!" - Lisa Simpson's poetry, adapted for my own personal use by Ithaca Sorensen

Unfortunately, young Rosie has passed. As temperatures climbed into the 30s (or 90s for you Fahrenheit users out there), the heat became too much for her little body to bear. We tried everything to cool her water, from shade and fans to ice bottles in the tank, but to no avail. She wouldn't eat and she got paler and paler. Finally, as a last resort I tried putting her in the fridge (a technique for cooling axolotls that has actually proven quite successful in many cases, despite how scary it sounds). But by that time I fear it was too late, and in the morning when I opened the refrigerator she was gone.

Tyler was away that weekend, so my neighbor Jesse was the only witness to the funeral service held in Rosie's honor. With a spoon, I dug a small hole in the yard by our apartment, under a nice little bush. I built a mound of small rocks atop her grave, and placed a nice blue flower on top. I cracked open a cold beer, and poured the first drink out for her.

RIP Rosie.

But, as always, life goes on. After Rosie's death I was consoled by health of my small garden on my porch! This morning I harvested my first (and so far only) cucumber. But look how big it is! Yum! Also, I have been munching on the many cherry tomatoes as they become ripe for the picking. My first blueberry turned blue. Only my broccoli plant remains fruitless. Oh well.

As we mourn the death of Rosie, who always had a smile on her little axolotl face and a spring in her floating step, we must remember that life goes on in many other ways. I write this post while sitting in the kitchen, watching out the window as butterflies flit cheerfully around Rosie's grave, enjoying their beautifully short lives. 

My Job Rules (because there are no rules)

Last week I officially started my job at OASIS English Private Conversation School. When I was here in May, I went to visit Tyler at his work at a public high school here in Morioka. He wears a suit to work every day and the students wear uniforms. Everyone is super polite and the students I talked to seemed kind of shy about speaking English in classes. Overall it was a very reserved environment. So that's what I was prepared for the Japanese school/workplace to be like. OASIS was a pleasant surprise.

Basically, my job is to chat with nice old ladies who are very excited to tell me all about their weekend trips to visit their grandchildren or go to nearby onsen (Japanese hot springs). I chat with people who are getting ready to go on a trip abroad, or have just come back. I hear about people's dance classes or piano lessons or their sick cats. With our younger students, I play a lot of games. Even with the adult students I sometimes play games! In one of the most advanced classes last week we played Cards Against Humanity. My job rules.

My coworkers at OASIS are awesome and friendly (although two of them are leaving to go home to the US and Croatia, hence me being hired). Instead of a school, it kind of feels like a big living room where friends drop by to hang out. And as if it wasn't great enough already, there seems to be an endless supply of candy and cookies and cakes that students bring as they return from their awesome trips. Bringing back small gifts of food for your friends when you take a trip is a big-time custom in Japan. And it's big-time delicious.

In case it's not obvious at this point, I love it there. Which is super cool considering that I got this job through Facebook and blindly agreed to it. Lucky me! 

Animals of Japan (and many many other places)

I spent a lot of time in Japan visiting zoos and aquariums, which was pretty neat. The Morioka Zoo was nice, but the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo and the aquarium in the Tokyo Skytree were awesome.

The aquarium was super neat because it was designed using principles of Japanese art, so it was kind of like an art exhibit that happened to be made of fish and jellyfish and penguins. Different sections featured different principles of design, and explained the significance for each. There was an awesome corridor of jellyfish, and a really cool dark hallway that had lighted tanks of different varieties of goldfish.

The Ueno Zoo was cool because it was built into Ueno Park, which was right outside our hotel. The pens in the zoo were very natural and big and open-air. Sometimes I wondered if there was enough keeping the animals in! It also had awesome buildings of nocturnal animals that were very very dimly lit so the nocturnal animals would be active. There were bats and aye-ayes and my favorite, a tiny mouse deer, the smallest hoofed animal of all!

Anyway, I’ve compiled a short video of my favorite animal encounters in Japan zoos and aquariums. Hopefully I’ll see some more wild wildlife once I’m there to stay!

Shrimpy Miso

So THIS is why that miso was so good.... 

Japanese food rocks.

Hello Kitty Popcorn

Tyler and I were wandering one of Morioka’s malls the other day when we made a brilliant discovery outside Toys R Us. It was pink. It was Hello Kitty. It sang and danced and…. MADE POPCORN*!!!  Seriously. A better invention there never was. Tyler was almost more excited for me than I was! He rushed to deposit 200 yen in the coin slot, and the magic began!

Voila! 80 seconds later, the popcorn emerged! Amazing! Fantastic! Phenomenal! Stupendous! Delicious! Hello Kitty Popcorn!!!


*You may notice there is a theme throughout this blog of me getting overly excited about popcorn. Just go with it.

Koiwai Farm

One sunny Saturday, Tyler and I visited Koiwai farm, a famous dairy farm on the outskirts of town. We took a 30 minute bus ride into the beautiful countryside, across rice fields and to the farm!

(It was very sunny and windy.)

I was a little confused to find that there were basically no animals in the area of the farm that was open for visitors. I guess most of the actual farm work happens nearby, but not in the visiting area. What the visiting area did have was a beautiful open field with attractions (food, gift shops, activities) around the outside edge. We started off our visit with the best soft serve ice cream I have ever tasted. It was so creamy. It was real dairy! It was like it just came out of a really cold cow that ate nothing but sugar. YUM.

Tyler and I tried our hands at some Japanese archery. We definitely need a little more practice to achieve any sort of accuracy, but it was fun. We wandered some more, checked out the gift shops, and then headed to the one big event that was advertised: something about a sheep dog and some sheep!

We went to the sheep area where there actually were pastures of sheep. Yay! Animals! I do love sheep. The show was a sheep dog herding up some sheep, then the announcer guy demonstrating sheep sheering by sheering a sheep in front of the crowd, which I thought was a little weird to watch. That poor naked and embarrassed sheep! But the weirdest part was that there was a mysterious white couple sitting on the grass in front of Tyler and I who entered with an entourage and were being video taped while they sat and watched the sheep. Very strange.

Anyway, we walked around in the sun, and ate delicious food, and got this really great picture taken as an ice cream cone and a milk jar. All in all, a day well spent!

Long Time No Blog :/

Hello, oh blog readers! I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. All of a sudden I went from vacation mode to work mode and then to travel mode, and I fell behind! The good part of that, though, is that I have LOTS of upcoming posts about the past two weeks. There will be fun photos and adventures and stories galore! Yay!

The first crucial piece of information you should know is that I’m back in the states! Surprise! What’s that you say, you thought I would be in Japan for a year? True. But due to a very complicated chain of events involving travel plans and visas and job-hunting, I went on a mini-vacation to Japan, I’m going home for a couple weeks, then back for the full year. It’s a lot of traveling (which I’m still in the middle of), which sucks, but it also means I get to see all my favorite people! So that’s great.

Stay posted for many blog posts coming soon to catch you up on all I've been up to in Japan. There might even be something about my adventures in Alaska!

See you soon!

Amusement Park

High on a hilltop near Morioka, Japan, hides a magical land called:

Ok, so I don't actually know what it is called since it's in Japanese. But there was a wonky panda and a long-armed clown to welcome us, so you know it has to be great! Here's an aerial view of the amusement park we visited this weekend with Claire and Jesse, taken from the ferris wheel of course!

(Photo cred goes to Jesse on most of these pictures)

There were so many awesome things about the little Japanese amusement park next to the zoo. Including:

I was tall enough for every ride!

I finally got to drive a pink car in Japan!

There were beautiful mountains and lush forest all around us!

A carousel!

And lots lots more, including a fence-maze-thing, a very haunting haunted house that I thought we were maybe going to be lost forever in, a 3D theatre room where we almost got eaten by a dinosaur, and lots of rides that spun us around in circles and upside down and all kinds of directions. But the best ride of the day by FAR was this roller coaster. It wasn't a particularly long ride, but each individual car spun around as you whizzed through the jungle. It made us feel like this:

 

Who wouldn't love being in a place like this?

Tourist-y Day

On Saturday, Tyler and I did some more tourist-ing. First, we went to the Morioka History and Culture Museum. It was not as big as the Iwate Prefectural Museum as it focused just on the history and culture of Morioka (as could be surmised from the name). It was really cool, but unfortunately there wasn't a good English guide available and very little writing was in English. The exhibits were awesome and had a lot of videos and reconstructions... I just wish I had known more about what I was looking at! At the entrance they had floats on display from one of the big festivals that happens in the fall. They had robes you could wear to pose with the floats, so of course I did!

The museum took less time than I had anticipated, so we decided to venture to this magical place I had read about online called Iwachu Casting Works. Morioka is known for its amazingly gorgeous cast iron teapots, which of course I am obsessed with. I really want to learn the art of cast iron teapot making! So for my first step toward this goal, we went to the Iwachu Casting Works "theme-park style factory." On the website there were directions for how to take a bus to Iwachu. We got off at the appointed stop, then used Tyler's Japanese iPhone for directions to the factory. It took us down a tiny alley and up to the back of what looked like an abandoned factory building with a sign on top that read Iwachu Casting Works. Because everything in that area was packed so tightly together, there was no way to get from the back of the building to the front (there were houses and fences right up to the sides of it). Tyler was pretty convinced that the factory was out of business, but I wasn't ready to give up on my dream. We backtracked to the main road and followed a different path, which led us to the front door of:

Needless to say, we were quite happy to have found the place! When we went inside the first room was a museum area, and there was no one there. So Tyler still joked that it was abandoned. But we wandered through the museum area and caught sight of people! Next we came to the factory part, which was very small. There was only one guy in there at the time, working on polishing some tea pots that had just been cast and didn't have their handles attached yet. I was amazed by the volume of production in that tiny factory!

The last part of the building was the show room and store. There were some amazingly gorgeous pieces. The cast iron feels so incredible in your hands, and you can tell how nice it would be filled with warm tea. The Iwachu teapots are not cheap though. I'm going to have to save up and buy one as my big Japan souvenir. Or learn how to make them myself! (A girl can dream). 

Me with what is apparently the largest cast iron teapot in the world. Cool!

A website of potential interest:
http://www.japan-iwate.info/app/location_detail.php?lid=80  This is the official Iwate tourism page, and everything on it is awesome. The link will take you straight to the section on the Iwachu Casting Works factory, but feel free to explore from there!

Exercise Park

There's a park across from the grocery store near our house. I've never been up to explore it until yesterday on my way to the store, when I figured I'd prolong my stroll and investigate the park. And boy, it was not what I expected!

Ok, full disclosure, it was kind of what I had expected because Tyler told me it was a "exercise park," which I mocked because anyone can exercise in any kind of park. But what I discovered was a bunch of hilarious "exercise equipment" set in the scenic backdrop of this park. In the background of this picture, note the large wooden rope course things and this bright orange piece of equipment:

It was kind of like a Russian army training camp met a playground, and altogether kind of funny and weird. Most of the equipment was made of logs (like the far-away one in the above pic), but some pieces were newer, like these orange ones.

(Diagram of, presumably, how to exercise. Stay in the middle of the spectrum because at one end it appears you are very angry, and at the other end you might die of exhaustion.)

Funniest of all to me is that there were no benches in the park. It was a little disappointing because I had been hoping to visit this park to sit and read, but clearly this park is for exercise only. I got excited and thought that I had found a bench, but apparently this bench is made for exercising, not sitting, as illustrated by this diagram of how to exercise on a bench:

The end.

New Job!

On Wednesday, I finally went to visit my future place of work! Next month, I will begin work at OASIS English School. It is a private language center, where I'll be teaching English classes to all level of students (mostly adults). And on Wednesday I had my first visit there!

OASIS school is in downtown Morioka, so it's a bit of a bus ride down there. My first great encounter of the day occurred at the bus station. There is a small kiosk at the bus station where you can buy bus cards. Mine was almost empty, so while I was waiting for the bus I went to buy one. I bought my bus card from the woman in the kiosk with my usual method of pointing and nodding. When I was putting my card in my passport holder, she pulled out a small card holder and asked me, "Card carrier?" and then something more in Japanese. I shook my head that I didn't need one, but she kept getsuring at it. "Present!" she said in English, and gave it to me! It was so sweet! Once she gave it to me, I could tell that it was handmade. It was pretty adorable. I have some Alaska pins that I like to take with me when I travel as small gifts for awesome people. When I was working in the visitor center in Alaska, some Canadians gave me one and I thought it was so cool that I wanted to do it too! So I dug one out of my backpack, went back up to the counter, and gave her a forget-me-not pin. "Present!" She was very happy too. It was a cute interaction.

Anyway, then I got on the bus and went to OASIS. It is a very small school; there are two other English teachers and one Japanese woman who is the administrator. Ryoko, the administrator, met me and we filled out some paperwork. Then the other teachers arrived and I met them. Some students came in from the highest-level class and we had a great conversation. I was really impressed with their English! One student, an older woman named Keiko, asked me all kinds of questions and started taking notes, so we joked that she was doing my job interview. I sat in on the highest-level class (which was only three students that day). It was great! Everyone there was very friendly and laid-back, which was kind of a relief, since Japanese society tends to be a little more reserved and formal in the workplace. It was also really nice to have so many people to speak English with!

I think I will be going back next week to observe more classes, even though I don't start work until I return to Japan next month. But I'm already looking forward to being at OASIS! 

Rosie, in Action

She's like a tiny underwater lion!

Earthquake!

This morning I was lying peacefully asleep in bed when I was jolted awake by Tyler's Japanese cell phone sounding a siren-like alarm and saying something in Japanese. "Earthquake!" Tyler said. And sure enough, it was!

Tyler was more freaked out than I was, since I am pretty used to small earthquakes in Alaska. But since we live in a pretty old tall apartment building, we both got up and started getting dressed just in case we needed to evacuate. Within a few minutes the light shaking of the quake was over. Nothing was broken or had fallen over, except Tyler's precariously perched Wolfman action figure (featured in an earlier blog post). 

The earthquake was a ways south of where we are, and while it was about a 6.6 or so, it looks like there was no major damage or casualties or a tsunami warning issued there. But it was eerily close to part of Japan hit by the tsunami four years ago. And with the recent Nepal disaster, it's important to be earthquake aware! 

So for Tyler and I it was (luckily) just a little bit of excitement for the day. There was one other small earthquake the first night I got here. Those nice little earthquakes always kind of remind me of home. 

Feels Like Home, Only Different

Well, I've officially been in Japan for long enough for it to start feeling like home. Here are a few of the most interesting things I've noticed.

• Cleanliness. As I mentioned in my TRASH post, the city is super clean. When you go out to eat they give you moist towels to wipe your hands before eating. That said, lots of people still wear masks around on a daily basis, which kind of makes me feel like I'm living in the middle of an apocalyptic epidemic of some sort, and kind of freaks me out.

•  Bundling. It was very hot for my first weekend here, and has still been pretty warm this last week. I was walking around sweating in a short sleeved dress, and yet most of the people I would see were wearing sweaters and light jackets. Everyone wears so many clothes! How are they not overheating?? Also, no one ever shows their shoulders (out of modesty, I would presume) and yet I have seen some very short skirts. And, of course, everyone always dresses super nicely. 

• Sitting to Drink. In America, a coffee cup in hand is pretty much a constant accessory for anyone walking down the street ever. In Japan, however, I have seen a total of zero people walking around with drinks, either coffee cups or bottles of cold drinks. Which is weird, because there are vending machines everywhere that have both hot and cold drinks in them. If people are buying drinks at vending machines, WHERE ARE THEY DRINKING THEM? Also, I really like walking around with my drink (hot or cold) and it's sad that it's not a normal and acceptable thing to do here. 

And lastly, my favorite:

• Pink Cars. Light pink is a normal color for cars here! It's adorable! Little old men drive pink cars! It's great! Every time I see a pink car when we're out and about I point it out to Tyler. I might have to get a pink car when I get back to the US, except everyone will think I work for Mary Kay. The cars here are also very adorable. They're pretty much all small and square and super cute. And pink. Did I mention that lots of cars here are pink?! 

Mt. Iwate

Here's Tyler and I, in the wind, on a bridge over the river that runs through Morioka city, with glorious Mount Iwate in the background:

Pretty majestic.