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.

TRASH IS SO HARD

So here's a fun fact about Japan:

TRASH IS SO HARD TO THROW AWAY!

First of all, there's no trash anywhere along the streets or sidewalks or anything. Japan is SUPER clean. Which is awesome.

But what I don't get is where all the trash goes, because when you're walking around there are also hardly ever any public trash cans anywhere. Except outside convenience stores, usually, but when you're downtown that can be hard to find.

Most importantly, though, trash is super hard to throw away because it gets sorted into at least six different categories. Including your own trash at home. We have a chart to help us figure it out, which looks like this:

Of course, this helpful chart is in Japanese. But the main point of it is that everything gets sorted into a color, and that color trash gets put out and collected on a specific day of the week, or every other week, or once a month. Depending on the category.

Tyler hadn't tried taking out the trash at all before I got here. Apparently if you put out the wrong trash on the wrong day, or if your trash is incorrectly sorted, the garbagemen will bring your trash back to you and fine you. This morning we tried putting trash out for the first time. It was pink day. It's 2pm and I have yet to have anyone knock on my door bringing me garbage, so I think that means we're good! Fingers crossed.

Prefectural Museum

Our apartment is located on a hill just north of the main city of Morioka. I really like being just a little bit removed from the heart of the city, and it's super convenient because there's a bus terminal that's a 5 minute walk away. It kind of reminds me of being on Palatine Hill at Lewis & Clark, except the bus isn't free. In fact, the bus is pretty expensive. But worth it!

Anyway, turns out there's some pretty cool stuff up here on the hill. Including the Iwate Prefectural Museum!

The museum was so cool, for so many reasons! They had pretty much everything... starting with dinosaurs then moving on to early human tools and pottery, which I of course went nuts for, and got to dredge up some facts from my Japanese and Korean art history class! They had really cool displays about all kinds of inventions like iron mills, and castle construction. They had an awesome folklore and culture section. We had a little museum guidebook in English that we got from the front desk, and a few of the main exhibit signs were in English, so I could figure out what most things were about. And just when I thought it was over, the natural history continued with all kinds of modern fish and animals (mostly stuffed, but some live glowy fish that were really cool)!

I will definitely be visiting the museum again. There was a TON to take in, and I know I'll just keep getting more and more out of it. For now though, here are some highlights from my first visit. It's mostly animal stuff, because I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to take pictures of the artifacts.

This dinosaur. What is it?? Apprently an early coastal mammal. Pretty big and really weird. Cool.

A giant shark jaw!! It was at the entrance to the modern animal area.

At the entrance of the museum, there were vending machines with little souvenirs in them. Tyler chose the scary samurai sculpture vending machine, and I chose the early cultural artifact machine. We got these two little guys on the left! They now live with our plants. And the Wolfman gets to hang out too, since we're all about the whole East-meets-West thing here.

Here's me with the giant awesome sculpture at the museum entrance. Unfortunately, I've already forgotten what this sculpture represents. There was a lot to take in! I'll be sure to check when I go back. I'm sure it won't be long until my next visit!

New Roomie

Meet Rosie, one awesome axolotl and the newest addition to our apartment! Her favorite activities include flapping her gills, floating about, and staring contests. 

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Tyler and I, along with our friends Claire and Jesse*, went to the Morioka Zoo! While we didn't see any tigers, we did see lions and bears and all kinds of other cool stuff. It was a pretty nice zoo. Some of the pens were awesomely huge and open like this one below. Others were smaller and sadder. But I like to think that all the animals got to take turns playing in the big happy pen in the middle of the zoo. When we were there, it was full of ostriches, these little deer things, and a zebra.

The zoo was quite extensive, and had pretty much everything except tigers or pandas. There were even weird things like prairie dogs in the zoo! There was a mountain lion, and regular lions,  and some really cute playful otters, and flamingos, and raptors, and gross monkeys, and a rhino, just to name a few. 

One of my favorite parts of the zoo was this handy guide of how to identify animals from their butts. Because let's be real, it's not often that zoo animals give you the perfect view like that rhino did above.

For instance, how would I know what that creature on the right was without the handy butt guide? Oh, it's an elephant!!

And here's the butt of a cool Japanese goat thing!

All in all, it was a great day at the zoo. We had originally wanted to go to the amusement park which is right next to the zoo, but it's a holiday right now so the lines were INSANELY long, and it was hot out. So we opted for the zoo instead. Tyler and I bought yearly passes, so I'm sure we'll be going back again! And we are hoping to go to the amusement park next weekend with Claire and Jesse. I'll keep you posted!

(Here's me as one eyeball of a giraffe)

*Claire and Jesse will appear often in upcoming blog posts. Claire is in the JET program with Tyler, and they live in the apartment building next to ours. They are from New Zealand.