一期一会

Hello 2012 / Goodbye 2011

2012-01-02T15:36:00.001-05:00

Where can I begin? The past year has been so disjointed. I had to make some major life decisions, and as a result, I’m at home, going back to school, managing to work in my field and still very much in love.

今年もよろしくお願いします。

2011 The Year in Review

Ringing in the year of the rabbit with Jimbo & the Ichikawas

Getting warm with some Amazake for Setsubun

Playing gigs at school (?!) and at local clubs in February

Making valentine’s day choco for my boy and a little bit of snow!

Fun on the Hina Matsuri Mystery Tour in March!

Nabe party & Chanoyu lesson with work friends

The earthquake and saying goodbye to my students

Coming home and having to start all over again.

Reuniting with my family after being away for so long.

Being together with my wonderful boyfriend.
Traveling to the Wizarding world of Harry Potter!!

More items of honorable mention:

- Successfully completing a semester at community college

- Passing the Praxis I PPST

- Working for the language school where I first started learning Japanese

In short, it’s been a year full of ups & downs.. but I think things are going to be pretty darn good from here on out. I’m optimistic and thankful.

So here’s to the year of the dragon.
あけましておめでとうございます!

The particle 「　に　」

2011-11-22T14:26:00.000-05:00

Another announcement for Japanese 001 about particle use, this time about 「に」. I used Google IME for all of the various 顔文字 in the previous post and this one as well.

こんにちはみんなさん！
Today I'd like to talk about the particle

に

So, how do we use 「に」?
Well, we have learned 3 ways so far:

We use 「に」 when we talk about where something is, like "in"

れいぞうこがだいどころにあります。

We use「に」 to indicate were we are going "to"

がっこうにいきます。

Lastly, we use 「に」 to say what we are doing "for" an occasion (like breakfast!)

あさごはんにすしをたべます。

Keep Studying!
＼(^o^)／ｶﾞﾝﾊﾞﾚｰ

The Particle 「　を　」

2011-11-22T14:09:00.001-05:00

I’m the TA for a Japanese 001 course, and I’ve been making little announcements for the students via the online course management system. Here’s one that teaches the function of 「を」.

Today let's talk about the particle：

を

Well, 「を」 doesn't mean anything.

(ﾟДﾟ；) ｗｈａａａ?

Don't fret! It doesn't have a meaning, but it has a FUNCTION!

(゜o゜) ｔｅｌｌｍｅｍｏｒｅ...

「を」 Just lets us know that the verb has a direct object.
for example:

しゅくだいをします。

In this sentence, 「を」 tells us that the direct object of the verb 「します」 is the noun 「しゅくだい」.

Which would otherwise mean, Do homework.

＼(^o^)／わかりました!

So... in conclusion, don't forget to do your 「しゅくだい」 !

じゃまた！

kimono culture

2011-06-07T13:10:00.001-04:00

With the influx of western culture and fashion, traditional Japanese clothing seemed doomed to become a thing of the past. However, kimono are still being manufactured and worn to this very day. Before the Meiji period, kimono functioned as everyday wear, but nowadays people wear kimono on occasions that require formal dress, such as weddings, graduations, and funerals.

Kimono are also worn on certain holidays. Children are dressed in kimono for shichi-go-san festival. Young women who will become 20 years old in the coming year wear ornate furisode (振袖, a special long-sleeved kimono) for coming-of-age festival in January.

I wore this vintage kimono at a tea ceremony lesson. Kimono are still worn for traditional events like tea ceremony, hanami (花見, flower viewing), or a gagaku (雅楽, court music) performance. If you attend a traditional cultural event, you will definitely see women (and sometimes men) wearing kimono.

There is a thriving kimono culture that exists in Japan. Vintage kimono can often be found at local flea markets for extremely reasonable prices. Sometimes they have small flaws or stains, but more often than not they are entirely wearable.

A fairly recent trend has re-styled vintage kimono with modern accessories to to give the wearer a retro kind of look. These kimono are often brightly colored (like the one I’m wearing in the photos) or are woven with strong geometric patterns.

If you’d like to get your own kimono, you can always go and find mountains of cheap used kimono at local flea markets like Kobo-san in Kyoto or the tenmangu market in Kiryu. Sometimes you can even find shops that buy and sell recycled kimono like Usagi-ya in Ashikaga.

What do you think about non-Japanese wearing kimono? Do you think it looks ridiculous? Would you like to try wearing kimono? Tell me what you think!

Japanese Apps for Android

2011-06-05T22:57:00.001-04:00

(made with Androidify)

Hey everyone! Go on over to NihongoUp to read my guest post on Japanese Apps for your Android phone. Then, go download them and try them out!

http://nihongoup.com/blog/android-japanese-apps/

弘法さん

2011-05-26T10:58:00.001-04:00

If you´re ever in Kyoto on the 21st of any of the non-winter type months, get your butt over to Toji (東寺) for the Kobo-san flea market. Toji is the temple with its famous 5-storied pagoda, images of which show up in a lot of Japan travel literature.

The temple itself was designated by UNESCO as an “Ancient Treasure of Kyoto” Heritage site. I’m not 100% sure if that means it equates with a regular old World Heritage site, like Nikko or Himeji castle, but it’s still pretty cool.

The flea market is really good! You can find just about anything there, from mountains of used kimono (going for about upwards of 1000 yen, cheap!) to tea sets, jewelry, old coins, toy robots, you name it, they probably have it. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for a lower price. I got a kimono set for 3000 yen because the lady was impressed with the fact that I could haggle in Japanese. I also picked up some vintage beads and a homemade sinobue. I ended up spending about 7000 yen including transportation and food for the whole day. Not bad!

The flea market is named after Kobo Daishi (the posthumous name for Kukai) Who is said to have invented the syllabic Kana writing system (yay!), as well as founded Shingon Buddhism.

There are also lots of yummy Kansai-type foods at Kobo-san. Mmm.

Of course, scythes for all you grim-reaper types.

To get there, from Kyoto Station take the Kintetsu line to Toji station and walk up the street for 5 minutes. You can’t really miss it with that huge pagoda. You can also take the bus from Kyoto Station that says its going to 東寺東門 or 東寺南門. Either way, make sure you get there early enough to beat the rush. Happy shopping!

誕生日おめでとう～♬♪♫♬♪

2011-05-16T23:11:00.001-04:00

Happy birthday, blog!! Have some cupcakes! I’ve been keeping this blog up for 5 years now! I can’t believe it! I started keeping it as a way to keep in touch with people while I was studying abroad at Kansai Gaidai. You can even go back and read the very first post I ever wrote to help my family understand what exactly a blog is. I guess I’ll mostly talk about the cosmetic changes I’ve done to this blog. However, I will say that my content has become a lot more accessible to more readers in the past few years. Most notably, it has transformed from personal journal-type writing to all sorts of different content: photos, recipes, notes on language and culture, but still maintaining a kind of travel scrapbook type feel. I really like what my blog has turned into, and it’s a creative outlet that I enjoy.

Here was the first design I made for the blog waay back when. I used a woodblock print by Ando Hiroshige and broke it up into the little strips and faded the ones that would be behind the text. Prettyyy cool!

Since I didn’t bring my own computer to Japan with me, I didn’t always have one readily available to upload and edit photos on. This is why I didn’t use many photographs to illustrate my study abroad posts. I have a feeling that I’ll be rooting through a lot of those photos and posting them now that I’ve had a chance to really reflect on the experience and, most importantly, edit the photos ( ´∀｀)

I’ve posted this a couple times before but I kid you not that this was a complete coincidence. I still can’t get over it. I took this photo on a class trip to Nara while we visited the Nigatsudo. Apparently Kawase Hasui thought this was a nice view as well. I was going through an old calendar of mine (Japanese Woodblocks 2004, to be exact) when I noticed this image was almost the exact same view of the lanterns of the Nigatsudo with the Daibutsuden in the distance. You can seven see the railing and the mountains in the distance are the same. I decided to go with the silhouetted lanterns as a nice symbol to represent my Japan blog. I also moved away from doing the entire design myself and started using the wysiwyg editor on blogger, with a few of my own tweaks here and there. It just made my life easier since I’m not a programmer.

I also made a couple of headers for different “columns” I intended to write regularly (and did so for a decent period of time) to mimic the style of the main header.

I kept the bright colors and Arial bold font. I however did not keep up with the columns regularly. Σ(´∀｀；)

Now that I’m not IN JAPAN anymore, I had to change the name, but I still wanted to keep this as a nice outlet to share all things Japanese, so I decided to keep the lanterns in my logo, but add a Japanese name, ichi go ichi e. I toned down the bright purple color and changed to a rounded-ish handwritten-looking Japanese font.

So there you have it. 5 years of blogging! Here’s to more writing, photos and amateur web design!!

☆(*ﾟ∀ﾟ)☆彡

Using Google 日本語入力

2011-05-08T13:04:00.001-04:00

When I initially found out that Google had produced a Japanese IME, I was pretty excited to try it out. I installed it in November of 2010, and I haven’t used any other IME for writing in Japanese since. Of course, I’ve used the default Microsoft IME that just comes along with Windows 7, which hasn’t really made any significant improvements since I first started using the Microsoft IME back when I was still using Windows XP. I’ve also used ATOK, which seems to be on every computer I’ve ever used in Japan. I’ve always disabled ATOK in favor of the Microsoft IME, but since downloading the Google IME, I’ve been more than completely satisfied, I get CRAZY EXCITED every time I use it!!

ｷｬ━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━!!

Google IME gives you suggestions. Way more suggestions than any other IME. It also gives suggestions based on what you’ve previously typed. You can turn that setting on and off as you like, but I quite prefer it, especially if I’m writing Katakana words.

Another great feature, as you can see in the video, is that it suggests the year in various formats.

For example, you type ことし(this year)
suggestion 1 is 今年 (lit. this year)
2 is 2011 (the numerical year)
4 is 平成23年 (the imperial year)
etc.
I really like that it automatically suggests the imperial year, which is always so difficult for me to remember, but is important to know for certain kinds of official-type documents.

(・∀・)ｲｲﾈ!!

Wondering what that katakana word is in English? Nooo problem!! Type ラジオ and you will get the English “radio” as your 6th suggestion.

It also suggests less-commonly-used Kanji for commonly used words like “France” = フランス = 仏国

Making special characters is easy. For a heart ♥, type はーと.
For any of the following types of star, ☆, ☆彡, or ★ just type ほし.

Last but not least, and my most favorite thing about Google IME, is that it has over 500 kaomoji to choose from!!!

ヮ(ﾟдﾟ)ォ!

For the huge selection, you can type in your onomatopoeia word, like ワオ, or you can type かおもじ to get the full list and choose from the 500+ suggestions.

The only thing that I miss from using the Microsoft IME is the IME Pad, which lets you physically write out the Kanji or its radical on a little notepad, and look up the correct character from there. Its helpful when I know the shape (or root radical) of the character, but not the reading. I keep the Microsoft IME around in case I need to use this feature, but since the Google IME has so many helpful suggestions, I rarely use this anymore.

And in true Japanese style, there’s a comic about what exactly an IME is, how it works, and it features the developers! Very cute.

As for me, I really enjoy using this application over my pre-installed Microsoft IME. If you’d like to try Google 日本語入力 You can download it at this address:

http://www.google.com/intl/ja/ime/

Happy typing!

Lily of the valley

2011-05-07T15:46:00.001-04:00

If I were a fairy, I’d wear one of these flowers as a hat.

They’re like little bells. You almost expect to hear them ringing.

Hello, spring :)

天橋立

2011-05-02T13:55:00.001-04:00

Amanohashidate, or, the Bridge to Heaven, is another place I visited during my West coast of Japan adventure in the spring of 2007. To get there, we took a bus from Kyoto Station. It took about 3 hours and we went through about 18 tunnels.

Here’s the Chirimen silk factory, with its sign welcoming visitors to Amanohashidate. The Tango peninsula is famous for its production of this type of crepe silk, which is used for fine kimono and other items.

In the Edo period, Shunsai Hayashi traveled the length of the country and considered Amanohashidate to be one of the three most beautiful views of Japan, otherwise known as 日本三景 (nihon sankei). The other two, in case you’re wondering, are Miyajima and Matsushima. Since then, they’ve been considered to be places that people should go and see at least once in their lifetime.

Massive pine trees, twisted by the wind, line the isthmus. Some of them are very old and have been given names. like the one pictured above.

There’s a neat rotating bridge on the southern end, here it is opened to let a barge pass through the tiny outlet.

You can take cable cars up either side of the bay to get both views of the bridge to heaven.

Looking toward the interior of the bay from the Northern side.

The view of Amanohashidate from the northern side, closest to our hostel (Amanohashidate Youth Hostel). Which I and my travelling partner highly recommend, with their fantastic western-style breakfast (they alternated between western-style and Japanese while we were there… the Japanese breakfast was OK, but we really REALLY liked the heart-shaped eggs).

Heart-shaped eggs!! And not-so-heart-shaped eggs… but still good.

♪～(´ε｀ )

People say that if you look at Amanohashidate upside-down, you will see a bridge to heaven. So, I tried it.

Hmm. maybe not from this side.

I still don’t know... what do you think?

諸寄

2011-04-29T11:28:00.001-04:00

Moroyose is a small fishing town in Hyogo prefecture I visited in the spring of 2007.

tetrapods!

hanging the fish out to dry

glass lanterns

how to find the youth hostel

Show me Japan

Reverse Culture Shock

2011-04-20T16:28:00.001-04:00

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Culture is an amorphous term. It can be anything, really. For me, culture is everything that influences and defines a way of life in a place. For example, my way of life in Japan was very different from my way of life in America. You don’t often get to see how different your own culture is until you haven’t lived in it for a significant period of time. I even feel weird calling it my own culture, because, well, I feel like it has little to do with me anymore.

However, it does. It has so much to do with me. For whatever doses of Japanese culture I was able to take in, I still and will always be American. No matter how difficult I find a way of life here to be.

So far since I’ve been back, I’ve had a number of bouts of “reverse culture shock” while I’ve been out doing things I used to be able to do without overthinking them or feeling panicky or nervous. When I lived in Japan, I had no qualms at traveling around by myself. None whatsoever. However, now I get irrationally nervous and afraid all of a sudden, doing things by myself here at home becomes a harrowing ordeal. I keep thinking that the more I do these things, maybe I’ll get used to them again. Sometimes I get completely avoidant altogether. It’s hard, but I’m working on it, I swear.

Driving, especially, I find myself continually at odds with. I’m in constant fear inside my vehicle. I’m afraid that when my light turns green, the other cars will not stop when their lights turn red. I’m afraid that people will find that I’m driving too slow, and (especially at night) will shoot me from behind as I’m driving (slowly… er… slightly above the speed limit) in front of them. These are irrational fears, I know, but think about not having driven in two years. But was I better off with trains and bicycles and the bad drivers in Tochigi, where at least only the yakuza supposedly had guns? I don’t know.

I’m terrified of guns. America has lots of guns! I know people have guns in Japan, too, at least shotguns for hunting and stuff, and some illegal ones, but here you can get a handgun at Wal-Mart! I’m terrified that at any given moment, in any crowded area, someone will go on a shooting rampage. Actually, strip malls and shopping centers scare me even more because there are all sorts of people milling around… looking disgruntled or whatever. You just don’t know what could set someone off. Everyone seems to be in a bad mood because of the state of things… the economy is bad, they hate whatever political issue is being televised, no jobs, whatever… people are fragile and the general situation of things seems volatile… and that’s scary, too. I know, this is another irrational fear, and most shootings here are drug-related, and if I stay away from bad areas and drugs I’ll be fine, but… it’s still scary.

So… how am I dealing with my irrational fears? Well, first, I’m trying to drive a little every day, and that helps. Secondly, I’m working on going to places by myself during the day. For example, going to the grocery store to pick up something for my mom, or going to get lunch at a fast-food chain, and not sitting in the car and going through the drive through, but getting out, going inside, and dealing with other human beings, be it standing in line, or with the cashier. It makes me feel more… integrated? Still nervous, but less wary of people I don’t know. I try to tell myself that most people are good, and they’re not out with a mission to hurt me, and that they are good, nice people, just doing their own thing.

When I get completely overwhelmed I take a walk or if it’s raining, I lie down and try to take a nap. I feel like… I’m completely re-socializing myself after being isolated for a long long time… and well… baby steps.

baby steps.

new look

2011-04-15T09:55:00.001-04:00

I re-vamped the blog. New name, new fonts, new colors, new images.

一期一会いちごいちえ (ichi go ichi e) is something I learned from tea ceremony. Literally, it means one lifetime, one encounter (or meeting). This is to say that each encounter, each moment, is precious (a once in a lifetime experience) and should be cherished as such. With this in mind, I’ll continue writing, taking photos, and sharing things on this blog.

Let me know what you think of the new look, and enjoy the pretty peacock.

♥

The Return Flight

2011-04-06T16:56:00.001-04:00

As many of you already know, I made the decision to quit my job as an ALT and return home a few months ago. My reasons for doing this included a desire to get a master’s degree and teaching certification, as well as a need for close family around me. I was terribly lonely. I also felt that my career as an ALT was really going nowhere. I had no opportunities for further development or training as an English teacher, and I wanted to have control of what was going on in my own classes. No matter how hard I tried, I was always doing what other people wanted me to do. In addition to my own professional development and personal life, it seemed as though the company I was working for wasn’t always completely honest or organized with their employees. One major instance was the number of contracted working hours versus the actual amount of hours I was at school working during the week. The company would not include the 10 minute breaks between class periods and the lunch period as contracted working time, despite the fact that I was still in the building and was not permitted to leave. Instead of working a full 40 hours a week (or more) the company said that I was still at part-time status (or as they like to say, “semi-full time”) so they would not have to pay for half of my national health insurance or include me in a pension plan. Once I realized this, after all of the time I had been spending at school, working through lunch periods, and spending significant amounts of time beyond my contracted working hours, I no longer felt entirely comfortable working for them. In fact, I felt sort of cheated. I liked working at the school I was at despite my small salary. But, my taxes were pretty high, and so were my health insurance payments (over 15000 yen a month!), the rent my company was charging for my apartment was ludicrous compared to other apartments in the area, and my salary just wasn’t cutting it.

With the advent of the great Tohoku Earthquake that occurred on the 11th of last month, I made a big decision and returned home ahead of schedule. This meant I left before the end of my contracted working days, before I could say goodbye to so many friends, and before I even had a chance to settle myself after the earthquake. I had to forego a trip to Kyoto I had planned, and just so so many other things. The earthquake was the catalyst that broke me out of work and sent me on my way home.

The Monday after the quake, I took the day off since the trains were not moving, but it appeared as though the trains would not be running for some time. If I didn’t go to work, I would not get paid. I wasn’t entirely sure why the Board of Education had decided to continue classes as usual – especially since the grading had been finished for the third term, the third-year students had graduated, and we were basically just wasting time with meaningless classes until the closing ceremony the following Thursday. It seemed as though people wanted to continue operating as usual despite the blackouts and gasoline shortage. However, when there was no real need to operate as usual, was it purely to to give ourselves something to do to take our mind off of the after-effects of the earthquake? Perhaps it was to give the kids a sense of normalcy or a place to go when parents (who had gas in their cars) were away from home and trying their best to continue on at work despite the rolling blackouts.

So, until the end of the week, one of my co-workers was generous enough to let me stay at her home with her parents and golden retriever. It was really nice not to have to go back to an empty little room every day, but I was stressed out from the aftershocks, I was stressed out from staying in a new environment… and I was unfortunately allergic to the dog. I really tried my best though, and it was fun to do a little homestay, and it was so comforting just to have other people around.

In the meantime, I’d been in touch with my family, who were overly awash in the sensationalized news reports from the foreign media. I tried explaining to them that I was far away from the disaster areas. I was a 125 miles as the crow flies from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. I was fine. However they yelled, they screamed, they constantly Skyped and hounded me to change my flight plans. I felt as though I had no choice but to relent. So, I did. I changed my flight. I called my company and said my last day would be Friday. After that, I’d lose 3 days worth of salary, but I was no longer concerned about money or contracts. I just had to leave.

Friday finally came. After days at school of doing absolutely nothing, teaching one class and then sitting around in the cold blackouts, I was really ready to leave. I said goodbye to my students, friends, co-workers… It was bittersweet. My friend from Ashikaga drove to Kiryu station to pick me up and take me back to my apartment. When we got to the apartment, he called another friend and I called some friends to help me clear everything out and pack up to leave. It was a miracle. We cleared out the apartment. I packed my important belongings into one suitcase. The rest were in other bags to be either sent home via parcel post, donated, or thrown away. Most of my clothes, towels and bedding I put in bags to be donated to help the tsunami and earthquake victims. I gave my food to my friend who had picked me up in Kiryu. I gave him the keys to my bicycle to be passed on to another friend. The apartment was cleared out except for the things it had originally came with. It was a little dusty and dirty, but nothing ridiculous. I slipped the key in the slot and said goodbye to the Leopalace.

That night, I stayed at my friends’ home. They took their grandson and I to dinner and told me they’d help to get rid of the things I would have no way to take home. They also had my other belongings (mostly books) sent to me here in the U.S. My things arrived about a week after I’d been home. Just.. amazing. I tried to give them the money to send the things home but they wouldn’t take it from me. I just.. I have to repay them somehow.

Saturday morning they drove me to Tatebayashi. There were plenty of trains running from there. I took my one suitcase and headed toward the airport praying there wouldn’t be another aftershock or a blackout or anything that would prevent me from getting to the airport. The scariest part was being in the subway in Ueno switching to the Keisei Skyliner. I was so paranoid that I’d get crushed in the subway tunnels if a big earthquake hit Tokyo while I was there changing trains that I ran from the Hibiya platform to the Skyliner turnstiles like a madwoman with my big suitcase.

So I got on a train. To the airport. I sent dad an e-mail to see if there were any flights that day and if he could get my flight changed to that day or the next. My boyfriend called me via Skype to my phone while I was on the train. It was so lovely to hear a voice from home that wasn’t yelling at me. For the 30 minutes I was on the Skyliner, I actually felt somewhat relaxed for the first time since the quake.

I arrived at the airport. My flight had been changed to 5:55 that very day. I checked in and made my way through immigration. Surrendered my alien registration card and headed toward the gate. No regrets.

So I’m home now. I’m worried about everyone I left there. I feel guilty leaving the way I did. No one seems to understand that I was far enough away from the nuclear plant that the radiation was not an immediate threat. I can’t watch American news reports at all. I read most of my news from Mainichi or Japan times.. and well.. the best sources are the people I know who are in Japan. They know what’s going on better than any of the news networks.

I was interviewed by a few news outlets, I won’t name any specific ones. But I will say I was contacted quite a few times by international, national, and local news channels. The questions they asked me in the interviews were so pointed, and so charged, that they CLEARLY wanted me to say “Japan is in complete discord and we are all going to die” which was entirely not the case for me, however it was the case for many many many others up in Tohoku, and I made every honest attempt to make that clear, but to no avail. The lack of knowledge of Japan’s geography (and much else about the country) stunned me. I’ve learned that many people know very very little beyond what they are immediately familiar with, and it’s difficult for them to visualize or learn about places and things outside of their bubbles.

So I’m not in Japan anymore. I’m trying to re-adjust to American life. It’s hard. I’m having trouble with it. Mostly driving to places (I miss trains), food, and just… a lot of other things. Like I said before.. I feel an immense amount of guilt leaving the way I did. I know I’ll be back someday. Not anytime soon, but I’ll be back, don’t worry. また来るよ。絶対に。

Maybe I’ll have to change the name of this blog, right? Any suggestions?

Earthquake Update!

2011-03-13T21:13:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone!! Thanks for all of the facebook messages, tweets, calls on skype, e-mails… wow!! I’m safe and everything here is going on as usual, we’re just getting ready for the planned power outages. They will go in cycles, so I won’t always be available to talk. Just know that I’m OK!

What have I been doing all weekend besides stressing over aftershocks, hoarding water, and stocking up on instant ramen?

Well…

Today some of my photos were posted on CNN.com http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-571539

I volunteered with some other people and translated a portion of these FAQ about the nuclear reactors for the Science Media Center of Japan.
You can read them at this link: http://smc-japan.sakura.ne.jp/?p=830

I also took a video this morning on my way to the train station:

Unfortunately the trains weren’t running, so I couldn’t get to work, which is probably better anyway.

I took this video last night when I heard some helicopters flying overhead.

We just had another aftershock now. I’m just praying that this is over soon!

Thank you everyone!

大地震

2011-03-11T05:44:00.001-05:00

I just wanted to let everyone know I’m ok. We are still having aftershocks, but I have electricity, so my heater works. The water is fine, but I have some bottles just in case. I also have blankets, a flashlight and food just in case things get worse. Hopefully they will not.

We evacuated school today sometime around 3. Things started shaking, and just didn’t stop, so we went outside to the soccer field/schoolyard where nothing can hit you on the head, and waited for things to stop shaking. It was scary. Some of the concrete fell from the ceiling, and there are some big cracks in the walls. I got a ride home, because all of the train lines have completely stopped running.

There is an oil refinery in Chiba that has been on fire since the quake first hit. People are stranded all over Tokyo. Some of my friends are sleeping in their offices tonight. The videos on the news are really really scary. The tsunami have reached six meters high (or probably more) and are strong enough to sweep away a moving vehicle. Buildings are collapsed. Landslides are happening. The power is out in some places. People have no food, water, or candles. Miyagi prefecture, the hardest hit, has 34 people dead and 90 found injured so far.

Please pray for Japan.

We are having an aftershock right now. I’m scared, even though Tochigi is relatively safe as far as earthquakes go. I hope this ends soon.

for more information:

Tsunami Warnings (Yahoo.co.jp)

Rail Service Delay Notifications (JR)

U.S. Geological Survey - Earthquake Information

Up-to-date Earthquake information from the Japan Meteorological Agency

ALSO!

My friend Masa made this really wonderful page full of earthquake safety information, and it is in English, so please be sure to read it and get things together for yourselves if you are in Japan!!

茶の湯

2011-03-10T07:12:00.001-05:00

I’ve been reading up on Chanoyu, or Sado, or Tea Ceremony, or The Way of Tea, or whatever you like to call it. One of my coworkers took me to her ochakai lesson with her mother and for the first time EVER I got to wear kimono! It was so exciting, and probably also very good for my posture. The obi is very tight and stiff, but not completely restricting, but the most difficult thing, I found, was standing up and sitting down without letting the undergarment show. I felt a little awkward, but I’m sure if I could practice all the time, I could easily get used to it. However, putting on a kimono by oneself is no easy task. I have a kimono, but I unfortunately do not have all of the appropriate underthings…yet. Don’t you love the tabi (socks)? They remind me of Ninja Turtle feet. Hee.

Also, I’ve been to ochakai before, but this was a lesson, and not an actual tea-meet. It was way more relaxed than the real thing, which made me feel a lot more comfortable and about 75% less awkward and foreign! You can learn so much about Zen philosophy from tea ceremony, and Japanese culture as well. If you want to learn more about the way of tea, I’d recommend reading “The Book of Tea” by Kakuzo Okakura. It’s all about the aesthetics and philosophy that are the tea ceremony itself. The book also includes the history of tea ceremony and talks about its earliest forms. The book also has a few anecdotes about the most influential tea master, Sen-no Rikyu, who broke apart his tea bowl and committed ritual suicide after performing his final tea ceremony.

“[tea ceremony] is an attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

– Tenshin Okakura, The Book of Tea

新見方

2011-03-06T06:41:00.001-05:00

I finally FINALLY bought myself a new camera. The shutter on my old camera doesn’t respond when I press it anymore, so I’ve been using my cell phone as a replacement (If you haven’t noticed from the poor quality photos I’ve been posting here as of late). I’m pleased with the nighttime mode and I also really like the HD videos. So, look forward to seeing some nice looking photos on here in the near future!

(testing out the night mode)

hina matsuri mystery tour

2011-02-27T07:26:00.001-05:00

You heard me. My “adoptive” Japanese grandmother took me on a hina matsuri (girl’s festival) mystery tour today! I had no idea it was going to last all day and that we would be on a tour bus for the greater part of it. However, that wasn’t the mystery… the mystery was that the tour itinerary had blank spaces where there were supposed to be the names of our destinations.
It was interesting to see how some people choose to spend their time off, and I did get to go to some interesting out-of-the-way places with my cool grandma-friend!

First, we went to a sake distillery in Sawara. I was like.. wait a second.. why are we going to a sake distillery? What does this have to do with hina matsuri?

As it turned out, the distillery had a massive collection of hina matsuri dolls on display in the big rooms up above the gigantic tanks of sake. Like, full sets of antique dolls. It was pretty awesome!! As some of you may know, I have my own little collection of dolls, so it was pretty cool to see all of these awesome handmade dolls on display. They’re so amazing! The details on the faces and in their clothing is so perfect down to the last little thread. The designs change ever so slightly from year to year, and you can usually tell when a set of dolls was made by the design of the clothing they are wearing and the female doll’s facial features, which happen to change according to whatever is considered to be fashionable at any given time.

Then we walked down the road to the river and went for a little boat ride! The boat was outfitted with a charcoal kotatsu, which was really nice, since it was kind of cool and breezy, despite being sunny. The woman steering the boat told us that Sawara’s main industry used to be food production, namely soy products, such as soy sauce, miso, natto, etc. However, the factories have long gone and have given way to a small tourist trade. Sawara was also the home of a man who apparently walked the length of Honshu and made some of the first almost completely accurate maps of the country. You can visit his house if you have time, which we unfortunately did not!

Then it was back on the bus! We drove towards the town of Narita-san, which is of course near the airport. We stopped at a restaurant and had a pretty no-frills lunch, everything was simple, but good! There’s a huge temple at Narita-san, called Shinsho-ji. It’s an old temple that has recently been ENTIRELY rebuilt, and it was very different from the old temples up in Nikko or Kyoto that I’m kind of used to visiting. It was almost surreal to go to a temple that was this new.

The main reason for visiting was to see the plum blossoms blooming behind Shinsho-ji. They were really pretty, and they smelled nice too (*´ω｀*)

After taking a walk around the temple to see the buildings and the flowers, we walked around the little town, bought some omiyage, and some snacks, and were once again on the bus for another two hours or so. Our last stop was a massive indoor farmer’s market near Ushiku, but I didn’t have a chance to look around because we were halted by another obaa-san who talked to us for like 30 minutes about her dog (which was adorable, she showed us photos she keeps in her wallet) and like.. oh I dunno…I’d been listening to Japanese all day so I kind of lost interest after she stopped giving me the usual 20 questions and stopped talking about her dog and the neighbor’s cat. Sorry…(；´∀｀)

After we had talked to this lady for like.. foreverrr… it was time to get back on the bus!! So we had to run to the restrooms and back to the tour bus. I was really not looking forward to sitting on the bus for 3 more hours… but we had a nice bento of tako meshi and we finished watching the silly movie that we started watching on the way to the farmer’s market, so it wasn’t all that bad. I guess maybe I’m just not Japanese-sized enough for Japanese tour buses (ー_ー;) At least not for the entire day, anyway.

I guess I don’t ever really go on group tours, I usually travel alone or with at least one other person. Big groups kind of drive me nuts, I hate time limits... and I don’t quite care for being on a cramped tour bus for more than half the day!! If you’re the kind of person that’s into set tours, Japan has plenty of them to take advantage of, and it does take a lot of the thought and hassle out of traveling. You can book them through any Japanese travel agency, and there are always ads in newspapers and travel brochures you can pick up pretty much anywhere.

However!! Even though set tours aren’t really my style, I was happy to spend time with my grandmother-friend, she’s so lovely and wonderful and such a sweet, thoughtful human being!!! I also got to eat some really nice food, and see some beautiful things in some hard-to-get-to places. All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good day.
(・∀・)

Show Me Japan

プリティーお弁当 #5 and #6!

2011-02-23T08:13:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s finals week, and this is pretty much what I do at my desk all day.

Ok, ok. I don’t really just sit around and do nothing. I sit around and read novels, study Japanese, write e-mails, check facebook… uh…tweet random news stories AND…since the cafeteria is closed all week, I think about making the next day’s OBENTO!

☆ ヽ(´ー｀)ノ ☆

I’ve been making bento all week, but Monday’s bento (vegetable goyoza, stir-fried veggies, and taki-komi gohan) and today’s bento (leftover lentils, broccoli, saffron rice, and curried chicken) just… weren’t all that pretty, so I did not photograph them. These were the two exceptionally nice looking bento this week!

Now, for the contents! First, Tuesday’s obento!:

stir fried vegetables
steamed broccoli
mini hamburgers w/ ketchup
taki-komi gohan (rice steamed with dashi, miso, renkon, and carrot)

I actually had made the stir-fried veggies on Monday, and these were leftovers. I tried to replicate the same kind of stir-fry that they make in the school cafeteria, but they have a really well-seasoned wok, and my non-stick frying pan just doesn’t compare! I also can’t generate the kind of heat on my electric burners like they have on the gas stove at school.
Also, being from Pittsburgh, I only use Heinz ketchup. None of that Kagome crap. I love that the bottle has “Heinz” written in katakana on the label. I may have to save this bottle for posterity.

☆

Next up is the bento for tomorrow!

steamed salmon
blanched spinach with sesame dressing
carrots steamed with butter + honey
white rice with salmon/wakame/sesame furikake
honey umeboshi (despite being called “honey” they’re not very sweet!)

I’ve also been trying to make different kinds of ethnic-type foods… Monday’s was kind of Chinese with the goyoza and stir fried veggies, Tuesday’s… I’ll say it was American because it was a mix of everything, and today’s was clearly Indian-influenced with the lentils and curried chicken. Tomorrow’s bento is clearly Japanese, as you can see, with the fish, umeboshi, white rice and furikake. Maybe I’ll make pasta tomorrow night and have an Italian bento for Friday!

transports

2011-02-21T10:50:00.001-05:00

This is the train I take to school every day! Yaay.
(it snowed a couple of weeks ago, and I felt the need to document it.)

I USED to take one of these to school every day…. but not anymore!! I was shocked when I saw this parked outside the station. I have never seen an American school bus in Japan before. I was kind of curious about it, especially since American cars and trucks are SO rare here. The name of the bus is Thomas, which appears to be a North American brand owned by Daimler. Daimler operates in Japan via Mitsubishi Fuso trucks.. where I’d assume this bus was assembled.
It always just really surprises me to see cars and vehicles from the U.S.! They look so out of place!! One of my co-workers has an H3, and it is comically GIGANTIC compared to the teeny tiny shoebox cars. I’ve also seen my mom’s minivan and a Ford Excursion riding around town and in the grocery store parking lot. I wonder what prompts Japanese people to buy foreign cars versus domestic ones? Is it purely for conspicuous consumption? I can’t imagine that it’s cost-effective to own (or store) a Ford Excursion or a Hummer in a country where there’s very little space and the cost of automotive fuel is significantly high. Perhaps other reasons? Does anyone have more ideas or insight into this than I do?

プリティーお弁当 #4!

2011-02-17T06:59:00.001-05:00

I feel like I haven’t made a nice-looking bento in quite some time. Mostly because it’s winter and I’d rather have something hot from the school cafeteria like ramen or my personal favorite, 野菜炒め (stir fried vegetables). The cafeteria was closed today, since the faculty was having the annual “let’s talk about who may not be moving up to the next grade” meeting, and all of the students left after 4th period. Luckily, I was able to anticipate the closure of the cafeteria, and I got down to some intense cooking last night. Hopefully my creative-cooking-juices will still be flowing and I’ll have some energy to make some obento for next week, since we’ll be having final exams and the cafeteria will be closed yet again.

And now, what you’re all probably dying to know… the contents!

chicken sautéed in soy sauce + ginger
renkon (lotus root), carrot, and daikon simmered in dashi, soy sauce, mirin and butter
steamed spinach dressed in tofu and sesame seeds
Rice steamed with carrots, sesame seeds, and mushrooms in dashi, miso, and soy sauce

The simmered veggies were easy enough to make, modified from a recipe I saw on NHK’s きょうの料理 (today’s cooking). You wouldn’t ever think to add a tablespoon of butter to something that is so…typically Japanese in flavor and ingredients, but it compliments these kind of root vegetables so so so well. Try it!

The rice I used is standard short-grain Japanese rice, well-washed, of course! I actually added a tiny bit of oil (I used grapeseed oil) to make sure the rice didn’t stick. This particular type of rice, made with broth and vegetables mixed in, is more specifically called 炊き込みご飯 (taki-komi-gohan). I feel like it isn’t an everyday kind of food, and that it is usually reserved for special occasions, but hey… when ISN’T a bento a special occasion?! ヽ(^。^)ノ

予餞会

2011-02-15T22:00:00.004-05:00

Last week was our yosenkai (send-off) for our third-year students. Most schools tend to have some kind of event for graduating students, whether it be from elementary, middle, or high school. There’s another word for send-off, 送別会 (soubetsukai) which is fairly common, but yosenkai, the word our school uses, is a kind of fancy word that denotes that the event is specifically for graduates, and the ‘sen’ can be written with either 餞 (hanamuke, which means ‘parting gift’) or 饌 (‘sen’ that comes from 饌米, or “rice that is consecrated for a deity”). Whatever way you choose to write it, they all basically mean the same kind of event these days.

The wind ensemble and the dance club performed, as well as the baseball club and a couple of other groups. The music teacher asked me to do a last minute collaboration with him. He asked me to choose a song (!!!) at the very last minute, so I ended up settling on “Good Riddance (Time of your Life)” by Green Day, since I figured that was appropriate for a high school send-off (Ha, maybe like 12 years ago). Also, I didn’t really have time to learn how to play anything new, and I didn’t really feel like playing anything original, since I didn’t feel like my songs would fit with the event. Lastly, I was asked to do this the day before the actual send-off, I just… happened to know how to play it, and the chords were simple enough so the music teacher could ad-lib an accompaniment during the bridge of the song. I don’t teach the third-year students, so I don’t know them very well, but I was glad that I got to participate in the event. Some of the kids even knew who Green Day was, go figure. Getting a chance to play at the Kiryu performing arts center was really awesome, even if the song I was covering wasn’t all that great... The most important thing is that the kids had fun, and I had fun too!

(sorry for the poor quality photos! The school photographer gave me actual, physical, photographs! I took photos of his photos with my phone, since I don’t have a scanner.)

梅番茶

2011-02-15T09:41:00.001-05:00

One of my coworkers is a tea expert!! Well, kind of! He certainly knows a whole lot about tea, and has a collection of different kinds inside the cupboard next to his desk. He makes his own personal stash of bancha (which is roasted green tea) and umeboshi (pickled pums, that I usually get my very own container of every now and again). Today was a pretty chilly inside our lovely concrete block of a school, even though the plum trees outside are blooming and making their best effort to make spring start happening. So, in an effort to warm up, he made me some ume-bancha, which goes a little something like this:

you will need:

umeboshi
bancha (or just roast some medium-grade green tea yourself!)
plum blossoms (optional)
honey (optional)

directions:

First, bring some water to boil for the tea. Once the water has boiled, turn off the heat and wait a minute!! Then, pour the boiling water into your tea pot with the dry leaves on the bottom, and steep for two minutes.

While the tea is steeping, remove the seed from inside the umeboshi, and place in a teacup. Pour your steeped tea through a fine strainer and over the pickled plum and float a plum blossom on top.

Plum blossoms should have a sweet fragrance, and are bitter to the taste. Make sure your flowers are safe enough to be consumed!! (i.e. no pesticides!)

If you like your tea sweetened, add some honey to this, and it will be really REALLY nice. The overall flavors are actually quite bitter and then sour at the end, but honey will add a really nice sweetness that compliments the umeboshi really well.

Enjoy!

ハッピー♡バレンタイン

2011-02-13T17:00:00.003-05:00

♡ 彼氏に送った手作りチョコ ♡

Bannaji snow

2011-02-11T04:50:00.001-05:00

It so rarely snows here, that when it does I get kind of excited about it.

So, I took a little trip to Bannaji today to take pictures of things with snow on them.

キムチ焼きそば！

2011-02-06T06:45:00.001-05:00

Yum!! Kimchi yakisoba is probably one of my favorite things to make, and it’s so easy!! I’ve added approximate measurements, since you all should know by now that I never measure anything when I cook. I’ve also made this before with moyashi (bean sprouts) in addition to cabbage and onion. You could also easily use beef or chicken instead of pork.
Ready? Let’s begin!

You will need:

1 tablespoon of your favorite cooking oil
1/2 cup of kimchi
1/4 head of cabbage, shredded
1/2 onion, diced
1 large clove of garlic, minced
thinly sliced pork
2 packages of pre-cooked yakisoba noodles
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
4 tablespoons of ketchup
siracha sauce to taste

Directions:

Take a fairly large sized frying pan or wok and heat up your cooking oil. Then, add the garlic and onions and cook them until they start to become transparent and very aromatic. Then, add your thin slices of pork. Shabu-shabu type pork works well for this. Once your pork is cooked through, add your shredded cabbage. Fry and stir. Stir and fry. Use a medium-high heat.
Then, add the soy sauce and ketchup. be sure to stir well and coat everything, otherwise the sauces will start to caramelize on the bottom of the pan since it will be very hot by this point. Add your pre-cooked yakisoba noodles and make sure they are coated with the ketchup and soy sauce. If not, you can always add a little more to make sure they get coated.
Now comes the good part!! Stir in the kimchi!! If kimchi isn’t spicy enough for you, add some siracha sauce and stir. The pan should be very very hot by this point, so it is fine if you turn off the heat completely and let it finish cooking by the residual heat. The noodles will suck up the ketchup, kimchi juices, soy sauce and siracha, and just become all around amazing. The pork should be completely cooked through and well coated with your sauces.

Serve on your favorite dish or in your favorite bowl and enjoy!!

★ ★ ★

I should also probably mention now that my hometown’s professional football team is participating in the national tournament (otherwise known as the superbowl) and yes, I’m excited about it, even though I’m not able to be at home to watch them or cheer them on with other loyal Pittsburghers.

so.. here we go Steelers!! One for the other thumb!!

Oh wait.. we got that one already…

the other index finger?

bean-throwing!

2011-02-04T21:56:00.001-05:00

I went with some friends to a local temple for setsubun this year.

The temple people had spent the entire day making ama-zake. It was apparently only available at certain times of the day. Luckily, we made it there in time for the last batch!

Afterwards, it was shabu-shabu time!!

Yum!

梅が咲いてますよ～

2011-01-31T04:20:00.001-05:00

The plum is starting to bloom – winter will be over soon.

東京の上に

2011-01-23T04:36:00.001-05:00

winter break highlights

2011-01-06T07:30:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, I decided to spend my winter break here, instead of making the pilgrimage back home for the holidays. My cousin was here for a little over a week, which was awesome! Nobody from home has ever come to visit me before, so it was a new experience.

First we spent a day in Tokyo, visiting Akihabara, Roppongi, Shibuya….

Hachiiiiii <3 Man, I love that dog.

Then some biking around town!

A day trip to Kamakura…

…complete with money laundering!

Quite literally ringing in the new year at a local temple!

Finally, a trip to Nikko with the Ishikawas!

Winter break is almost over, and I’m just relaxing reading books, doing a little shopping here and there, and just hanging out in general. School’s going to start again fairly soon… so…

that’s all for now!

あけ☆おめ！！（ビーバーいとこだちより）

2011-01-01T05:39:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year’s from the Beaver Cousins!!

My cousin is visiting me right now (which explains all lack of posts)!! We decided to spend our New Year’s Japanese-style at a Buddhist temple with some friends of mine. Complete with bell-ringing, wish burning, and book slapping. There were fireworks, too.

今年も、よろしくお願いします！

メリー☆クリスマス

2010-12-24T06:16:00.001-05:00

肉じゃが！

2010-12-23T05:46:00.001-05:00

Did you know that niku-jaga (lit. meat & potatoes) is the Japanese take on beef stew?? A long long time ago, when foreign traders first came to Japan, Japanese people saw that they were eating beef stew, and they tried to imitate it using what was immediately available. It soon morphed into what we all know and love today as niku-jaga. I think everyone makes their niku-jaga a bit differently, much like how everyone makes their own particular style of curry, but here’s how I learned to make this classic pseudo-Japanese item.

You will need:

1 onion
2 carrots
4 or 5 new potatoes
pork, finely chopped (the kind you might use for shabu-shabu would be OK for this)
7 ladles full of dashi (broth made from konbu and katsuo-bushi)
1 ladleful of soy sauce (I’ll explain this measurement in the directions)
1 ladleful of mirin
1 tablespoon of sugar
Optional: konnyaku noodles, green peas, or 1 tablespoon sake

Directions:

*NOTE* I am going to reiterate that I am pretty bad at gauging the measurements for what I cook. I usually just add things to a pan or pot and it just magically turns out to be something worth eating 80-90% of the time! So, when my friend Ko-chan taught me how to make niku-jaga he explained that it was all about this 7-1-1 ratio. The 7-1-1 could be basically anything, cups, half-cups, ladles, etc. Since I have a miniscule kitchen and even tinier cookware, we decided to go with using the ladle to make the measurements. Please adjust the amount of onion, carrot, potato, and pork as necessary in accordance with however large you choose to make the measurements in your 7-1-1 ratio.

First! Halve or dice your potatoes, depending on how big or small they are. Cut your carrots into large chunks. Dice your onion as well.

Then! measure 7 whatever-fulls of dashi into your cooking receptacle! I used a pot! After this, add your 1 whatever-full of soy sauce, then 1 whatever-full of mirin! Simmer this liquid. Add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and dissolve. Then, put all of your vegetables into the liquid and bring to a boil. If you want to add sake to your liquid to give it a bit of a drier sweetness, this is the time to add it. Once the liquid has begun to simmer, make sure to taste it to see if any one flavor is overpowering another! You may find that your mixture is too soy sauce-ey or could use a little more mirin or sugar. Perhaps the entire flavor is too strong, and you need to add more dashi. Who knows. Adjust as necessary!

In a separate pan, brown your pork with a little bit of oil. It doesn’t have to be totally cooked to death, since it is eventually going into the boiling pot of veggies.

Once your vegetables have come to a boil, reduce to a simmer and add the pork. At this stage, you are going to want to cover the pot with either a lid or tinfoil. I don’t know why, but for some reason, the tinfoil skims all of the pork grime off of the top of the liquid, whereas a regular lid will not. Either way, you will end up with delicious niku-jaga. Simmer this until the potatoes and the carrots are soft enough to be pierced with a fork. If you’d like to add konnyaku noodles (as pictured) or peas (mostly for a color contrast) this is when to add them.

★ ★ ★

I know of some people who cook this stuff to death so that the liquid becomes entirely evaporated, but that isn’t really my style.. I like to have a little bit of the liquid remaining to keep everything in the bowl nice and happy and warm. I don’t usually drink it though, since there is a lot of salt in the soy sauce and (if I use the instant kind) dashi.

Let me know if you have your own take on niku-jaga. I’d be interested in knowing how you make it.

If you try this recipe, don’t' forget the 7-1-1 ratio!!!

serve steaming hot and enjoy!!!

★ ★ ★

P.S.: Leftover niku-jaga makes for a very nice bento! I put some spinach dressed with sesame along with it, and some rice, of course.

日本語能力試験

2010-12-18T07:06:00.001-05:00

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is something that I, a student of Japan and its language, have been battling with for some time now. Many of you may remember an old post of mine containing a quote from Miyazaki Toten that reeked of despair and frustration. Not long after that, many of you e-mailed me and tweeted at me and left supportive comments and talked to me and just really gave me a lot of hope. I hope you all remember the follow-up post, where I decided to pick myself up and dust myself off. I will say now that yes, even now, I get frustrated, but I am now miles (kilometers?) from where I was when I wrote about giving up.

A while back, I had a conversation with Lindsey (!!!) about studying for the JLPT. She had made this awesome study plan and said something to the effect of, “we’re both teachers, we plan lessons for our students, why not do it for ourselves?” I mean, I had all of the materials sitting right in front of me, I hadn’t really been utilizing them to the full extent I could have been.

So I threw myself into studying. I picked up those books and dug into them. I bought a notebook to write down all of the grammar points I was learning and the practice exercises that went along with them. I mean, I actually needed to physically write everything down into this notebook, instead of just circling the answers in the practice text. I found that if I actually did the writing myself, I was more apt to remember what was written down. Following this mindset, I also bought a graph paper notebook and used it to practice new kanji as well as some kanji I knew, but wasn’t entirely sure of how they were written. Luckily, I sit next to one of our school’s Japanese teachers in the office, and he gladly helped me when I wasn’t entirely sure of stroke order, usage, etcetera.

Wow was he helpful, and never ever once condescending or confusing. Sometimes when I ask people questions about word usage or idiomatic phrases, they tend to go off on a nihonjinron tirade that never really ever answers my original question and always succeeds in me saying “yes, I agree, you speak a difficult language…” but never following with, “… can you freaking help me now?!”

I think that perhaps the difference between him and all of my other Japanese teachers was that my teachers were teaching Japanese to me as a foreign language. Whereas, he teaches Japanese to high school students as like.. their first language. I mean, he’s the equivalent of what my English teachers were like in high school, making us read great novels and write essays and papers about them. Not so concerned with the correct-ness of the language, but more about how one communicates with it and its usage and written form. I wish I could have taken all of my Japanese in college from a teacher like him, but I suppose it was best that I learned my basics the way I did!!

I finally invested in an electronic dictionary, as time was of the essence!! It was, hands down, the best purchase I’ve ever made it my life!! I know how to use a regular-old paper Kanji dictionary, but let’s face it, those things are a pain in the butt to lug around and looking up kanji using the STEP method takes a fair amount of time. The electronic dictionary is a huge time-saver and convenience. I can even save all of the entries I’ve looked up with a flashcard feature, and review them later on. It has a pronunciation guide, thesaurus, encyclopedia, business dictionary, cookbooks, medical dictionary… etc. Totally a great purchase, even if it did set me back a couple hundred bucks.

Lastly, I’ll talk about the texts I used. I will provide links to them on Amazon.co.jp, along with their reviews.

日本語総まとめ問題集 [2級文法編] and日本語総まとめ問題集 [2級漢字編]

these two texts are published by Ask publishing. When I looked at them in the bookstore, I appreciated the fact that they contained English explanations and (in the Kanji book) lots of useful vocabulary. Unfortunately, the English translations are poor and are in need of serious revision. When I was making my own notes in my notebook, I translated the example sentences myself so they would be easier to relate to and understand. The other axe I have to grind with these books is the fact that they have lots of really negative sentences in them, that just… kind of make you want to give up studying! They don’t really create any kind of positive attitude toward language learning!

For example:

この手紙の日本語は間違いだらけだ。
The Japanese in this letter is filled with mistakes.
ひらがなさえ書けないんですから、漢字なんで書けません。
I can’t even write hiragana, so of course I can’t write kanji.
今の実力では、試験に受かりっこない。
It is impossible to pass the test with my current abilities.
この作文は、日本語がめちゃくちゃで直しようがない。
The Japanese in this essay is so bad that it’s impossible to fix.

実力アップ!日本語能力試験2級漢字単語ドリル

I mainly bought this book to take and read on the train to and from work. It’s a nice size for commuting, and it comes with a red plastic plate so the words and furigana printed in red disappear and force you to memorize the vocabulary. It’s nice for short-term memory recall practice, but as a regular study method, I would personally steer clear of this kind of book.

and lastly,

日本語能力試験N1・N2 試験に出る読解―40日完成
Wow! I really loved this text the most out of all of them. Reading comprehension is probably my weakest section of the test, but this book is great as far as explaining the types of questions, giving you wonderful explanations of how to break down sentences and truly get a grasp of what you’re reading. However, this book is written entirely in Japanese, which makes it a little tiresome at first. I figured that since I’m taking a N2 test I should at least be able to read 80% of this book, so I shouldn’t complain that it’s written all in Japanese – that is what I’m aiming for. I WANT to be able to read and understand 100% of the book! So. I did my best and made my way through the N2 practice problems, and I did very well with this text, and I highly recommend it.

I’d also like to mention that I used all of these texts in conjunction with the mass amounts of Japanese I already know. I do have a degree in this stuff, and without my background, I think it might be hard for an independent learner to work with these texts. On the other hand, everyone is different, and who am I to say what works for me may not work for anyone else!! I encourage everyone to find their own style and way to study whatever it is you’re passionate about! For me it happens to be Japanese. I loove Japanese. I love how it rolls off of my tongue and I love writing it mostly! I like all of the little idiomatic expressions and I even like the things that challenge me like humble speech and transitive/intransitive verb pairs. I think it’s really cool. Anyway. I’ll stop gushing over how much I enjoy this language and keep my fingers crossed that I did well on my test this year!!

mmm…クリームシチュー...

2010-11-28T07:55:00.001-05:00

Oh my goodness. Cream stew is probably one of the most delicious things ever. It’s not really Japanese fare, but I really never ate it until I came to Japan. I know that you can buy little cubes of roux for the stew in the grocery stores here, but they have a ton of salt and lord knows what else in them, so I prefer to make my own roux. It’s easy peasy and I know exactly what goes into my lovely stew. I am pretty terrible at guessing the quantities of the ingredients, since I basically go by how much will fit into the tiny pots I have, so I haven’t included any real measurements… ahem.

You will need:

1 onion
2 carrots
1 small head of broccoli
5 or so new potatoes, well washed (I never peel the skin off of potatoes, but if you’d like to, go for it!)
*optional* napa cabbage
2 or 3 boneless chicken thighs, cut into nice bite-sized chunks.
milk (I use low-fat milk, but whatever you like or have around is fine)
1 tablespoon-ish of butter
2 teaspoon-ishes of flour
cooking oil (I use grapeseed oil)
water

Directions:

First, add a tiny bit of oil to a nonstick pan and add your chicken and make sure it is cooked through all the way!! Then, remove the chicken and set it aside for later. In your pot, start sweating your chopped up onion with a tiny bit of oil (I like a large diced onion, not teeny tiny pieces) until translucent. Then, add your carrots, roughly chopped, and the new potatoes, diced. Add enough water to cover the whole shebang and let it come to a simmer. In the meantime, steam your broccoli in the microwave. I put mine in a little dish with a tiny bit of water. This way it gets cooked, but doesn’t turn soggy. Set this aside, maybe by the chicken.
Once your potatoes, carrots and onions have come to a simmer, cook them until you can easily put a fork through the carrots. The new potatoes shouldn’t take too too long to get cooked through all the way.

In a separate pot, start melting your butter and add the flour. Whisk it in until there are no lumps, but the mixture is thick. This is your roux. Then, add a ladleful of the water from the pot with the potatoes and dissolve your roux in this. Then, using a slotted spoon, start adding the carrots, potatoes and onions to the pot with the roux. Then add your chicken and broccoli. Once everything is in, add a little more of the potato/carrot water and pour in the milk until everything is covered. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir gently. You don’t want to break up the broccoli, but you want to make sure the roux is evenly distributed so that everything becomes thickened – so it becomes kind of… stew-ey.

Let this simmer and thicken. If you find that your stew isn’t thickening, you can always add a little more flour. Don’t forget to add salt and pepper to taste. The butter has a little salt in it, but without a little salt + pepper the stew can be a little bland.

Finally, in the words of the greatest of the greats, miss J. Child: Bon Appétit!!

★ ★ ★

This is a really nice fall/winter dish, and can be modified with vegetables you like. Sometimes it’s good with mushrooms, which would be added at the end, with the broccoli and chicken. It is good even with cabbage (I like Napa cabbage myself) boiled along with the potatoes and carrots. You could even possibly add small pastas to this, but since the stew is pretty thick, I don’t find it necessary.

Enjoy!

渡良瀬渓谷と草木ダム

2010-11-21T02:20:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, Kevin, Eric, and I went on the Watarase River Valley railway to a tiny little station called Godo up in the mountains. We went for a nice walk/hike to Kusaki Dam and got to enjoy lots of local scenery. Despite the fact that Japan has been heavily forested and its rivers diverted and dammed and developed, it still continues to be a beautiful place.

I randomly picked Godo station to get off at, because It has the same characters as Kobe (神戸). Weird, huh?

Kusaki dam. It was surprisingly big!!

On our way back to Godo, we walked past a house that had chicken coops and pheasants right out front.

Maybe you can see Kevin off to the right there… right before he decided to take a swim in the river.

プリティーお弁当 #3!

2010-11-15T05:58:00.001-05:00

The colors aren’t as nice as I’d hoped, I have such crappy lighting in my apartment >.<; but here’s pretty obento #3! I took this bento for school this past Friday. I really like my star cupcake wrappers. They are made out of silicone, so you can use them over and over and over, AND they totally make my bento 500 times more adorable than usual.

Now for the contents!

mini hamburgers w/ siracha sauce
green beans simmered in soy sauce/broth
Japanese-style pumpkin
steamed broccoli
rice!

The L.L.

2010-11-12T23:37:00.001-05:00

L.L. stands for Language Lab, which is what this classroom used to be, probably 20 years ago. There are tape recorders built into each desk, along with individual microphone headsets. At the front of the room is a large control console, complete with a monitor system and master recording panel. I turned on the control console and found a display not unlike that of one of those old apple computers my elementary schools had in their computer labs when I was in like.. 2nd grade… that had 18 amazing colors on the screen. I guess the sad thing is that nobody knows how to operate this thing anymore, and even if they could, the students have absolutely destroyed the tape recorders in the desks and more than half of the headsets are missing or broken. Teenage ennui will always ultimately lead to destruction.

The LL is on the 4th (and top floor) of a separate building that was added to the campus of our school about…20 years ago. There’s a windowed connecting hallway that spans the distance between the main building and the building where the LL is. It’s wickedly cold because it’s all glass and old windows, but it offers a nice view, which is especially nice in the morning and mid-afternoon. Especially around 3:25, when I go for cleaning. The light hits the mountains in an especially nice way that calms me down after a long day.

I tried to decorate the LL a little bit. My predecessor had left up a lot of the posters and flags and things from the ALTs before him, and a lot of them had to do with New Zealand and the now totally defunct exchange program from about 10 years ago. My first week consisted of cleaning out all the garbage and tearing down all of the old posters. I made this poster for the window between the prep room (which is also our club room) and the actual classroom. Unfortunately 90% of my kids don’t know what it means… but I like it and it’s going to stay up as long as I’m here. There are also some maps and things like speech schedules that I have hanging on the walls, but I like looking at this during my classes when I get frustrated to remember why we need to learn how to speak each others’ languages.

Of course, the LL isn’t the pristine learning environment that I make it out to be. It’s pretty dirty, like… 20 million years of dust, on the shelves and things… it has a musty kind of smell, sometimes there are dead birds that I find out on the veranda, and then there are nice little things that my students write on the desks. I really like the one that says OCだるいよー。

Here’s a nice view from the front of the room. This is what I get to see every day at work.

The light coming through the pine trees next to the building along the riverside at 3:45 is surreal. I can never see the river because of the trees, but I can always hear it. Nobody comes in the entire building for any reason other than my class, and the band uses the big tatami rooms on the ground floor for practice, but other than that… there’s not much happening here, and it feels so lonely and neglected compared to the rest of the school. Anyway. It’s my classroom.

till we meet again, cupcake.

2010-11-09T05:09:00.001-05:00

The home economics club at my school invited me to make cupcakes with them last week. We made the cake part on Thursday, and then, since the cupcakes had to cool, we did the buttercream icing and sprinkles on Friday. The cake (which was devil’s food) was slightly dense, and the buttercream wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped. Despite these couple of flaws, making the cupcakes was all good fun, until it came time to actually eating them.

I guess American-style sweets just aren’t popular in Japan. I was really surprised that the students in particular didn’t want to eat them… or take them home. One of the teachers even said that she hated American food, but for American food, these were OK. I was a little bummed out by this turn of events. In any case, I got to take home a couple of cupcakes. Since the home ec. club money pays for the ingredients, I felt kind of bad taking a lot, so I said I’d take two and give two to the music teacher, to say thanks for letting me use the piano all the time.

So. there goes my idea of opening up a cupcake shop in Tokyo. I guess cupcakes just aren’t a crowd pleaser here. Oh well. More for me!

カ。。。カ。。。カワイイ～♪

2010-11-07T03:06:00.001-05:00

These are easily the cutest things I’ve ever eaten. The owl is so so so so freaking adorable.

hee :)

プリティーお弁当 #2!

2010-11-05T06:59:00.001-04:00

Ok. well. Maybe it wasn’t especially pretty, but it was especially tasty.

The contents!

carrots & broccoli steamed with butter & honey (yes!)
tuna that was pan.. fried? maybe? I dunno... with a little bit of soy sauce
white rice made with dashi and a little sprinkle of dried parsley

I also took a mandarin orange, but it didn’t make it for the photo shoot.

台風でディズニ－!!

2010-11-04T08:52:00.001-04:00

The best part about going to Tokyo Disneyland in a typhoon is that you don’t have to wait in line for very long for rides!!

Shin-chan and I planned on going there Halloween weekend, and when we heard there was going to be a typhoon, we decided to go anyway. I had never been to Tokyo Disneyland (and it’s been a veritable lifetime since I’ve been to Disney World) and I had been itching to go, ever since I found myself in Kanto and within very close reach of the happiest place in Japan.

I got this sweet leopard-print Minnie hat, and had a FANTASTIC time!!!

I want to go to Disney Sea for the next typhoon!!

プリティーお弁当！

2010-10-25T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I like to make a bento to take to school. I made this kind of bento a while ago, but I forgot to take a photo of it. I think it looks really pretty! Well, not just the food, but I like my bento box, the matching chopsticks and the cloth bag I use to carry it around in. Anyway, I tried my best to replicate the contents once again, and I remembered to take a photo this time!!

Inside!:

steamed broccoli
steamed salmon
Japanese pear slices
rice with mushrooms and sesame seeds

明日。。。いただきま～す！

October

2010-10-24T03:36:00.001-04:00

Fall is in full swing here in Japan. I know I KNOW that pumpkins and Halloween aren’t a part of Japanese culture, but they are something that I do so enjoy. Last weekend, I joined a pumpkin carving event with the Kiryu International Association. They had these beautiful little pie pumpkins shipped in from Hokkaido, where the weather is somewhat similar to the Northeastern U.S., and sold them for about 600 yen a pop, and kids (and some adults) came to carve them! There was a big group of us ALTs there to help out, since there needed to be some explanation for first-timers as to how to carve a pumpkin! It was nice sharing culture :D

Here is, of course, my pumpkin. I had him sitting on my desk at school this past week, but he unfortunately started to mold and I had to.. ahem… dispose of him… sooner than hoped.

I also visited my Nametwin up in Tochigi City last weekend. We took a nice walk along the river, had a bento and had some serious girl talk. I’m sad that she lives further away from me now, but it’s very cool to have a new place to explore with her and it seems like she’s much more comfortable living in Tochigi than back in… that other place… sheesh!

Lastly, I finally played that gig with the band I joined last night! It was really cool! It was my very first time working with a band (well… other than my high school band… does that even count?) I unfortunately don’t have any photos, but I will ask around and see if anyone has any kind of data from the show. It was a good experience doing something new and different. I realized that I really enjoy singing, but I have a ways to go as far as musicianship is concerned. I’m certainly no professional when it comes to this kind of stuff. I feel like I’m always fudging it.

Until next time!

織姫山 recording session

2010-10-11T09:31:00.001-04:00

I kind of joined a Jazz band, and I’m kind of singing with them at their next gig.

(I’ll give those in the know the needed details concerning this)

Anyhow. They have a song called Orihime, and we went up on top of Orihime mountain to record it this evening. It was an amazing sunset.

東京道路

2010-10-07T07:56:00.001-04:00

きのう一年の生徒たちと企業見学やりました！4時に起きたのせい、すごく疲れになったけど、面白かった。学校戻ったとき、道路の写真を撮った。東京へ行く時、ふつうに電車で行く。だけど、今回はバス乗ったから、違う見え方なりました。

二月堂で絶景

2010-09-27T05:44:00.001-04:00

灯籠の影きれいだし、奈良の景色もすごかったし、このブロッグのデザイン作った時、左の写真を使った。右のイメージは川瀬巴水の版画です。景色あまり変わらなかったでしょう。さっき、写真撮ったとき巴水の版画みたいことゼンゼン分からなかった。本当に奇縁です!

9.30.06 奈良

2010-09-26T07:29:00.001-04:00

外大生のとき授業のため奈良へ行った。

If you don’t move, they can’t see you.

2010-09-23T04:53:00.001-04:00

ゴジラじゃね～よ！！恐竜です！

It’s not Godzilla!! It’s a dinosaur!

先週の週末六本木ヒルズ森アーツセンターで「地球最古の恐竜展」見に行った。

Last weekend, I went to Roppongi Hills Mori Arts Center to see the “Dawn of the Dinosaurs” exhibition.

子どものときから恐竜が好です。なぜならよく分からないけど、親だちはいつもチッチャイブリジットをカーネギー自然史博物館へ持ってきた。ピッツバーグのカーネギー博物館の恐竜もすごいよ!

Since I was a kid, I’ve liked dinosaurs. I’m not really sure why, but my parents were always taking a very small me to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum also has amazing dinosaurs!

展覧会がすごい恐竜見えました。私ゼンゼン見たことない恐竜は全部だった。名前も覚えられない!

The dinosaurs I saw at this exhibition were fantastic. They were all ones that I had never seen before. I can’t even remember their names!

New 判子!

2010-09-14T06:44:00.001-04:00

As many of you know, I kind of dabble around in sumi every once in a while. As a goodbye present to one of my schools last year, I gave them one of my paintings. One of my former co-workers remembered that this was one of my hobbies, and on his recent trip to China with his family, he had a gorgeous new stone hanko (判子) made for me! It came in a pretty gold box lined in yellow silk with a brand-new pot of shu-niku (朱肉). The stamp is a gorgeous burnt-orange stone and the shu-niku is even the good kind that smells like cheap lipstick! He dropped it off this weekend. It was great catching up, and now I can’t wait to paint something so I can use my new stamp!

I’ve had my own personal seal since I carved my first one for sumi-e class back at Kansai Gaidai. There are a few different types of seals, but the ones I use are for artistic purposes only. These types of seals originally came to Japan from China (like basically everything else…) and are also used in Korea as well. Essentially, they are the equivalent to the western signature, or ‘John Hancock,’ if you will.

The first kind of seal is called a 実印 (jitsu-in). A jitsu-in is officially registered, and is used for legal-type-things.. such as business contracts, marriage certificates, deeds to property, etc. As well as having to be totally unique, a jitsu-in must also abide by any number of stringent regulations that have been set by the local governing body. Many people keep them in vaults or other secret places, as the possibilities for identity theft would be endless. To have an officially registered inkan, you must apply at a local municipal office for a 印鑑登録証明書 or “certificate of seal registration.”

A 銀行印 (ginko-in) is used specifically for banking. Every bank has their own rules and regulations on how big your bank seal can be, but for the most part they contain a person’s full name. For foreigners, however, anything goes, apparently. My bank told me I could register either my signature or a ginko-in with them, but I decided to register a signature, since I figured it was way more secure than registering my stamp. I do have a stamp that would be a great ginko-in, and I do use it to receive parcels or mail which is the next type of seal I’ll explain, but I would never use it as a signature for banking. Yikes. Just seems like a bad idea to me.

A 認印 (mitome-in) is a kind of moderately formal seal for signing deliveries, work memos, bill payments, and not-so-high-profile functions. They aren’t really stored as carefully as ginko-in or jitsu-in, as they are used quite often. If any of you work in a Japanese school like I do, you probably see them laying around on people’s desks. According to wikipedia, the size is totally based on your seniority in relation to the other people who will be seeing your stamp. So if you are a new guy at the company, your stamp is going to have to be smaller than your bosses’.

Here’s what my equivalent of a mitome-in looks like. It comes in a small box with its own ink pad in it, and has my first name, 舞莉実都 in a crazy font. I actually had this made thinking I was going to use it like a bank seal, but ultimately decided against it. I use it instead of signing for packages or other mail. Other than that, it’s not like my fingerprints or a signature.

The last type of seal (and the kind I personally use the most) is called 雅号印 (gago-in), which roughly translates to ‘pen name.’ They are used by artists to sign AND decorate their work. As my sumi-e sensei would say, the stamp is the ‘spot of red’ that is absolutely necessary in the completion of one’s painting. They are mostly used for calligraphy and sumi-e, but appear in other media as well. The shape and size of gago-in can be totally freeform, as opposed to the strict legal and social guidelines that govern the other types of seals. More often than not, they are handmade by the artist. You can even get your own do-it-yourself hanko kit at a craft shop if you’d like to make one yourself! I made my own for sumi-e class back at Gaidai. I picked up the stone at a craft store and used a paperclip to carve my design. Which looks like this when stamped on a painting: When I carved this, I didn’t write 莉 with the top ‘grass’ radical but instead wrote 利 I guess it was an honest mistake. It was really difficult carving the negative space around the backwards characters (you have to make them as a mirror image on the stamp itself, otherwise it will stamp out backwards on your paper) that I was preoccupied with getting the ‘look’ right rather than the accuracy of the kanji.

Left: my hand-made gago-in for sumi-e class at Gaidai. Right: my mitome-in w/ case and ink pad.

Here’s the impression of my new hanko!

It doesn’t have the 都 that I used in my other two stamps, but it was a gift, so I’m not complaining! So, while it isn’t an official seal by any means, I will use it for paintings!

This time 4 years ago…

2010-09-11T08:34:00.001-04:00

I was going to Kyoto for the first time EVER!

Hard at work…

2010-09-07T05:44:00.001-04:00

…or hardly working! It’s the second week of the second semester and I have no classes scheduled…at all. Why? Because it’s English Week, of course, and I live in the land of logic! So… I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with myself… you know. Taking pictures of my desk, studying Japanese, listening to my ipod, reading “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” making small talk with the other teachers, etc. The best part is that I get to do it all in the glamorously air-conditioned teacher’s office. HOLLA! Ok. so I don’t goof around all day. I do make photocopies of English exam practice sheets for the teachers who are… observing the kids take the practice exams. I did get to watch one class, while the teacher was broadcasting the listening questions over the PA system (so it could go to multiple rooms). This is about as close to actual work that I’ve gotten. Ah well. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. Back to the grind next week!

American foods

2010-08-28T04:20:00.001-04:00

I had ample opportunity to sample the many native delicacies of the United States during my trip there this past month. Here are a few rare and exciting treats to tempt the palate:

Pizza at Milano’s

Sparkle raspberry cupcake at the Border’s cafe.

bacon cheese fries from the potato patch, which are only enough to vow to only eat them once in a great while as well as make one ask: HOW AM I STILL ALIVE AFTER EATING THOSE?!

home made devil’s food cupcakes with buttercream icing and rainbow seasoning.

So…um…I basically ate nothing but grease and cupcakes for an entire month. It was great!!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

flying in an airplane is safer than walking across the street.

2010-08-27T12:47:00.001-04:00

On July 28th, 2010, United Airlines flight 852 from Tokyo Narita (NRT) to San Francisco International (SFO) experienced a CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE approximately 20 minutes following takeoff. Right after the flight attendant said they would start the meal service, the right engine on the Boeing 777 exploded while we were in the air. The power went out. The plane dropped. I was pretty sure I was going to die.

Then we started to level out. The power came back on. We waited for the pilot to come over the loudspeaker… for what seemed like ages…. was actually more like 5 or 10 minutes.

The pilot said that a bearing inside the engine had broken off and hit the turbine, causing the right engine to fail. We were going to make an emergency landing back at Narita, but we were too heavy to land, so we would have to make a fuel dump. As long as the left engine held out, we would make it back to Narita safe and sound. Which thankfully, it did.

Once the plane landed at Narita, passengers were not allowed off of the plane, since there was fuel dripping out, it could have erupted into flames during landing or taxi, killing us all. They had to make a long safety check before ever pulling into the gate. Once at the gate, we waited even longer to be let off the plane, as the Japanese Immigration people had to decide just what to do with us once we were off. This was the most time-consuming part of the entire ordeal.

After a few hours, Immigration had decided to issue all of the foreign passport holders who had been making connecting flights, and/or had cancelled visas in Japan temporary visitor visas, valid for 90 days. Japanese passport holders went through immigration first, their departures being cancelled. I was in the short line for people with re-entry permits, my departure also being cancelled.

Then we picked up our bags and went out to the parking lot, where there were buses waiting to take us to the Hotel Prince Takanawa in Shinagawa – a good hour and 30 minutes away from Narita. Not a soul had mentioned anything about re-booking.

I hadn’t had any food or water since I’d left for the airport on the bus at 11:30 that morning (save for some pretzels on the airplane) and it was now close to 1:00 in the morning. I was hungry, thirsty, and ready to get the hell out of Japan, but this unforeseen turn of events had thrown me back in and caused further stress.

We arrived at the hotel – a swanky business-type place with rooms larger than the average Japanese business hotel (they were about the size of a normal American hotel room). There was nothing to eat… and wouldn’t be until 6:00 in the morning.

In the meantime, I’d contacted my dad and told him about the entire harrowing experience. I guess at some point between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM dad had called United and managed to get me on a plane to Dulles.

After breakfast at the hotel (which at the time seemed like the best thing I’d ever eaten) it was back on the bus to the airport. I felt really sorry for all of the 300-some people who had to wait in line to re-book their flights. Luckily I escaped the nightmare, but I still had to wait in line to check-in for my new flight. For some reason United wouldn’t let me carry on my bag. I relented and checked it.

I was on my way to DC and slept from about Alaska to Montana. When I noticed on the map the the plane was circling…we were avoiding something, which luckily was only bad weather. However, this new maneuver had cost us 30 minutes, which meant I was going to have to run through the airport to make it to my flight to Pittsburgh.

The line to go through immigration at Dulles was INSANELY LONG. Then, I was angry that I had to check my bag back at Narita, so after I had gone through immigration, I had to take the time to wait for my stupid suitcase to go through customs. I waited and waited. The time was getting closer for the flight to Pittsburgh to board. Past boarding time. It was almost time for takeoff. STILL NO BAG. I collapsed on the floor. I was crying and wailing and carrying on. Hyperventilating, even. Stupid United had almost killed me and now was going to make me miss my flight home by not putting my bag on the goddamn luggage carousel?! I had a total nervous breakdown. Right there. In the airport. The TSA people had to calm me down. One TSA woman was really nice to me, she brought me some water and told me that they would send me my bag once it got to Dulles (or even Pittsburgh) since it was ticketed properly. She just kept telling me to go to gate A2. Make sure you get to A2. All of the flights are delayed, so you have plenty of time to get to A2.

After going through security (which was ANOTHER long line that took FOREVER) at Dulles, I ran. I ran to the gate. I was crying and my chest was tight and I was probably hyperventilating, but I ran anyway. I ran as fast as I could. I’d never been to Dulles, so I had no idea where gate A2 was, but I ran there anyway.

I got to the gate. They had just started boarding. I didn’t miss my flight. I think I hugged the flight attendant who was working at the desk when he said they hadn’t left yet. I collapsed on the floor again. I was crying again. I was saying a lot of things that didn’t make sense to people who were asking me what was wrong. I was SO HAPPY that I didn’t miss my flight home.

I was a complete mess. A bundle of nerves. My hair was disgusting. I could barely walk. I probably should have been drugged and put in some kind of safe place where I couldn’t cry and carry on like I had been. Then we got to Pittsburgh. EVERY GATE WAS UNOCCUPIED EXCEPT THE GATE WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GO TO. I was FURIOUS, but I couldn’t do anything. I was too exhausted. I just laughed.

I stopped at the baggage claim to see if my bag had made it. It didn’t. So I went home.

My bag was sitting on the front porch at 8:00 AM the next morning.

ピッツバーグ

2010-07-28T00:19:00.004-04:00

back to the burgh, brb.

渋谷

2010-07-27T10:13:00.001-04:00

今日東京ちょっと買い物に行った。明日一ヶ月アメリカ帰るから、友達や家族の為良い御土産買いに行った。平日だから、人々少なかったし、渋谷の景色ぜんぜん違う。すごい人ごみ嫌いので、今日は超よかった。

スターバで、空いている席すごく見つかりやすい。この写真取れた。ほら! 誰もいない!

もちろんハチ公。めっちゃかわいくない?!

ハチイィ～♪

the last big hurrah

2010-07-26T00:08:00.001-04:00

It’s always sad when friends leave, but it’s good to know they will be going on to bigger and better things. Hardly anyone is permanent in this kind of job. It’s probably a good thing, though.

In any case, I’m not leaving yet, but it’s nice to have a good send-off for everyone :)

クール・ファウンテン！

2010-07-18T22:33:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, I found myself wandering around Tokyo and I found this cool fountain! I thought it so cool, in fact, that I thought it would be rad if I brought a friend there. Which is what I did yesterday with Lindsey!

Yay! We love the cool fountain! Especially when it’s 93 degrees outside!

We also made the keen observation that the particular part of Tokyo that the cool fountain is in had basically no people in it. For me at least, the best parts of Tokyo always seem to be the ones with no people in them.

Nevertheless! We made our way to Harajuku (easily one of the most crowded parts of Tokyo yesterday) for the LaForet grand bazaar! Woo! Since you can’t go in the front door of LaForet when they have sales, you have to go in the back door. Which we did. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as the winter sale – which I can only liken to shopping in a mosh pit.

There was a super pimped-out limo that seemed to be riding around the block aimlessly.

A trip to Harajuku is never complete without a ridiculously decadent crepe.

Awesome day, all thanks to the cool fountain.

東京タワー

2010-07-14T06:34:00.001-04:00

Tokyo tower is really freaking cool. It’s like the Eifel tower, but bigger, and redder, and in Tokyo!
I went there last weekend with Hiro and Mari :)
東京タワーとエッフェル塔の関係は何でしょ?

I think that seeing Tokyo from above really gives you a good grasp on just how BIG it actually is. Every time I see a view of Tokyo like this, I feel like it just goes on forever…Which It kind of does, until you get to Saitama.

Later on, we went to Shinjuku and checked out the massive bookstore… I kind of felt like I was back home at Border’s or something, there were so many books printed in English!

I guess I like the sense of anonymity that Tokyo gives me. Out here, everyone sees me. In Tokyo, I’m just another white girl who’s probably a tourist. Nobody really cares, except those scammers in Harajuku that hit me up for money for their fictional earthquake victims… I’m not sure if I’d ever want to live in the city though, I just don’t think I’m tough enough for the city, more or less able to deal with the constant barrage of people.
Gosh, I can hardly stand the students on the Ryomo line, I can’t even imagine having to deal with the salarymen on the Yamanote line every day. I suppose after a while you’d get used to it, just like anything, right? Right!

The longer I stay here, the more I get used to it, and the harder it is for me to go home. I know that when I visit home this summer, I’m going to go through some kind of crazy reverse culture shock. I usually do. I still have the odd bout of culture shock here in Japan every now and again, where little things annoy me and stress me out, but I still like it here. I have a job, nice friends, a safe place to live, and plenty of cool stuff to do and see, it doesn’t hurt that I like Japanese food, either. Yep.. things are great :) I guess all I need now is a boyfriend, right? Riiiight…..

Traveling Music

2010-07-08T08:04:00.001-04:00

I didn’t think I was going to like this song, mostly because I looked at the title before listening to it. “How typical,” I thought, “of me to like a song with ‘Japan’ in the title.” Nevertheless, surprise, surprise, I actually do. I think my favorite time to listen to it is on the train in the morning going to work. Somehow the rhythm just fits with that of the train. Augh, now I guess I’m just being sentimental. I’ll shut up now.

七夕

2010-07-07T08:07:00.001-04:00

I went to the Tanabata festival at Orihime shrine this evening. I almost didn’t think it was going to happen because of all the rain we had today. I was going to wear my yukata, but after about 40 mintues of futile obi tying, I eventually gave up and wore a one-piece and leggings. I got there late, so I didn’t get to write my wish and hang it on the bamboo, but I still made a wish anyway!

I went to Tanabata last year, too. I guess I just like this festival because it’s cute. I also made the realization during the past year or so that Orihime is a weaving goddess and because this was at one time the textile center of Japan (see Sunday's post), naturally there would be a shrine to a weaving goddess here! I wonder if there are any shrines to Hikoboshi…

I know for a fact that a map of his constellation is on a bridge in 枚方市 (Hirakata City) in Osaka. Orihime’s is on the other side (which I unfortunately cannot locate the photo of). Also, from Keihan Hirakata-shi station, you can take the Orhime and Hikoboshi lines to… ooh… who knows where!? I never had any good reason to ride them, but I did sincerely like the names. The trains are even pink and blue! Cute!
But, I digress. Back to Ashikaga.They shut off all the lights at about 8:00. Unfortunately, once again, it was too cloudy to see the stars. Oh well. Probably wouldn’t be able to see them anyway, with all the lights from town on, too. The luminaries on the steps were really pretty. Glad my cell phone has a night camera setting!

Saturday

2010-07-04T03:13:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I went to a flea market in Kiryu at the Tenmangu with some friends. We meandered around for a while, and it was really cool just looking at all the old stuff that people accumulate. I didn’t really buy anything, though. I saw a used yukata that I liked, but it had a stain on the sleeve that probably wasn’t going to come out anytime soon, and besides, when do I ever get a chance to wear yukata?! Well, I did yesterday! I FINALLY had a chance to wear my yukata. Yay!

I’m the blonde one to the right, with the purple obi. I think my hands look huge in this picture, probably because my sleeves are a little short. I don’t have geta because they’re too short for my feet, so I wore a pair of flats instead. I think that was the big thing most people remarked on.

Old-fashioned kaki-gori machine. Looks like it was going for about $250.

This part of Japan was historically the textile center of the country. The textile factories are still in Kiryu, but they don’t really use them anymore. Now they have them around for their cool, old architecture. Also, there are all kinds of references (names of festivals, shrines, etc.) to Orihime, the weaving goddess, as well as the JR Ryomo (両毛) line, with the character 毛, which means hair or fur, but in this case specifically they used it to refer to the thread produced here.
We also went to a cool old-style restaurant called “Basho” (芭蕉) for lunch. The building itself was easily over a hundred years old, complete with thatched roof, clay walls. and uneven stone floor. There are all kinds of horse-motif decorations in the place. It’s a little dark but it’s cool even on a hot day. The tables each have their own unique noisemakers to call for the wait staff. We had a little brass gong. The booth next to ours had a mini brass temple bell, and another had a wooden windchime. Had the house curry and a salad, which were fantastic.

Its funny how you can go to a place every day and know so little about it. Kiryu has plenty of information and things to promote tourism, as well as tons of stuff to do and see. I’m glad I have nice friends to show me around!

Special Advertising Section

2010-06-25T07:00:00.001-04:00

That’s right. I’m in the brochure!
With my students! In my classroom! Looking like a real teacher!
I even put those nice posters up on the wall.

if you come to our school, we have awesome Bridget-sensei to teach you English. hehe.

お茶会

2010-06-20T08:20:00.002-04:00

I went to an ocha-kai today in Kiryu! I’d never been to a tea ceremony before, so I was really happy to have the chance to go! There are so many small details in a tea ceremony, like the color, shape and design of the serving vessels, the type of sweets that you’re served, even the way the tokonoma is outfitted with a scroll and a piece of ikebana, that it’s almost overwhelming to a beginner. I’m serious! It’s hard to take in all of this stuff on the first time!! It was a really cool experience though, and I would really like to go to one again, now that I know a little more about it.
On a separate note, I felt severely underdressed. I SHOULD have worn my yukata, but I am unfortunately not able to put it on (in a decent manner) by myself. Had I known this was a yukata-appropriate occasion, I would have worn it.

It would have matched really well with all the purple hydrangeas and irises, too. Bummer. One day I’ll get to wear it! One day!!!

夏の始まり　Beginning of Summer

2010-06-19T05:16:00.001-04:00

It’s the beginning of summer! You can totally tell because the hydrangeas are coming out in full pink, blue and purple force, and the rainy season has started. There’s also some kind of old tradition about eating unagi around this time of year. Its supposed to keep you healthy for the duration of the summer or something. I went to dinner with one of the teachers from one of my old schools last night for this unagi tradition. If it’s a tradition that involves eating delicious foods, I’m all for it.
The past couple of weeks were pretty nice. There is a row of azalea bushes behind my apartment and I really enjoy the fact that they are highlighter pink. I try to keep my back windows open so I can enjoy them while they are blooming. I had a visitor as well… I didn’t even realize that there were geckos in Japan until I saw this little dude crawling up the screen.

Last weekend I played the last show with Z and the Vicelords of Valhalla at Gokurakuya. I’ll be very sad when they are gone. However, for foreigners in Japan, existence is extremely transient. So many people are here one day and gone the next. I think that Japan intends to keep it that way… which sucks. What about the people who want to stay? What about the fact that the population is declining ever so steadily? One day, this country isn’t going to have anyone left. However, that day is not to-day, and I plan to make the most of my time here, without timelines or deadlines for leaving. People ask me: “How long will you be in Japan?” I always like to answer '”Indefinitely” or “well.. I like it here, so I’m not sure.” I like to think that it makes people a bit nervous and probably slightly uncomfortable. It sure doesn’t make me feel very welcome to have someone asking me when I’m going to leave.

日光 NIKKO DAY TRIP
I went to Nikko with Lindsey and Shin-chan and gave them the guided tour (you know, since I am a native Tochigi-an and all). Nikko is beautiful, but man… there are so many people and ridiculous pitches for o-mamori that it sometimes gets to you after a while. It was still fun and AWESOME to hang out with two of my most awesomest friends from Gaidai!

蛍 LIGHTNING BUGS
On Tuesday, I went to a firefly festival up in the hills AND to a new Indian place here in town for dinner. The fireflies were SO cool… and one of the signs that summer is here! I wish I could have taken photos, but it was so dark, my camera definitely wouldn’t have been able to capture anything. Anyway, just imagine small greenish yellow flickering dots against a pitch black background of trees…or who knows? I couldn’t really see because it was so dark. Hundreds of them. It was probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. I know we have lightning bugs back home in Pittsburgh, and it made me homesick, but I know they’ll be out when I get home this summer!

梅雨 RAINY SEASON
I got completely drenched going to school I mean.. like.. I brought extra clothes to get changed at school, because I looked out my window and saw that the rain was just not planning to let up any time soon. I sincerely loathe the rainy season and the fact that I nevertheless must commute to work in inclement weather. Subsequently, I ordered some rain boots from Rakuten… hopefully I will get them before the end of the rainy season. I do have a raincoat…. and of course a nice big umbrella, but a torrential downpour is a torrential downpour, if you know what I mean.

Stay dry.
Love,
Bridget Beaver

水族館

2010-06-07T09:24:00.001-04:00

I went to the Sunshine City Aquarium yesterday with Lindsey and Shin-chan. It was a nice way to get out of town and see some awesome crazy people from Gaidai. They had these super adorable yellow and white eels… which are apparently commonly called Splendid Garden Eels. They are not so common as they are adorable!! Unfortunately, this aquarium was seriously lacking in Deep Sea Fangly Fish, as most aquariums do. They had two big マンボウfish! We even named them. Alex Trebek and Tiger Woods. Yes. We are creative. Going to see fish always puts me in a good mood.

It’s so funny. When you go to an aquarium in the U.S., people talk about the beautiful fish. When you go to an aquarium in Japan, you can always hear at least a few people saying that the fish look tasty. Sashimi tabehodai, anyone?

everybody gets knocked down

2010-06-05T06:29:00.001-04:00

Last week… after hearing so so so many supportive things from so so so many people… people I know, people I’ve never met, people I care about and vice versa, SO many people…. I kind of don’t know where to start now.

I guess I should start with “Thank you” because that’s as good a way to start as anything, right?

So.

Thank you.

I graded midterms last week and I was really kind of shocked as to how many kids outright failed the test. I remember how I felt in high school when I got a bad grade on a Spanish exam. I remember how I felt in college when I got a C on a Japanese test. I remember every freaking time I’ve taken the JLPT and gotten that stupid 57% score. I even did fairly well on these tests and I still felt so stupid. I can only imagine how my students felt after they got their tests back. I guess I’m just too hard on myself. I hope they weren’t too hard on themselves.
I tend to internalize these kinds of things, like test scores and things that other people tell me…for example: “Oh.. Japanese is so difficult” “I see that you’re only able to speak at about a 6th grader’s level.” And so on and so forth. This compounds itself onto the stress of daily life for a foreign person in a foreign place, being away from home, dealing with things 13 hours away… and I suddenly give way and break down. I don’t sleep well. I don’t eat right. I can’t exercise or sit still to read a book. I procrastinate doing necessary daily life tasks (laundry, taking out the trash, cleaning this tiny apartment) and wallow in filth for what feels like an eternity until the day I can breathe and snap back into it, which just happened to be today. I’m celebrating it by getting ice cream.

Today I was able to do my laundry and take out the trash and clean the apartment and wash away the stench of failure. The cleanliness is symbolic to me in this way (please don’t call me crazy, we all have our quirks).

It could have been a lot worse. I could have been stranded somewhere, literally, no food, no water... no roof over my head and no place to go. It could have been A LOT worse.

I have it pretty damn good. I’m lucky.

So. Thank you.

Let’s try this again, shall we?

Giving up.

2010-05-29T09:58:00.001-04:00

I think that Miyazaki Toten said it best:

“When a person is where he thinks he ought to be, and cannot grasp what he thinks he ought to be able to grasp, he is overcome with misery and unspeakable pain.”

I have studied Japanese for almost 10 years now, plus have a bachelor’s degree in it… and I still can’t pass the JLPT level 2 test?

It’s time to give up and go home. Maybe I can get a part-time job or something. As for Japan and Japanese… well… I’m done. I guess it was fun while it lasted.

What did your sky look like today?

2010-05-27T04:39:00.001-04:00

This is what mine looked like!

It’s rainy.

2010-05-23T03:02:00.001-04:00

It’s rainy today, and I had school yesterday, and I’ll have it again tomorrow.
I found this while looking through my old photos from Gaidai.
御堂筋線懐かしいな～。

長瀞

2010-05-17T03:18:00.001-04:00

Nagatoro is a little off the beaten track in Saitama prefecture. I went there this weekend on Kazu’s suggestion, and I was not disappointed!! There are beautiful mountains and rock formations with a river running through them. The weather was perfect and my only regret is that I went alone. It’s actually not far away, but since I don’t have a car, it took a little over an hour to get there by train. There are 21 stations between Hanyu and Nagatoro! Once I got there I had a climb around on the rocks, made a new friend, took a nap. It was a really nice day.

This dude had the right idea!!

This is my new friend. His name is Syun. He is 3 years old and likes trains and the color blue. I was just sitting around enjoying the scenery when he came over and said コンニチワ (hello) and did this funky dance for me. He said 目がきれいだよ (you have pretty eyes) and 好きだよ (I like you), and I pretty much was smitten. Yep. Why can’t all guys stay this sweet when they grow up? His parents were also sweet and demanded that photos be taken.

SO CUTE!!

wild wisteria （藤の花）

Three stars, don’t you think?

★ ★ ★

please. stop. staring. at. me.

2010-05-10T06:34:00.001-04:00

はい。アンケート読めますよ。はい。日本語しゃべれるよ。

珍しいことを解って、じろじろ見ないでね。

そういうけど、よく間違います!

いや～

やっぱ、外国語を習うことは大変!

Golden Week

2010-05-06T10:08:00.001-04:00

Well, for those of you who don’t know, golden week is when Japan has three big holidays right in a row. This means that everyone and their brother must go and travel somewhere over the extended weekend. It’s the busiest travel time of the year next to New Year’s. From my own personal experience I have learned to not do any serious sightseeing during golden week…as the crowds simply make it… un-enjoyable.

I did, however, manage to have a nice break!

I went to the National Art Center in Roppongi to see the Artist File 2010 exhibition. As usual, the National Art Center managed to bring in another top-notch exhibition. I really enjoyed experiencing the varying perspectives of each artist through their works. In the case of this show, some notable indivduals were Naoyo Fukuda and her embroidered books and business cards, Takashi Ishida’s Moving Picture and Still Picture, and the surreal, paint-laden canvasses of Toru Kuwakubo. Yep. It was a good art show.

Then! Lindsey came to Ashikaga!! Wooohoo!! We had kimchi-yakisoba and french toast and had a FANTASTIC time! I played the music festival at Banna-ji, which went all right. I was actually nervous (which I usually am not) and I thought I could have played better, but my singing was adequate. I really appreciated having the chance to participate in the event, and I am thankful to all of my wonderful friends who made it out to the festival. THANK YOU! (I’m sorry I didn’t play my best for you though.)

Then! There was a kitty! On my back step!

Kitty….. Since it was about 90 some degrees outside and I felt quite bad for it, so I gave him some water and named him Sergeant Pepper. Yep. Well.. “Sergeant” only because the positions of “Chairman” and “General” are currently occupied.

So… yeah. Good golden week. Art, music… cats? Oh! And a fantastic balcony-barbeque that happened yesterday (though I ducked out early, since I wasn’t feeling well). Yes. Definitely a good golden week.

大日尊野外ステージ音楽祭

2010-05-01T02:16:00.001-04:00

I have a little gig on may 4th at Banna-ji in Ashikaga. My set starts at 11:55 AM. If you have some spare time on your hands this golden week, please drop by! There will be a lot of talented musicians playing at the festival!

- 大泉太鼓 10:00 -10:45
- Red Hibiscus 11:00 - 11:45
★ Bridget Beaver 11:55 - 12:10
- 黎明座 12:30 - 1:15
- Frank Kaneko and the country western boys 1:30-2:15
- The Vicelords of Valhalla 2:30 - 3:15
- Parque Viente 3:30 - 4:15

Hope to see you there!

★Listen to my music on Purevolume

★Join the event group on Facebook

お台場

2010-04-30T08:34:00.002-04:00

Odaiba is so freaking cool!! I want to go back!! ASAP!! I went on a little adventure there with my nametwin last weekend. The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS. A perfect azure sky!! Did some shopping, some hanging around, rode the little train around, checked out the Fuji Terebi building. We also went to Harajuku and went to a fantastic Thai restaurant there that I have a feeling I’ll be heading back to at some point in the future. Here’s some photos from our adventure!!

I really wanted to see the Fuji Television building up-close and personal after having seen it on ‘Mezamashi Terebi’ about a billion times… and I know Mezamashii TV isn’t a real news show… but it’s cute and I like it. SO THERE. Anyhow, the building was designed by one of my absolute favorites, Tange Kenzo. The architect of both the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office buildings (the Tocho, where I went last year) and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (where I went 4 years ago).
Fuji Terebi is also the station that broadcasted the のだめカンタービレdrama, which I also love to pieces (I saw the finale this past weekend!). So, while I was there, I bought Nodame’s bag!!! How cool is that?! Yaaay Nodame bag!!

The rainbow bridge makes for a really spectacular view. I guess I just never realized how big it actually was until going to Odaiba. I want to go back and see it at night!!
This photograph is just a jumble of icons… in the background you can see Tokyo tower… then the rainbow bridge.. and then a miniature… Statue of Liberty?!!?!?!?! I just don’t understand Japan’s fascination with that statue. It’s great and everything…. but like... did they really NEED a minature replica in Odaiba? I personally don’t think so.

I’ll be back, Odaiba!!

Sunset

2010-04-17T06:12:00.001-04:00

This is one of my favorite views of Kyoto. When I was going to Gaidai, I would take the train to Sanjo Keihan and walk across the bridge and study in the basement at the Starbucks that’s right by the river there. I’d come after class or sometimes if I wanted to get away from my host family for the evening and study for an exam or write or something. This image of crossing the bridge at sunset is always going to be a fond memory for me, despite it being so mundane.

sunny days

2010-04-13T09:52:00.001-04:00

It was a really gorgeous day this past Sunday, and I took this photo of my plants enjoying the sunlight. Photosynthesis, baby!

I had my first day of classes with my high school students today, and it went much better than I had expected it would, and that makes me very happy.

About 2 years ago, I contributed to a College Prowler guidebook for study abroad. At the time, I was working at the Penn State Office of International Programs a couple of days a week as a Peer Advisor. I was (and still am) a big advocate of studying abroad. In any case, College Prowler finally got around to publishing the stuff I wrote on Japan for the guidebook. To be absolutely honest, the sections on “Dining” “Nightlife” and “Guys and Girls” kind of sucked for me to write, since I didn’t really do a whole lot of those things because I was living with a host family. When you’re reading it… please skip over those sections, and remember, it’s heavily edited! I got paid for writing it (not much, but like.. whatevs.) So I guess I’m a real writer now. I also had a lot of help from people from Gaidai who helped me out with questionnaires, and I want to publicly thank ALL of you! Thank you!!! Holla! So, without further ado: The College Prowler Ultimate Guide to Study Abroad: Osaka, Japan.

Photosynthesis! For the wolf!

伊香保

2010-04-11T09:00:00.002-04:00

Ikaho is a little village in Gunma, the next prefecture over from where I live. It’s about an hour’s drive from here and up in the mountains!! I went there this past Wednesday with Kazu and Miki on a little road trip to see the mountains (duh) the Takehisa Yumeji museum, the Chin-po-kan (which was unfortunately closed) and the Venus museum (which was kind of entertaining, but unfortunately there was a creepy dude there…)

So, to get to this little lake, we drove up these super narrow and windy roads up these huuuge mountains. The best part was the melody road, when we drove over the bumps on the pavement, the vibrations made a song!! So cool! On our way back, Miki swerved into the opposite lane to see if it worked the same backwards, but it didn’t. I wish they would have had the melody road both ways!! So cool!!

After checking out the absolutely SPECTACULAR view, we went back down into the little town and had some udon & soba before going to the Takehisa Yumeji museum. I don’t know if the guys enjoyed the museum as much as I did. I first found out about Takehisa when I was studying at Kansai Gaidai. I saw some of his prints at a shop in Kyoto and I ended up getting postcards to send back home. He was kind of a painting renegade, as he basically did his own thing, yet still incorporated some traditional techniques. He also was a printmaker (he designed some really fantastic prints for yukata fabric) and commercial artist (like.. newspaper illustrations) as well. In any case, I like his style, despite the fact that most of the women he paints all have really sad looks on their faces. Sad, but beautiful.

Woman w/ black cat © Takehisa Yumeji

So after that, we tried to go to the chin-po-kan… but it was closed !! >.< We drove down the hill for a while, and we came across a similar (but definitely not the same) kind of museum… and we ended up going in. It was interesting, but I guess the chin-po-kan would have involved more laughing. We came back to town after that and went to see the cherry blossoms (photos from which are in my previous entry), got some foods, and then hit up an izakaya to end the day.
Anyway. I had a great time. Great views, gorgeous art, and with good people. As per the usual, more photos are on the Facebook!

お花見に行きま～す！

2010-04-08T07:44:00.001-04:00

I take back all the flack I gave hanami last week. So gorgeous, and always better in the lamplight. I’ll write about our trip to Ikaho in my next post. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and today I woke up an hour before I actually needed to, which didn’t really help me out much. Annnyhow. Later on, then.

根津美術館

2010-04-05T10:01:00.001-04:00

Some shots of the garden at the Nezu Museum, where I went last Wednesday. It’s hard to believe this place is smack dab in the middle of Tokyo. While meandering the garden, there were times I totally forgot that I was even in Tokyo… it felt like I was back in Kyoto. Really. It was spooky, almost. There are a bunch of windy stepping-stone paths that lead down into a small ravine that the garden itself covers. It there are 4 teahouses and a number of buddhist statues and architectural pieces in the garden that are nice little surprises for you as you’re making your way on the paths. There’s also someone’s grave… whose I’m not sure… and a small shrine in the garden as well.

The museum itself is a gorgeous ultra-modern building, which is a really nice contrast to the ancient Chinese bronzes and other artifacts inside. I went to see an exhibition of Chinese ink landscapes. Some were really inspiring, as I’ve had some trouble with my own ink painting lately. For more information, check out the museum’s homepage: http://www.nezu-muse.or.jp

¡Dios mio!

2010-04-03T08:01:00.001-04:00

Chili bean shiba needs to work on his accent! Also… the English annotations are a little off. Here’s the English one with jelly bean shiba:

Jelly bean shiba needs to work on his plurals and posessives.

Tora bean shiba is my personal favorite because he speaks Kansai-ben! I love how the lady flips out at him.

MAMESHIBA ♥ !!!

It’s that time of year again.

2010-04-03T04:13:00.001-04:00

上野公園

I like cherry blossoms, and spending quality time with friends, but I don’t like:

the crowds
sitting on cold asphalt for… hours.
not wearing shoes on the cold blue tarp sitting on cold asphalt.
the immense amounts of garbage.
the creepy people that stalk me around Ueno park… telling me they just want to practice their English and “make friends” (pshhh yeah right).

In any case, I prefer to enjoy the trees on my own terms.

The best Hanami I’ve ever been to? It’s a tie between walking the Tetsugaku no Michi (哲学の道) and Yozakura at Kiyomizudera (清水寺夜桜).

哲学の道清水寺夜桜

Well, and then there was that first-ever hanami I went to in Osaka-jo Koen… it was cold, the trees weren’t totally in bloom, we stole a tarp from some people that hadn’t arrived yet, and we met a homeless fellow who thought he was God. He said I was going to go to Buddhist heaven. At least he was nice and not that creepy!

大阪城公園

Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but maybe I’m just over traditional-style hanami.

富士宮

2010-03-30T03:41:00.001-04:00

Fujinomiya is a little town at the base of Mt. Fuji. I happen to be lucky enough to have a friend who lives there, so I went out for a nice little visit this past weekend. You see, I was pretty excited, #1, because I hadn’t seen my friend since I’d left Kansai Gaidai, and #2, you can get a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji from his apartment!! Well…

Nevertheless, Fujinomiya has other things to offer besides ample cloud cover for the biggest mountain in Japan. Like what, you ask? Fujinomiya is actually famous for Yakisoba. You can even take a bus there from Tokyo called the “Yakisoba Express.” We went to a place in the middle of town that had a yakisoba shrine (so cute) in front of it. Then you can drink Fuji water to wash it all down. The water in this area around Fuji is super clean, so you can drink it straight from the springs. There was a little fountain of it right in front of the yakisoba joint. Needless to say, the yakisoba was fantastic.

After yakisoba, we walked across the street to check out the big shrine… but it unfortunately started to rain a cold, cold, rain.

Oh nooo. So we decided to head back to the apartment, since walking around in the cold rain is no fun. After a couple of hours, the rain had subsided and we decided to venture out again. This time, we went to Shiraito Falls (白糸滝, literally, “white thread” falls). After being so disappointed by that stupid volcano, I really enjoyed the waterfalls. It was absolutely beautiful. Despite the absence of Fuji, I had a great time. I’ll be back. I don’t think that Mt. Fuji is going anywhere anytime soon. In addition to the Shiraito Falls, we also saw the legendary Otodome Falls (音止滝, the story of which I’ll save for another post) and had wasabi-flavored ice cream (!!!). I’ll end the written portion of this post here, so you can enjoy the photos.

Japan – The Strange Country (video)

2010-03-26T00:06:00.001-04:00

Japan - The Strange Country (Japanese ver.) from Kenichi on Vimeo.

Found this today. Great design & provocative message. Personally, I think the reason so many people are killing themselves is because they work too much and aren’t having enough sex. That’s just my opinion, though. I’m no sociologist.

Here is a link to the English version.

ビーズ！

2010-03-25T08:47:00.001-04:00

Last weekend, Lindsey and I went to Asakusabashi, where all the awesome bead stores are!! We spent the most part of our Sunday hunting around for beads and beading accessories… I mean like… we spent HOURS in these places. It’s easy to, since there are so many miniscule bits and pieces to peruse. So I ended up with these:

“Recipes” (otherwise known as “instructions”), beads, and metal parts to make my own lovely earrings! The two big name-brand stores in the neighborhood are Parts Club and Kiwa Seisakujo. There are also a plethora of other stores that have millions of strands of freshwater pearls, glass beads, swarovski crystals, natural stone beads, etcetera in every shape, size and color imaginable. It’s really a cool place if you are into making jewelry or being crafty, like me. The cool thing about Parts Club & Kiwa, is that they have project ideas! It’s cool for people like me, who may not be skilled jewelry artisans. You can get your “recipes” and choose the color metal you like and the colors of your beads or even change the design as you see fit. So, I got directions on how to make these awesome star earrings: I think they turned out pretty good, don’t you?! Now I want to design my own earrings and go back and get parts for them!!

Anyhow, to get to Asakusabashi, we had to go through Akihabara, which always kind of overwhelms and/or frightens me, mostly because there are so many crazy/sketchy people around. However, I remembered that there was a really awesome okonomiyaki restaurant there that I had seen on TV or something and wanted to check out. So, being the good Kansai-bred girls that we are, we did! We decided on the mixed seafood and the cheese (yes, that’s right, cheese) okonomiyaki. Absolutely spectacular. Omg. We were in heaven. Akihabara isn’t so scary after all. How about you guys? Do you think Akihabara is a little scary? Do you like to make cool stuff too? Would you try a cheese okonomiyaki??

The biggest dog in Japan

2010-03-19T10:15:00.001-04:00

Ok, ok, not really, but I wonder how many tatami mats a St. Bernard would span, anyway? That dog is bigger than my entire apartment. I took this photo on a trip to Uji (宇治) with Kimm during the spring of ‘07. I miss all the dog-watching you can do in Kyoto. Here… not so much.

週末＝東京

2010-03-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to get out of town on the weekends. I had a good reason to go to Tokyo this past weekend; seeing the Vicelords of Valhalla play a nice gig in Ikebukuro. I also got to see my Gaidai compadre, Lindsey, which was super awesome!!! On Sunday I went to Shibuya and checked out the Tamara de Lempicka Exhibition at Bunkamura and got my nails done at Shibuya 109. I took some photos of last weekend’s exploits, and figured I should post them up here, since I haven’t posted anything interesting in quite some time, as I’ve been busy wrapping up this school year and trying to get the next one started up… so. At least, enjoy the photos!

Lindsey and I went to a restaurant called the “Milky Way” where everything was Zodiac themed, including the parfaits. It’s super cute. We both got the Aquarius (水瓶座) parfait… A. because it’s sweet potato/pumpkin flavored AND because we’re both Aquarius…ses.
Yaaay parfaits!!

たこ - Taco Doria. deliciously ironic.

Also, we both got the “Tako - Taco Doria” which was fantastic, since it did not only include tortilla chips, ground beef, and salsa… but also, ironically, octopus. We really really hoped they were sincerely being ironic. After our meal, we went to the performance. Well done, as usual! I had to be the mic stand for the last song because it was broken. On Sunday, after going to see the EXCELLENT exhibiton of Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings and sketches (as well as portraits of the artist)… I decided to be frivolous and get my nails done at Shibuya 109. I went with a slightly more gaudy French manicure.. complete with sliver glitter lining the white tips and rhinestones glued on my middle fingers. Getting my nails done is a nice stress reliever, and surprisingly, even in Shibuya, was affordable. My students went nuts and were like: OMG YOU HAVE GLITTER NAILS WITH RHINESTONES. Yep. I want to go back and go get some crazy go nuts nails at some point… although it’s a pain to really do anything with crazy go nuts nails… like wash the dishes or play the guitar…. At any rate.. they still look pretty good considering it’s already Wednesday evening. The rhinestones fell off.. but no chips yet. Woohoo!

Anyhow. Tomorrow is our graduation ceremony. I still somehow have lessons next week.. but just for 5th & 3rd grade…and then our closing ceremony. I can’t believe this year is already over. It went so fast!!

Until next time!

Presents!

2010-03-14T08:51:00.001-04:00

I have to say, last week got started on the wrong foot. It really did. You can read in my previous post that Monday was a bad day… those lovely pink flowers and a surprise special guest visitor to my humble abode (!!!) made things a lot better! Then, I was ill on Tuesday, thanks to my 花粉症 (pollen allergies), and after taking my temperature, my school nurse sent me home. Then there was the weather, it couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to be spring or winter… and on Wednesday morning, I opened up my door and found a big slushy, snowy mess outside my door that I had the pleasure of biking to school in….

Then! Thursday, things started to look good! The sun finally came out and decided to let us start spring! I also had my last classes with my 3rd and 6th grade at one of my schools. My 3-1 class made a really sweet book of thank-you messages for me. Here are a few of them, and my poor attempts at translation:

To Bridget Sensei: Bridget sensei, you taught us English on Thursdays!! Thanks to you I understood English!! Thank you!!
(I really liked the big red exclamation marks in this one)

Bridget Sensei, thank you for teaching us lots of English every week. The games were fun. I won’t forget what you taught me.

To Bridget Sensei: Than you very much for teaching us English. I couldn’t do English every day, but (I can’t read the rest…this kid doesn’t have the best handwriting.. and it seems like they had a lot to say and not enough space to write it. Can someone help me out?)

Then, I got this beautiful card from one of my 6th graders who studies English outside of her once a week lessons at school with me. This is far far far beyond the level of her peers and I am so proud to post this up on my blog:

So… besides these lovely letters, my favorite groundskeeper/personal mechanic gave me some sweet roasted chestnuts (complete with directions on how to crack them open with your thumbnails) and a couple of pots of gorgeous violas (I just hope I don’t kill them… I’m quite skilled at killing plants).

All in all, despite crappy days at work, 花粉症, and slushy wet weather, I think I had a pretty stand-up week, don’t you? I even had a really sweet weekend hanging out in Tokyo, photos of which I’ll save for my next post! So, until then!

ピンク

2010-03-08T04:19:00.001-05:00

I had another bad Monday today. But! I saw these gorgeous pink flowers on my way out the door today. I didn’t even notice these walking into school, but right in front of the teacher’s genkan, there is a great big bush blooming with these lovely flowers. Does anyone know what they’re called?

蘭

2010-03-06T07:47:00.001-05:00

An orchid caught in the wind.

一期一会

Hello 2012 / Goodbye 2011

2011 The Year in Review

The particle 「 に 」

The Particle 「 を 」

kimono culture

Japanese Apps for Android

弘法さん

誕生日おめでとう～♬♪♫♬♪

Using Google 日本語入力

Lily of the valley

天橋立

諸寄

Reverse Culture Shock

new look

The Return Flight

Earthquake Update!

大地震

茶の湯

“[tea ceremony] is an attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

新見方

hina matsuri mystery tour

プリティーお弁当 #5 and #6!

transports

プリティーお弁当 #4!

予餞会

梅番茶

ハッピー♡バレンタイン

Bannaji snow

キムチ焼きそば！

bean-throwing!

梅が咲いてますよ～

東京の上に

winter break highlights

あけ☆おめ！！（ビーバーいとこだちより）

メリー☆クリスマス

肉じゃが！

日本語能力試験

日本語総まとめ問題集 [2級文法編] and日本語総まとめ問題集 [2級漢字編]

mmm…クリーム シチュー...

渡良瀬渓谷と草木ダム

プリティーお弁当 #3!

The L.L.

till we meet again, cupcake.

カ。。。カ。。。カワイイ～♪

プリティーお弁当 #2!

台風でディズニ－!!

プリティーお弁当！

October

織姫山 recording session

東京道路

二月堂で絶景

9.30.06 奈良

If you don’t move, they can’t see you.

New 判子!

This time 4 years ago…

Hard at work…

American foods

flying in an airplane is safer than walking across the street.

ピッツバーグ

渋谷

the last big hurrah

クール・ファウンテン！

東京タワー

Traveling Music

七夕

Saturday

Special Advertising Section

お茶会

夏の始まり Beginning of Summer

水族館

everybody gets knocked down

Giving up.

What did your sky look like today?

It’s rainy.

長瀞

please. stop. staring. at. me.

Golden Week

大日尊野外ステージ音楽祭

お台場

The particle 「　に　」

The Particle 「　を　」

mmm…クリームシチュー...

夏の始まり　Beginning of Summer