Japan Week 2

(8/13) Thursday- Eric headed to work assuming it would be a normal day but upon arrival he was told to take today off and to take a half day tomorrow because there is virtually no one in the office due to Obon! YAY! Today we walked to town and explored for a few hours. We found a farmers market with lots of fresh locally grown produce and tons of fish. We discovered several little shops along the way, including a honka store that we will attempt when our Japanese improves a little. Honka are stamps and everyone is required to have one to use at the bank. After you choose your stamp (usually initials in Kanji) you must register it with the government. Eric already has a Honka but they made it in English for him, so we are trying to find one in Kanji for both of us. We went grocery shopping again, and today it was so much more familiar and easy to navigate!

(8/14) Friday- Today was a great day for skype business, I got to talk to my Mom, and Patti and Glenn and Rachel!! Today Eric only had to work a half day so after lunch we walked to Ajigasawa Station and caught a bus to Kizurkudi which is about a 30 min drive, where our new friend Hal lives. Kizurkudi is one of 5 small towns that merged into Tsugaru City as their populations shrunk well below the cut off for a city. We went with Hal to the Jusco, our nearest shopping mall. The mall has a wide array of stores from the typical books, clothes and various textiles to a giant grocery store, a Daiso (105 Yen/ $1 store) and a bowling alley, a movie theatre and McDonalds! We went and got some French Fries at McDonalds ☺! The menu seems very similar to those at home, with a few variations, poached eggs included on most hamburgers for example. The Daiso was very interesting… imagine a dollar store the size of Target, filled with very useful things. It wasn’t like the dollar stores at home at all… we spent 3000 Yen! Also near the mall, is a home store (home depot meets wal-mart) and an electronics store. We did lots of shopping and spruced up our new house quite a bit!
This weekend is also a very significant weekend in Ajigasawa! There is a 3-day festival that only happens once every 4 years; however, we have no clue what it’s for! Every time we try to ask, people respond in broken English that it only happens every 4 years. So we are excited to celebrate whatever it is we are celebrating with the rest of the town. We think it must be pretty significant because it is apparently always the weekend of Obon and there are several extra cops around, even up near our house. We had planned on coming back for the festival with Hal after running errands but when we got back at 6pm the festival was clearly over and entirely cleaned up. We later found a poster for the festival (also no explanation of the purpose of the festival) and learned that it occurs in the morning. We went to a ramen house for dinner and had large bowls of delicious ramen for only 650 yen! We also taught Hal how to play Phase-10 which was a lot fun and now we have someone to play our favorite game with!

(8/15) Saturday- This morning we heard the normal 7:00 town bell, and at 9:00 we heard 5 gun shots to start the parade. After chatting with friends from home (we really really love skype!) we headed down to the festival. We saw 4 floats but aren’t sure if there were more because the parade route was very strange and appears to have gone down 2 parallel streets simultaneously. The floats were all of Samurai and there were small groups of young children in cute costumes dancing in front of the floats. We are starting to think that the festival may have something to do with the Samurai who founded/protected Ajigasawa. Having just been to Techi Nebuta, the parade seemed very small but we were also impressed by our little town for putting on such a cute parade!
Eric had the brilliant idea of a beach picnic while we watching the parade and enjoying such beautiful weather so we walked to the grocery store and bought lunch and had a picnic on the beach. It was wonderful! The rest of the day was spent cleaning and organizing and starting our balcony garden, our house is really coming along!

(8/16) Sunday- We slept in late today and had a lazy morning, we heard the 5 gun shots for the parade again at noon so we headed to town to check it out. There were many more people sitting on the street to watch the parade. Today the viewers had small tables (remember tables are only 2 feet off the ground) set up with candles and water and some type of oil. As certain floats passed they did ceremonial type things with the oil and candles. There were several more floats today and the dancers ranged in age from very young to older adults. As Eric and I walked down the street people pointed and said “Hello” they were very excited to try out the few English words they knew and seemed happy to see that we are working on learning their language too. I said excuse me in Japanese as I passed a woman and she smiled and said “very good”.
We spent the rest of the day cleaning but we think we are finally nearing the end ☺ and our house is starting to feel like a home. Our first home together is in Japan… who would’ve guessed it.

(8/17) Monday- today was a pretty quiet day… we both felt a little under the weather earlier but it has passed now. The title/insurance for the car were supposed to be transferred as of today but they are not yet… just means a few more days of healthy walking. We received notification from the internet company that our services have been turned on (YAY!) but the modem they sent us has not yet arrived (Booo) but we can live another day without the internet. Today we also learned that we have not yet mastered the trash puzzle. Our garbage here is sorted into 12 categories the two main ones being burnable and non-burnable. Today we threw out our non-burnable and received an unfriendly notice in our mailbox indicating that we had failed, and our trash was sitting in the parking lot so we brought it back up and are trying to figure out what we did wrong, and yes that does mean digging through 11 day old garbage.. sigh. We got another slip of paper in our mail box and it’s a bill for something that 4706 YEN, hopefully it’s not a garbage violation ticket… eek! Yesterday at the grocery store we bought pancakes and syrup so we had breakfast for dinner today and it was delicious!

(8/18) Tuesday- This morning Eric showed his boss what we feared being our garbage ticket but it wasn’t it was our gas bill! Eric spent the remainder of the morning setting up all of our bills to be automatically withdrawn so we don’t have to figure out what they are for or how to pay them anymore. Paying bills here is tricky. Some bills are paid at the Combini (a convenience store), some are paid at the bank and some are paid at the post office. All must be paid in person within 2 days of receipt, in exact change... auto-withdraw sounds like a good plan to me. My gyjing card was finished today so we are both officially registered alien residents! YAY! Still no sign of internet… hopefully soon. We also solved this piece of the garbage puzzle. The Styrofoam trays that meat comes on from the grocery store are recyclable… not garbage! Today I also tried the recipe from the Japanese Cookbook for homemade teriyaki sauce… mmmm mmmm delicious!

(8/19) Wednesday- Today Eric got off work an hour early! Yay! In the early evening we walked to the grocery store to buy food for dinner and discovered that at 6:30 the pre-prepared food goes to ½ price so we bought some teriyaki chicken and sushi rolls for a total of 400 yen. I ate a very delicious roll of sushi and learned it truly is much much better here. For those of you who do not know, I did not eat sushi in the US due to dislike. On our walk back up the hill we were talking about how sad it was that the internet package hadn’t come yet and when we approached our apartment building we saw a delivery truck there about to pull away so Eric approached and sure enough, it was our internet!!! YAY!!