Japan Week 3

(8/20) Thursday- The past 24 hours have been quite exciting in Ajigasawa. Around 2am this morning a siren went off that we had not yet heard, along with the siren several loud announcements were made (in Japanese of course) and shortly after the sirens from several emergency vehicles were heard in various directions. We were slightly alarmed, especially because we were completely clueless. We looked out the window and saw the only a few of our neighbors were turning lights on, and no one seemed to be too alarmed. We tired to go back to sleep and ignore it; however, the siren wailed on for about 40 minutes. We were thinking that maybe there was a Tsunami warning or an Earthquake. When Eric got to school this morning he asked around about it and no one seemed to really know, but people assumed it was a fire. We can't really figure out how large of a fire it could have been since we did not see any evidence today or smell anything; however, it is a small town so they may get that excited over a single house fire. Also, prior to the past decade, fires were a very big problem in rural Japan because most homes were still being constructed almost entirely out of wood and paper. We are guessing that the sirens were to alert the firemen and volunteer fire society.

The day today was rather quiet, Eric worked as normal and I got mostly caught up on emails and such and started searching for jobs. I am hoping that if teaching at the elementary school does not work out I might be able to snag a part time job at the ski mountain. It turns out that it is a very popular resort year round and in the past people from Australia and England have worked there. I have no idea what I would do.. but I'm up for just about anything!

Tonight we heard the normal announcement at 6pm (sorry 18:00) that all junior high children should be preparing for bed by now and that the beach was nearing a close, and at 7pm we heard that they were locking the beach parking lot. Shortly following we heard a few loud bangs, that continued... FIREWORKS!! Not just a few random ones... a pretty sizable 20 minute firework show seen perfectly from our bedroom window. We again have no idea what it was for, maybe we'll find out tomorrow. An impromptu fireworks show seems especially random in a small fishing village in the countryside of Japan, whatever it was for it served as great entertainment for us!

(8/21) Friday- Today was such a great day! After work we walked into town to update our bank book, yay for payday! With the bank accounts here you get an atm card and small book, you can insert the book into the atm and it will print out all transactions since your last visit, its very handy. We also had another treat from the bakery inside the grocery store, Eric had a cheese danish that looked delicious, but since I just absolutely "love" cold cheese, i refrained. I had the most delicious piece of raisin bread that I've ever had in my whole life! They slice the bread almost 2 inches thick here, which makes it that much better! We returned home and played games for awhile, which has become even more of a favorite for us than it was at home! (although we really do miss game nights with Larry and Nancy!)

Eric's "big sis" in the program, Genevieve, picked us up and took us to a fantastic local restaraunt that serves Okinomeiake! I had no idea what is was either until we got there, but she swore it was delicious and boy was she right! Basically the way it works is the center of the table is a griddle and you make a dense pancake like meal. You order to your liking, I had veggetarian with chinease cabbage, corn, onion, garlic and some other stuff I did not recognize and Eric had a seafood combo. You cook it until its ready to flip, then you flip it (which is actually a little challanging) then you put sauces and cheeses and things on top! The fact that they had fresh cheese was pretty surprising because its few and far between here. MMM MMM GOOD, and it was 1200 yen for both of us!

Then the night got even better! Genevieve drove us the grocery store (imagine magical music playing right now, because it really was like going to disneyland for us)! No limit on how much could fit in our back packs, or what might spoil, or be too heavy to carry on a 30 minute uphill walk, we could buy eggs, plus we went to a normal sized grocery store, and ... the list goes on. Needless to say, we now have a well stocked pantry and our oddly small sized fridge is quite full. I did however learn something very dissapointing at the grocery store... all the tubs of "peanut butter" i have by eying... are soup stocks for winter time....... :( There is still hope though... we will be going to the foreign foods store as soon as we can drive! (which we have now been told monday or tuesday of this week, which leads to another interesting situation because Eric will be away on business weds-fri. So realistically, it will be another carless week, but we have survived thus far and we will make it one more week.) Now we have lots of food to eat, that we don't have to walk to go get, which means we must walk around after we our delicious food, so not to turn into elephants!

(8/22) Saturday- "Genevieve to the rescue!!"- the theme for this weekend.
Today Genevieve took us out for the day and showed us around the neighboring towns, took us to buy a new futon mattress (YAY!) and we explored Elm- the 2nd closest mall. I do have to admit that my favorite part of the day was certainly our visit to Baskin Robins, although referred to here only as 31! They had all of the classics from home as well as Matcha (green tea), Hibiscus, and several other Japan "classics". Personally, I stuck with some of my long time favorites, Oreo-cookies and cream and Strawberry Banana. The S-B was so much better here than it was back home... I was impressed. Shopping is always quite entertaining in Japan, we found more hillarious sayings on various clothing items (see the green purse picture) and many random stuffed "animals" like an adorable oddly round, seal... with feet.

On a sad note, we made it to the international food store, and peanut butter is extraordinarily expensive, and only available in Skippy... and since I have a choosy mom, I was spoiled by JIF my whole life. So, I will have to adjust to life without a daily dose of pb. Today we also searched the recycle shops, much like goodwill, for a toaster oven/microwave contraption but we were unsuccessful.

While driving us all over, Geneveive also taught us about the traffic laws and what the very confusing signs are trying to imply, another highly valuable portion of the day. We also went to the 100 yen sushi restaraunt that Eric had been to in the past, I wasn't brave enough to eat the real stuff yet, as it was more like sashimi then the sushi I am used to. Tonight we have a much more comfortable sleeping set up, and I am very excited for a good nights rest!

(8/23) Sunday- Again, Geneveive to the rescue!! After a wonderful nights rest (thank goodness for our new bedding, Geneveive arrived to take us to Hirosaki city, AND she arrived with homemade banana bread, cookies and neosporin. While Neosporin would not normally be too thrilling, it is apparently not sold in this country... and I have a supurb blister from all of our walking, so I was quite excited by it!

Today we want to the inakadate! Inaka means contryside, da means rice, and we have no idea what da-te means! Anyway, the Inakadate is an area where they make art in the rice fields. I was expecting shapes or something else of the simple variety; however, I was delighted to find out that it is actually very complex and beautiful. They plant different varieties of rice in a pattern and as it grows the picture develops! This year it was Napolean on his horse, and it was quite impressive. The pictures don't really do it justice.

We walked around Hirosake City and explored today. We visited a TINY coffee/tea shop called "Lemon" and listend to a local jazz band that was very good. The drummer was my favorite! He must have been in his late 70's- early 80's and he sat on the windowsill and removed his velcro tennies to play the drums. He kept his eyes closed the majority of the time and swayed back and forth, you could really tell he loves to feel the music. I also enjoyed a delicious hot lemonade that I would like to try to recreate! We found an Indian Restaraunt near the train station that had amazing Nan! For those of you who have not had Indian food before, Nan is the bread that you eat the curry with. The menu was also English friendly. I like to refer to things as English friendly when an attempt was made to translate it into English. For instance, they serve lam chilly- which does not mean cold lamb... it means Lamb Chili.

Our drive home was rather rainy, my Mom had been telling me she was hoping for a monsoon, I think it skipped Phx and came right to Japan! Genevieve taught us which signs to follow when we are far away and had us navigate home... such a great teacher. We also unofficailly renamed her car this weekend, we now refer to it as Kari... as in kareoke. We discovered there is no need for a radio, between the 3 of us we thought of some wonderful sing-a-longs for all of our driving around this weekend, it was very entertaining and reminded me of driving around with my best friends in high school!

All-in-all we had a wonerful weekend, thanks to our "big sis" Genevieve!

(8/24) Monday- Eric had his first day with the students back. The kick off each semester with an opening ceremony, at which Eric gave a brief welcome speech . He is starting to understand how easy the kids in the states have it, in terms of dress codes, at school. Today the students were all checked for piercings and anyone that had dyed their hair (even just a tint) had it dyed back to black in the nurses office. The students also had the length of the hair measured to make sure that it was within regulation. The students submitted their homework from break and took a few exams to make sure they remembered what they had learned in the last semester. Eric got to edit some of the speeches that students submitted, and he was pretty impressed. The annual speech competition is coming up soon so the students are starting to memorize the speeches they have been writing. All of the students who participate are required to write, memorize and recite a speech in English. Students come from all over the prefecture to participate and are judged by the JET teachers. We are pretty excited to listen to them!

Around 4:30 pm we heard an unexpected knock on the door.... our care package from my parents arrived within 48 hours!! Amazing!! We spent the evening unpacking it and playing the card games that were sent and enjoying the delicious snacks!! There were even some surprises in there...like boxes of mashed potatoes, and a non-slip shoe contraption that will come in very handy in a few months! We were even able to find some episodes of American television shows online!

(8/25) Tuesday- Today Eric met with his students in their classes and gave them a self intro presentation. He spoke mostly of where he has lived and traveled to, and encouraged them to talk to him anytime. He has 3 different classes and they each have their own character. He was pretty excited that one of the classes really seemed to comprehend what he was saying, and they got excited about his speech! He is really looking forward to teaching them English and getting to know them!

I went out for a run this morning and explored the town a little. I met a very sweet old man who stopped me to take a picture of me with his disposable camera that looked several years old. He didn't speak a word of English so I'm not really sure why he wanted my picture, but he acted as though I was the first white person he had ever seen! He kept poking at my arm... maybe he was making sure I'm not a ghost! (It's an honest mistake though, I am pretty white compared to everyone else). I also learned that the Japanese house wives will offer you water as you are running by, which is wonderful! Unfortunately while running for a few miles, I forgot that the end of my run would have to be uphill since we live at the top.. so it was quite a tiring venture home, but I made it!

Lunchtime today was quite exciting! Yesterday was the first day of school and the lunch schedule was different than it had been from summer break, so Eric assumed that it was going to be the new 12:40 schedule for the school year... at 12:20 someone came in his office and told him he was missing lunch! The 12:40 lunch time is only for the first day of school. So he rushed home (fortunately it's only a few minutes walk anyway). I had planned to make Tofu and vegetables for lunch and was following some simple instructions on how to prepare tofu. When I placed the tofu in the hot pan it caught fire... very very fast... and very large flames! I tried to put the pan in the sink to run the water but the flames were so high they were going to hit the cabinets, so I just held it out from my body and low to keep the flames off the ceiling. I had no clue what happened, eventually whatever caused the fire to start burned itself off, and all was fine. I have since learned that my "simple" directions were all too simple because they left out the step that you are supposed to press Tofu dry, as the liquid is flammable! Would have been good to know! We survived though, the tofu tasted like the bottom of a campfire though, so it didn't even get eaten. No more tofu cooking for me... at least for awhile.

We decided to walk to the grocery store that is a little further away to vary our selection a bit and the walk was absolutely beautiful! The paperwork for the car is finally ready! We can drive now, but will be waiting until the weekend. Eric will be away on business until Friday evening, at which point we will have our welcome party with the town!

(8/26) Wednesday- Eric left for his business trip today. He spent the day in meetings and training sessions, and then went out for Indian food in Aomori City. I spent a good portion of the day cleaning out the last of the closets... washing all of the mystery linens, as well as studying for the MCAT. I was fortunate enough to talk to several of my friends today, thank you again to Skype. And no, I did not attempt to cook anything to dangerous while home alone. I did however make delicious fried rice! (sorry there was nothing too exciting to report for today)