Japan Week 4

(8/27) Thursday- Eric has been in Japan for 1 month, and we have been married for 2 months now!! Eric had an extremely busy day of training but got to enjoy an Onsen in the evening. An onsen is a very large bath where the water is pumped from the natural springs. They are very common and extremely popular in Northern Japan. He loved it so much he insists on taking me next week! I spent the day attempting to do laundry but the rain won! It rained for almost 6 hours today, so I stayed indoors and read books (and cooked only non-flammable meals)!

(8/28) Friday- Eric is back from Aomori City, YAY! Tonight was our Enkai (welcome party). All of the JET's have an Enkai hosted by the school around the time the students come back. I was fortunate enough to be included in the welcome party; in Japan spouses are not typically included in any work functions. We went to a very fancy restaurant and had quite a feast!! There had to have been at least 15 different dishes served (all very small portions thankfully)! Some of the dishes included green beans and sea snail, sashimi, sea urchant and tofu soup, green beans with spicy mayo, prawn (head included), ocean crustacean, egg pudding with whole shrimp and mint, a big bowl of white rice :) and a whole cooked fish (that they serve with the face looking at me!) and for dessert they served watermelon. All of which we ate on the floor in a traditional Japanese manner. Also, they had a "wedding cake" for us! Today is memorial day in Japan (people celebrate whatever they wish, so they choose our wedding). They had a cake cutting ceremony for us, and yes they took pictures! We told them afterwards that it was our first time cutting cake together because we had ice cream (didn't think they would know gelato) at our wedding, they thought it was very funny! The party started with a formal welcome speech, then Eric and I gave our introduction speeches, Eric was also asked to give his self introduction powerpoint that he gave at the High Schools opening ceremony. After dinner we had a Q&A that turned out to be a lot of fun! The party was quite an experience.
* I should also mention that we had a tremendous amount of rain today!!!! I have never seen this much rain in my life!

(8/29) Saturday- I was right, we did get a ton of rain yesterday... 16 inches to be exact!!!! (Quite a change coming from Arizona where the avg. ANNUAL rain fall is only 7 inches!!

Last night at the Enkai one of the teachers mentioned that the Elementary school regional sumo competition was going to be held near our house today so we decided to check it out. It turns out that it was only about a 4 min walk from our house, we have seen this Amphitheater many times and wondered what it was used for, apparently its a sumo jo (where sumo is held)! We stood off to the side, not knowing which side to sit on because we didn't know which team was "ours", about 5 minutes later one of the referees told us to come with him, so we followed. He took us the judges box and told us to sit down, we politely refused 3 times (Japanese custom) but he insisted. People them proceeded to serve us drinks, when we politely refused they brought us several other choices, they didn't realize that we weren't thirsty, they must have thought we didn't like the selection they had offered. So eventually we got settled, with our beverages, and watched the little kids sumo wrestle! About an hour later they tried to serve us lunch (mind you, this was 10:30 in the morning and we truly weren't hungry) when we politely refused, they insisted, and brought us more food... it became apparent that it was one of those times that you have to eat it for the sake of pleasing them. So, we ate. They served us a delicious multiple course meal that we consumed rather slowly while watching the sumo competition. Then along came Kobayashi (the teacher Eric works with), he came on his way to school to deliver us some corn that his wife cooked us, since we were not home he figured he could find us at the Sumo competition. We explained to him that we had already been force fed a gigantic lunch so he told us to take it home and reheat it for dinner. PHEW! We got out of eating it right then! (We did cook it later and it was very delicious!) Then, while we were talking to Kobayashi someone asked us to move down to the other side of the table so we gathered our things and moved. In walks the Mayor, we had been in his seats! He saw that they asked us to move and he refused to sit in his seat and insisted that we sit there... so after 3 polite refusals, he began moving our stuff back over for us. So now, we are sitting in the Mayors seats, in the VIP/judging box, totally stuffed and feeling guilty about this royal treatment. Needless to say, it was quite the unexpected experience. As a side note, the little kids sumo wrestling was awesome!! My favorite was a little kid from our town! He was so skinny you could count his ribs from far away; however, he KICKED BUTT!!! He would approach his opponent (usually 2-3 times his size), pick them up by their Mawashi (the diaper) and carry them to the edge of the dohyo (wrestlers circle) and then push them out! It was amazing! In sumo the wrestlers compete not by weight class, rather by the amount of prior victories.

After our morning at the Sumo Jo we met up with some of our friends to visit and orchard up on mount Iwake San. Getting there was quite exciting as it was our first time driving!!! Eric drove us there and did a VERY excellent job!!! The orchard was on the base of the mountain and was completely surrounded by the forest, with the exception of a small lake. It was possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen! (If anyone feels the need to get married in rural Japan, this is the spot!) We paid 1000 yen to get in (about $10) and were given a basket, a knife, and a rough map. We walked all over the orchard picking and eating as much fruit as we wished (which was a lot of fruit!) The plums were at the height of their season and boy were they delicious! After taking the first bite you could literally push the fruit out of the skin, they were so juicy and delicious! We also found wonderful (and terrible) grapes. It was very entertaining to watch people eat from grape vines that were far from ready! We also decided we should relive our childhood and roll down the hill (video footage will soon be on facebook), it was extremely amusing for ten 20-something's to roll down a hill (and over each other in the process). Needless to say we had an amazing time!

After that we went to a new Okinomeyake restaurant with the group and then we went out for Ice Cream at good ol' 31 (Baskin Robins)!!!

(8/30) Sunday- After recovering from our sugar overload from mass quantities of fruit we decided to spend the day out of the house, without a chauffeur!! It was my turn to drive today, and again it all went very smoothly... once you get over the fact that you're sitting in the wrong side of the car, and driving on the wrong side of the road.. the only thing left to worry about is that the stupid turn signal and windshield wipers are on opposite sides as well. (I bet we have the cleanest car windows in all of Japan!) We didn't really have anything we needed to do today so we just went exploring, we went to both malls and to some electronic stores. Part way through the day we laughed and felt like we were on a jr. high date, because all we did was walk around the malls! We decided to purchase a dehumidifier today, never thought I would be sooo excited about any appliance, let alone one that you plug in and walk away from! It is quite nice to have in the house and will be very helpful for drying clothes come winter!

(8/31) Monday- Back to work and our weekly routine. Now that nothing super exciting happens each and every day I will be blogging less often. Check back periodically though!