Japan Week 42

May 17- 23, 2010

When I titled this blog entry, Japan Week 42, I suddenly because extremely thankful that Eric re-contracted because if he hadn't, this magnificent adventure would come to an end in just 10 short weeks! Thankfully instead of having 10 weeks to go, we have 62. Sorry Mom & Dad, I know you kind of wish it was the other way around. . . but we really are having a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This week started out absolutely fantastic :) On Monday afternoon while Eric was out taking the Japanese Driving test for a 2nd time, I was at home doing an interview via Skype for an online, work-from-home job. Good news all around, Eric passed and I got the job! Look at how excited he is!!
Eric's supervisor asked one of the administrators at the testing center how many times a foreigner usually has to take the road-test before they finally pass, the answer, SIX! I'm so glad Eric only had to do it once! Eric told me exactly what he did this time, so I better pass on my 1st try in June.

As for my job, I will be working from home tutoring University age students and young adults, via the Internet. The company I am working for is based out of Tokyo, they prepare people who are going to study/work abroad. My job is to help them perfect their conversational English. I will be helping them with sentence structure and vocabulary a little bit, but mostly we will work on pronunciation. They have completed enough English Language courses to qualify for study/work abroad, so my job should be pretty easy. The program being offered is brand new so they cant make any promises in regards to how many hours a week they can offer me, but it's a minimum of 15 so that's something! And I can work entirely from home, which means no awful commute in the Winter :) I got a very good vibe from the company and I think I will really enjoy the position. One major added perk is that because I have to get a work permit and the program is just starting up, I wont be able to work until the end of June. I told my new boss that it's perfect timing for me because I have the MCAT in the middle of June and she told me that I can even wait to do the initial training until after the test so that I have nothing else to worry about right now! See, I told you they gave me a good vibe! I'm very excited to start and I promise to keep you posted!

On Tuesday at Taiko practice I was told I am getting much better! It was quite encouraging to hear. Practice was so much fun this week! We had a much bigger group and since I know the rhythm now, I really got lost in the music, it was fantastic! I can't wait for the actual festival. When I arrived at practice I was the first foreigner (as usual) and the little kids asked me to play with them! I explained to them that I don't speak Japanese very well but I would be happy to play with them. We played Tic-Tac-Toe on a white board and they asked if I could write my name in Japanese and when I did they were so excited! So then they all wrote their names on the board too. Then they had a drawing contest and I was the judge. They mostly drew popular Japanese Cartoon characters, one girl added a little flair to the competition by drawing the ever so popular steaming lump of poop that is an "emoticon" on Japanese cell phones! The children couldn't believe that I knew who Doraemon and Anpanman were, personally I don't know how you could make it through more than a few days in Japan without knowing who they are. In case I haven't introduced you to them yet: This is Doraemon:He is my personal favorite. He is a little robot and he can pull a red door out of his belly pouch and use it to go anywhere he wants!! I really wish I had a magical red door!

and this is Anpanman:
Anpanman cracks me up because he is a Pastry with superhero powers! An- Red Bean filling, Pan-Bread.... Red Bean Pastry Man... with super powers! It's pretty funny if you ask me! So long story short I had a great time with the little kids, even though I didn't always understand them!

On Wednesday I went swimming at the town pool in the afternoon, I swam laps for an entire hour, I was so tired afterwards but it felt so good to get a real workout in. We also had our Eikaiwa club tonight. Every week we each get a drink, after all the bar lets us use the space for free. Normally I get a Coke, which is 400 yen, and Eric gets a juice or a coffee, also around 400 yen, this week we decided instead of spending $4 on a drink, we would spend $6 on a meal and have a free glass of water. I finally had one of their mouth watering burgers and it was far more satisfying than my $4 coke tradition! This time we also took a game to class! We took Bananagrams and it was such a hit!! Thanks again Rachel and Charlie for sending it to us. It was a perfect game for practicing English because it helped our Japanese friends to think outside the box and come up with words that they knew, they also learned a handful of new words from mine and Eric's hands. It was a lot of fun!! Most of the rice fields look like this right now, the plants have been uprooted from the green house and re-planted in perfectly straight lines in the fields. I am very excited to watch them grow!

We had Japanese tutoring again this week. I feel kind of bad because I have not been studying Japanese at all recently since I am preparing for the MCAT, I'm thankful I have Toshiya once a week to keep me on my toes. I'm pretty excited to get back into in a couple of weeks though!!

On Friday I handled what I expected to be a very difficult task all on my own. In Japan, everyone has a personal hanko (name stamp) made, and it serves as your official signature for all legal documents. I have not ordered one to-date because everything was in Eric's name, but now that I have a job, I have to get my own bank account, and therefore I need a Hanko. I managed to make it through the ordering process at the small little hanko shop in town all on my own, and of course entirely in Japanese. I was very proud of myself! On Friday night we watched the movie, The Fall. It's a very interesting film set in the 1920's in a hospital in Los Angeles. The story is being told by a stuntman in recovery from his drugged up, mildly delusional, entirely creative state of mind. He is telling the story, to a young girl who is also in recovery, of 5 mystical heroes and how their paths cross. The story itself is very intriguing but the filming itself is truly spectacular. I would highly recommend it! Eric even commented that he could watch the film on Mute and still enjoy it, the images are truly unique.

Saturday morning Eric and I set off on a little road trip, just 3 hours away to the opposite side of the country. We drove from the East Coast all the way to the West Coast, where we reached our destination of Lake Ogawara!

The start of our journey.....And. . . Our destination! Cross country in only 3 hours!
Now if we went cross country N-S, it would be a totally different story!

Lake Ogawara the 11th largest lake in Japan, and the largest lake in Aomori. (I have noticed it's very common for places in Japan to publicize when they are the largest in their class, was that a big thing in America too that I just skipped over?) The lake is absolutely beautiful, and quite massive. The most interesting thing to me was not even the legendary story of two sisters (see below), but rather that the lake contains both fresh water fish and salt water fish. It is the largest supplier of fresh water fish products in all in Japan!

And so the legend goes. . .
About 1300 years ago, there were two beautiful sisters in a city that was far south. They were searching for their missing father, and traveled many countries tracing their father's footsteps. when they reached here, they found out their father had already gone. In despair, the older sister, Tamayo, threw herself into the lake. Then a water monster arose out of the lake ad attacked the younger sister, Katsuyo. Katsuyo transformed herself into a huge serpent and defeated the monster. She inherited the watery kingdom and will reign in the water forever. Now the lake where Tamayo died is called Ane-numa "Old-Sister March". The lake where Katsuyo sank in known as Lake Ogawara or Imoto-Numa "Younger-Sister Marsh". Katsuyo is enshrined in the Hironuma-Dalmyojin (shrine in pictures below).

Of all of the adventures I've had in my lifetime. . . I had never ever been camping in tent (beyond a backyard or two) in my whole life, until this weekend. It's so much fun, and so relaxing and rejuvenating! I loved it. My new mission is to find us a cheap tent to buy!! We borrow one this weekend from our kind friend Allison! Thank you!!! The tent was super easy to set up and very thankfully kept us nice and dry when the rain started pouring down in the middle of the night. The weather report had no mention of rain, and with clear blue skies on Saturday we didn't even expect it at all... thank goodness for the tent! I was a little nervous about getting cold as it was only supposed to be 48F at night, but my super trusty ultra warm pajamas, that I picked up off of a men's clearance rack a few years back for 99cents... kept me so warm all night long :) I had a fantastic time and I can't wait to camp again! I can't help but think of the numerous places we can take weekend trips too knowing we only have to factor in $10-$15 for a tent-site instead of $100 plus for a hotel! Oh the possibilities!!

This is the view in one direction from our camp site.... guess what?! It's rice fields!!
This was the view in the other direction, over looking the lake, it was so beautiful. After we got the tent set up we went for a walk along the lake. It was a little windy, and slightly chilly, probably because we were in shorts and flip flops :) but it was certainly beautiful! I'm sure my mom is thinking "That's what you get for wearing shorts" as the 'rule' in our house was we could wear shorts to school once it was 75 degrees, but now that I've survived 1 harsh 6 month long winter.... 55 degrees is good enough reason for shorts for me! Sorry Mom. These crazy stairs were our route from the camp site down to the lake, they were quite steep!

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom in the area, it was such a nice surprise since ours have already fallen and turned to beautiful full green trees! The sky was so impeccably blue! We discovered a very pleasant surprise at the camp site, an 18-hole Put-Put Course!! Of course we indulged! How could we not?! Half-way through our round of "golf" I realized that I don't think Eric and I have ever played Mini Golf together before! How did that happen?? We tried once in Colorado while visiting friends, we were going to visit Fort Fun, but due to the rain it was closed, so we renamed it "Fort Disappointment" and found other means of entertainment!

The golf was fun, and the scenery was beautiful as always!
After Put-Put we headed into the city of Misawa for the main purpose of the trip. . . MEXICAN FOOD!!! Misawa is home to a US Air Force base and therefore has a lot of international cuisine. We of course we most interested in the Mexican food, by we- I should really say Me, and Eric because he just want to make me happy. Our other options were Chinese, Italian, Thai, Indian, and many others. We had to ask for directions 4 times and we quickly got the idea that people assumed we lived on base, and that the locals in town don't exactly love the Americans from base, but regardless we finally found it! We had the address, but the road it is located on is of course unmarked, and the locals we asked had never heard of it. We asked a guy from base and he told us that it was just near the main gate and we drove around in circles, and finally discovered the side-road, which led us to:

MIKES TEX-MEX RESTAURANT

When we first walked in the door we had a "deer-in-the-headlights" moment. The restaurant was packed wall to wall and there were a grand total of 3 Japanese people in the whole place, 1 behind the counter and 2 waiting tables. We understood every conversation happening around us, people had American dollar bills on their tables, Jeans, Tennis Shoes, Baseball caps and children running aimlessly around. It was the strangest thing I've seen in 10 months. After the inital shock wore off and people stopped staring at us, we asked for a table and very willingly waited for about 20 minutes. The staff was so surprised when we spoke Japanese to them, in fact when I ordered my enchilada I specified "Che-zu" the way I would in Japanese joint, and she looked at me and said "Cheese??" and I silently laughed and said "hai" (Japanese for, yes). The food was definitely "Tex-Mex" but it certainly fulfilled my cravings for food from home. We ate WAY to much and enjoyed every last bite of it. . . untill the stomach aches set in. We started our dinner with Fresh home-made Chips and Salsa with Guacamole, how could we skip that?! Then we moved on to a Bean and Cheese Chimichanga to share. And then the Entre/mistake. I only call it a mistake because it was so huge, yet so delicious that we ate every bite! We each had the Hungry Hombre Special, 1 enchilada, 1 taco and 1 burrito. No Joke! We ate every, last, bite!

4880 yen later ($53) 2 very Full Hombres headed back to camp! We played a few hands of cards by lantern light, and then the food comma hit, and I was out like a light!
When we woke up Sunday morning, after i poked and proded at Eric to get up because I was sure were sleeping in past the 10 am check-out, only to realize it was barely 6am, we packed up our soaking wet tent and then went for a walk to see the shrine of the sisters. The fog was so dense we could barely make out the lake:

This is an entrance point to the lake, I assume the sister on the left is Katsuyo and the sister on the right is Tamayo.
So by 7:02 am we had packed up, been for a morning walk and were on our way back home! We stopped in Aomori City for breakfast and walked around for a little bit and made the ever so important purchase of Dr. Pepper :) By Sunday afternoon we were totally wiped out and took a 3 hour nap! It was truly a great weekend!