Japan Week 48

June 28- July 4th, 2010

I finally decided to do something with the giant blue tub that was left on our balcony when we moved in. All Winter long it served as snow storage, not that we needed to keep it around any longer! So, I put some rocks at the bottom and filled it with soil, and some colorful new flowers! Hopefully they will survive the heat!

My job technically started this week, but I don't have any students signed up yet. (Hence my boredom and planting in rubber tubs!). I'm hopeful that I'll have students soon, but not very confident. We'll see what happens, I guess I don't have anything to loose by being patient. In the mean time, I'm finishing up my post-MCAT to-do list, and I've just about done it!

On Friday early morning an announcement was made over the town loud speaker and it was difficult to understand. I understood that they were talking about a problem with the water but I didn't understand the rest. Later in the morning I headed to the supermarket and saw that many people were filling up buckets with water from a truck, so I figured something was up but I wasn't too sure. I hadn't heard an announcement regarding our neighborhood or seen a truck, and the water was on in our house when I left so I thought we were fine... then just I went to make lunch the water stopped. Apparently the main water line into town broke and they had to cut of the whole water supply to fix it. Eric inquired about it when he went back to school after lunch and they said it wouldn't be out too long. I headed to the store to buy some bottled water just in case and much to my surprise, all of the bottled water had been moved to the front of the store and was all on sale half-off! I can't imagine the stores in America doing something so courteous in a time of crisis. Fortunately a few hours later the pipe was fixed so we could at least flush our toilets but we were told it would not be potable for another 24 hours or so, it was running rather orange. The town sent around a water truck with free water supply 3 times a day, before breakfast, lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday, another courtesy I wouldn't expect in America. It certainly was nice to known they were concerned about it. Needless to say, we survived the drought just fine!

On Saturday we helped our friends Miyo and Shu with an event they have been putting on in Japan for the last 10 years. Miyo and Shu are potters by trade and they organize an art-fair, much like a small-scale Tempe Festival of the Arts. This year they had 200 artists participate from places all over Japan. The variety of art was really interesting and it made for a wonderful weekend. C-Point stands for Craft- Creative- Cross Roads as well as "see the art" and its by the sea! Miyo is so cleaver! This year the C also stood for "close" because it was the 10th and final year.

This is Miyo arranging her pieces, bright and early Saturday Morning:

This is her husband Shu, showing some of his work:

The artists were all along the ocean, there's something extra special about being at an art-fair by the Sea instead of the freeway!

Throughout our stay in Japan we have stumbled across a few random things that lead us to believe we are currently in just the right place. This weekend at C-Point we found another. Back when Eric first took me engagement ring shopping I found a tension setting ring that I really loved and we had planned to go back and purchase it the following day, and upon our return to the store we discovered it had closed. No wonder the salesman was so eager for a deposit the day before, good thing we didn't give into him. Anyway, while I'm honored to be the 4th generation recipient of the Malloff Family ring, I did not bring it to Japan because it is so delicate. This weekend at C-Point we found a ring nearly identical to the original, and it fit perfectly. I feel a little bit like Cinderella :) After our duties at C-point were complete, we joined our friends on the beach for a BBQ (hence the color of my hand in the above photo) and had a really great afternoon with them. After that we came home and took very long showers and passed out for a bit to recharge for the C-point party! Although C-Point was Saturday and Sunday, the "after-party" was on Saturday night. Here in Japan there is a party or festival for just about any reason you can dream up. And yes, they do have Enkai's (after parties) for Festivals! The after-party was lots of fun, TONS of food and a small group played some local festival music for us and best of all, our friend Michael performed a skit in the local dialect in the back of a truck! He is wearing a Yukata, a summer style Kimono. He did a fantastic job and had the crowd roaring!! The people from prefectures south of here missed half the jokes because they don't know Tsugaru-ban but they were certainly having a good time anyway!

Happy 4th of July!!!

We had intended to go to a small festival on our main street at the shrine on Sunday but we were so exhausted from being out in the sun all day Saturday that we decided a movie and veging out at home would be so much better (and it was). We did sneak back to c-point for only a moment to buy one last amazing sandwich from one of the vendors :)