Adventures in Japan

Festival of the Dolls

I went to a Hinamatsuri, or Girls Day, party last night. Girls Day is actually March 3rd, but whatever. Just about everyone was wearing kimono, and we ate sushi, and Japanese sweets, and we all did tea ceremony, which was explained at length in Japanese (which for the most part went right over my head). And we made little paper crafts to take home. I got superglue all over my fingers. That kind of sucked. And then my little crafts fell apart anyway.

I was the only non-Japanese person there, but everyone was super nice to me. And next time, I get to wear a kimono too. Japan is great.

My Name is Not Susan Or: I Got Puked On Yesterday

This is the post where I wrap up our Okinawan adventure (and share with you the pictures our posts lacked). I know it's been a week since we got back but it has been a very busy week. For example, I got puked on. The pants that got puked on are ruined. Good thing I paid extra for the stain and spill resistant khakis. Thanks for nothing Lee. So I only have one pair of pants for work. You see... I brought 3 pairs of dress pants with me when we came to Japan and they are all too dressy to wear whilst playing around with kids. I brought 2 of khakis as well. 2 days ago I split the crotch on one pair while at work. I had to buy another pair on my lunch break. Yesterday, I was vomited on, and the stains didn't come out. So I have to do some pants shopping tomorrow.

I got a little sidetracked there. The whole vomit thing kind of bothers me. I kind of thought it was funny until I learned about the loss of pants. Stupid anonymous barfer.

But back to Okinawa. More specifically Naha. Let's get even more specific, and talk about CamCam, the place where we stayed. It was a fairly new guest house. We could tell because they were still building it while we were there. The mural in one of the lounges kept changing on an almost daily basis.



They finished off another lounge, bathroom and shower during our week long stay, bringing the total of each to two. There was only ever one kitchen, and it wasn't ever really clean. Neither of the bathrooms or showers were all that good. There were drainage problems. The dorms were crowded. Not that they were always full of people, but the bunks were all attached to one another, and the bunks themselves weren't super huge. Like a capsule hotel but not. The guy next to me in the men's dorm snored incredibly, mind-shakingly loud. I don't think I got a single good uninterrupted night's sleep during our vacation. Let's break all these words up with some pictures. First is a picture of one of the dorms.


See, those are all bunks. Here's a picture of one of the bunks.


Not super cramped, but not spacious. Keep in mind that we had to keep our luggage in there with us because there was nowhere else to put it.

Back to words. It may sound kind of less than good. And I can see how some people would not like it, but it had such a great vibe. It was a guest house, which meant that there were people checking in and out all the time, but there was also a group of people who were there all the time and they were all awesome. We got free food and drinks all the time. We never wanted for conversation. There always something going in the lounge every night. Even if it was just everyone hanging out and messing around with the guitars and bongos. But they weren't annoying bongo/guitar players. See this picture?


You can't be a pretentious wanker musician with snack food up your nose. You just can't. Here's another picture.


There was only one person at CamCam who wasn't super cool. And he wasn't there all that long. And he was entertaining in his own way. I forget his full name, which is odd since he was repeating it all the time. I want to call him Kenzo Suzuki, but that's just because there's a wrestler with that name. Doesn't really matter, as he liked to be called Su-san. He knew a few English phrases and he just kept repeating them over and over. While wildly gesticulating and and bounding about. Su-san was a 41 year old balding Japanese man with something wrong upstairs.


His dream is to become the welterweight boxing champion. OK? He does 40 push-ups a day. OK? Sometimes he'd just whip off his shirt and start doing them while talking to you about his limited range of topics. Internet, email, homepage. He didn't drink alcohol, only mineral water and he smoked Kent cigarettes because his nine year old son's name is Kento. He might be a mail man. Hard to say. He was interesting at first. Excuse me! You look really nice, OK! You look gorgeous! OK? But by the end of the second day of his stay, we were hiding from him.

Luckily he was taken away by the police on the third day.

The people at CamCam were always teaching us Okinawan slang and always wanted to learn more English slang. That made for some good nights of drinking. One of the local Okinawan liquor specialities has a snake in it. I never tried it. I would have, but it was stupid expensive. I don't imagine that the snake adds much to the alcoholic content. The only way I'm gonna pay 13 bucks for a shot is if I don't have to drink again for a good while. Here's a picture of the snake brewing process.


There's a hell of a documentary to be made about the roles of both Hawaii and Okinawa in WWII. Both had been a part of their respective countries for under a century yet they were the places where the main violence of the Japanese-American conflict occurred. Okinawa was about as peaceful a place as could be before joining up officially with Japan. It was an Asian gateway of sorts. So close to all the major Asian cultures, it was a trade hub. Then the Americans bombed the hell out of it. I'm not trying to bash America here, I'm just saying that large chunks of Okinawa's history are lost forever due to that bombing. The naval bunker we toured, which was the basically Okinawa's last stand, made my eyes want to get wetter. Also, the pictures I took there looked kinda nice.


Look at the colours, children, the colours. Now I'll bring the room back down.


This naval base is where hundreds of hundreds of men, lacking any real weapons to fight with, killed themselves rather than surrender.

There was a lot of suicide in Okinawa at the end of the war. Carla mentioned the schoolgirls and their teachers killed themselves. There was another tour we could have taken that stops at a beautiful seaside cliff. The cliff is famous because a lot of people threw themselves off it rather than face the American savages. Once again, I am not bashing Americans, just pointing out that the Okinawan people were led to believe that the invading Americans would rape, mutilate, and kill (not necessarily in that order) whoever and whatever was in their path.

There was a small museum/display at the entrance to the naval base that compared the firepower and casualties of both sides. There was a handy bar graph to further illustrate the point. It was a bit sickening. 200 656 dead Japanese (slightly less than half the population of the island of Okinawa), 12 560 dead Americans. 37 139 dead Okinawan civilians. I am so glad that my brain can't even begin to comprehend those numbers. Here's another number: 4.72. That's the amount of shells per person the Americans fired on Okinawa. I ain't no hippie, and I understand the need for war, but damn that hurts. I hope I haven't overstepped my bounds of being your charming internet tour guide of Japan.

There were countless unclaimed, unidentified corpses left at the end of the conflict. Okinawa, and Okinawans embraced their peaceful history and buried them all together and erected a peace memorial in the hopes that peace would someday prevail. The giant Buddha in the main building had an odd effect on me, I was both intimidated and calmed.


The paintings in the museum also made me want to get emotional. As we were on a rushed tour we could only glance at each painting, let them all just kind of wash over us.

The cave was cool. All sorts of neat formations, and it was BIG. Didn't like how a very large portion of a large portion of stalactites had been amputated to make room for the catwalk. Uncountable years of incremental growth destroyed and discarded so the tourists can rush through so they don't miss their bus. The Christmas lights were offensively, tackily cool. Maybe I'm just bitter because I didn't get a lot of cool pictures.




This is Carla by the gaudy, gaudy lights.


To be fair, here's an unflatering picture of me. See that curtain rod behind me? I hit my head on that stupid thing on a daily basis.

I'm going to talk about the cool people at CamCam again. We got hugs and well wishes when we left. That has never happened to us at any hostel before. The hugs were nice.

Okinawa is known for its crafts: its lacquerware, its glassware and its textiles. The glass blowing was mesmerizing. I was mesmerized. Wish I could post video to this page so you could see how efficient yet beautiful the whole process was. But if I could post videos, you might see what happens at Rock Rock or Karaoke. No one needs to see that. We have no pictures of the textiles or the lacquer, but rest assured, they were bright and striking and beautiful. Would that we were rich. I'll have to console myself with my awesome Okinawan shirt.





This is what it looked like out my window as we left Okinawa.

Wow, that was a tonne of words. In case you haven't had enough, Carla was finally able to post the last bits of what we all got up to while Nate & Trev were here. The new stuff starts January 26. The easiest way to go back and read it is to use the links to the weekly archives over there on the right. Or down at the bottom if you have a teery, tiny screen, which I imagine some of you do.

And now: more pictures.





Remember how we said we liked the curvy castle walls? Well here's a picture. You're welcome.


This is delicious, delicious french toast in a cup.


This is, I believe, a Spam (or low cost Spam equivalent) and cheese onigiri sushi.


This is the only beach we made it to. Oh well. See those footprints in the sand? That's where Carla carried me.



You could buy fish food out of vending machines in this garden. So all the fish always swam near the surface like sharks. They would follow you as you walked around the pond. If you ever stopped, they would stick their gaping maws out of the water.


It was disgusting and entrancing. I imagine this is what Cthulu's skin looks like.



These are pictures from our favourite 50's diner in Naha.

I Just Got Puked on

Put a damper on an otherwise fine day.

I got up and went to the place where I teach a little bit early today, so I decided to go to God Mountain. Which is a coffee house. With a really cool name. And really good food. For fairly cheap. Ice cream as a part of breakfast is just an outstanding idea.

Training went well, even though one of the girl students cried (but she's a crier, or so I'm told) and the boss lady told me most of my training won't be paid for. I wish she would have mentioned that beforehand. But she also mentioned that I'm improving by leaps and bounds and that she's amazed at how quick the kids take to me.

After work I caught a train to Kyoto and met Carla at a big book sale. We bought several books. After the book buying, we met some people from the Bing Bang Boom Club for some supper and coffee. The supper was meh, but the coffee afterwards was nice. As was the conversation.

I was reading Tietam Brown by Mick Foley on the train ride home when I got puked on. Didn't really know what was going on until it was too late. The dude puked on me and then got off the train, leaving me in a puddle of his vomit. Carla doesn't do well with regurgitation, so I told her to move away. I sat there, smelling his inner essence, and wondered what the hell to do. If I had my camera with me, there's a good chance I would have snapped a few picks. Which probably would have deterred some of the kindness that was soon to come. There were orange-y chunks on my pants and some splattered on my jacket and the bottom of my backpack got a bit pukey too as I failed to move it in time. I just kind of avoided eye contact with anybody and also avoided eye contact with the up-chuck. That left me with not a lot of viewing options. But then people on the train started handing me tissues (the ones that get handed out on the street all the time) and apologizing. That was nice.

That's the part that I'll focus on. While I may have been the unwitting recipient of a technicolour yawn (mainly, though, it was earth tones), I was also the witting recipient of a lot of kindness from strangers. People here in Japan sure are nice.

Can't hold their liquor though.

More Soggy Wanderings

The weather has turned towards the 'less good' side these last few days. Not bad weather, the temperatures are still in the double digits, but there is rain now and wind. I'm not so much complaining as setting the scene.

We got another early start today, yay us! We ate at another quasi-hidden coffee house and read old Japanese comic magazines as we ate our breakfasts. It's a nice way to start the day. Beats the hell out of instant curry. After the most important meal of the day we caught a monorail (have we mentioned the monorails yet? They are so cute!) that took us to the bus station where we caught a bus that drove past the station where we caught the monorail (thanks for nothing Lonely Planet). The bus eventually deposited us 2.8 kilometers from our destination. Our travel books said that there was a connecting bus we had to catch, but no such bus exists. We warmed our bellies with some food from a restaurant called Chaplin, in honour of some guy named Charlie. Just because.

Then we walked to our first destination, Nakamura Ke/House. The walk took us past a U.S. military base and we saw lots of guys with short hair and women and children with big butts. Somewhere along the way it began to rain. That mean kind of rain that circumvents any attempt to umbrella it by being blown around in every direction. Stupid jerk rain. Today is the day that I learned that my left shoe has a leak in it somewhere. But the walk was nice in spite of the weather and the fact that the bulk of it was uphill. The island of Okinawa is fairly different from the rest of Japan. Much more tropical, much more green. And the area we were walking through was fairly hilly. Long ago people, important people, used to bury their relatives in neat looking tombs in the sides of these hills. The tombs are still there. But right next to a half century old tomb is a new condo, or a freeway. Kind of jarring.


We made it to Nakamura House, paid the lowish entrance fee and poked around. Nakamura House is basically just an old house. About 500 years old. It's built in the traditional Okinawan style, which is a distinctive blend of Chinese and Japanese architecture. The other problem with the weather today is that it made all our pictures look kind of dull and blah. But the house was neither blah nor dull. It was big, breezy and beautiful.


From there we walked to the Nakagusuku castle ruins. The castle ruins are older than the house. And they are in slightly less good shape. But still about as interesting as collections of rocks can be. Basically all that remains of the castle are the distinctive curvy walls. Which were in the process of being pulled apart brick by brick for reasons beyond our ken. It was interesting to see the walls disassembled. Made me appreciate even more just how much planning and effort went into making these things. Plus the views were quite nice. On a clear day, I daresay they'd be spectacular.


We thought about heading to Okinawa city, but my foot was soaking in its own soakings and we both reckoned Okinawa would just be a smaller Naha with more white people. So we went back home.

A word about tacos. They eat a lot of tacos down here on Okinawa island. Sometimes they put it on rice. Sometimes they use tuna instead of beef. Most times they deep fry the shell before they make the taco. I like it. Mexican food was too healthy. Deep fried tacos are right up there with crisp meat burritos in my books.

We went to another steak house for dinner because it was our last night in Okinawa. A lot like our other Okinawan steak dinner but with a less impressive cook and more Spam. They really like their Spam over here. I seriously thought about getting someone some Turkey Spam as a souvenir but then decided against it. I also decided against getting James a dried frog change purse to go with his kangaroo scrotum change purse from Australia.

We bought some alcohol to share with the rest of the gang back at Cam Cam and had us a good time. The Japanese seemed to really like their introduction to the Wyoming Stetson. There was a reggae party going on somewhere nearby but it didn't start until two in the morning and everyone kind of powdered out at around one. Oh well.

Nabe

There was a Nabe Party at our hostel tonight. There was a lot of liquid consumed. Both alcoholic and non. There was a lot of talking. Both English and non. I could go into more detail but I chugged some kind of Japanese firewater and my fingers feel like tingly cake pudding so I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow is a big day. I forget why, but I know we have to get up early. I am really going to miss this place.

Yay Canadian bar!

I don't quite remember how yesterday ended, but it began with another great breakfast. It wasn't exactly traditional Japanese fare of the fish & rice with raw egg variety, but it certainly wasn't American-style, either. It did include rice, but also fried eggs & spam, salad with garlic dressing, tofu, squash, pickles, fruit, miso noodle soup, and coffee. Good stuff.

In the afternoon we took a bus tour of some of the sights to the south. I only understood about 1 out of every 30 words our guide said, and she talked a lot. It made my head hurt. She also sang every once in a while. That was nice.

The tour took us to a lot of places, but we never got to stay anywhere long enough to see everything we wanted. What we did in an afternoon, we could have easily spun out into a couple of days. More if we got lost, which is likely. A brief rundown:

• Imperial Navy Headquarters Underground HQ of the Japanese navy during WWII. Site of a mass suicide when they realized they'd lost. War makes my tummy hurt.


• Ryukyu Glass Village We watched people make stuff out of glass. It was amazing! There were a lot of people back there, and they work so FAST. There was so much going on at once, and everyone seemed to be in the right place at the right time with the right tool or bit of hot glass, but I never saw or heard them talk to each other or ask for anything. They all just knew. It was nuts. The glass blowing & shaping itself was super cool, too.


• Himeyuri no To Memorial to 190 high school girls and their teachers who comitted mass suicide rather than surrender to the Americans. I think it's a stop on a lot of tours, because the little park was surrounded with ugly shops selling tacky Okinawan souvenirs. There's a museum there, too, but we didn't have time to go in.


• Okinawan Peace Hall There were A LOT of peace memorials around here, but all we saw were the giant lacquer Buddha and a bit of the peace art museum out back. I tried to fold a paper crane (because that seems to be the thing to do when praying for peace) but I don't think I did it right. It's the thought that counts, I guess.


• Okinawa World A tourist theme park, without the rides. The big attraction is a large cave, which we dutifuly walked through. There were a lot of pretty linestone formations to see, and some creepy-crawly cave creatures (bats & fish) but it all felt kind of ruined by the immense number of tourists that pass through every year. There was hardly anyone down there when we were, but we could see all the places where stalactites had been broken off as souvenirs, and the dark spots on the formations where people touched with their oily hands, wish-tossed coins just about anywhere there was standing water, foot and handprints in the clay where people stepped off the walkway, presumably to take pictures. There were even Christmas lights wrapped around a bunch of stalagmites and stalactites near the exit. Tacky. I kinda liked it anyway. I think caves are neat. The cave exit was at the far end of the park, so we had to haul ass to get back to our bus in time. We rushed past a sugar refinery, a brewery, a distillery (all with samples), more glass-craftery, a snake park, and a few souvenir shops that actually had neat stuff we haven't seen elsewhere. We would have loved to stop and see all of that. Sigh.


• One Final Tacky Gift Shop The stuff in here seemed especially crap, but it was the sole purpose of our stop. No one bought anything.

We were pretty bushed after all that, but we stopped in at a Canadian bar on the way home. We ate nachos and drank Crown Royal (among other things) and talked to a lot of people, and apparently used the free internet to post about what a great time we were having. I don't remember how we got home. Yay Canadian bar!

Tyler makes up the titles, not me

We've been drinking. Too much for a blog. Yay Canadian bar! This took far too long to type. Yay Canadian bar! More tomorow!

You Look Nice, Okay?

Today we got off to an early start. We were so proud! We were out looking for breakfast before most places even opened. That kind of sucked. But we eventually found a café that sold us cubes of French toast baked with syrup in a coffee cup and it was all good. By which I mean delicious. Really delicious.

We spent the day in Shuri, the old capital. Pretty much everything of cultural note had been destroyed during WWII, but a lot of stuff has been reconstructed for tourists like ourselves. But not in a crappy concrete Osaka Castle kind of way. More like in a UNESCO World Heritage kind of way. It was all very interesting, at any rate.

Shuri Castle was a mixture of Chinese and Japanese styles (with some purely native touches, of course). Makes sense. For a very long time these islands had close ties with China and were an important stop along trade routes through East Asia. Some of the things I noticed were the curved walls, the bright colours (lots of red), the dragons, the lush tropical vegetation, and the slanty, slanty steps. Can't say I was a fan of those. The not-at-all-level steps, I mean. And I was also kind of disappointed that the big touristy photo ops (the main hall of the castle and an ornate gate) were all covered up for restoration or something. Pity they were both out of commission at the same time. But...

We didn't know ahead of time, but on certain days the Shuri Castle people put on free cultural dance performances. It just so happened that we showed up about 10 minutes before one was about to start. (Kinda made up for getting caught in the rain.) The 40-minute show was made up of six dances. Like all other Japanese dances I've seen so far, four of them were mesmerizingly slow. Two were faster. I quite enjoyed those. All six made use of handheld props like shiny fans & castanets. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Except when the awning overhead would dump massive amounts of water onto the spectator seats. That was a little distracting. And because there are no pictures (at least not yet) you'll just have to take my word for it: the costumes were beautiful.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the park and saw more ruins and reconstructions. We paid to see Tamaudun (a royal tomb), but we couldn't go inside or anything, so there's really nothing to say about that, other than it's World Heritage Listed. I wonder why our guidebook gave it 3 out of 3 stars.

Beach Day

We went to the beach today. That's about it, really.

To be more specific, we also ate at a 50's style diner. I had burrito rice and Carla had a fantastic breakfast with stupendous bacon. Won't find that in Osaka! Later on I ate a goya burger at a chain called Jef (Japan Excellent Foods). We walked a lot. It was windy. We didn't swim in the ocean, but we did get our calves wet. Parks here are greener than they are in Osaka. We fed some fishes in a Chinese garden, their gaping maws were disturbing.

On Valentine's Day, only the boys get chocolate

Okinawa's got a lot of stuff we haven't seen in a while. Like Dr. Pepper in vending machines (extra big cans, to boot), A&W, and Spam. Lot's of stores selling Spam. I think it's considered an Okinawan souvenir or something. Other souvenirs we see everywhere are Hawaian shirts, pork noodle soup, a vegetable called goya (I think it's also known as bittermelon), glassware, and pairs of stylized clay lions (or representations thereof). They're called shisa, and seriously, they're for sale every shop, in an astounding variety of styles. Some are scary, some are colourful, some are weird, and some are really, really cute. If you can't find a clay shisa to suit your tastes, their likeness is also available on T-shirts, fans, mugs, pens, keychains, magnets, ashtrays, Hello Kitty costumes... you get the idea. Funny thing is, if they're so representative of Okinawa, why haven't I seen many outside of souvenir shops?

Something else they have in Okinawa that I'm pretty sure you won't get anywhere else is taco rice. It's a plate of rice with a pile of ground beef, lettuce & tomato on top. Tastier than it might sound. Also, deep fried tacos. And steak. Okinawa must have a lot of cows, because there seems to be a steak house on every corner. Not crazy expensive steak houses, either. We found ourselves in one this very evening. We were the only people in there besides the ten or so employees that stood by and watched us eat, and the music was an odd mix of forgotten 80's tunes (such as the Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney duet, The Girl Is Mine), but we got a good meal, and a flashy teppanyaki show (where our chef flipped around his knives and tossed the salt & pepper shakers around) so we were pretty happy. And full. And a little sleepy.

There was more shopping, and a little napping, and now Tyler's getting a crash course in colloquial Japanese in the guest house common room.

Sorry there are no pictures. We haven't found a way to post them yet, and might not get them up until we're back in Osaka. I just hope we don't run out of room on our memory cards...

I'm on vacation so I don't need to think of witty titles

It took a couple of hours to find our hostel. Turns out it was a two minute walk from the station we started from. Luckily the weather was fine. It has been a few months since I have been able to wander around outside wearing only a T-shirt.

So we found the place, Carla popped her head in and I stayed outside. I heard a question, "Schwartz?" and an answer, "Yes" and then I heard a whole mess of people loudly say, "Hello!" I went in to see what was going on. I entered the common room and people started talking to me. Carla was already in conversation with others. We were the only white people there. But everyone was super duper friendly. When we mentioned that we were a little hungry, two people (Jun and Rieko) stood up and escorted us to a cheap and tasty noodle shop. An Okinawan noodle shop. It served SoKi SoBa, which was quite nummy IMHO. The noodles were different than any I've had thus far and the meat in the soup was rib meat. I love ribs. Rib meat that has been simmering in soup stock? I highly recommend it. And there was a lot of meat for the price. I added a few dashes of Okinawan hot sauce and was nearly in heaven.

After supper, Jun and Rieko (who I introduced in a parenthetical aside so referring to them in the actual text is kind of a no-no. Whatever. Or, as the Japanese say Ma E Wa) took us to a cherry blossom festival. Cherry blossoms are kind of a big deal in Japan. They haven't started to bloom yet on the main island but they seem to be doing alright down here. So we looked at some cherry blossoms, chatted some more and met up with Rieko' sister, Mieko. We wandered back to the CamCam (the name of the hostel) and were included in a whole lot of drinking. People just kept pouring us AwaMori, an Okinawan liquor. We also had a big can of Orion, the Okinawan beer. Jun challenged me to a fighting game on the PS2 that they had in the lounge. He did a masterful job of making me think that I was holding my own when in reality he could have slaughtered me at any time. It wasn't until I saw him have a match against someone else who actually knew what they were doing that I realized just how big, thick and wooly the kid gloves he was wearing for me were. I can respect that.

Also, free internet. That's how I'm sending these words out to y'all.

Vacation from Our Holiday

Carla tried to post from her cell phone, but it hasn't shown up yet. So if this seems redundant, please forgive me. We are in Okinawa now. Sans laptop. So we won't be updating for at least a week. Probably. Who knows. Carla just about finished typing up the rest of Trev's visit related adventures but then the internet stopped working at the Orange House. So you don't get to read it till later. If you're lucky. Do you feel lucky, punks? Well, do you?

Happy Birthday Laura

It's been a busy few days here in the Lukiwski/Schwartz household. Carla has been busy trying to write about the boys' visit and avoid finding out how much we spent while they were here, and planning our trip to Okinawa, whilst I have been preparing for a workshop tomorrow and training for my new job. They want me to sing. A lot. I sang for them during the interview, you'd would've thought that would have been enough. But I'm not here to talk about my crap singing voice, I'm here to talk about what we got up to today.

Chinese New Year happened recently. Kobe has a large and vibrant Chinatown that's been celebrating the event all week. We decided to go and check it out. The other big event today was that Yoshinoyas nationwide were having a Beef Day. You see, back in the day, Yoshinoya's big thing was beef on rice (cheap!) but then some mad cow stuff happened and their supply was cut off. So they made the switch to pork (still cheap!). Recently they've brought back some limited time only beef dishes, but not the cheap & tasty beef bowl they were known for. Until today, and today only. Carla and I thought we'd better give it a try.


There was a line up. A line that extended out of the door and into the street. People miss their beef. We waited in line and finally got to order our beef bowls. They were... oddly reminiscent of meatloaf.

From there we walked over to the Chinatown. It was packed. So, so packed. There was stuff going on, festivities and demonstrations and stuff but we couldn't get anywhere near that. We could only go where the crowd pushed us. It was a pushy, pushy crowd. We managed to duck down a side alley and beat a strategic retreat. Wanting to chill out a little we descended into a Danish cheesecake coffee house. And when I say cheesecake I mean a cake covered in melted cheese. It tasted oddly good in an odd way and made my nose very shiny. They also do fondue.

As we left the coffee house full of coffee, grease and regret that we didn't really get to see any Chinese New Year's goings on. As we were lamenting, a lion dance passed right by us. Kind of handy, that.


From Kobe, we caught a train over to David's for dinner. Poor David, he wasn't having the best of nights. Japan really sucks if you want to take out money any time after, say, six in the evening. For such a cash based society, that doesn't make much sense. But David soldiered on and whipped up some very nice green curry. Plus he had Spaced on DVD. Carla and I have been wanting to see that for some time. It was worth the wait. Very funny. And charming and witty. Plus people fell down. That's always good for a larf.

Redundancy

I was going to write about January 20th, but Carla pretty much covered all the bases so I'll just mention what we got up to today.

First, we went shopping for groceries. Boy it'll be nice when we move into a place with an actual kitchen. Or at the very least some counter space.

I'm going to miss winter in Japan. It doesn't get all that cold, and all the fast food restaurants serve soup. I really enjoy a good soup. A good spicy Korean soup. I'm going to miss spicy Korean chige. Of course, right now I miss mom's chicken noodle soup.

After the shopping and the soup, we jumped on a train to Kyoto to meet up with Ayako. She took us to a nice udon restaurant and then on a walking tour of the surrounding area. Kyoto looks different at night. Maybe it's the lack of people.

We walked through a shrine and a park and then through a slice of the past. There is a section of Kyoto that looks like it hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's all wood and stone and narrow streets. The electric signs, the streetlamps and the blinking lights of the security systems ruined the effect a bit but the deserted streets and the lack of normal city noises helped add to the mood. The dim lights meant no photographs, so my lackluster words are all you get. Sorry.

After that we hung out in a coffee shop for a while, chatting, and then we headed back home.

Oh yeah, Ayako showed us pictures of her dressed up as a nurse, a bunny, and a policewoman. I love this country.

Nervous Beans

We haven't gone out much the last few days. We've been mainly focused on blogging 'bout the last two weeks and not spending any more money. Yesterday's big event was listening to The Wolf (Regina's Rock Station) on the internet. I think we did it to be ironic, but that's really no excuse. The song playing as the Wolf began to stream? I dunno. Some crap by Creed. I'm glad I don't know the title of it. Then it was Big League by Tom Cochrane. No amount of prodding would get Carla to screech along with the chorus. Next up: Back in Black by AClightingboltDC. Then some announcer by the name of Krash blathered on about how beer is good for you and then some Finger Eleven followed by some Pinkish Floyd and we killed the audio. I gotta say, next time you're in a foreign land and start to feel a little homesick, just listen to The Wolf.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm also not here to talk about Groundhog Day, which the Japanese people know nothing about. They're too busy with their own silly early February day of import. Setsubun. Here's the deal, someone dresses up like an oni (demon) and tries to enter your house. You throw beans at him and say, "Out with bad luck, in with good." That's Setsubun.

I'm serious.

We made a day of it, went to Kyoto and took in some of the festivities. There were many places to choose from. The first mamemaki (bean scattering ceremony) we attended was at Yasaka Jinja. It was a big place with lots of stalls. We shoved our way into the crowd and managed to get somewhat close to the stage. Luckily, we're tall. There were geisha up on the stage.


They did a traditional dance, or two, and then threw beans into the audience. Then they left. We were getting ready to go when some guy started talking onstage. So we wandered back.


Some Oni slowly made their way onto the stage and then did some stylized dancing. Then they threw beans into the audience. That was that.

The next mamemaki we went to was at Rokuhara Mitsu-ji. This one had geishas AND local celebrities.


So the Japanese versions of Krash, in other words. This one was slightly different in that there was an actual ceremony during the proceedings. An Oni (the best looking one of the day) tried to disrupt the ceremony by shooting paper streamers at everyone but the monks just kept on chanting and doing their things.


Eventually beans were thrown and the Oni left.

The last place we went to was the biggest. All sorts of stalls selling all sorts of food that smelled all kinds of good. We broke down and bought some candied fruit. They don't just candy apples here, heavens no! Their candying technology is far more advanced than that available in the Americas. Carla had a candied strawberry and I had a candied orange. Oh. My. God. So good!!! It's like they crammed 14 oranges into my one candied orange, and then they covered it with candy!! Same with Carla's strawberry. But with strawberries, not oranges.

The big attraction of Mibu-dera is the kyogen they put on at the theatre there. It's 650 year-old mime that was originally used to teach Buddhism to the common folk. I'm thinking I wasn't the target audience, cuz I zoned out for a lot of it. It involved bean throwing, mimes in masks, and incredibly repetitive music. I'm all for culture, but this just wasn't my cup of tea. Nor was it my steaming bowl of hot Korean soup.

On our way home, we got a call from Ben the Ozzie and we all met up and the Green Leaf and shared a few pitchers and stories about how nice the Japanese people are. They really are quite nice.

Confusing Musings

Trev left yesterday and I didn't get to see him off. I was at work. My last day of work. I didn't teach any kids, I trained a whole bunch of Japanese females in the fine art of English good speaking. I think it went okay. The girls seemed to have a good time. Then I helped my boss look through resumes to find my replacement. That was a bit surreal. I tried to find a guy who would do a good job but not be better than me. Then it was time to go. My bosses seemed sad to see me go, and I felt a little bad to be going. Plus I felt bad that I didn't get to go to the airport with Trev. Plus it was fairly cold out. Not the best of days.

Also, yesterday was Carla's and my anniversary. 10 years. That's a little bit of a long time. Both her and I were feeling a bit out of sorts so we just stayed in. Stayed in all today as well. Which was nice for a change. Big change from spending over two hours on a train. I like it.

I don't like how my blogging skills seem to have atrophied during our two week absence. This post seems all over the place and mainly pointless.

Let's fix that. There are a couple things that I should mention. The first is that I quit this past job so I can take another one next month. The one that starts next month goes for a year. So Carla and I will be here until at least next March. Probably longer, as we'll have a whole lot of sight seeing to do once the job ends. I'm excited about being able to stay in Japan and making pretty decent coin at the same time. But then we will be missing at least three weddings this year. And two more births. I don't know how old my cousin's kids will be before I get to see them. Hunter and Rowyn will be over a year old. A lot of stuff is going on back home. Kelly might even finish editing Blue Rare. I feel bad about missing all that.

The other thing I should mention is that we had a freaking fantastic time with Nate and Trev here. We did all sorts of stuff that we had been putting off.

I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to back blog all our adventures. Rest assured it will take too long and not make a lot of sense. Just check the page top to bottom and back again everyday and you'll be right. And if Trev and or Nate want to email in some stuff, we'll post it here. Just remember that grandparents and young cousins sometimes glance at this site.

Also, the 10 years of dating anniversary is the butter cookie anniversary.