A Little Tidbit

Friday I did a bit of grocery shopping and was very elated to find a loaf of bread with eight slices.

You see, in Japan, all loaves are the same size and it's all white bread. Brand matters not. The difference is the thickness of the slices. They range from four to ten slices per loaf. I have only heard tell of the ten-slice loaves. This Friday was the first time I had seen eight-slice loaves. Usually I must settle for six slices.

I'll have to document more Adventures in Food in Japan sometime as well as Christmas in Japan.

Answers

Show me pictures of your car! and if my bike can fit in it.

It's a little Daihatsu Mira K-car. About 10 years old, I think? The back seats fold down. Perhaps if you take a wheel off I could fit it in there. I'd have to check it out with my bike.

My bike is a hand-me-down from my predecessor and probably her predecessor, too. It's a mama chari. It has two speeds: slow and stop. It doesn't like hills. I mostly use it for shopping.

public transportation.
chopsticks: do they have forks anywhere?
maybe what you know about the government?
is it weird to pay 10000 yen for like a banana?

Forks are plentiful. All I could tell you about the government is what I heard a few months ago. Basically, the last prime minister Yasuo Fukuda resigned and Taro "one culture, one civilization, one language, and one ethnic group" Aso took his place. The Liberal Democratic Party has been in power in Japan for nearly all of the post-war period. Both Fukuda and Aso are LDP members.

That banana had better be made of gold if it's going for 10,000 yen. In the summer bananas were about 300-400 yen for 4-5 bananas, I think...?

As for public transportation, there isn't too much and it's pretty expensive. Trains are pretty fairly priced, but buses charge you according to how far you travel. For example, it costs me about 1,800 yen to go from Osaka to Kaibara ( 2.5 hours of travel). It costs me 800 yen to go from Aogaki to Kaibara by bus (45 minutes). It's much better if you're in a more populated area. Taxis are killer: 4,500 yen from Kaibara to Aogaki (30 minutes).

Nara

I was in Nara City from Nov 21st to the 23rd. I hoped on the train right after work, got a bit lost trying to find the Kintetsu Line in Tsuruhashi, and made it to a fellow ALT's apartment by late evening.



Nara is a former capital city from the 700s and is known for Nara Park, which is crawling in deer, young families, and tourists. You can purchase a stack of shika sembei or deer crackers for 150 yen and be accosted by little deer. I've heard stories and seen pictures of deer bowing politely in order to receive a cracker, but these guys were pretty adamant. They're all pretty tame, if pushy, and you can pet them. In October there are a few antler cutting ceremonies, where many of the male deer are rounded up and have their antlers removed to keep the deer from going on bloody rampages.





This is the approach to Todai-ji. You can buy all the souvenirs you could ever want here. I picked up some delicious deer droppings (chocolate peanuts) for some neighbors and some deer-shaped cookies for everyone at my base school. I never ever ever buy omiyage when I visit other towns and figured I probably should this time.



This is Todai-ji, the largest wooden structure in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inside you'll find a Buddha (the Daibutsu or Large Buddha) and some guardian statues. To Buddha's left there is a pillar with a hole in the bottom. If you crawl through it, then (according to various sources) you'll become enlightened/have a long life/have happiness/have a wish granted. The hole is the size of the Buddha's nostril. I was the only person above the age of nine waiting in line to crawl through (hint: go in diagonally with one arm in front).



Crummy picture. One just has to wonder, though: did I climb out of or into Buddha's head? What if I was already enlightened and this undid all my work? What then?



After Todai-ji we headed over to Nigatsu-do, which offered a great sight of the city and some tea. I also picked up what I've seen called a goshuin, a noukyouchou, or a shuinchou. Whatever you want to call it, it's a book of stamps and calligraphy signed by a priest at a temple. For me it's just a souvenir, but it acts as proof of your visit to a temple. I'll post some pictures later.

Then it was back to the apartment for some delicious lemon soup, cheese and crackers (boursin!), and fruity tea. Oh yeah, and SLEEP!

On Sunday we saw the Kofuku-ji complex.



While waiting in line to see some Buddhist statues in a stupa we chitchatted a little with some Japanese ladies who wanted to know if I got my little red pepper charm from Korea. The conversation was prefaced by a listing of languages that we might have possibly been speaking (French? English?).



Also part of Kohfukuji was this octogonal temple with a Kannon statue inside. More info here.



Afterwards we walked around the newer part of town. We got some fresh mochi. Mmm mmm! Too bad I was already bursting at the seams from all the food I had eaten throughout the day.

I'm looking forward to returning to Nara one day and seeing more of it.

Possible blog ideas

Hello everyone!

What are you interested in hearing about from me? Is there some detail I've completely failed to mention in this blog? Is there something about Japan that you're just dying to know about? Here, let me throw you some topics. Give me some feedback. This blog is just as much for you as it is for me.

- convenience stores and their convenience
- school systems
- transportation
- food and drink
- my house and its lack of insulation
- internationalism in Japan
- bowing, shoes, toilets, chopsticks, etc.
- daily schedule

Have at it!

Fauna of Aogaki

What I love most about Aogaki is the Kakogawa River. While much of it is dried up it's still a haven for all sorts of animals and plants. My favorite thing to do is bike along it. It never fails to offer up something new and exciting. I cross it everyday on the way to work and ocassionally I break the rules and ignore the school-prescribed route back home so I can see what's going on in the river bed.

Today on the way to Kogenji Temple I forgot to cross a bridge that would let me hug the banks of the river, but I was still rewarded with plenty of opportunities to catch some local fauna on camera.



I really need a guide to birds and trees in Japan. I wish I could tell you what these are.



Neither Wikipedia nor Google will tell me what kind of dove this is.



I think these are black kites, but can't be certain. Where there is one there is certainly another nearby. Same goes with the crows that are on the next telephone pole. The crows are really amazingly intelligent and affectionate. I've seen pairs feed each other. They really love the cherry tomatoes in the garden next door (birds in general are pretty attracted to red).



The same pair again. I chased them between phone poles for a while until I could get a good shot of them. Sorry for being so annoying!



This is not the best picture. I can only zoom so far and I only have so many pixels, but you see that blue/green smudge in the center there? It's some sort of kingfisher. I've seen one once before near the high school.



A heron! These guys are all over the place and are really skittish. I had to hide behind a traffic sign just to get a picture. Half the time I stop along the river to look at something I end up scaring one of these guys up without having previously known they were there.

There was also a beautiful pheasant that landed right in front of me, but I couldn't get it on camera. Oh well! Next time.



Enough of the birds. Here's a weasel of some sort by the river. This guy came really close and wasn't afraid of me at all; just curious. Half the time I see these they have some juicy prize in their jaws. I've seen a larger mustelid of some sort romping through my backyard (I was eating toast and staring out the kitchen window when he entered stage left). It was twice the size and had a darker, redder coat without a mask. A sable or marten? ::shrugs::



This little frog was hanging out in this faux bamboo rail for a few days. I guess he was down. It's not easy being green.

Kogenji Temple 高原時

Another post? There are more to come today! I've got a lot of catching up to do.



It is fall and the leaves finally changed about a week or two ago. The ginkgos are all brilliant and have been for a while. The maples (momiji) just turned red this week. Persimmons hang in naked trees and from drying racks throwing a bit of orange into the mix.



There's still a fair bit of green out there, though. Mornings are a little overcast, but the days have been sunny and surprisingly warm.



Today I biked to Kogenji Temple, which is a popular place to view autumn leaves for 300yen.





The three-story temple there is quite old (about a thousand years old, I think).

I'd been to the temple grounds before (though never all the way up to the pagoda). It's nice in the fall, but I much prefer it during the summer when everything is rich and green. I'll have to visit in the winter, too.

文化祭、 発表会 Culture Festival and Recital

Friday was the bunkasai or culture festival at my base school in Aogaki. Whereas American schools usually have cultural events after school or only for part of the day (the only exception I can think of was the IA Olympics), a culture festival here can span from one to two days depending on the size of the school. Students put on a variety of acts, some of their own volition and others not. The PTA and school staff also join in the festivities by overseeing events or performing.

The taiko club invited me to play with them for the festival about two weeks ago, so I took up the offer. I played two of the simpler songs with them for the opening ceremony. Some of the kids are half asleep in class sometimes, but they're really energetic when they're doing what they love. I got to wear a happi coat and braided headband and the kids got me to put some styling wax in my hair (and then the second conversation of the week about the differentness of my hair ensued. The day before some first years were surprised to see that I had blonde eyelashes and eyebrows.)

There was also a rock band, a tea ceremony, lots of food, mothers who wanted their middle schoolers to speak a bit of English with me, calligraphy and arts and crafts displays, and conversation with people here and there. I also got roped into judging the choruses, which gave me the opportunity to talk with the principal and vice principal (two new words : seikatsu　生活　（daily life) and shi 詩 poetry).

Then today there was a recital at the elementary school down the street. About a week and a half ago the little girl next door ran over with a letter in an envelop inviting me to the happyoukai or recital.

So, today, early on a Saturday morning I went over to the school. The gym was full of parents and grandparents and the usual line of video cameras lined up in the back. There were art displays on the walls and reports about animal and plant life in the river (I was pretty geeked about all the plants). The principal came over and introduced himself (of course he knew who I was). Elementary goes from first to sixth grade here and each class did their own presentation, usually of a musical nature, though the older kids did reports about the history of the town and history of animal and plant life in the river. The staff and PTA also had their own performances and used the chance to give the kids (and audience) some good laughs. Parents dressed up at Anpanman or in drag and danced to the theme from Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. One staff member even acted drunk of stage (while holding an Asahi beer can as a prop). Definitely not the type of humor you'd see in an American elementary school, but good times were had by all.

At the end there was a performance by a musical group that the school had invited. They had some African percussion, a pianist, and two singers do a musical version of a children's book called Tomodachiya, which is about a fox who goes around selling one hour of friendship for 100yen (so far as I could understand). But the best part was when they brought out the Austrian they had been hiding behind stage and he played several pieces on accordian, which the kids got a real kick out of.

Afterwards I got to flex my German muscles (my brain cannot handle two languages at once and I kept saying little filler words in Japanese). Turns out one of the Japanese members of the troupe had studied in the Netherlands and had met the accordianist in Vienna and each year he returns to Japan to play in Tamba City and other places in Japan. It was great to be able to speak a language that I am almost fluent in, be understood, and understand those talking to me! And who would have thought I'd be able to that in little Aogaki? Of course, if this were a bigger city I wouldn't have great neighbors to invite me to different events and I'd never get to speak in person with all these interesting people. The accordianist, whose name is Alexander Chevchenko (as translated from the katakana flier), has a concert in Osaka, but I sadly cannot make it, as it is on Wednesday.

What a great day! :)

Himeji 姫路

This Monday was Culture Day, a national holiday in Japan, so I had the day off. A few weeks ago I had signed up to participate in a budo festival at the budokan in Himeji on Culture Day and invited some fellow ALTs to go with.

The day started off on the right foot when I woke up late and ran out of the door. I drove down to Himeji with some Sasayama ALTs and we only managed to get lost for 20 minutes. Thankfully we only missed the opening ceremony at the beginning and I was on time for a free lesson in wushu tai chi chaun.

Afterwards there was a demonstration of various martials arts.



Taekwondo team breaking some boards. It was set to a music track.





Karate. Those little kids were spot-on and kept up with the older kids.



Pretty sure this was shorinji kempo.



Taiko half-time show.



Naginata, taught to upper-class women back in the day, as far as I know.



Judo. Some sort of a stretching exercise...?



Kyudo, Japanese archery.



After the demonstrations we walked around the Himeji Castle grounds and took some pictures, had dinner and dessert, and then headed back home. It was quite a long day, but well spent.

Learning Japanese I think I'm learning Japanese I really think so

My language materials from CLAIRE came in the mail today. Beforehand I had been doing a bit of review here and there from my old course materials and reading some of the books left behind from previous ALTs. Still, my grammar continued to disintegrate, though my vocabulary grew.

If anything good came from my monitor being down for a month and a half, it was that I watched a lot of Japanese TV. While low in nutritional and entertainment value, most of Japanese television is subtitled in one way or another, which means that you get the benefits of listening and reading. I picked up a lot of combinations of kanji I already knew as well as common words.

There are free Japanese lessons offered in Kaibara out of a volunteer's home. I went to a lesson yesterday. While the material is review for me, well, I need it desperately, as well at the listening and speaking practice. I do a bit of speaking at the school with the office staff and some neighbors, but not often enough.

Hopefully everything combined will show some results. I signed up for the intermediate course materials with CLAIRE, which may or may not have been a mistake. Before signing up I looked at the material covered in the beginner course and it seemed like I wouldn't have any problem skipping it. However, there is a fair amount of vocabulary and some grammar that I didn't learn at university, so I'm playing super catch-up with this course. I guess it'll just be like an excelerated course.

My next step is to maintain my German! I know of one German speaker in the area and hopefully I can get in contact with her sometime soon.

Kyoto 京都

昨日は先生と京都へ行きました。京都はふるい首都。やっぱりたくさん神社と寺があります。京都へいったことがあります。でもたくさん所みたことがありませんでした。

さいしょに京都東寺へ行きました。この寺は日本の一番の高いパゴダですと。このパゴダは国宝。

Yesterday I went to Kyoto with one of my JTEs. Kyoto was the former capital city of Japan until it moved to Tokyo (Edo). Naturally there are a lot of shrines, temples, and palaces. I'd been to Kyoto before, but I didn't get to see any of these places. You can visit a temple every day in Kyoto and not see them all.

First we visited the Touji Temple, which has the largest pagoda in Japan. It's a National Treasure.



Main Hallの中ではYakushi　Trinity (click!)

Inside of the Main Hall is the Yakushi Trinity.


沢山　Fudo　があります。 There were a lot of Fudo statues. Praying to him will protect you (especially from car accidents).

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次は三十三間堂です。この堂は立っているの観音千一体とすわているの観音一体が持っています。

The next place we went to was Sanjyuusangen-dou. Inside of the hall there are 1,001 Buddhas. In the center is a large sitting Buddha, Kannon (who can be either male or female), who is flanked by 500 standing Kannons on the right and 500 on the left.


とても長いです！

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次は西本願寺です。
The next place we visited was Nishi Honganji Temple. It's a large hall somewhat comparable to a sanctuary, I guess. You enter, sit on the floor, contemplate, or listen to the monks. I'm not expert on Buddhism, so don't go quoting me here. I'm just sayin' what I saw.


本願寺は一番の大きいな木で作られているの寺です。
This is next to the largest wooden lecture hall (I think).

---

次は二条城でした。

Then we saw Nijou-jou, which was started under Ieyasu Tokugawa. By his time the capital had been moved to Edo (Tokyo), but there were still a lot of official residences and offices in Kyoto.

Nijou-jou is well-known for its nightingale floors (they squeak to alert guards of intruders). There are also some lovely painted and gold-plated walls. As my JTE said, "mottanai!" or "what a waste!"


In front of the gates.


Looking over the complex.

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次は金閣寺はでした。
The next was Kinkaku-hi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Very nice and picturesque, but not much else. We visited in the evening around 5PM when the sun was low in the sky and shining off the gold walls.

Aki Matsuri 秋祭り

This morning I managed to drag myself out of bed. As an aside, I didn't sleep well because I had a mad headache and neck ache. I considered several times driving to the 24-hour convenience store (or コンビに konbini) in my pajamas to get some Advil or similar product, though I doubted my abilities to drive or read katakana at 2AM on little sleep.

Anyhow. I got myself all prettied-up and drove over to Kaibara for the aki matsuri or fall festival. There was food and fun. I had an okonomiyaki (a sweet pancake-omelet type deal) and then bumped into some Kaibara ALTs and their Japanese friends and watched a taiko drum performance and then the procession.


Taiko performance. They were really good.


Procession.


Messengers in the procession. Ah, the days before e-mail were tough, weren't they?

I met some volunteer Japanese teachers and bought a little messenger bag that I sorely needed from a woman and her husband that had worked in Bangladesh for 25 years and got to practice my Japanese a bit.

I also picked up some cosmos flowers to throw into my yard. I need to pull out more of the crab grass. Everything else, while a bit weedy, actually produces some neat little flowers.

Some of us headed to Miwakare Park (水分れ), where mountain runoff is directed to the Sea of Japan and the Pacific　Ocean and played some frisbee. Then it was off to dinner and some second-hand shops for some deliciously cheap manga (Kaze Hikaru and Slayers).

It was a nice three day weekend and I'm looking forward to the week ahead.

Arthropods!

Japan is a land of many, many things with exoskeletons. When I first got to my house one of my tasks was to go through all the cabinets and see what past ALTs had left. I found a veritable arsenal of insecticides and traps in one cabinet. I had heard stories of fierce mukade (centipedes) that roam the countryside, looking for innocent JETs to terrorize. It seemed that my house would be the battlefield on which I met the horrible, hundred-foot foe.

First Encounter: a rainy day

It was raining, but the house was muggy and I wanted to let some cool air in. I let in more than that. I walked into my eight-tatami room to find a mukade on the inside of the screen. I got some spray and hot water to back me up and then swept it outside. It was pretty long, but not all that terrifying. Only half as big as I thought it would be.

Before you get the impression that I go through my house spraying every thing that moves, know this: mukade are venomous and it's recommended that you go to the nearest hospital or clinic if bitten. While not deadly (to most), it's rather painful. I do have a rather Wizard Howl-like appreciation for the spiders in my house (and they're kind enough to stay out of my blankets).

Second Encounter: the futon

I've gone through spells of sleeping on the futon on the floor and sleeping on the bed. I had another encounter with a geji geji, a smaller centipede that isn't nearly as venomous earlier, which moved me from the futon to the bed. But after a while I was back to my comfy comfy futon.

One night, around 3AM, a mukade crawled across my face. Thankfully, my little prehistoric critter brain clicked on and knew what to do; pick it off my cheek, throw it down, jump up, turn on the light, wait for eyes to adjust, find it, and kill it. I was pretty buzzed on adrenaline and didn't sleep well the rest of the night.

The next week I was gifted with some insecticides (er, arthropodicides) from a JTE (Japanese Teacher of English). It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Future and current JETs: you have been warned.

But now for some neat bugs!


A cicada. On a hot day your eardrums almost burst because these guys sing so loudly! They're called semi or セミ in Japanese.



A hitchhiker! This guy is green, but I've seen dark and light brown praying mantises as well.


Over the course of a week two of these caterpillars ate the vine outside of my kitchen window. I wonder if these guys turn into the giant black and blue butterflies I've seen (unfortunately difficult to capture with my camera).


I was biking along the Kakogawa River when I saw the sidewalk covered in these little guys.


Looks like some sort of long-horned grasshopper, but don't quote me on that.


I passed this spider everyday on my way to work. She's got real gorgeous, bright markings. The spiders here are huge. You can see them in their webs on the telephone wires from your car.

That's all for now! I wish I had some pictures of the Asian Giant Hornets I've seen, but alas! I usually run from those (two inches long and venomous) before thinking of taking out my camera.