Amazing Adventures in Aogaki!

Yes, that's right, dear readers! Saturday I snubbed my sickly symptoms and struck out on my one-speed steed to soak in the sun and surroundings.



Sakura and sugi are just some of the symbols of spring in this Land of the Sun. Sakura summon the sights and sounds of sloshed salarymen sipping Sapporo, sake, and shochu under a snowfall of petals. Sadly, sugi seasonally send scores of sufferers into spasms of sneezes, their schnozes veritable spouts of snot, eyes shedding salty tears.

(I hope at this point you're as impressed with my prose as I am!)





I walked along the river for a while in the hopes of catching sight of something new. And I did! More flowers that my guides fail to cover. I guess Aogaki offers more than can be covered in two guides.



This little Buddhist shrine is nestled half-way up a small hill.



Each day Buddah looks down on the little town of Aogaki and wonders if it will ever be more than a two-convenience store village.





I'm sure there's an art to catching birds on film (or in pixels). Something tells me there's a lot of waiting and chance involved. Perhaps some camouflage as well. I usually end up scaring birds away before I am able to spot them. Usually they taunt me with their frilly calls.

"I'm here, I'm here!"
"I hear you, but I can't see you."
"Now I'm over here! Over here!"
"You're getting farther away."
"Over here, over here!"
"That's all well and good, but I have other things to do..."
"Over here, over here!"
"I'm pedaling away. You are such a tease."



There were two of these keri or grey-headed lapwings in a rice field. Finally something that guide can i.d.

It was two hours well used.

Sumo in Osaka

On Friday I headed to Osaka to watch the sweeping, salt-throwing, name-announcing, ice cream-hawking, futon-carrying, bow-wielding, face-wiping, belly-pounding extravaganza known as sumo. Oh yeah, there was also some fat man shoving and throwing going on.



First, the two competing stables will have their members called one-by-one as they enter the ring and do a little ritual. It is the "macarena" of sumo. Easy to do and synchronized.




Before the actual bout can begin, there's still a lot to do.



You gotta sweep and water and then do some more sweeping.



Then you gotta announce the wrestlers and if there are any sponsors, you get some stable boys to walk around the ring with advertisements. At the final bout McDonald's had three banners. Mm, the food of champions.

Finally, the wrestlers enter the ring after throwing in some salt. Everyone has their preferences for how much they throw and how high. And then the stare-down begins. They look like they're about to duke it out when finally one stands up and walks out of the ring and the other follows. They go back to their corners, get a drink, spit it out, and grab some more salt. There is another round of staring each other down. Then they stand up again. The crowd goes nuts. They go back to their corners and wipe themselves with a handkerchief. They grab some more salt. Finally they're ready to go.



There's a lot of preparation (sometimes 3 minutes) and the actual bout lasts usually less than a minute.

Rinse and repeat 35 times.

More adventures with food

What could be better than buttered toast?


How about a kimchee omelet on buttered toast?


How about a kimchee omelet on rye bread?


Yay for non-white bread.

It's like I never left home

Two Sundays ago the temperature was in the 60s and it was glorious



Three wishes:
1. Bird would give me a moment to grab my camera,
2. I had a camera that could handle more distance and I knew how to use it,
3. I had a decent guide to Japanese birds. The current one does not cut it.



Something is always in bloom in Hyogo.

Now the weather's back to being crummy, gloomy, rainy, and snowy.






I pass by this sign everyday that says キリストの再臨は近い！ キリスト (kirisuto) and 近い(chikai, or "near") were the only two words I could read and I didn't know what kirisuto could be. It's in the katakana script, which is mostly reserved for foreign words. So for the longest time I thought the sign said something like "There is a crystal (kirisuto) shop nearby" or maybe "There is a crystal mine nearby". But about a month ago I was biking by it again and recognized the kanji 再, which sorta means "again" or "re-" and suddenly it all clicked!

First person to put it all together using only what's been written here gets Japanese sweet potato KitKats sent to them.

(Hint: kirisuto =/= crystal, の = 's (possessive))

漫才 Manzai!

Sunday I was invited to see some manzai in Sasayama. Manzai is usually a two-man comedic act in which a straight man and his idiot partner discuss this or that. The idiot gets hit upside the head a lot and the straight man is always astounding by his friend's stupidity. Manzai has expanded to include lots of different styles. Some are more physical and full of slapstick, while others drop the straight man/idiot set up, and still other acts may have up to four members.

There were 20 acts in all (although there were also magic acts and a musical performance by my neighbor, Maestro Adachi) and of them I really only understood one well enough to honestly laugh a bit. Still, I didn't think I'd understand even that much.

The audience was mixed; everyone from 2-year-old tots to 90-year-old crones showed up. Being the inaka and Japan being an aging/aged society, there were definitely more of the latter. Perhaps that accounts for the audience response, as the performers were usually a lot younger than the audience. Some of the non-manzai acts actually got more laughs than the manzai acts.

Or maybe Japanese comedy is just like Japanese sweets - not too overwhelming. There was no knee-slapping or rolling in the aisles or having to wipe tears away. Goofy? Yes. Clever? Yes. HILARIOUS? No. But then, I don't speak Japanese.

Here is Somei Yoshino, the one group I did manage to understand (though they performed a different piece).

青垣の生活 Daily Life in Aogaki : A Dichotomous Key

6:30AM Alarm goes off.

1a. If Monday, Tuesday, or Thursdays, go to 2
1b. If Wednesday or Friday --> Get out of bed/futon at 7:10

2a. If I can see my breath, --> Get out of bed/futon at 7:30
2b. If I can't see my breath --> Get out of bed/futon at 7:15


Okay, enough of that.

Breakfast used to be well-rounded, but that was months ago when I was still going to bed at 8PM and waking up at 5AM. Now I'm doing good if I remember to grab a mikan orange on my way out the door or if I remember to throw some toast into the toaster oven. Sometimes there is time for tea.

MTTh I am at work by 8:10 and morning meeting starts at 8:15 at my base school. I swivel around in my chair and listen to the meeting, but hardly understand anything. Usually I hold off my reading of the NYTimes until about 8:20, when the morning meeting is over and teachers are running around getting ready for homeroom. I have time to look at my schedule, set out books, find class lists, mentally prepare myself, and maybe eat that mikan.

If I have to go to the bank I'll find an hour I don't have anything to do and walk down to the bank. A good 7 minute walk. Wakes me up and gets me out of the office with all of its fumes from the space heaters.

Usually I'll have 2-3 classes, though sometimes only 1 or as many as 4. Usually I can be out by 4PM, but sometimes I'll stay later if there's something to work on or ponder. Once in a while a student will ask for a conversation hour after class or the cooking or taiko clubs will invite me to a meeting and I will be at the school until 5 or 6PM.

In warm weather I might go for a walk or bike my way on some errands after work, but in cold weather I do one thing: sit under my kotatsu, eat at my kotatsu, and drink at my kotatsu. I catch up with mail and messages and Skype friends and family. It's my time to unwind.

WF I am at work by 8:05 for the 8:10 meeting. More of the same. Any number of classes. If it's a slow day I'll walk into town for lunch, either to the grocery store or the bakery.

If it's a Wednesday I stay in the office and work/read until about 5PM and then head out to dinner with friends before going to my weekly Japanese lesson. I get home around 9 or 10PM, depending on when the lesson begins and how long it lasts, which all depends on if I feel like the living dead or not.

If it's a Friday, there are several possibilities: I run out of the building at 4 on the dot and return home, I run out at 4 on the dot and hop on the train to a weekend destination, or I stay until 6 and hang out with the tea ceremony club. I sorta got roped into that, but it's fun and there are Japanese sweets involved, so it's all good.




In other news, I killed a mukade in the bathroom yesterday. I guess that means it's spring.

猫の時間 Neko no Jikan!

Today I went to Osaka with a fellow ALT, who works at the same school as I do, only on a different day.

We went to a cat cafe, where you pay a 1,050 yen to hang out with cats for an hour and enjoy a drink. You can doodle in guest books, flip through cat photography books, and do various other cat-related things.



The cats are friendly, but they won't come and sit in your lap. I mean, they're cats, right? What did you expect? This guy just sat on the bookshelf with his face in the corner.



I was unfortunate enough to be stuck in the doorway between the cafe and the cat room when the owners decided it was feeding time and suddenly I was in the middle of a cat stampede. Imagine that scene in LotR where Arwen rescues Frodo by summoning those river horses (no, not hippos, you know what I mean) to drown the Nazgul. Yeah, it was like that.

Altogether a good time. The longhairs were real friendly and it was great to watch the cats jump around and cause a little bit of mischief.

I think I'll have to check out the dog cafe sometime soon.