Happy St. Patrick's Day! (early)

So yesterday there was an "Irish Day" in Ise, with a parade and Irish music and everything. The parade was probably the most subdued affair I have ever been a part of, and certainly the quietest St. Patty's parade in existence. But after we got done processing down the main streets of the city, we ended up in the square of a covered outdoor mall and finally got a little louder :3

There, among other delights including Power Rangers who subdued a pig-faced demon with the power of Ise-Shima team spirit, a Japanese band from Nagoya played some fantastic reels. One of our lovely organizers on the JET end taught the crowd some easy Irish line dances. I'd tuckered myself out during the first two rounds, thus I sat out the final song and got the shenanigans on film:


Guidance for the J-go deficient: "jyousei" = ladies; "dansei" = mans

In this dance the wimmins are supposed to form one line, and the guys the other. Of course there weren't really even numbers at the event, and getting most Japanese men (cool old dudes excepted) to do anything in a circle with everybody watching is like herding cats. Nevertheless, it was good times :D

On the real St. Patrick's Day, I will be hopping a night-bus to Tokyo in the first leg of my two-week trip to India. I am so stoked, you guys! First three days I am host-famming it up in Delhi, next week is building houses with a volunteer group down in Andhra Pradesh, and if I survive all that hard work in the burning sun, I get to chillax for my last three days with a pre-arranged tour package. And then I get to go back to work the day after I return, haaaaaa ha ha ha oh god (>__>) I still have no idea what I am teaching next term besides the first-year classes.

REAL winter

This is what it looks like.

See that lack of mountains? Those sprawling farmlands? The snow piled 3-4 feet deep? That is JAPAN, man! Only not, because Hokkaido is hardly anything like the mainland, except for that people with black hair and brown eyes who speak Japanese live there. And a healthy smattering of foreigners, too.

Foreigners who don't get stared or marveled at as much, it seemed to me. What I really liked about Sapporo was that people would leave me to my own business, but were very helpful when I needed directions or whatevs. Also the grid system. Oh. My. Jeebus. Grid systems are BEAUTIFUL, and cities built on grids are made of win. Sapporo is a Japanese city where you absolutely cannot get lost, it is un-possible. And it has great shopping, and great eating, and cheese, a-a-and BAGELS. BAGELS WITH CREAM CHEESE I seriously almost started crying right there in the middle of the store, I have been having the worst goddamn cravings for bagels and cream cheese for, what, probably a year now?

Best moment of Christmas day, in fact, for me, was sitting on an express train out to Asahikawa with my travel buddy, looking out the window at what honestly could have been any flat stretch of Wisconsin, eating my earl-grey flavored bagel with plain honest cream cheese slathered all over it. A close second was finally making it to a hot spring bath after getting hella lost, but by that time my Christmas Present From Japan, a.k.a. raging cold / very probably swine flu, was in full swing and I was feverish and cranky. This is the podunk mountain village we ended up in at one point, and grumbly as I was I couldn't help but admire the irony:

...Okay this is one of those things that is only really funny to people who know Japanese. Basically, we are at this point in central Hokkaido where it is cold as the ninth circle of hell, and stumble across this place whose name literally means "to know coldness" and on top of that sounds pretty darn close to what my students exclaim in the open-air hallways of our school at this time of year: "Wah! Samu'-!" ( "cold" is supposed to be "samui," but Kansai people love to drop syllables) I guarantee the Japanese teachers will find it hilarious.

Moving on, Touhoku. Really, really effing pretty c: The snow followed me all the way back to Nagoya, for pete's sake. Just look at this magic right here (this is in Nagano Prefecture, just south of Matsumoto):

After another 10 minutes or so, the snow got so thick you couldn't see 50 feet out, and the mountains just sort of disappeared. And then reappeared, even bigger than before. Japanese Alps: way impressive, you guys.

I connected up with two of the three slated hosts for my Great Meander back southwards. First night, my Japanese host dude took me out for a local (Akita) variety of nabe, in which the special ingredient was kiritanpo, mooshed-up rice cylinders that are hollow and closed at one end and sorta diagonally sliced at the other. The rice still retains its ricey-ness, so it's not at all like mochi, and it does an excellent job of soaking up the tasty nabe broth :d

Second night, I was crashing the couch (well, futon) of a fellow JET. He's been around the world a bit, did Peace Corps in South Africa, and was eminently gracious in sharing his stash of American cold medication with me, as well as some tea. We went out for Italian food in Sendai and talked for hours without really noticing the time go by and it was generally a very chill and groovy stay. I really wished I'd had more time to spend in that city. As it was I probably could have just stayed a second day & night and not bothered with Matsumoto / Nagano, but then I guess I wouldn't have had that lovely picture to show you above.

My would-be hostess down thataways never connected up with me, so around 11:30 I wandered into a business hotel that was about as overpriced as anything you could expect to find near a busy station - 5,500 and change for one person for a night. Actually most of the other hotels were charging more, but that still doesn't mean it's reasonable. As it happened, I'd managed to sneak in half an hour past the stated closing time, but before the manager guy had left and set the key-coded lock on the main door. So when he waddled out from a back room I asked if he had any free space, not really expecting anything. Must've had a soft spot for foreign girls down on luck, though, 'cause he offered to let me have a room for the 4,000 yen I claimed was everything I had on me (this was a half-truth: I DID have 4,000 yen in my pocket. And another 10,000 in my wallet, which was in my bag.)

Got back into Nagoya on New Year's Eve, and spent the night out with friends. Then I spent most of Jan. 1 sleeping off the effects of New Year's Eve / travel weariness. Still got a sniffle and a cough lingering, but otherwise I feel mostly peachy-keen.

I'll leave off with a view from the top floor of the Chocolate Factory in Sapporo city, where they have a sweets cafe overlooking Shiroi Koibito Park (Snowman Park). That was a very delicious Christmas Eve indeed :3

winter

It's a typical December day in western Japants.

The wind-chill is below freezing, my sliding door and window are open to try and suck out some of the dust from my very unfiltered living space, and I look like this -->

That's a warmfuzzysweater underneath my Dinosaur Comics hooded sweatshirt. I would have another full layer underneath my warm corduroy pants, except I am washing just about every piece of cold-weather underthings and overthings that I own.

Why? 'Cause for Hokkaido adventures commence in 72 hours \o/ And after THAT? Touhoku adventures. And then Chubu adventures. I'ma wandering down the local train network (well, starting off on the expresses because I realized there's no feasible way to get from Sapporo to Akita in a single day otherwise x.x durrrrrrdurrdurr I fail geography), stopping off at a few of the larger cities on my way back down to Kansai.

I initially had no plan whatsoever but to maybe try a couple of the inns / hostels I happened across in the metropolises, and take refuge in 24-hour internets cafes if that didn't work out. But as departure day approached I got to thinking maybe my spirit of adventure would be less dampened if I had an actual sleeping room for sleeping times. To that end, I joined this couchsurfing / international exchange network a Siberian dude at a dinner party told me about, and sent off one request for crashspace for each of my stopoff points, not expecting to have much luck given that it's the holidays and most people are off having their own fun travels.

The morning after I sent the requests, I'd gotten affirmatives from all three peoples :D These are vouched-for and peer-reviewed experienced hosts, with confirmed identities / addresses and so on, so safety factor is high. The network is very efficiently self-regulating in that respect, to minimize on creepers. PLUS they all sound like for-seriously awesome people! Two of the three have been around the world and back again, one of 'em is actually a current JET, and one is a BRAIN SURGEON. SUPERNIFTY.

I am all kinds of excited about this trip ~/o/ (that is me running around with my arms out making whooshing noises)

i do things sometimes

One week until my first evar for-srs-you-gaiz art exhibit aaaaaaaaahhhhhh @.@

Should I wear the necktie-skirt what I made? I am thinking yes. OH HEY here it is.

It only took me....I don't even know how long, between collecting just the right vintage / novelty / amazing ties and I was a little lazy with piecing it together. Nevertheless, I have a skirt made of ties now c: huzzah

The other thing I am doing is kind of a zen-thing, in that I am doing by not doing. The thing I'm not doing is spending lots of monies, because the thing I'm trying to do is save a bunch of monies for a service trip in March. When the cost estimate came, I kind of stopped breathing for a minute, but it is still totally doable since I got half a year's notice. (Good gods, when did "half a year" become such a small and trifling thing? That ain't right.)

I've stashed away (i.e. left in my bank account in Japants) a good 72,000 yens thus far, and if I keep aiming for 40,000 yens per month --- that's in addition to my monthly minimum savings goal so that I can have a life after I leave here --- it should cover the service trip with a little bit left over. Which would mean I could stay a little longer to travel around after the official build-a-house, hug-a-kid business is done.

This is definitely doable, I have saved 180,000 yens in a single month before. Maybe not during the winter, because heating bills add up, but if I limit my splurges at foreign food stores, take short showers (HA. No really.), stop the snackyfoods from adding up, and don't buy that emerald green PSP I have been wanting so badly, I should be able to pull it off and probably drop a few pounds in the process. Since I won't be munching on fancy Swiss chocolates or making Betty Crocker fudge brownies anymore. And exercising to keep warm in my drafty apartment.

There is no way I am skimping on the whole foods, though, because I have tried that once before and it just isn't worth the paltry amount of cash I save to feed myself ramen and insta-dinners until I am literally sick from the lack of proper nutrition. Also I just like cooking too much. Japan is no different from other "developed" nations, where the stuff that is worst for you is the cheapest stuff on the grocery store shelves, but there are ways to save money AND eat healthily here as well, if you only pay attention to restocking schedules and keep an eye on the reject-vegetable-bins (I LOVE those ♥ absolutely nothing wrong with most of them other than they are not pretty enough to warrant full price)

Score two more for O-town

Okay maybe two-and-a-half. The Starbucks in Shinsaibashi's subterranean shopping town pulled one from the tranportation industry's book and, much like all Japanese cities do to their subways, heated my sammich to an even five-zillion degrees. But I am prepared to forgive it and give it half-credit because my chai latte was so very exceptional.

That was the end of my day in Osaka - the middle portion involved a little reconnaissance and just the right amount of wandering around like a tourist except I am getting to know this city quite well now so my inner compass will actually kick in and prevent me from having to wander too much.

The first evidence of this came about during the start of my day. After escaping the limited express train that just went to show Kintetsu does not, in fact, lag behind JR in torturing me through the clever and precise mismanagement of small details, I hopped the local subway to the aquarium. Now it being Children's Day, and fishies and otters and penguins generally being attractive to small children, there were thick hordes of people swarming about Osaka Port. This was actually surprising to me for all of 10 seconds, whereupon I mentally smacked myself upside the head for believing I could go to a landmark attraction on a long-weekend holiday and AVOID crowds. Sometimes I have a problem with my brain not working.

So back down the main road I go, thinking alright, at least I can get a good lunch down here by the port, and I'll use the 70 minutes I would have spent just standing in line outside to wander about a bit. Surprise me, Osaka. Two blocks later, there's a cute little curry shop on the corner with the most magical name: 星の森 ~ Forest of Stars. I love that image. I loved the interior even more than I loved the name. I loved the seasonal-vegetable curry, too, and the soy-milk hot chocolate, and the photo albums brimming with pictures of the shop teddybear Loreley all the hell over the world, and the way the proprietress unabashedly took a lunch-break on the corner bar stool next to me and let me chat her up about the bear, the music, stuff.

Her husband, who takes the orders and refills the water glasses, has a kind face. He reminds me of Steve Tomasula somehow. I think it's the beard-glasses-smile combination, but mostly the smile. If I lived in Osaka, this place would be one of my haunts. A little pocket of calm and warmth in the midst of all the bustle and hurry and dodging that goes on right outside the door.

It occurs to me that I never found a place like that in Nagoya, despite having lived there for a semster. It also occurs to me that I was 20, which is one up from 19, which was a stupid age, and that my life as an exchange student was quite insular and extremely repetitive from week to week, and only some of that was Japan's doing. It was still a good semester away from Notre Dame. It's just what worked for me then would make me crazy now, and does sometimes, when I catch myself falling into routines. Ironically, it was a Japanese Zen master who once said, "To become accustomed to anything is a terrible thing."

Eff eff eff.

Okay, Korea pics are finally available to the general public: clicky clicky
None from Tuesday for obvious reasons (generally not advisable to bring a camera around a place that's full o' nekkid people, as spa's tend to be).

It's been a long and wonderful weekend (the Friday-Saturday bit) and I am entirely too sore (out of shape) and not nearly as on top of cleaning and organizing as I should be (no excuse really, so there's me feelin' pretty shitty), and next week I am a teacher again and still not quite sure how to feel about that.

My fellow JET and I have better plans, clearer goals, but it's the same system we're working in, and that system has been grating on me for a while. More specifically my function within it, I suppose. ALTs are supposed to shape their students' education but are also endemically excluded from shaping the process. I almost wish I didn't see it, except I'd be a complete fool to wish for lack of perspective. Anyway it's not my or any other foreign worker's personal battle with the education ministry, and it never can be; that's not the way things will get changed. I can hope to close out the term with a few small successes, a couple students with the genuine spark of interest, and I can be glad of those, and so on for the next term. And then I'll move on to challenges that will actually allow me to make the effort of meeting them. In a new place, somewhere with bookstores and cafes I can haunt. I do like spooking about without spooking the locals, every now and again. Until then, of course, I'm making the most of my place and time here, crushing bureaucracies be damned. I can start champing at the bit and being a wet blanket next April :p

Ow?

Spent the day at the Dragonhill Spa yesterday. After soaking in every kind of bath that wasn't hot enough to boil me alive, I decided to go for the Back/Shoulders Oil Massage in the "Relaxation Hall." It was 70 minutes, ridiculously cheap, and many parts of it I very much enjoyed. However, there was a 20-minute warm-up Sports Massage to kick it off and "relax the body..." I assume it's only meant to start working after it's done, as you are so relieved that the torture has ended you can't do anything else but go limp. The surly-looking lady at the front desk did it, and I feel like she was working off all of her job frustration on every crevice of my back. Ensuing 50-minute treatment by a younger and gentler woman and full day of lying in tubs notwithstanding, this morning I woke up feeling as if I'd been beaten around the neck and shoulders with a very big stick, possibly studded with iron lumps.

My back feels great, though! And I smell pretty and my skin is quite refreshed, so all in all good deal.

Today we are undoing all of yesterday's possibly-therapeutic bumming around and hiking up a mountain, after visiting the International Zen Center. I am armed with a couple bananas, some sunflower seeds, a full canteen of water, my sketchbook, pencils, inks, and pastels.

Seoul Food

...I couldn't resist.

The first thing we saw when we got through customs and out into Incheon Airport was a Baskin Robbins. The second thing was a scam artist posing as a taxi driver, and he saw us right away, too. The next time someone comes up to Nicole and I and demands to know where we're going, we're speaking French back to them.

In Korea every other word sounds like Japanese, but the syllables are all slurred and the writing is loopy. The TV is still weirdtacular, though. There are lights everywhere in Seoul, the bridges are illuminated, underlit, and across the river there is a stretch of buildings and rainbow pinpricks that just goes on and on. On the sidewalks there are people who don't walk in one direction or on one side and vendors who sell fried things, flowers, plastic toys that light up. It's like Tokyo except it's better because it's not Tokyo - there are busy streets with no crosswalks, no signals telling everybody when it is and is not acceptable to set foot on asphalt, in fact you can't not walk in the roads sometimes and it's wonderful to have to be aware of cars rather than beware of them - and it's like New York except I've never been to New York but I just get the feeling that that city is trying to reach me through this one.

We ate home-cooked kimchi soup and bibimbop at a mom&pop place just down the street from our very amazing guest house. Our host walked us there himself and told the proprietess what we wanted to eat. Her husband took pictures of me on his cell phone from across the room - that was refreshingly shameless, and it made me smile. She mimed to me that I shouldn't eat too much, because I'm wee and my stomach might hurt, but I finished most of a bowl the size of my head anyway because it was delicious.

Note: I admit that I wanted desperately the eat at the Outback Steakhouse or even the Papa Johns that we saw along the walk to the guest house, but Nicole, being the best friend that she is, talked me out of it. Still, if I get a hankering for pizza or black bean sauce, those two are fair game.

There is a small neighborhood market called "Lucky Sale Mart" a two-minute walk towards the station, and they have POMEGRANATES. Today after I see the palace and the historical district and the art galleries, I am coming back, buying a pomegranate, and eating the hell out of it!

Exploring time. Pictures will surely follow.

Happy Moo Year

Yes, we are neck-deep into week 1 of the Year of the Cow (or "ox" if you wanna be all old-school, but cows are moar cute yuh-huh). It's supposed to be my year. Thus far it's been a mixture of awesome and failure. Awesome mostly coming from my winter vacation in the FROZEN NORTHLANDS Oh My God Snow!!!! :D And chocolate, and REAL cheese, and sloppy joes for dinner & waffles for breakfast, and fireplaces, and homey Midwestern-Americans who pronounce their o's kinda funny but at least they don't need to keep giving me verbal cues to constantly reassure me that our social relationship is A-OK.

Not that I didn't miss Japan. I totally missed out on New Year's Eve + sunrise at Ise's sun-goddess shrine, and that only happens once a year :c Also I missed the national transportation system that actually works. Most of the time. When I don't bork my timing. That was the failure I mentioned way up there ^

After a day of risking pulmonary embolisms in planes, (for some reason I never think "ohmygod what if the plane crashes????" - it's always "ohmygod what if the blood in my legs clots because I can't goddamn move and it gets into my lungs or my brain and I DIE????" I'm getting aisle seats from now on, because apparently nobody in the world has properly functioning kidneys anymore so they NEVER PEE or get up to do anything EVER and I'm stuck feeling like a jerk 'cause I made the 6'8" guy who just found the one comfy position in his undersized seat move to let me out again) I was finally in familiar territory in Nagoya. Express train from airport to main city station, express train from main city station home. Easy.

Except I took the wrong express train home. Not really the WRONG one, just the one that left for Toba 13 minutes too late to catch a local train back to my town. And by "left for Toba" I actually mean "left for Ujiyamada and you have to take the local Toba train to actually get to Toba." In my defense, I hadn't eaten for about 4 hours and used those 13 extra minutes to find food.

Totally against my defense, though, I'm already well-versed in the weasely bait-and-switches Kintetsu likes to pull with their train service, so I really should have just hopped the first train back to be safe. I knew better. In my defense again, though, 15 hours of airline travel. Brain not working at full capacity.

Oh well. All the craptacular travel experiences Japan can throw at me (and really that's been the only one thus far, and not nearly as harrowing as being stranded somewhere in the States or, yanno, any other country that's not Japan. Both of which have happened before) won't take away from the awesome winter break I had. Movies and music and hanging out and sleeping in, and even though I am contractually obligated as a former Chicagoan to forever grudge Macy's their blackhearted takeover of Marshall Field's, I DID find an awesome fitted shirt there, and a jacket as well, both on sale thank you shopping mojo <3

So, to wrap up, things the new year holds:
shopping mojo (always)
little ceramic cows that go "dingle-dingle-dingle!"
enough Americana to last for the next 18 months
books, books, all kinds of books! (thanks, Mom & Dad!)
grad school apps
new first-year students
at least 3 new babies (lots of young married teachers in my office)
at least 1 new prime minister (lolz j/k...or AM I???)
AT LAST a new president
adventure, alliteration, serial commas, and onomatopoeia