weekend in the woods

On Friday I caught a train down south to where the JETs in my prefecture gather for an annual "camping" trip. That's in quotes because we rent out fully-furnished, air-conditioned cabins complete with upstairs tatami rooms bigger than mine. Seriously, if I could trade my apartment for one of those babies, I'd do it in a second.

According to some of the second-year peeps, the rainy season was in full swing last year so it was damp and miserable for the whole time. Not so this year! Friday evening was rain-free and the sun was out aaaaall day Saturday, which made it perfect weather for jumping into a freezing mountain river and drying off on the ginormous rocks:
As my cabin was the nerd cabin, we proceeded to watch "The Fifth Element," get pleasantly drunk, and play a couple inebriated rounds of Munchkin, the tabletop-roleplaying card game where the object is to bribe, swindle, and back-stab your way to level 10. I kind of really want to get the Cthonic version of Munchkin. Maybe a Halloween present to myself? We'll see.

Anyway, most of the good pictures are on other peoples' cameras, so I am still waiting to receive them via the webbernets. The best pictures, of course, are all in my brainspace. It was a lovely super-fantastic weekend with awesome people and scenery that could take your breath away. I feel ready to take on the rest of summer in western Japan - it's going to be sticky, and insect-y, and moldy & gross and generally will do all it can to suck the will to live from me, but I will have the wisdom of Dori to keep me afloat.

dear Japan

I want to know how to make these.

Please get me lost in one of your wee-tiny fishing villages and land me at the home of an obaachan who knows how to weave rice stalks and cloth in this fashion.
Love, Nikki



...AJ and I got to visit the town day-care center today. 4- and 5-year-olds were quite literally screaming for our attention, as they would most likely explode if they couldn't get to tell us their favorite colors & ice cream flavors. After we did a silly dance with them and gave them all high-fives on their way out of the assembly room, the head caregivers brought us to their office for tea and sweets while handfuls of children intermittently escaped from their group rooms to peek at us through the doorway c: We both got a pair of these sandals, which are what reg'lar Japanese folk used to wear way back in the day.

foto trifecta

Not quite a photo-dump, but some odds & ends.

I had some heavy cream in the fridge that was gonna expire in a few days, so I decided to make some veggie korma couple nights ago. Got everything chopped up, sorted out, had the onions & garlic frying in the skillet, and then I reached for the tomato sauce. Which was totally NOT there. Too late to go to the store, and too late to stop cooking even had it still been open. Sooooo I tossed in a splash of water to disperse the curry powder and the last of my garam masala, and this is what I ended up with. Actually, I think I might prefer this to the version with cream. The snap peas and bell peppers and cashews made for a really pleasing mix of flavors c: It's nice when unexpected set-backs turn into delicious discoveries.

This town takes the usual counter-measures against pigeons and their ungodly mess (and as usual, they fail spectacularly). And yet people here seem to be remarkably accommodating towards the swallows, who make just as much of a mess, at least on whatever is directly below their nests. There's a nest above the vent on the front outer wall of the konbini near school, and the store clerks went to the trouble of putting a box beneath it to catch all the droppings. Today I was heading to the school lunch office when I heard a lot of loud chirping very near the student entrance downstairs, and I caught sight of these little guys. Judging by their size, they're nearly ready to strike out on their own, but for now they still snuggle down together while momma's away.

Finally, my latest order from Kawachi came tonight. I...couldn't help myself. But I make no apologies. This sketchbook's paper is just as good as any more "traditional" book's, and I won't brook any intolerant slurs against it.

rhythm

It's a rainy grey day in Shima, the kind that makes you want to be inside. Except jim-jams and hot chocolate inside, not desk-computer-workplace inside :p Still, I just have my second-year culture kids today, and their teacher is overseeing a group translation of their latest reading. They do well with structured tasks, these guys (otherwise they can be a handful; all that unfocused energy and whathaveyou) and I'm glad their new sensei is an instructor who can handle that.

I'm starting to get the rhythm of this year's classes, I think. Not all my first-year communication lessons work, but the rate-of-epic-failure is dropping and the students are starting to voluntarily participate without so much teeth-pulling. As I recall, the previous co-teacher and I were still having to call out student numbers pretty much every day throughout fall term.

With the second-year class I can not-stress for a change, because they've a Japanese teacher who is actually willing and able to take charge of their education, take at least this portion of it in some direction. The third-years are pretty chill and the girls just want to know everything, and the boys are pretty well-behaved for teens but then again there are only three and my girls will actually out-volume them c: Two of them, I can tell, are really interested sometimes. They just can't let it show, or the one who took this class purely to get out of math distracts them. But it's by far the smoothest-running class, is third-year culture.

In August I get a new beat - the Ise-Shima/Minamiise JETs, particularly the newbies. A while back our current regional advisor dood called for a show of hands as to who'd like to replace him, and I guess it was just me and another guy. I was perfectly content to let other-guy take it, as I'd only really volunteered in the exceptional case that NOBODY else would, but apparently the people up in the Tsu office thought differently. And final decision's theirs, so, tag, I'm it.

Checkin' in

Eikaiwa started back up yesterday, and boy did we sure cram a loooootta people into a stuffy little room. I think at the last class AJ and I taught back in February, maybe five people showed up. There were 20 last night, most of them new faces, several of those completely new to English conversation, so this is gonna be interesting. We decided it would serve our general sanity better if we took turns teaching separately; not that our adult students aren't all kinds of wonderful, but sometimes you just really don't feel like standing up for two hours in a lecture room every other Tuesday night. Two people for that small a group is a little redundant anyway.

I got thrown a little off-kilter last night, with the long day and the sink full of dishes and the arts-and-crafts-included lesson I wasn't quite done preparing for when I got into the office this morning, but my head is clear again and I feel as on top of things as I generally get. Tomorrow is my first visit of the new year to moon-school (like a new moon, it only comes around once a month, and its workings are still mostly inscrutable to me).

Oh yeah, and over the weekend I scooched some things around in my apartment and managed to make it both broader and deeper. Suck on that, physics, my space works for me now, and does that ever feel good. Even better than soft-tennis-Mondays, because it doesn't make me all stinky and tired. THAT MONIKER IS A LIE, it is way harder than normal-tennis. Okay the balls are soft and squidgy and I cannot help thinking they look almost exactly like those fake boobs you'd find at Spencer Gifts & giggling to myself every now and again... but YOU try hitting one of those things across a full court while maintaining control of its height and direction and see how "soft" a workout it is.

Also, the backhand form? Weird as hell. If someone from my school's club attempted to so much as volley a normal tennis ball with their wrist in that position, their hand would snap clean off.

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."

blips

I haven't made a real picture-laden post in a while now, I think not since I put up those terrible and pity-evoking shots of my empty apartment when I first moved in and had no clutter stored up around the edges like cushy, subcutaneous fat deposits.

So here be some things:

1) wee-tiny kwabs be back in town. This one don't take no sass!
B) a gecko I found chillin' on the stairway handrail one afternoon. He'd just recently lost his tail, as you can see, little bud's just starting to come back in. He let me poke him and pet him a bit, probably thinking the whole time ohgodohgodohgod what is this horrible thing touching me please don't eat meeeeeee;

iii) a birdbatterfly. They seem to be all over Mie - I just saw one in Kumano over the weekend (I will look up their real name some day, wait no of course I won't, it can't be as good as this one I made up) They are generally not very obliging photo subjects, but this one had some flowermunchies to snack upon and keep it (relatively) still. It was the size of my hand, fingers splayed, and it was so drunk on nectar it nearly bumped smack into my head quite a few times;

and Δ) something NOT alive but flora-related, sorta, a painting I started a humiliatingly long time ago. It's going to get done and then it's going in a closet somewhere, and meanwhile I am starting a new project or two and not letting this old thing haunt me with its staleness and my failure to make it better.

Tomorrow I'm making a day-trip into Osaka that can't get too expensive, because I forgot that when Japan has public holidays, Japan's ATMs take public holidays as well; they dun' work and you can't get to 'em anyway 'cause the banks and bank-corners are all closed. Konbinis still operate, obviously, but Nicole and I have had some issues with finding Hyaku-Go-friendly stores in O-town. Helps when the ATM actually services your bank.

Anyway I am stocking up on chili-beans and diverse&sundry food-goods, for in a recent attempt to make myself some delicious chili, I inadvertently created the best Sloppy Joe recipe ever. EV-ER. No, internet, you can't have it, I'munna make a million dollars. ...Also I have to remember exactly what I did first (.__.)a

Chaahan (fried rice) tonight was in general a success (it was DELICIOUS, thanks for finally getting me the recipe, AJ!), only gum in the gears being that I tried to add some chopped bok choy to it and it weren't havin' none of that, taste-wise. Silly rabbit, bok choy is for stews.