City life -- for one night

Itching to get the hell away from the inaka (Japanese word for bumfuck nowhere) and all the rain that's been pishing down on Niigata lately, Aaron and I bucked up and headed into Tokyo on Saturday. After a brief scare that all the parking lots were full at Tsubame-Sanjo station, we managed park my car and hopped onto the 9:30 Shinkansen where we finished off our JET Japanese courses to send off and just chatted a bit. We pulled into Ueno station at 11:22 (have I mentioned how much I love the Shinkansen?) and immediately started weirding out Tokyo.

We had decided that we'd walk through Ueno Koen and then make our way to the University that Aaron studied at during college. First stop was the dorms where we needed to print out directions to our hotel and to see if we could find Aaron's cousin, Nichole, who is studying abroad now. We managed to sneak in and use the computer and draw out a map (which we subsequently forgot - we are such tools!) then since Nichole wasn't there we dropped in to talk to one of Aaron's old Japanese professors. This woman was really nice and spoke amazingly natural English and before we knew it, an hour had passed. So we headed back to the dorms, managed to find Nichole and her friend and then hopped on the subway to Jimbocho where our hotel was. It was at this point that we realized we forgot our map (and Aaron's beloved pencil!) but between the two of us and our stellar memories and indisputable intelligence we managed to find the place in like 5 minutes -- if you've ever been to Tokyo you know this is no easy task.

Let me take a moment to descibe this hotel. It's called the Sakura Hotel and since Aaron and I are trying to, uh, save money we went with the "dorm style" accomodation for 3500yen. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't stay in dorms when I travel so this was a big stretch for me. We checked in and rode the shady elevator down to the basement where the dorms are. We were separated into men's/women's dorms which was actually good for me since guys are filthy and disgusting (especially backpacker ones, heh). My room had 3 sets of bunk beds. All of them had crappy flourescent lights and curtains to pull closed. I was pleased to see that the sheets were clean (this is, after all, Japan). So other than all the other girls' make up and shoes strewn about, the room was actually ok.

Anyway, we dumped our crap into our um, cubbies and took off for Ginza. I had been looking forward to Ginza all day cause I really wanted to hit Zara and buy something hotty to wear for New Years (to go with those hot shoes) but by the time we got there it was just after 3 and I need to be in Gaienmae for my 4:00 hair appointment. I didn't think I'd have time to do Zara justice so I separated from the group and just headed into Gaienmae. Ah, well.

After my hour and a half or pampering at the hair salon, I had an email from Aaron that said that he was in Shibuya, so I hopped on the subway and met up with him, Nichole, her friend and Aaron's old friends, Asuka and Dondon. We immediately made our way through the neon lit streets and the incredible crowds into TGIFridays where we had Ultimate Margaritas and massive cheeseburgers. Oh, a slice of random American heaven! After dinner there was some confusion about where to go out drinking and how to co-ordinate the other people who were meeting up with us. Since I didn't know any of these people, I just kind tuned out and let everyone else do the planning (the tuning out girl is usually so not my role!).

Well we met up with Saki, another one of Aaron's friends from his study abroad time and we ended up going to a few bars. Every so often another group of Minnesota college kids showed up to join us. I don't think I've ever sat at a table with so many Mid-Westerners in my life, haha! I had no idea what was going on so I just tried to act cool and make small talk and enjoy the fact that there were unfamiliar faces around.




At some point a group of young Japanese people struck up a conversation with Aaron so when I got back from the bar with our round of drinks, I sat down with them. It was two guys and two girls and so we hung out with them for pretty much the rest of the night conversing in both English and Japanese. It was exactly what Aaron and I were looking for - mingling with other young people. The young people up in Niigata are so damn shy not confident in their English abilities that it can be quite hard to make friends here. It was refreshing to meet some people our age who just, like, aren't afraid of us!
We decided to call it a night around midnight cause our hotel was too far to take a taxi without paying 900000yen.

The next day we headed Korakuen where we did a tiiiny bit of shopping (I got a fantastic green sweater from United Colors of Benetton) and ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Then we walked back to Ueno and headed to Asakusa where we hoped we could pick up some souveneir type stuff for Christmas gifts.


Eventually we headed back to Ueno to grab the Shinkansen back home. We didn't get reserved seats so we were out of luck. We ended up standing at the back of the Car 1 where there was a mother and her adorable (although mulleted) 4-year old son. The little boy noticed Aaron and I and announced loudly "Eigo shaberu!" (They're speaking English) so I looked at him and smiled and said "Wakarimasu ka?" (Do you understand?) to which he shook his head and said "Wa-ka-ri-ma-sen. Zennnzen wakarimasen" (roughly, I really don't understand) at which just about everyone on the train erupted with laughter. It was such a lovely little exchange that reinforced my love for innocent, wide-eyed Japanese children.

Overall we had a great time in Tokyo and also, AMAZING weather. When we got back to Sanjo, it was still raining (of course!). So we went to the movie theatre to see the new Harry Potter. Which was fantastic even though I had to miss my Sunday night curfew by like 2 hours! Shock!

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And two random thoughts:
-19 days till I go home - 6 days at Maki Nishi, 4 days at Higashi, 2 days at Shogakko, 1 day at Nursery school, 1 day of private eikawa class! Woohoo!
-10 days till snowboarding season opens. I hope the snow's good enough so I can go once before I leave for Christmas, that's slightly doubtful though.

Ghetto Thanksgiving

So, we had Wednesday off for what is supposedly "Labour Thanksgiving Day". I'm gonna assume that whatever this holiday really is has been lost in translation on my calendar, but alas. We decided to use this day off to celebrate Thanksgiving in our own, kinda ghetto way...

This year's festivities were slightly, um, smaller than last year's since our group of friends has become significantly smaller, see:
Last year

This year


Anyway, Kate offered to host Thanksgiving at her place this year, so Emily, Kouken, Aaron, Kate and I all prepared things to bring. In a rare Martha Stewart moment, I decided I'd make bruschetta, and if you ask me, it turned out beautifully. Tasted good too. My next Martha Stewart moment is scheduled for Christmas time with my sister and serious amounts of flavor bombs (our special word for Christmas Cookies)

Now, what made our celebration especially getto (other than the fact that we are in freakin Japan) are a couple things
1.The Thank-o-lanterns. I mentioned in a previous post that Aaron and I got free pumpkins (kabocha in Japanese) from a random mountainside shop on the way back from Nikko, so we decided to carve them. Our creativity failed when we were thinking of ways to make them Thanksgivingy rather than Halloweeny, but it was still fun. Mine seems to have a bit of an Asian face, though...

2. The food. Yes, if you look closely at this picture, you will notice KFC on the table. I think this is the first time any of us had eaten KFC in like years, but we figured it was American and with no chance of getting Turkeys, it was (kind of) our next best option.

All in all, dinner was good. It was accompanied by 3 bottles of wine and good friends, so how could it not be? Since this is my third Thanksgiving abroad, I must say that I'm looking forward to next year's on American soil... or maybe I'm just homesick right now.

A few non-related notes:
-26 days till I'm home for Christmas!
-When I get back to Japan in January, it'll be snowboarding season!
-I'm stoked for my new shoes (see below)
-The weather in Niigata has been abso-fucking-lutely miserable lately. We are going on like day 9 of rain, thunder, lightning and COLD. The winter rainy season is so much worse than the summer one.
-Aaron and I are heading into Tokyo this weekend. I'm getting my hair cut at the foreigner-run salon (no danger of a mullet this time); I'm buying lots of things at Zara; I'm eating dinner at a crappy American food chain like TGIFridays and I'm gonna love it; and, most importantly I'm gonna get hammered and have a good time. I've noticed that we never have real fun anymore and I'm involuntarily (other than the 10pm weekday curfew) turning into a granny. I want to mingle and see cute boys... I miss having a social life!

That's all for now.

New Year's better be good

I (impulse) bought these fantastic Charles David purple crocodile skin heels specifically for New Years. I will look cute and have a champagne flute in my hand so there better be music and people and cute boys around wherever we go.

Only in Japan

ときどき、給食はちょーだめだよ！
Today we had squid for school lunch. Rather, everyone but me had squid. If that wasn't bad enough, the teacher next to me told me that tomorrow's lunch is whale meat!
Guess who's bringing a PBJ sandwich tomorrow!

After school today, I wanted to go to the foreign foods store to see if I could pick anything up for our ghetto Thanksgiving dinner we are having on Wednesday. But first, I had to go to the ATM. The ATM at my bank wasn't open (at 4:00 on a Monday - I almost screamed) so I went into 7-11. The ATM at 7-11 charges 105yen to withdraw, but despite this I am usually too lazy to go to my bank (5 minute walk from my house) when there's a Sevvies 30 seconds from my house. Since I use these ATMs a lot, I can pretty much do it with my eyes closed, right? Well, today was payday, so I thought I'd print out a receipt to see my now amazingly huge bank balance... It wasn't until I had driven 45 minutes into Niigata that I realized I had the receipt but I DIDN'T TAKE THE MONEY! Damn it, we're talking about $100 here!

I made it to the foreign foods store (which takes credit cards - not many businesses do in Japan) only to find that they have nothing even resembling something we might want for Thanksgiving. So I picked up some Swiss Miss, Junior Mints and salsa and muttered the whole way back to 7-11 in Maki about what a waste of my time this whole afternoon had been. I was getting very anxious about using my limited Japanese to communicate my problem as well.

Anyway, I walked in and waited for the cashier to finish what she was doing before I told her what I had done... She understood and walked me over to the ATM where there is a phone that connects directly to the bank. She told the man on the phone my problem then asked me if my Japanese was ok-enough to talk on a phone. I told her I wasn't sure, but I'd try anyway. The dude on the phone asked me which bank I belonged to, how much money I lost and what time I was there - I can answer that! Then he asked to talk to the lady again and after she hung up she told me that no one had taken the money and that they were going to wire it back into my account tomorrow. WOOHOO! I bowed like never before and thanked her a million times and on the way out I mentioned how embarassed I was - she was oh-so lovely about it all. Seriously, ONLY in Japan...

After that I decided I should hit the gym to work off all the frustrations I'd experienced between the hours of 4-6 today. And now I'm in my warm, clean apartment making dinner. Then I'm taking a shower and going to bed before my 10:00 curfew.

Roadtrip to Nikko

Nikko is a small town set in the mountains of in Tochigi Prefecture. Very famous in Japan for its shrines and temples and natural beauty, it was added as a World Heritage Site in 1999. Since Nikko is an easy and beautiful drive from Niigata, we planned to head down in the fall so we could see the temples and the foliage.
Armed with iPods, maps and overnight bags, Kayvohn, Kate, Aaron and I headed out early Saturday morning. After about 2 hours on the expressway, we drove through miles of breathtaking mountains in Gunma and into Tochigi. Despite dismal weather forecasts, we had perfect, crisp, sunny Autumn weather for the drive. The trees were in full color on the way up and down the mountains; and we drove through the snow at the top. There are also small lakes scattered throughout the mountains and it really is amazing to see such unspoilt nature


Our first stop on the trip was Lake Chuzenji to visit the shrine and stretch our legs.


Kayvohn and I rang the bells to summon the spirits. My religious exercise of the year.



Then we made a stop at Kegon Falls and took the elevator down the 100 meters to get a better view.




To get to central Nikko we had to trek up and down another whole mountin range and finally made it into our ryokan (Japanese style hotel) at around 4:00. Our ryokan was outside of central Nikko in a forest where there were actual monkeys running around the grounds (I took pictures, but they didn't come out well).
This was my first stay in a ryokan. We were given a seriously huge suite (bigger than my apartment, by far) with a huge tatami room with a table with a full tea set in the middle. Another tatami room with a TV and lounge chairs, a full Japanese style bathroom and then a third tatami room that was completely empty. At about 6:00 the hotel staff came and set up the empty room with our dinners. And while we ate, they set up our futons in the other room. Oh, the service.

The food here was, as expected, extremely Japanese. I have a theory that the more expensive and lavish a Japanese meal is, the more gag-worthy it can be to Westerners. I'll attempt to describe this going clockwise from the top left: some kind of boiled fish and sauce; the pot contained beef and onions in a sauce - it was cooked inside that pot at our place setting; the purle porcelain thing contained unidentifiable mush floating in liquid; sashimi (yum); miso soup; pickles; more pickles; more mush in liquid; fresh fruit; tempura shrimp and mushrooms and in the center - a full on mini crab (still in its shell and still with legs) a shrimp with its eyes - decorated to appear to be climbing up the kaki (persimmon) skin, two pieces of mush and some random pickles inside the kaki skin. I'm not a very picky eater, but you can guess which ones I did and didn't eat.


After dinner, we split up for an onsen (Japanese hot spring). We then returned to our room in our provided (and oh-so-sexy) Yukatas and got silly with beers and chu his.
Kate and I modeling

And a random Yukata pyramid


Sunday morning we got up bright and early for another special ryokan breakfast including more mush, rice and soup. After check out, we headed over to the main Shrine and Temple area, called Toshogu Jinjya.


We saw the 5-tiered pagoda


The famous Three Monkeys "See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil"


A mother and her child in kimono


The main gate of Toshogu Jinjya. The intricate detailing of the carvings on this gate was amazing.



We descended from the shrine area to have some yakitori in a park amidst the fall colors.



Stopped at the Shinkyo Sacred Bridge



Then embarked on our journey home. The highlight of the drive home was when we stopped at an fruit and vegetable stand in the mountains in Gunma to buy pumpkins. You can't buy them in Niigata so I was super excited. And we got even luckier because the lovely old lady gave them to us for free! So Aaron and I plan on carving them for our mock Thanksgiving feast next weekend. Thank-o-lanterns anyone?!


Oh, and a note on the shirt I am wearing in this picture... Kate and I were going to have a ridiculous English T-shirt contest, but unfortunately she won before I even had a chance to compete - luckily she gave it to me for my birthday so I might actually be the winner. Anyway, here's what it says, and I kid you not.
On the front:
"Babe, I'm very selfish right now. I can use magic for you are crazy about me"
And the back, with a picture of a parrot:
"You may come where you like"

I'll let you ponder that for awhile...

お誕生日おめでとうございます、妹
My little sister is 21 today! Ahhh!

A busy/sickly week...

Wow, let's start off by saying that I have the worst cold in the history of mankind. It's awesome.

Other than that, I'm gonna run down last weekend:
Saturday morning was one of those lucky mornings (not being sarcastic) that I have once a month where I get to go to the nursery school to teach English. Since this is technically out of my contract I get paid 1.5man (~$150) to go play with 3-5 year olds for like 2 hours. It's amazing. This month, I taught them animal names and made a fishing game out of dowels, string, magnets and paper clips. They ate it up!




How cute are they?!


After that we went to a festival in Yahiko, a neighboring town that has an annual Chrysanthemum Festival (Kiku Matsuri) during the entire month of November. I missed it last year cause I didn't have my car and I was generally clueless here up until like, two months ago. So we had our first Saturday of nice weather in the longest time, so Aaron and I headed over to check it out.
Yahiko is this tiny town up in Yahiko Mountian and it has this lovely old shrine and a ropeway to the top of the mountain. I've yet to take the ropeway up since I've climbed Kakuda (the mountain next to Yahiko, in Maki) so many times and seen the view that way... Anyway, here's what Yahiko looks like:
These are the prayers that people write and leave up around the shrine.

Here's the shrine itself

And this is a lovely little little bridge in the forest near the shrine.

Basically, for the festival there's just lots of flowers inside these booth type things. They were actually quite stunning.



Aaron and I took advantage of the typical yakuza-run matsuri food stalls - including the ChocoBananas. YUM! And spent time enjoying the fall colors. I really missed the changing seasons when I was in Florida.


After that we went back to my place to get ready to go out. We were going into Niigata to have dinner and drinks with some people. We made reservations at an Izakaya we can never seem to get into and we posed with more Zima bottles (cause it never gets old) and ate and ate.


It turned out that the night was kind of a, um, couples theme, so Aaron (my gay boyfriend) and I decided to leave. We bought more chu-his for the train back to Maki and got totally and senselessly wasted by ourselves in my apartment where we proceeded to drunk dial unsuspecting people (raise your hand if we drunk dialed you on Saturday morning!). Oh, and Aaron tested out the scarf SJ made for me (here's your picture, sj)
(he looks sober ne?)

Sunday was a school festival day at one of my elementary schools, so even though I didn't need to, I dragged my (and Aaron's) hungover ass out of bed to go say hello. I saw some parents making mochee, which was cool cause I'd never seen that before. Mochee is a Japanese sweet made from rice. It's really sweet and has a strange texture, so I don't actually like it that much - this shocks and appals Japanese people everytime I tell them.



And I was pleasantly surprised to see ME on the 1 nen sei posters. See, they really DO love me!


Phew, that was hard work. Now I'm gonna chill out till my new English student comes along for his lesson - that's another $30 a week my friends. It's gonna suck when I go home and no one pays me for simply speaking my own language anymore...