Anticipation

So, school starts tomorrow, and I have to actually start doing stuff. My God, how frightening. I spent the latter half of today making visuals for my self-introduction lessons and writing out short/simple speeches in both English and Japanese. I'll have to let you know how it goes. *looking skeptical* I also visited my mysterious fourth (and final) school, Tagami Jr. High. I'm not scheduled to actually teach there until October, but it's nice to at least know where it is.

Went to the Japanese cooking class again today. We made four dishes this time around (excuse the rough English translation of dish names): sardine fry rice (rice, pickeled Japanese apricot, leaves of perilla, and sardine fry), bracken mochi (sugar, soybean flour, water, and bracken powder), horse mackerel marinade (mackerel, garlic, onion, cucumber, and tomato), and this boiled squash dish. On the whole, I liked this meal much better - I really liked the mackerel marinade and the bracken mochi. I sliced all of the fish for the former dish, which I was rather proud of. I should also note that sardine fry are really disturbing looking. Anyway, the class as fun, but I think I might not go again for a while, at least until I get into the routine of school.

September, here we go.

Shinkansen...?

Up-and-down day today--the spectre of teaching is looming every closer. Yikes.

One of the many adventures of the day involved a 100-yen store in Sanjo, where I stumbled upon this:



For those of you who aren't Japan-heads, "shinkansen" means "bullet train." So, this thing is a bag. But is it also an advertisement? An expression of pride in an efficient, convenient, comfortable, and fast public service? An excuse to make something cute? Probably all of the above.

Oh, Japan.

The Big Snake Festival

Click here to view more photos
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Yesterday, the JET crowd hit up yet another local summer festival. This time it was the "big snake" festival out in Shitada, a fairly small city about 40 minutes away from Kamo. Rosalind and I drove out to Sanjo to retrieve Paul and also met up with Errol and Joel, two JETs from Niigata City. It was your typical festival - food, drink, dancing, fireworks... And lots of fun. :) I think the small festivals are sometimes more fun, simply because they're small. You can really experience things, versus just spectating.

Afterwards, we dropped off Paul in Sanjo and the rest of us came back to Kamo for some late night karaoke at Pinokio. All in all, a very good Saturday.

Friday was a pretty active day as well. I didn't have to go to school in the morning - instead, I took the train out to Nagaoka for a meeting with my Board of Education out there. We had a welcome enkai (party) for all of the new ALTs at a place close to the station, another one of the many all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-drink deals that Japan seems to be so fond of. I had to leave early to go to yet another party back in Kamo. Julia and Yamaya-san were throwing a party for a visiting German family at Pinokio and coerced me into playing the piano while Julia sang - an interesting performance indeed. But it's always in good fun.

It just never slows down here. I'm hoping for a relaxing day today though - back to "work" tomorrow.

One month down, eleven to go...

Well, as of yesterday, I've officially been in Japan for one whole calendar month - pretty crazy, eh? I must say, it's gone much more quickly than I expected. I'm sure things will really start flying once I actually start doing some teaching.

I've spent the last couple of days visiting some of my other junior highs - I'll be teaching at four total. It's interesting how each one seems to have a very distinct personality, both in terms of the students and the teachers. I'm curious as to how classes actually go, particularly at the schools that I visit once a week or less. It's like making a guest appearance...

Yesterday, Rosalind and I attended a Japanese cooking class at the Kamo youth center. It was pretty intense. We made a three-course meal: okra vinaigrette (okra, seaweed, sugar, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and shred ginger), bibin sohmen (Korean-style thin wheat noodles with chicken, cucumber, tomato, and hard-boiled egg), and goya chample (tofu, pork, green onion, egg, dried bonito, and a bitter melon called goya that's native to Okinawa). Needless to say, it was pretty exotic. But surprisingly good. I need to work on eating more though - I can never finish my portions here, and that's not really a good thing. People tend to thing you're unhappy if you don't eat well.

Speaking of which, the Kamo youth center (or "Kinsho Home") is a pretty interesting place. They offer a variety of classes like flower arrangement (European and Japanese style), social dance, dessert-cooking, general cooking, tea ceremony, kimono and yukata dressing, aerobics, calligraphy, gospel choir, Japanese traditional dance, kendo, and tai chi. They also host some clubs. Membership is about $10 per year, with some fees for classes, so a great deal in all. I think I want to try a few other things...

I'd like to close with a couple of random pictures of Kamo - click on them to see larger versions:


A view of Kamo from atop one of its hills


The Kamo River

In not-so-Japan-related news, I'm really starting to dive into my applications for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. There's a ton of coordination to do (for example, the Rhodes requires eight letters of recommendation and the Marshall requires four), so it pays to do everything a bit on the early side. It's hard to be last minute when you have to deal with mailing things from across the Pacific Ocean. :) I also need to finish the precis for the article I'm co-authoring with Professor Pekkanen. And study for the GRE. And decide when I'm actually going to take it. And whether I'm going to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (I'm leaning toward no at the moment). Hrm, it seems that things never slow down, even when one is out of the country. But I guess that's part of the fun of it all. ;)

Sado Earth Celebration 2005

On Friday, I went over to Sado Island for the annual Earth Celebration Festival with Aaron, Grace, and some of the other ALTs. We drove down to Joetsu and took a ferry to Ogi to see the Friday night concert. The taiko drums and other performances were *amazing*. I really wish I could've taken pictures or video or something, but the security was pretty tight. Anyway, after the concert we set up tents and camped on Sobama Beach. Quite fun all in all, although I think the best part is often getting home and taking a nice hot shower afterwards.



Click here to view a few pictures

There have also been stirrings of self-sufficiency - I've been getting more of a handle on this whole living-in-Japan thing. I've mailed stuff at the post office, driven to Sanjo (the next city over), made my first withdrawal at the bank (after my first payday), paid my rent, and both located a mall and shopped in it (I'm so glad I'm Japan-sized). I also finished yet another Haruki Murakami book, Sputnik Sweetheart. I think I'll probably try to read all of his books in English and then make it my goal to finish After Dark (his latest one, which I started in my translation class last fall) after that. Maybe the reading will go more quickly if I'm not trying to find the precise nuance of every word...

Tomorrow I get to go to Osaki Junior High, one of my "one-shot" schools. One of the English teachers there called me this evening to let me know she's meeting up with me in the morning. So far I've just been hanging out at Kamo Junior High, my base school, so it'll be exciting to see another school and to talk to some of my other teachers. She sounded very nice. Anyway, I'm out for the night - hope all of you are doing well!

Prefectural Orientation in Niigata City

Just got home from a two-day prefectural orientation in Niigata City, the largest city in my prefecture and also the largest city on the Japan Sea coast. It was pretty fun, all in all. I got to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen since Tokyo. There were a number of workshops, etc, but they were mostly useful. Back to work tomorrow...

Some of the other ALTs and I are making plans to go to the Sado Earth Celebration Festival this weekend. It's supposed to be the best summer festival in Niigata, with the main attraction being the taiko drummers and the island itself. I think the plan is to spend two or three days out there and camp on the beach.

Some pictures of Niigata City to close:


The Shinano River


The Rainbow Tower


Popsicle flavors - some normal, some slightly not so

Kamo Festival!

Today was the Kamo Festival, which meant lots of fun for the new Kamo ALTs! Rosalind and I started off with lunch at Pinokio's and a walk by the river with Grace. In the evening, we were dressed in yukata and taken to the festival. We watched yosakoi dancing, learned and performed the obon dance with hundreds of other Kamo residents, and saw some great fireworks. Despite some problems with rain, it was quite fun.

Here are some more pictures for you:



Click here to see all of the pictures

Yahiko Shrine

In honor of Rosalind's birthday, a group of us headed out to Yahiko today for a hike up the mountain and a closer look at the Yahiko Shrine. Unfortunately, I didn't make it very far up the mountain - but on the upside, that left me with a lot of quality time with the shrine itself. One website describes it as follows:

"The supreme shrine in the Echigo region (now Niigata prefecture), Yahiko Jinja is cited in the Manyoshu (the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry). The shrine is located on Mount Yahiko (alt. 638 m), whose summit commands a panoramic view of the Sea of Japan. Revered as a sacred mountain with the divine power to protect people from evil, Yahiko-san is forested with cedar, cypress, and oak. It is now a popular site for open-air bathing among locals. A sacred chinquapin tree is enshrined in the holy precinct."

And of course, I took pictures:







Click here to see all of the photos from the Yahiko Shrine

Snails, frog, and nato - oh my!

It's been a really interesting weekend. I've gotten to see a lot more of Niigata, thanks to the hordes of other JETs around here. Friday I met the other prefectural ALTs at our first Board of Education meeting in Nagaoka - it was totally the classic Japanese office environment. We all had to stand in a line and introduce ourselves in Japanese to the entire office, complete with lots of bowing and applause. Very interesting. Later on, I finally got the chance to meet the other Kamo ALT - it's just the two of us here in this city, so chances are we'll be running into each other from time to time. Luckily, she seems really nice; her name is Rosalind and she's from England. Anyway, on Friday night we both wound up at the Kamo community center for gospel choir (I played the piano) and Kisa Club (aka drinky-drinky time). After that, her supervisor took us out for more drinking and eating. He seemed to be on a mission to find something she wouldn't try, so she (and I, by association) ate a variety of dishes including umeboshi, snail, fried frog (which I liked quite a bit), and nato (which I could do without eating again).

Saturday I went out to lunch with Rosalind and some other international association-type folks. After that, Rosalind and I took the train a couple of stops to Sanjo, where we met up with 8 or 9 other JETs and drove out to a beach town called Kashiwazaki. Unfortunately, it started raining almost the second we stepped out of the car. Our Sanjo group met up with 20 or 30 other JETs and ate soggy burgers and hot dogs in the rain... I have to say, that's the longest I've willingly stood in the rain... possibly ever. The sunset was stunning though. It's funny, the sun sets really early here, by maybe 7:00 pm, and it comes up before 5:00 am. It makes for an interesting "day". Anyway, most of the people stayed the night out there at a guy named Patrick's house - apparently he has a huge two-story house that comes free with the job. I guess Kashiwazaki is home to a huge nuclear power plant, so it's a perk; he also gets paid "risk money". Hrm. Anyway, I caught a train home to get some rest...

I woke up to find Yamaya-san at my door with three fresh-baked loaves of different types of bread - apparently, baking is one of his hobbies. I also got an infusion of "foreign" food. I meant to go to Niigata City (the biggest city in this prefecture with a population of about 550,000) to meet up with the other JETs for the Niigata Festival - the main attraction is a huge dancing ceremony across the bandai bridge. Anyway, I actually did take the train up to Niigata but decided not to meet up with them and to go shopping instead. I had a good time browsing some of the larger department stores and hitting up Kinokuniya. Apparently, the Kinokuniya in Niigata City is the only place in the entire prefecture where you can get English books (not counting the Internet). And there are only three [small] rows. But still, I had to stock up on a few Murakami books and a study guide for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. But it was fun. :)

Anyway, it's back to work tomorrow, so I better start winding down. Hope all of you are doing well.

Yahiko Mountain and Nagaoka Fireworks

Took the day off work yesterday to do a little bit of sightseeing around Niigata. Julia and Yamaya-san (the giver of the car) took me to practice driving and showed me the routes to the other three junior highs I will eventually be teaching at. I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to remember how to get there, but it's nice to have an idea of where I'm going. They also showed me how one gets gas in Japan, which I'm sure will be very helpful. Apparently, they went to check on the shakken (kinda like Japanese tabs) and insurance earlier in the week and everything is all set. I'm still kind of amazed at it all.

After a while, Yamaya-san took the wheel and drove me out to Yahiko Mountain. We were supposed to go see the shrine, but Julia had to be back in the early afternoon so we settled for taking a cable car up to the top of the mountain and eating ice cream up there. It was very pretty - you could see the Sea of Japan. Some pictures:


Looking down from the top...


Kristi and Julia...

After that, we drove back to Kamo and had lunch at Pinokio. I seem to be becoming quite the regular there already; I'm told that my predecessor ate there almost every day, so I guess people choose it as a meeting place out of habit. And admittedly, the food is very good. I'm particularly fond of their seafood pizza (which is remarkably good, by "real" pizza standards).

Anyway, after the adventures with Julia and Yamaya-san, I headed back to the apartment for some rest. The evening proved to be even busier. I took the train from Kamo to Nagaoka and met up with a bunch of other ALTs from the area for the Nagaoka Matsuri (Festival). A bunch of people had literally just arrived from their Tokyo orientation (Group B - I was in Group A), so they were pretty wiped out. Anyway, it was good to meet other JETs and talk about our different situations. And to get to know some people that I can maybe go exploring with.

The highlight of the Nagaoka Matsuri is its huge fireworks display, which are reportedly . They have two - one on each night of the festival and supposedly set off more than 10,000 rockets per night. Countless people lined the banks of the river to see the show, which was totally different from American-style fireworks. Instead of a 30-45 minute display, the show was broken up into 45 "rounds", for lack of a better word. They'd say the number and talk a bit over the loudspeakers before each display, which gave it somewhat of a marathon feel. We had to have been there for at least two hours, trying to guess how many rounds they'd do. My favorite parts were when they lighted up the bridges with fireworks, making them look like huge waterfalls of light. I took a short video of a few of the displays. Click here to download one of them (Quicktime required).

Anyway, I didn't get back til almost midnight, so I'm pretty tired. For once I slept until my alarm clock went off instead of popping out of bed around 6:00 am or so. I guess that's a good sign. And I think I'll be leaving the office right at 11:30 to go have myself a nap. Tomorrow I have to go back to Nagaoka for a meeting at the Chuetsu Board of Education, so I should rest up. Nagaoka is the second largest city in the Niigata prefecture, so I'd like to have a look around. Maybe pop into a book store or something. That's all for now. :)

Lazy day

Nothing too exciting yesterday, except for the fact that I started and finished the new Harry Potter book. I tried to pace myself, but it was a really quick read. I enjoyed it... I should slow down a little though - I think the only recreational book I have left is the copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle I stole from Adam before I left for Seattle. The books I shipped to myself will be arriving in three or four weeks, but if I finish everything, I'll be forced to read teaching books and GRE study materials til then. Although, that would probably be good for me...

I think I have to venture out onto the main highway to buy some things at the larger supermarker, Lion D'or. Driving in Japan is still a little disorienting, with everything being flipped over to the other side. I actually think the inside of the car is more disorienting than the outside - shift with your left, operate the blinker with your right, etc. The first time I took the car out, I kept turning on the windshield wipers every time I took a turn. :)

Anyway, time flies when you've only got a few hours of Internet access a day, so I better wrap this up. I'm looking forward to getting my YahooBB service setup at my apartment. Should only be a couple more weeks. I'll be doing a bit of sightseeing today and tomorrow, so I hope to have some more pictures to post on Thursday... and I'm making definite progress with the new website, which I hope to unveil soon.

Hope all of you are doing well. Send me an email sometime - it's nice to hear from home.