#11 Traveling Finally!

I. AM. SO. SORRY. I should have posted a long time ago but to be honest nothing really happened until I had my Obon vacation which I got back from about 4 weeks ago. Then I started typing this up after 2 weeks had passed but then I ran off to Kyoto and was too wiped out all week again to type more. Oops.

Anyway Obon is one of the religious holidays in Japan where folks commemorate their dead and their ancestors. In Japan it’s just kind of a family reunion-type of holiday. Sometimes people put lanterns in the river or families clean their ancestor’s graves or reveal new memorials to their families. Then there’s food. 

Here's a helpful wikipedia page about the holiday if you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obon

So my work gave us 9 days off coinciding with Obon and for us foreigners it’s just (an extremely short)  summer vacation.  So I started off my vacation by going to Nagoya. It was about an hour-ish on the Shinkansen. I left Kurashiki at about 8 pm on Saturday (right after work) and caught the 8:30 Shinkansen in Okayama. I had a rolling suitcase that weighed about 50 lbs and a garment bag that I took with me. (I had forgotten my garment bag and had to turn around halfway to the train station and walk back to get them. Yes, I NEEDED it.) Overall I feel like my entire Obon vacation was incredibly blessed because I always had help everywhere I went. Friendly strangers helped me find my way to the right platform and the right train and the right car and then other friendly strangers offered to let me use their hanger for my garment bag on the train when I ended up with a seat without one and when I couldn’t navigate the Nagoya train station to save my life, I happened to find a hotel inside of the station and their other entrance happened to lead directly to the subway I was looking for. It was nearing 11 pm and the subway was PACKED but people were kind enough to let me have a seat with all of the crap I was carrying plus one girl had asked me where I traveled from that day and I told her Kurashiki and she was like “WOW” since Nagoya and Kurashiki aren’t close at all. She helped me get the seat. When I left the subway I managed to miracle myself to the correct station exit and in the right direction towards the hostel.  For not really have any idea of where I was going, I only REALLY got lost once, and that was inside of Nagoya station. By the time I checked in it was basically 11 pm which was an hour after my proposed check-in time that I put on my reservation. Oops.

Now I’m sure you’re all wondering “Why go to Nagoya?” and the answer is quite simple if you know me at all. Cosplay. I love it. And in Nagoya is where the World Cosplay Summit takes place and my work vacation happened to have landed right in the middle of the World Cosplay Summit festivities. So of course I had to go. I also knew the people who were competing as Team USA this year and they contacted me when they were selected to represent USA so that we could meet up and hang out; which we did.  It was soooo much fun hanging out with them and being able to see other Americans that DON’T work as English teachers was just so refreshing! I also got to meet up with one of my cosplay photographer friends too as he was acting as kind of press/manager/handler for the USA team this year because the regular USA organizer was unable to go this year. (It worked out really well for me ‘cause I ended up with her All-Access pass anyway. :3)

So here is the breakdown of my two days in Nagoya.

Day 1: Competition Day. I had missed the first two days of the Summit but I managed to arrive in time for the competition day which is the day that matters, so that was really fortunate. Nagoya was humid and hot in all of its sweaty glory and everyone at the summit was drenched, including me. I had made a bright red cotton dress to wear to the competition because 1. I didn’t want to be stuck sweating in a costume in that heat. 2. I didn’t want to be stuck sitting and watching the competition in a costume in that heat.

But I did wear a wig with my dress and it wasn’t so bad. I knew I would be fine in a wig because I wore a wig to Disney World once and everything was just fine. Here is a photo of my before I went out into the heat. Please forgive my silly expression. It’s what I do. Photo courtesy of LJinto.

 Here is a video of team USA's performance!

just a little bit of the crowd long before the events started.

Day 2: Sweet Castle Photo Event. This is the day that I dressed up in a costume. I dressed up as Sailor Venus from Sailor Moon. It is the only costume I have with me in Japan because everything else was too bulky and I needed the space for real life stuff. Anyway, this was a really nice event. The place called Sweet Castle is literally what it sounds like. The building looks like a castle and the whole thing is dedicated to sweets and cakes and candy. It has a buffet of just sweet things and there is a GIANT cake that goes through the middle of the castle with a spiral staircase around it. The cake is something like 4 stories tall. And just to answer any questions now: No the cake wasn’t real and neither was the icing. There were also other smaller giant cakes throughout the castle.

Sweet Castle was out in the middle of nowhere-land Nagoya and I had managed to magic myself onto the WCS bus with team USA on the premise that there was still room for me. (I was tiny and so was my stuff.) It was lucky because I would have had to pay an arm and a leg for a cab as the ride was about an hour long just to get there.

We get there by 11:30 and we only have half an hour to change. Which is silly ‘cause these people are all top-notch cosplayers and they all have crazy costumes that take at least an hour or more just to put on, let alone doing makeup.  After all the introductions and speeches and “official” photos were had, there was a short time where we could wander around and take photos wherever around the room we were in, then after lunch and more meetings and speeches, we could use the majority of the castle for photos. Lunch was good and thankfully it was not made entirely of sweets and sugar. It was clear that the castle staff had definitely put effort into trying to make the lunch menu as culturally diverse as they could muster, which still underwhelmed most of the WCS teams, but I was glad to see pizza and meat and potatoes again. I also tried the cake. It was delicious!

So the photos that I have from Sweet Castle are pretty much all from LJinto, the photographer friend I mentioned before. He takes a darn awesome photo too. :) We got to go into a giant room with mirrors on all four walls and the floor was black and white tiled. Then there was an all red room with red walls and red carpeting and red chairs. It was really sassy. But one of the silliest things at the castle, sillier than the red room, sillier than the giant 4 story cake, was the fountain at the front of the castle. It had a life-size Santa in his sleigh with like 2 reindeer at the lead. It was the first thing I saw at the castle and it made me burst out laughing when I saw it.

After Sweet Castle there was partying and fun times. I left early cause the music was legitimately too loud. This is the second time I’ve been somewhere where my ears actually hurt from how loud it was. The first time was at an awful dance club and I didn’t even bother to stay for 5 minutes. This time I had ear plugs and it helped immensely but it made socializing impossible, so I just went home early.

NEXT DAY.

I went to Tokyo.

I did so much sightseeing! The first thing I did was go to Akihabara and do a little bit of shopping. It was sooo crowded that it was hard to really see anything at all. The rest of the week is kind of a huge jumble right now so I’ll list all the places I went to:

Akihabara

Ueno Park (there were pandas and an old pagoda!)

Asakusa Shrine (I drew out the stick with the fortune that read “The Best Luck!”)

Sweets Café (Everything was based on the zodiac. I got the most ridiculous thing on the menu.)

Sunshine 60 (Great view of the city and had a Prince of Tennis mini-museum in it)

Tokyo Fish Market (Went really late, it was neat seeing chopped up fish, fisherman hate tourists so hard.)

Tokyo Tower (Awesome, awesome and more awesome!)

Harajuku (Awesome shopping and SOOO crowded! Did not go on a Sunday though so no crazy dress up time)

Gundam Café (Fun café, awful food)

Madoka Magica Café (Beautiful café! Needed a ticket to eat???)

Comiket/TFT: (Worst changing rooms in my life. Stand around hoping for photos. Everything is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CROWDED. Overall glad I did it but never again.)

ShabuShabu party in Shinjuku (Partying with the folks still in Tokyo from WCS. We got drunk and had a blast together. Shabu Shabu is delicious.)

and some photos!

If there is anything you want me to elaborate more on, please ask in the comments. I’ll try and make a post elaborating on it for you. I just couldn’t do it in this one as there was just too much to talk about with this trip to a point where I just had it do it that way in order to get it down. But I have a pro account on flickr now so please enjoy the photos! There are a lot of new ones!

Up next: Kyoto!!

#10 Happy 4th of July and Happy Canada Day!

 Hello everyone! Again this post is late, but I have a proper reason that doesn’t include laziness!

So of course the day after I made my last post, my computer broke, and it stayed broke for 2 weeks. Ha ha such is life! But it is alive again! I took it apart myself and cleaned it out and now it works better than before it broke! There was an outrageous amount of dust built up inside and that was the only problem. I think I may have to clean it out again before I leave Japan because things get REALLY dusty REALLY fast here.

So let’s get caught up. Teaching has been quite an experience. There has definitely been a steep learning curve and its had its ups and downs to say the least. Some days the kids are fantastic, and other days it can be like pulling teeth to get them to do anything. It’s also a thing in Japan that parents rely on teachers to teach their kids discipline where it American it is the other way around and society expects parents to teach discipline to the kids. So that is sometimes interesting. (I have yet to learn how to teach the 5 and 6 year olds to stop trying to punch me, anyone have any ideas?) Overall I find that I really like teaching high school level kids and above the most. Mainly because I can get more creative and use less energy trying to keep them entertained/awake.

In other news, those of you who know how much I completely love to sew, I finally got a sewing machine! It’s super exciting and the machine is really pretty! I was having a tough time finding one that I liked because ordering online would have been a major hassle since it requires registering with the website in Japanese and that whole process and I really just didn’t want to do that. So just when I was going to buckle down and shell out the money for a machine I liked at my local sewing store, I found the exact same machine at the electronics store for $50 less! So that is what I bought. It is a Jaguar machine and it has 28 stitches and 2 buttonholes (Which is okay since I hate buttons.) And it can sew through denim without a problem! I can’t wait to start sewing up a storm! I also think that having a sewing project will keep me motivated throughout the week when I start feeling really sluggish and down and homesick.

Last week I went back to Okayama city for a friend's birthday party. It was a lot of fun! I met up with Misty and Melinda (They are some of the folks who trained me for the job when I first arrived in Japan. We became pretty good friends!) and it was a while before we were supposed to meet up with the birthday people so we went out to dinner next door to where we needed to meet them. The restaurant was set up where several different parties sit at one big table. So we sit down, order drinks and order some food. Just as we get our salad, this group of 3 guys get the courage to talk to us and ask if they can scoot their party over to join us. Because you always need to be polite in Japan we said yes since it would have been super awkward if we said no. So they shifted down and started chatting with us to the best of their ability. They knew broken English and we knew broken Japanese. It was really amusing. Then the group of guys from the other side of the table (to my left) started talking to Misty and kind of joined our group too, then no more than maybe 10 seconds later these two girls show up and sit down right next to me and one of them is really really drunk and she starts talking to me about how she studies English and that she's in college studying English and she wants to be my friend and practice English with me and so on... She was very touchy feely but only because she was so drunk. Overall she was a completely harmless girl.

We ended up staying at the restaurant until 1:30 am. I had more wine than food because the guys talking to Misty (one of which totally fell in love with her) kept offering me wine and free booze is free booze. When we left we hadn't really eaten anything and I had only had like 2 glasses of wine and one of the guys drank Melinda's beer but someone ended up paying for our bill and it wasn't any of us. So we got a free dinner that we didn't eat and free drinks from someone else's tab and our drinks were dunk by other people and paid for by yet a different person. (Confused yet? Cause I am!) After our dinner, we met up with the birthday folks and went to a club called MARS. It was supposed to be a dance club of some sort but it was only playing really really awful rap music and people were just standing around bouncing their knees acting like wannabe be-boys. The whole place reminded me of an awkward middle school dance. The music was way too loud too and it was the first time that my ears actually hurt because of how loud it was and Misty had to scream in my ear in order to talk to me which hurt even more. Needless to say Misty and I left and went to Matador which is a bar that is owned by a guy from Peru which we had the pleasure of meeting two weeks ago on a Sunday night. (We chilled at his bar that night until 4 am. And the place was empty! This is how entertaining he is!) But on Saturdays its a dance club so we went to dance and it was great and the music was awesome and the loudness levels didn't hurt and I was about a billion times happier. We stayed at this place until 4:30 am. (again...) and went home after that and showered and went to sleep by 5:30 am. I woke up with a bunch of heat rashes and was really sore but it was all worth it. :D So that was a really fun weekend last weekend.

Yesterday we had a fancy dinner for one of our Japanese teachers because she is leaving. She was at the school for 3 years but she chose not to renew her contract because she is getting married. So there was delicious fancy food in a really nice upstairs room. It was really nice to eat good food for once since I usually get my food pre-preared from the convenience store or the grocery store. Here are some photos!

Next week my old Co-Net is leaving! My next Co-Net is already here though. Her name is Natalie. She is also excited to travel around Japan and see things so it should be a lot more fun and a lot easier to plan trips now!

That’s really all that’s new. Not much has happened since golden week because I’ve been working so much all the time and it’s going to get busier because I will be teaching extra classes as summer seminars… which I still need to plan out…

Next post: Who knows! We’re all caught up now! :D

#9 Golden Week

Hello everyone! Sorry this post took sooooo long to get out! I kept thinking to myself, I really need to update my blog, but I’ll do it when I have time! But then when I actually got time, I totally forgot about it. So that was a major flake out on my part. But things have slowed down a lot here now and I may actually get a chance to catch you all up!

So we left off with Golden Week.

For those of you who don’t know what Golden Week is, it is the week that a bunch of Japanese national holidays happen to fall on. So because there were a bunch of those, they just made the whole week a kind of “spring break” for everyone.

Unfortunately everyone at my office had already made plans for Golden Week and were all going out of town. I had never had the chance to make plans so 1. I had no money to do anything, and 2. I just got to Japan the week before.  But luckily one of the Japanese Teachers who was also new to the school invited me with go with her and her parents on a day trip somewhere which ended up being to the next island over called Shikoku. It was only about 30 minutes away from Kurashiki by car and you go over the longest bridge in the world. (I’m pretty sure it’s the longest bridge in the world.) The bridge is called the Seto-Ohashi Bridge. It has this little stop in the middle where you can park and eat food and take photos. It was like a rest stop and a tourist spot all in one. We ate processed fish on a stick in varying flavors. I ate the bacon and cheese flavored one. I figure if I’m going to try something new and strange, bacon and cheese will inevitable make it super delicious.

Next we went to Risturin Park which is a huge Japanese garden where some of the trees there are 350 years old. I was impressed by it. The day was pretty hot too and I had started wishing I had a parasol or something to keep the sun off my head, but I don’t think that far ahead so I just had to deal with being hot. But at the park I ate quality dango for the first time and got it in Sakura flavor and red bean paste on top. It was delicious. The garden was absolutely beautiful and I always find myself wondering what the atmosphere of the garden would be like without the ridiculous amounts of tourists in it. Ha ha!

Dango with red bean paste, it looks like poo but it was yummy!

feeding the Koi fish

After the garden we took off again to go to a temple on top of a mountain. But on the way there we stopped to look over the edge of the ledge because that was also a historical site. (I swear, every branch and leaf in Japan is historical.) This was a historical battlefield where different Samurai clans would clash in battle during the feudal age in Japan. (Think the film The Last Samurai, only way earlier in history and without Tom Cruise.) The air was really fresh there too and I could have sat there for a good hour just breathing.  The temple (or is it shrine? I get confused.) was also crowded with tourists, but very pretty. I bought a cute purple charm from them and it’s supposed to be for protection. Then we walked around the side of the mountain top and tossed clay discs off the edge trying to hit rings that were set up. It was a lot of fun and everything was just so beautiful! There is just so much to look at in this country and it’s all beautiful! Anyway, after the temple visit we were all pretty tired and went back to Kurashiki from there.

During the week I also paid a visit to my local mall called Aeon Mall (pronounced as EEon Mall) just to look around and see what they had. It’s a pretty small mall especially compared to the malls back home, but it had a lot of cute stores and there was plenty to look at. I found a studio Ghibli store and practically squealed with excitement! I really love Totoro and there was a ton of Totoro stuff! I bought a phone charm. I also went to the historical district that day too it’s known as the Bikan here. It was SUPER crowded and I’ve never seen that many people in it before. There were extra vendors all over the place and in the sidewalks. It was really entertaining to see. I visited the O’Hara Western Art Museum. It was pretty interesting, and they had a couple of other collections too in various places on the property. The place was really quite large but each individual collection and its building were all pretty small. I also went to the Bikan's historical informational building. It was really just someone's house turned into an information spot. But I met these people who had rented one of the rooms to sell their artisan works in and they invited me to sit with them and.. attempt to chat. Ha ha! The old man who called me over liked my vintage 1940's hat because it looked a little like a baseball cap and then we talked about being right handed and left handed and stuff because I signed the guest book and I'm left handed and people in Japan always freak out when they see me write. They were very funny and the man gave me a tiny flower pot before I left and I took some photos with him and his family because they were really nice and really funny.

On a different day, I went to the next town over with Osama and met one of his friends named Tomoyo! She is a really funny girl and she helps me a ton! But that day we were getting together to play tennis and then visit a dairy farm and get some fresh ice cream. The day was super fun because I really suck at playing tennis but I’m enthusiastic about it so there were lots of poorly hit balls and running to pick them up when I missed. But I didn’t hit any over the fence this time and I think that is something to be proud of!

The dairy farm was pretty awesome too, there was a miniature petting zoo (aka pet some goats and look at some rabbits and cows.) and the ice cream was more like gelato and it was soooo tasty! I tried salt ice cream for the first time too and I was expecting it to be really gross, but it was really good! It was the perfect amount of salt in the flavor and I liked it so much I went back for seconds!

The rest of my golden week consisted of visiting shopping areas around Kurashiki to see what was where and resting. I had been fighting a really intense cold the whole week and the last two days of my break were dedicated to sitting around and doing nothing except a little cleaning. It was nice to just be lazy for a couple of days and rest up.

And that was my golden week! Sorry it wasn’t too terribly detailed, but I’ve kind of forgotten a lot of the details now. It’s my fault for not typing this up sooner! Ha ha oops!

Next up: Random antics and getting caught up to now!

Also have a Panda-like pastry. It was delicious and adorable: 

#8 First Week in Kurashiki

Sorry this didn't get posted this weekend. Blogger was having some issues with working properly.

So my first week in Kurashiki started with meeting my manager and the NET I was replacing when I got off the train in my city. They took me to my apartment and showed me how things worked and where stuff was. Overall the apartment was in decent enough shape. Osama, the Emergency Teacher I was replacing had done his best to clean but since he doesn’t usually cook, the entire kitchen needed a good scrubbing. But the bathroom was spotless! The rest of the apartment also needed some TLC but nothing major. The only major thing was the faucet in the sink. It was leaking pretty bad to a point where it was spraying water everywhere and I was told that it would eventually get fixed. However when the whole thing popped off later in the week, the company got someone to fix it really fast.

Anyway, after I was shown my apartment and my futon set, we stopped by Chelsea’s apartment (who would be my co-NET.) And she was on her way to a wedding so she left pretty quickly. However manager invited me out to lunch with her and Osama, so I accepted since I always like food and we went to a pasta place that is walking distance from my apartment. I think it’s really funny that an “Italian” place is right around the corner from my apartment since I LOVE pasta and I had been feeling less than fantastic lately with the msg-heavy foods. The pasta was pretty good! I wasn’t expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised. Manager let me try some of what she ordered and she called it “Japanese flavor” and it was actually pretty good and it was the first time I liked how a mushroom tasted! I normally can’t stand mushrooms and I liked the mushrooms in this pasta. They didn’t make me want to spit them back out! After lunch I went back to my apartment and started unpacking. The rest of the day was spent organizing. I cleaned out my whole closet and found a lot of useless junk left from previous tenants and threw away the majority of it. I kept the floor fans and space heaters and of course the kotatsu. I had to vacuum the closet out before I put anything back in. Everything was REALLY dusty. (The rest of my apartment was also caked in dust but I only tackled the closet that day so that I could at least unpack my bags.)

The next day I walked around Kurashiki with Osama and he showed me the historical district and a bunch of other places. It took a long time because I wanted to walk due to the fact that it was pouring outside. We didn’t get too wet but the bottom of my pants were soaked and we were really tried towards the end of the day because it was constant walking. We did go to the local conveyor belt sushi place which was a lot nicer than the one I found by accident in Okayama and everyone gets their own booth and you can order on a screen if you want to special order any sushi that you don’t see on the belt. Or you can order desserts or other non-sushi items, then when your order comes up on the belt, the screen beeps at you and that is how you know it is yours. It was pretty fancy.

The rest of the week consisted of going to work and following around Osama and learning his duties. It was good because I could see how he interacted with the kids and how to keep them entertained while trying to teach them something. There were only a few classes that have a TON of kids and I find that there isn’t really any good way to keep that many kids amused and that it is a struggle for any teacher, even the really good ones. But for the most part I have a lot of private or semi-private lessons, and I really like those the best because I can really teach them better like that.

On Saturday, the last day of our work week, we all went out after work to a big dinner. It was at this cool “traditional” style place and you have to take off your shoes when you go to sit down because everyone was on tatami mats and there were cushions on the floor to sit on. We were such a big group though that there was a little room under the table where the floor dipped down and you could put your feet down and sit like you were in a chair. I was glad for that because sitting on the floor for many hours gets pretty uncomfortable and we were there for a good 3 hours too. After the dinner party there was a lot of bowing and “Otsukaremashita” and more bowing. Then we kind of went our separate ways. Many of us were going in the same direction so we walked together as well. Once we got to a bar that Chelsea really likes, all the Americans broke off to go have more drinks while everyone else went home. We only stayed for about an hour because we were all really tired as it had been a really busy week plus work-related dinner party.

Now we are up to April 24 and 25, which for me is my weekend because I get Sunday and Monday off. I’ll talk about this week and weekend as well since it was mostly uneventful and I really want to get to my golden week post because a TON of stuff happened during golden week.

So that weekend was another cleaning and organizing weekend. I pretty much spent the entire weekend doing that too. I bought a futon pad and a tiny shelf at the home goods store that is practice around the corner from my apartment. I got the expensive futon pad because I knew that if I got the cheap one I would still be uncomfortable at night. The cheap pads were made of normal cushion material and squished pretty easily and the expensive one felt like memory foam. Since the pad is the barrier between the floor and the futon I went with the memory foam. My floor is pretty hard. I also went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of other organizing stuff to help with my kitchen and my bathroom situation.

Speaking of the kitchen this was when the faucet popped of the sink too; which definitely made cleaning the whole kitchen a lot harder since I was in the middle of cleaning all of my dishes. (They were also caked in dust and I was sick of having to wash a dish right before using it.)

And now for a bombardment of apartment photos:

The Shower Room

The "Bathroom Sink" and a cabinet and the washer on the left.

Kitchen dishes on the left, the walkway into the bathroom sink and and you just see the bath tub in the shower room

My cabinet for all of my dishes. It's almost useful.

My kitchen. (I am standing with my back against the dishes)

My front door and tiny shoe area.

The main room. Desk on the left, dining table on the right. (I am standing in the bookshelf corner)

The Bookshelf on the left, then the tv, my computer on a coffee table and a floor couch on the other side of the desk.

My hanging stuff. The hanger contraption doesn't fit in the closet because of the way it is set up. The double doors on the left are the closet doors and the HUGE window leads out to a tiny balcony where I hang my clothes to dry.

The toilet room. It gets its own room. Its next to the shower room.

The next work week was only 3 days long and they were my first 3 days teaching on my own. It was really crazy because I needed to get my sink fixed and go to the bank to deposit some of my traveler’s checks and I still needed to try and lesson plan since I hadn’t had any chance to do that the previous week because I was brand new. The 3 days went by really fast and it’s a miracle that I was able to keep up!  But then it was Golden Week and I had a whole week to do whatever I wanted!

Next Up: Golden Week!