Nature...Awesome and Terrible

Mother Nature and I have had 2 or 3 memorable runins over the last week or so. I will fill you in. 

First: The Good

I figured I would finally go and visit the waterfall that I have lived less than a mile from for 10 months. 

A second picture of the bridge I walked across to get there. I just walked from my house. It was kind of a long walk and all uphill one way. The bridge was kind of terrifying. It was terrifying because I have no doubt that I am the heaviest person to ever walk across it, and because there were spider webs and nests all across it. Never fear! I prevailed!

Nice right? Seems like a crazy thing to be thrown so haphazardly out there. No fanfare, just a waterfall near a road. 

A view from the top of the path. This was the second part of the falls.

Oh...now for the terrifying. I was getting ready to take a shower and saw this 8-legged vessel of hate brooding down at me from the corner. Yay me...Luckily I shower all the time with a can of bug spray. I don't know what I did to make the animal kingdom (or insect kingdom) so angry, but they seem to really hate me.

For my 4th encounter with the evil that seems to to inhabit my home...I got a video of it. You can see how much of a high roller I am because I throw 20's down on the floor as a mat for spider genocide. Ugh.

On the plus side, I have discovered what would be a good training for people in law enforcement and bomb squads. Put them in a space and unleash a whole bunch of spiders and tell them they have to find them. I now look all around whenever I enter the room. When I get in the shower, I do a visual sweep of all the relevant areas. I assess the threats as they arise and (as shown above) dispatch them with extreme prejudice and no small amount of freaking out.


I hate this country sometimes. 

Dose of Engrish

No super exciting stories. I did find another vessel of Satan in my shower the other day during the eclipse which forced me to miss it. 

Here are 2 gems of Engrish I thought I would share with you:

Charming Pureness Heart

We have various meetings and parting

Have a great time

Seen on a t-shirt worn by one of my students

The next was on one of the 100 papers I graded about the 9th graders trip to Kyoto and Nara. You may remember the maniacal deer that bit me when I was feeding it a cracker. One girl said this about the deer:

"It was very cute, and very terrible animals. But I like it. 

Important work I am doing...I can already see the fruits of my labor. 

Japanese BBQ

Over the last holiday (a week ago), I was invited by Furiya Sensei from my Junior High to a BBQ at his house. We had the day off, so we were going to eat food and do things that Japanese people do on nice days. I met him there and we hung out for most of the day. 

 The first thing I took a picture of was his stairs in his house. Awesome right? Drawers built into the stairs! Cool right? I thought it was, so I took a picture for you all. Turns out that Furiya Sensei has a friend who is a carpenter that built the house for him. I actually met this friend as well. He was an...interesting...guy. 

He had a really unhealthy obsession with my stomach. Really. I understand that Japanese people aren't used to people having big bellies, and that their social bubble is smaller than ours...but this guy was out of line. Maybe it was all the alcohol he had, but he would pat my belly and show it off to every new person that came to the party. It was all sorts of uncomfortable. Like MAK said though, I guess this will help me appreciate what my future spouse will go through when people touch pregnant lady bellies. I am coming up with a new slogan:

Not Even Once. 

 They had Costco pizza! Unfortunately it was the Japanese variety with corn and mayonnaise. I think when we get to heaven, the Japanese are going to have to answer for the sins they have committed against pizza. 

 Wouldn't be a BBQ without the actual BBQ right? You can see slices of tongue there on the grill. What can I say? I enjoy tongue now. (That sounds so weird and awful)

 Also on the grill: Shellfish, Whole Shrimp (including eyes), and hot dogs that you buy pre-stuck on a stick. The hot dogs weren't bad...but they served them without buns. Just munching on a hot dog.

 The coolest thing about his house was his Kendo dojo. It was super awesome. It was entirely wood from floor to ceiling. He is super into Kendo so why not?

Speaking of Kendo, he teaches it to younger students. I took some video for you to see. 

He also had his Kendo teacher come to the party and they practiced for an upcoming evaluation thing. The guy on the left is teaching Furiya (in the blue). His description of the guy on the left was, "I think he is a very...kind of scary guy. He is very...um...I don't know." I didn't get those kind of vibes from the guy, but he wasn't swinging a stick at me. 

 A few of his kids and some of the friends kids playing with the COOLEST Matchbox Car set I have ever seen! It had loops! It had jumps! It was self powered! It was everything I always wanted to have as a kid. *sigh*

 The view from his back porch. Not bad right? I also like the lawn. Just squares cut out from sod about the size of carpet samples. No effort to cultivate it or anything. Just kind of let it roll. 

 I had to take a picture of this in the bathroom. This would be at eye-level if you were sitting on the toilet. It's just a calendar with some random white person staring at you. All the pictures are random and the calendar is from some kind of taxi company or something. 

 Evidently teachers have the good life. This guy has his own URINAL! If that isn't the dream, I don't know what is. 

 The party folks. From left to right: Some guy, the carpenter, Mrs. Furiya, and the carpenter's girlfriend. Mrs. Furiya was a hoot. She and her friend (someone's wife) were drinking and chatting me up. It was quite an interesting conversation. We shared what information we could, but it was very limited. We went over all the animal sounds and how they were different from America to Japan. That was interesting. They kept shouting "Obachan power!" It means basically Mom power. It was really funny. They asked me what food I liked, after going through a list, I got to Yakisoba. They started saying it over and over and made me follow them into the kitchen. Once there, they proceeded to make Yakisoba for me despite my protests. I obliged and ate it...

While the Yakisoba was being made, I made some origami with one of the kids and Mrs. Furiya showed me the extent of their DVR. We compared movies we liked. She likes: Con Air (yup), Titanic, Lady Gaga music videos, and the music video for Titanic.

 The previously mentioned hot wheel set and 'scary guy.'

Here you can also see another picture of the kids in their lunchtime getup. Funny. 

Carp and Spiders

On May 5th, Japan celebrates Children's Day. I am not sure what the big deal is about children...I mean I guess they are alright. Anyway, to celebrate the children, they have big old carp banners that they hang. The idea is that carp are healthy and lucky in history or something. The people want their kids to be like the carp and grow big. In a valley near my house, they have strung carp banners across the whole little valley. 

 See? Colorful right? Go children! Become like the fish!

 My friend Chitaru also told me that they want children to be like the carp because the carp can or sometimes swim up through waterfalls (I guess like the salmon) and they want their children to climb the waterfalls of their life...or something. May your children be like flying fish...slimy, slippery and airborne. 

Sometimes I feel like the school is just messing with me when they throw out stuff for school lunch. Here we had noodles in a bag that you had to combine with the meat stuff. Also you can see the spinach and something green something or other. 

 To add to the Japanese hall of horrors, we have this monster of evil that I found last week. Some people advocate keeping these big freakin' spiders around to kill the other bugs. You know that the problem is with that right? The only bugs that I can't handle are these spiders. No. Way. Ugh, I nuked this with bug spray. 

Not 3 days later, I found this horrifying cousin of the previous spider. I did consider spider resurrection, but I was forced to face the fact that there was more than one. For reference, those tiles are 4-inches wide. 

Sakura-ra-ra-ra-ra GOOOOOO Springtime!

Here are some pictures of Sakura...Sakura is a big freakin' deal in Japan. For about 1 week in the springtime, the cherry trees blossom into bright pink and white. It looks like a second snowfall, but it's warm. Anyway, this is a lot like the Japanese version of Easter. Rather than religious observance or bunnies or something like that, they get together and have "Hanami" parties. Hanami is a combination of the words flower and view. Basically it is a flower watching party. People get together and sit on blue tarps and get stupid, falldown, knockout drunk.  

 All of the schools have trees around the fields. This is outside my elementary school. Pretty right? 

 It was a really nice day, so I took a walk and snapped these pictures.

 We had a little Hanami party of our own at the elementary school for lunch. Nice picture right? I think it really captures the humanity of nature and stuff. For some reason, the picture is unlike any others I have taken...but I can't put my finger on it...

We ate with the 1st grade students. We sat on the blue tarp and enjoyed the sun. Unfortunately, the only thing the kids said was "atsui" which means hot. They said it about 100 times. To be fair...it was very sunny.  

 The principal on the right and the 6th grade teacher on the left. 

 Another blue tarp party further across the field. 

 A view from the Junior High and their Sakura trees. 

 The sad thing about the cherry blossoms is that they only last for about a week or less. Supposedly it is a lesson about life and how it is short and we should take advantage of it while it is here and whatnot...I think we should genetically engineer better cherry trees. 

 At my bi-monthly English lesson, my student (a really nice lady named Nagai) served me some mochi that is for children's day. Evidently they serve it wrapped in an oak leaf. I did find out that you are not supposed to eat the leaf. Sometimes they have cherry blossom mochi where they have the petals all around the outside and they eat them too. It's weird. 

It was pretty good overall.

Mixer

As it turns out, we had tongue again today at a birthday (or so I thought) party today. It was good, and it is on my list of things I like now. Several of you commented about seeing an entire tongue putting you off the idea, and I agree. When I was a counselor at EFY, a session director gave me an 8-pound cow tongue as a trophy...I think he used it for some object lesson and at the end of the week he gave it to me because I am really good at talking, or because bear a strong resemblance to a cow. Who remembers?

 We had a welcome back party at a new restaurant. It was alright. Here you can see the big plate full of sashimi. Starting from top left we have shrimp, mystery fish, mystery fish, mystery fish and wasabi. 

 We also had deep fried mystery. In that bowl is chopped onions, some kind of sauce and eggs. Not my favorite. As much as I love fish baby-genocide, I don't. 

 More sushi! It was a pretty good party overall. Much like the others. Drank a whole bunch of coke and raw fish. 

 At the English Society meeting we talked a lot about tofu. Turns out one of the guys who comes to the meetings is a tofu expert...guy. He read about 10 pages of information about tofu origins, style, types, regional tastes and chemistry behind it. It was interesting, but not really interesting. Afterward he made tofu for us fresh. 

 Making tofu is hard work. It requires constant supervision and recombining of the different parts for up to 15 hours. When he ran his tofu shop, he would work from 5am to 7 or 8pm every day just making tofu. He had made a special brew the night before and was ready to heat it up for us there in the room. You have to get a boiler to heat it by steam or you will scald tofu. He had a special pot that he took with him to Italy last month to show them how to make good tofu. 

 Stirring the tofu mixture. He gave a lot of insight about why he chose to be a tofu master. He just decided to leave his pharmaceutical job and make a tofu shop with no experience. He talked about how much he enjoyed taking risks in his life to do what he wanted. When he was younger, he liked fireworks. He walked into a fireworks factory and started working there and eventually became manager for many shows before he left again for the higher paying job. I thought that was more interesting than tofu personally.

 It was really interesting? I realize that I have 3 pictures of a man stirring a pot of bean curd. 

 If you can tell, it is done and we took a chunk out of it. He explained the benefits of using fresh water and higher quality local beans and the merits that they have and how they change the taste of the tofu. He gave a sample to everyone and they all tried it and immediately started freaking out about how good it was. People were commenting that it was so sweet and tender. People were saying "Wow, this is so amazing." Christina, who was a vegetarian prior to coming to Japan, thought it was extra-sweet and delicious.

I did not think so. Call me a heathen. Call me unrefined. It's tofu. The taste variance is pretty minuscule in my experience. Was it good? Yes. Was it good enough/different enough to comment on? No. 

 I caught this little bugger scuttling across the hall on the way to class. I asked the teacher that was walking with me if we should step on it. He said no, that we should leave him alone. He said that "it has a life." Evidently he thinks spiders have souls and deserve to live. Too bad he is wrong. I didn't squish it, but I did see that it was curled up dead a few feet past where I saw it. Boom. Justice.

Lastly is this terrifying picture I found in a textbook. Advertising Halloween in America, they chose a picture of a white woman dressed as a witch...and in black face? I think? The longer you stare, the less sense it makes. 

Internet go! I got a class full of Asian students saying Annyong on my command. The kids had to learn how to say hello in 8 languages. They know English so well, they thought they would throw in Swahili, Russian, Finnish, Korean, Chinese and Portugese. 

Suspense! Samurai! Succulent Tongue!

Here I have been terrible about the blogging over the last few weeks. It isn't because exciting stuff is happening...more that I have lacked the energy to write up stuff and be witty about things. I have oodles of pictures from several adventures that I will update soon. I can't do the post about Nanta yet either. I don't know where my picture went for it. So we are going to skip ahead!

Right after I got home from Korea, it was the Takeda Shingen Festival. Takeda Shingen was the head of a samurai shogunate based in Yamanashi. This festival is the worlds largest gathering of samurai in the world. Over 1500 samurai march in the parade. The red banner you see with 4 squares is the symbol of the Shingen clan. 

 All of the samurai clans were represented. Even the Hitachi clan! 

 All the people just lined up to watch the parade and listen to some kind of triumphant Japanese speech made by the famous actor that was playing Takeda Shingen. 

 Girl samurai...kind of. Also a really tall white guy! See if you can find him in the parade (hint: he is way taller than the rest).

 More samurai.

 I went up to get some delicious street food. I thought I was buying chicken on a stick or something. As I read the sign, it was written "tan." I was confused about what that meant. It was written as an Japanese version of an English word. As I said it over and over trying to figure it out, the girl who served them up pointed to her tongue and said 'tan.' There we go. The one on the far right is cow tongue. The ones on the left were mystery beef. You may be thinking, "why did you eat it? Was it good?" Yes it was good, and I ate it for the experience. 

 Also there was dancing. I don't know what they had to do with samurai.

This was a samurai warlord guy who was head of one of the clans. He rode a horse.

You can hear Shingen shouting out things to the crowd over the triumphant music. It was weird. 

We are marvelling at the beginning of this video because our friend Coleman was leading the procession for Takeda Shingen. He is a big white guy from Georgia, so we thought it was pretty cool. During this video, Shingen came by. You can tell because hordes of people came to take pictures.

Each clan wouls top and shout in frong of us. They did this a whole bunch of times. Most of them really lacked hustle though. They were just kind of going through the motions. Which is weird right? I mean, you are samurai!

More lackadaisical chanting. Some of them I get. Rather than being from a cool clan, they are from the clan of Yamanashi Middle Bank. Also a group from Panasonic Electronics clan. Took some of the magic out of it.

Samurai affiliated dancing...I thought it was crazy and entertaining...crazataining. 

 It was really quite chilly with the vicious wind that was blowing. I did go up to Kofu Castle and see the cherry blossoms. 

 People standing around at the food vendors. Cherry blossoms are awesome! They look like a second snow. 

 Looking out across the moat.

 A line of vendors.

 Down a street. Sorry the pictures are such low quality, it was nighttime. 

 I don't know what happened here, but The guy in the bottom right looks all zoomed up like he is on America's Most Wanted...I CAUGHT YOU EATING NOODLES!

 The Takeda Shingen statue in the prefecture. Cool dude right?