So it's Alex's fourth day here in Shikoku, Japan. He has been doing great!
Yesterday, Bret and I took him to his first ramen shop. I am not one of those "ramen is amaaaazzzziiing!" people, so I was curious to see how he would take to it. We went to a place we recently discovered on a recommendation from one of our adult students.
The place has the most delicious fried rice I have ever had, REALLY good homemade gyoza and pretty good ramen. Alex liked everything! Even the ramen. He said, to quote, "Wow, that's some taste!" I had to ask if he was being serious or not in case he was trying out his -still not quite fluid- sarcasm skills.
I have been happy to see that he likes most of the things we have taken him to do and given him to eat. He has adjusted quite well.
Before Alex came, my mom wanted me to ask my boss if Alex could work a few classes, to get a new work experience. I had talked to my boss about it months earlier, but it didn't seem likely. Out of nowhere, one of my fellow coworkers fell ill and quit her position. Alex has worked this past Tuesday (11 hours including travel time) and will work today (10 hours) and Friday (6 hours) and Saturday (about 8-9 hours). It's pretty awesome that he has been taking all the work in stride.
I expected him to reject the offer of work, but when I emphasized the pay he agreed and has been enjoying his classes! I will try to get some pics of him in action and will post more updates soon!
I have always liked Japanese public transit, but it is really disfunctional for travelling long distances. You have to speak Japanese just to book a bus, which thankfully my friend Emi helped me with. But that didn`t even take me to the airport. I had to pay another 15 bucks to get there, bringing the grand total one way to 6,300 yen! Ugh.
Now that I`m here at the airport the info desk people are telling me that a) no buses/ferries past 8 PM run to Saijo and b) If i do want to wait at the airport until morning, I have to book my tickets after 9 AM, forfeiting the earliest bus/ferry (which comes at 7 AM)
So I guess I`ll have to take the train, but oh wait, they stop running at midnight, and it`s a trip with about 4 transfers, so I`ll have to wait about 5 hours on a train platform. Welcome to Japan, brother! I hope you like steel benches!
Whatever happened to the good old days of bumming a ride to the airport? I think I asked about ten people who were all equally horrified by my request and told me ``Everyone takes the bus or ferry to the airport, no one drives``
....I hope it works out better for everyone else....
So today I had one of my three hour homestay classes. For the last few weeks there were three kids of mixed age in the class, so I wasn't enjoying it as much, but now it's back to just me and Stuart, who is pretty low maintenance.
We just did school work for the first two hours (it was very, very hot and the air conditioning keeping us inside) but for the last hour we went to the corner market, taught each other the names of fruits and vegetables and got some ice cream. We took our ice cream and fruit to a nearby shrine and ate on the steps. Halfway through his ice cream, he held it out towards me imploringly. "I can't eat it, I'm full! " I say. He doesn't understand and holds it out again. Then he points to my bag of fruit that I bought and eats three bananas in a row.
How many kids in America would beg to let you trade their ice cream for bananas?
I'm going to Osaka's Kansai Airport tomorrow to pick up Alex! I am taking the bus and have about three plans and back up plans for transportation.
It's tricky, because Alex's flight gets in at 9:00 pm, and buses and ferry's are going to stop running soon after. I'm a bit nervous. I hope he gets through customs quickly, otherwise it's on to plan B and C! (Plan C is wander around downtown Osaka all night until 8 AM, which is when the earliest bus to Saijo is!
I will be taking lots of pictures and videos so Mom, Pop, and Grandma Viktoria can keep up with us on our adventures and know that he's okay. Thanks Mom and Pop for the rail pass, plane ticket and spending money! <3
This picture is from a few weeks ago. It was our friend Caleb's birthday (he's on the far right) so we went to Bellini's expecting it to be a small hangout. SO many people came. It was really fun. My friend Audra had a couple of people from the couchsurfing network lodging with her, and it was fun talking to a people who weren't English teachers (no offense, English teachers). They were from London and were in Japan for work(physicists working on solar energy), but also traveling after their seminar in Tokyo. It was a fun night. This is Bret, Remi and David (the one who paints all the cool pictures I have sent home). David's friend who he met at a guesthouse in...some city not on Shikoku....was visiting and he made a huge batch of amazing vegetarian curry. It was really good. We all hung out for a while (this was after swimming at the river) and everyone was speaking a lot of japanese, but it was still fun even though i was slightly out of the loop Me at the river! Japan is the hottest, most humid place I have ever lived, and going swimming in a cool, clear river is the best remedy when I feel like I'm never going to feel cold again in my life :) Some people don't know this, but Japan's rivers are mostly dammed up and have concrete barriers to prevent flooding. Aside from being barricaded by concrete and stripped of their natural beauty, lots of them are surprisingly polluted. People have...less of an appreciation for nature in most public beaches and things(not everyone...but it's not that much of a generalization). It's odd. (When I went swimming in the Seto Island Sea a few weeks ago in Kannonji, there was garbage everywhere. It was almost too gross to swim. Like when people barbeque or whatever they sometimes just leave or throw into the ocean whatever they don't want . I saw an onion, plastic bags and a lot of bottles. Part of the problem is the whole aversion to public trash cans that Japan has, but that's another topic altogether....) So having a clear pristine river to swim in whose water is good enough to drink is really special. Also, not many people know about/care about this river because it's sort of up in the mountains where few people go so whenever I go with friends we're the only ones there! Bret, Derry and Caleb in the river. Where Bret's standing there was a really cool rock that we used as a water slide. It lost some of it's slickness as the day wore on, but it was fun while it lasted :) Derry and Caleb are both teachers in the JET program.
The gang! Caleb, Derry, Remi and Bret. It was a really nice afternoon at the river. We did a little hiking, had a picnic and swam all day! Remi and I on the bridge crossing the river to get to the big tree and shrine
This was at the Kamagawa river party. Kamagawa is not the river in the pictures preceding this one. It's much bigger and much more popular because it runs through the center of the town more or less. People go there to barbeque, camp and light fireworks. Fireworks are an all summer long thing here. They call them "hanabi" and wherever there's a barbeque on the beach , there'll be bottle rockets, roman candles and sparklers.
This river party was really fun though. The river is pretty slow running and broad, but has a few rapids if you hike up to the steeper parts. We had a big inflatable island thing and about ten of us carried it up to the rapids and floated down the river. It was incredibly hot and we swam all day. Despite copious amounts of sunblock i still got burned!
Our friend Pat organized the river party. He brought a generator, tents, lights, firewood, speakers and turntables and tons of chairs. He is closing his bar, Bellini's, but this party was basically like bringing Bellini's to the river. He even brought an old couch for us to sit on by the campfire. On the last day of the river party (it was THREE DAYS LONG) they burned the couch. In Japan, they incinerate all non recyclables, so I guess it's not so bad, right? Our friend Taka took a video, it's pretty funny, but maybe you had to be there. The best part is when Pat sits on the couch with one end on fire. I really hope someone got a picture of that.
This has been life in Japan for the last few days. It's not that unusual, right?
my friends Derry and Ashley found a kitten in a rice paddy and brought it home. Derry tortured everyone by putting up monstrously cute pictures of it online so I had to go visit. Cats in Japan usually aren't friendly, so having an animal friend is rare out here. Look how cute!!
We have a friend named Shuuko that we have known for a while. He does the lighting for a DJ friend of ours, and he's pretty good at it. What we found out much later was that he was a monk, so we wanted to go visit his temple in neighboring Imabari. But it turns out, he isn't just a monk in the temple, he is the master! He is the 22nd generation in his family to be the master of his temple, which has been around for 586 years! He inherited it from his grandfather, because his father died when he was still in high school. So he should have been 23rd. We came and we saw him do his morning ritual, which was actually quite musical involving a gourd and a singing bowl. He is actually really talented at being a monk, he attended a special Buddhist university in Kyoto and has done all kinds of various training in mountain sanctuaries and the like. He primarily works in funerals, like most Buddhist monks in Japan, and his mom owns a flower shop on the grounds. She is really sweet, and we got a very fancy and official Japanese tea ceremony which was something I wanted to experience for a long time. The maccha was sooo strong! Some of the ceramics were 300 years old! Then Shu brought out a book written by the founder of the temple almost 600 years go! He also showed us a scroll painting depicting Buddhist heaven and hell, and I found that it was remarkably similar to some christian parables. Its quite amazing, seeing as how these religions formed thousands of miles apart. Actually the Amida Buddha, which is the main deity of the Jodo sect, and many aspects of the sect, are quite similar to Jesus and Christianity. Shu drew a lot of comparisons as well, it was quite interesting. He also gifted me some incense that his grandfather (mother's side) makes in a specialty shop in Kyoto. Then he took us out to eat Unagi (freshwater eel)! After almost a year in Japan, a wholly new meal is quite rare, so I was thrilled. And the food was delicious! It WAS weird to think, though, that the eel was alive when we came into the shop. Now that's fresh! All in all it was an amazing day, I was so interested to have a look into the world of a professional monk, especially one who I've known for so long! Shu and his mom were really happy to have visitors, because let's face it, his clientele usually is in mourning and foreign friends don't often come visit. I am looking forward to coming again, because Shu's wife is a registered expert of the Tea ceremony and wants us over for a full experience!
