NagaYES and Illuminations Festival

Hey everyone!

So, a few weeks ago, I went to my first NagaYES event! What's NagaYES? And why is the name/pun so lame? Sorry, I can't answer the latter, but I CAN answer the former!

My prefecture is one of the biggest prefectures in the country, so we have a lot of JETs and direct-hire ALTs.  Because the prefecture is so big, the community of JETs has divided into four different regions (also called blocks): north (Hokushin, 北信), south (Nanshin, 南信, that's my block), middle (Chushin, 中信), and east (Toshin 東信).  The entire JET community has a competition each year between the blocks, and each block hosts one event.  The first event was a swan-boat race held by Hokushin up in Shinano-machi.  This time, it was a capture the flag event held by Nanshin in Oshiba Kogen (a beautiful park with many trees, sports fields, picnic areas, and even an onsen!).

Here's a pic of a lake in Oshiba Kogen:

Before the event was held, Catie, and I went for a run with Emma. Emma was training for a half marathon, and we ended up jogging 7km! I wasn't too tired, but I sure was sore after the run. My mind still thinks that I can run a long ways, but my body might need a little more heads up before I suddenly spring so much activity upon it. My hip-flexers weren't too happy with me...

After that, Catie graciously offered to take me to the onsen to clean off and relax. Onsens are amazing places...they have a few rules and etiquette to follow, but they aren't too difficult. You enter the area, undress, and then clean off in the showering area before sitting in one of the many different pools. There are jacuzzi pools, outdoor pools (gated off from the public and men's pools, of course), a milky pool (that was supposedly good for your skin), a freezing cold pool, and a sauna. It was very relaxing.  :)

The NagaYES capture the flag event was held inside the park...it was very confusing. There were many ways to earn points. We were given tags. These tags could be pulled off an enemy for points, so it ended up being kinda like flag football mixed with capture the flag. The main goal was to try to steal each others big flag, hidden somewhere in our area. The map below makes the place we played in seem small, but it took maybe 5 minutes to run the perimeter of my territory (area 3).

It ended up being fun for the offense, but really boring for the defense, since most teams didn't venture into our territory. ...Guess who was on defense??  :/

While capture the flags really wasn't too interesting for me, the Illuminations Festival held right after made up for it entirely. When I first heard about the Illuminations Festival, I thought it was going to be more tranquil and Chinese-esque (not sure why I thought this when I am in JAPAN...) with lanterns, but I was totally wrong. It ended up being more like Christmas light decorations on crack! There were lights from different animes, movies, and even holidays (not just Halloween, which was the closest holiday to the festival at the time). I took lots of pictures, which you can see below:

This is what I expected all over, but this ended up being one of the few Halloween displays

This place was a mecca for One Piece references...

One difference between Japan and America...kids are actually allowed to touch the displays.  Although, a lot of kids ended up breaking a few of the displays.  Pros and cons to each culture, I guess lol

 

Yes, you see correctly.  Garden gnomes.  Disney garden gnomes everywhere...

 

So creepy...

They had some Valentines day decorations too!  I already miss Pumpkin alot, but it made me miss him even more!  I wish he could've been here with me.

I believe that's Mount Fuji...

Origami cranes

 

A mecca, I tell you, a MECCA!

Nekobus from Totoro!

You could turn a steering wheel and move this dragons head!  Kids had lots of fun with this one.

That's all for now! I'll see if I can write more tomorrow!  :)

School Festival Weekend

That weekend, my visit school had a 文化祭 (bunkasai---a school festival), so I went with another ALT, Catie, the first day. I bought some deep-fried chicken called karaage (much to the delight of the 3rd graders selling them) and made a bookmark in the school library! Two students in one of my 1st grade classes helped me make the bookmark...the student helping me didn't speak much English, but the other student did his best to help the other student. I heard them speaking about how to say certain things in English and I heard the first student expressing his worries about not being able to speak English in Japanese lol From the window, Catie saw a play put on by the students. 5 students dressed up like Power Rangers and fought 3 bad guys. While I didn't see them that first day, I got to see them the second day...the video is below. After making the bookmark, we watched a food-eating contest where students stuffed an entire riceball into their mouth and another where they had to chug a can of coke as fast as they could.  Some students were surprisingly dainty for high school boys, but others packed the food down (as expected haha)! We then watched a concert by some bands in the gym...some of the boys had no expression while playing music! It was kinda funny haha Catie was wondering what would happen if she just ran up there and started rocking out hahaha They probably would have been so confused!!!

The next day, I visited the school festival again by myself to try to bond with some of the students. I bought cooked sweet potatoes (cooked in a box by depleted charcoals) first thing...and they were sooo good (and surprisingly filling, which may have been for the better, since I didn't buy as much food as I could have)!

While I ate my sweet potatoes, I watched the play that Catie saw the day before. It was about the 駒ファイブ　（こまファイブ --Koma [short for Komagane Kougyou] Five) fighting evil to protect the school and keep it clean. Or something like that. They used simple enough language that I could mostly understand, but it was still a little confusing at times haha

Here's a picture of the bad guys in the play:

Here's a short clip of the play:

After re-watching the clip, maybe my guess about trash wasn't completely incorrect haha  ^^;;

After that, I talked to Mami-san and a nearby 3rd year (whose English was surprisingly good). He and Mami-san were really easy to get along with and talk to, so I was happy to try to exercise my Japanese while they tried their best to speak some English. I ended up speaking mostly Japanese, but I was really happy that they were having fun talking to me :) Since the next event was starting, Mami-san and the 3rd year had to leave, so I went along my merry way and visited my 1st years rooms. My first years had 3 separate rooms set up, one for each class. 1-B made a haunted house (in the beginning, it was scary, but as it went on, it was more funny than terrifying for me...^^;), 1-C had some sort of set-up that I didn't understand, and 1-A had a station where you can make a design on a mug/cup and they'd print it out for you! While I don't care much about the design, I hope to get all the students to sign it before the year is over! I think that'd be a really cool idea. :] During the time it took to make the cup, I got udon, which also took forever to make due to the lunch rush (in addition to the cheap prices). As soon as I was finished, I got my cup, and then left to go home. It was a tiring day.

But, to be honest, I think speaking Japanese at length can be as tiring as walking around a lot. I guess this is what could be considered a mental workout haha  ^^;

Kindness from a Co-Worker

One day a while back, my same-age teacher friend (Mami) at my visit school offered to take me out to dinner after my base school's marathon to celebrate my birthday! I'm surprised that she remembered!! What a nice gesture from a really nice person!!! I was moved!!  :]

The marathon day came up really fast! After visiting my school with Pumpkin, I decided that the best day to explore my school was during the school marathon. It was an insanely long marathon (40km for boys, 30km for girls), so I didn't end up running. No, thank you! I'll do a few miles here or there, but running longer distances does not appeal to me in the least. I watch stuff like that on TV and I've never ever seen anyone after running one NOT look like they were in pain. I definitely prefer to exercise by biking, jump-roping, occasionally running a few miles her or there, or working out at home. :/

The school was empty during the marathon, so I decided to go on an adventure. I looked up the word "explore" on the jisho.com, and さぐる (saguru) popped up. I wrote it down so that I could tell people that I was exploring the campus in case anyone wanted to talk to me. The idea was nice, and I did talk to four people, but only 1 person out of the four that I talked to understood what I was trying to say (; __ ;).  I got really really depressed about how no one was understanding me...so I ended up asking one of my JTEs how to say explore, and he gave me a completely different word, "探検する" (tanken suru), which apparently has an "african safari" kind of exploration-feel to it lol I was happy to put my humiliation behind me and explore more using the new word. :) But anyways, during my tanken, I found out that my school has 2 gyms, 2 music rooms, a cooking room, a word-processor club (shortened to "ワプロ部" (wapuro-bu), a computer lab, another English room, a Mandarin club, an outdoor stage, a weight room, and other things! I'm really glad I got to explore so much :]

As soon as school ended after the marathon, I rushed back to my home, got ready, and went to Komagane station to meet Mami-san. To be honest, I was really nervous about the meeting.  While I really like Mami-san, I was worried about my Japanese abilities and thought that it might be really awkward with many misunderstandings. She was a bit late, but since I was practicing writing kanji anyways, I didn't mind. Both of us were fairly new to the area (she is a Suwa native, which is in the middle of Nagano Prefecture), so we didn't know where to eat! We found out that we're both very indecisive, so we ended up wandering around a lot until we finally found a restaurant to eat at. I ordered inoshishi-don (wild boar meat over rice) and she ordered vegetable tempura.

Here is a picture of Mami-san with her vegetable tempura:

While they were making the food, we talked about movies, food, Japanese vs American customs, and lots of other things, entirely in Japanese! I told her about my worries, and she told me that I was doing really well, which did wonders for my confidence. I didn't believe I could do something like that, but I surprised myself! :) After, she paid for me (she didn't let me pay, since it was for my birthday) and drove me back to my house, where she asked if she could see my apartment. I told her I didn't mind, so we ended up chatting for a long time about various things until I realized that I was late for my Skyping time with Ryan! She ended up meeting him and we talked about a few things until she had to leave. I had an awesome time with her...I hope I can do something for her for her birthday in November!! :)

Busy, Busy, Busy!!

Hey everyone!

So these past weeks have been filled to the brim with lots of interesting stuff that has happened, so I have a lot to write about soon!

I touched on this last week, but Ryan came and visited Komagane! I've probably said this before, but it takes a LONG time to get from Komagane to Aomori and vice versa. As the crow flies, it is 100 miles from Komagane to Shinjuku (and would roughly take about 1 hour and 40 minutes-ish), BUT because there is a huge mountain range in the way, it takes about 4 hours to get from Komagane to Shinjuku. Bummer.  >.<

But what's a bigger bummer is that the bus that goes to/from Komagane/Shinjuku is notoriously late in both directions. So far, we're 0/3 in the times that we've traveled on that bus (the train that he arrived on was super late), which is pretty awful. I was more than 1 hour late when travelling to Shinjuku, Ryan was late going from Shinjuku to Komagane, and also going back, he was late getting back to Shinjuku from Komagane!  He couldn't meet with one of our friends from the TEFL program (Yumi) that he had planned to meet because of this. Stupid bus. But I'm going too far ahead. I digress.

So...rant aside, add another hour to the journey for lateness. :(

Anyways, from there, it takes about 30 minutes to get from Shinjuku to Ueno and, last, it takes 11 hours to get from Ueno to Aomori.

Here's a link from Google Maps to help you visualize this journey:

Komagane City to Aomori City

Adding it up: 4hrs + 30 mins + 1 hr (for lateness) + 11 hrs = a grand total of around 16 hrs and 30 minutes!

Long distance sucks, but at least we're on the same island/country/continent. I can't wait to be with him again!!  :<

Once he finally got out here, he was pretty tired, so we didn't do much the first day. I made him some food and we went to sleep after watching some TV. There isn't too much to do out here, and, this weekend, no one seemed to be walking around...but nevertheless,  we had a lot of fun in my quiet little city.

Side note: In Japanese RPGs such as Persona 3 and Persona 4, various Tales games, Harvest Moon, Pokemon, etc, etc, I noticed that the music changes based on where you are or what mode of transport you are using. I thought that these changes in music were solely for variety in the game soundtrack, but in reality, the similarities between Japanese RPGs and daily life in Japan are eery. All of the grocery stores have different tunes that they play over and over and OVER again. In my town, they play some strange elevator-like music or other happy music on the speakers when you walk around downtown. They sometimes play music on the speakers at school too! It seems that there's a sound for everything over here! I really do often feel like I like I live in a Japanese RPG... ^_^;;

If only the grocery stores near me had tunes this cute and catchy (and not annoying)...

Anyways, let's continue!

On the second day, I took him to a Nepalese restaurant called Pokhara in one of the far corners of my city. Because I have no car (and no access to a second bike), we walked all the way there.  It was about a 40 minute walk there (not including a pitstop to check out a temple along the way), all uphill! I didn't quite realize how far it was without a bike...we both found our footsteps growing heavier as we walked uphill. Poor Pumpkin! Aomori is pretty flat, so walking around Komagane for a bit must have been a rather unwelcome change of pace... ^.^;;

When we got to Pokhara, there was a special combo meal where we could choose 1 curry, 1 type of naan, 1 drink, and one side dish. There were lots of different types of curry for us to choose from...we ended up choosing mutton curry and got sesame naan (later, we got a delicious slice of garlic naan, which was awesome)! The naan that came with the curry was HUGE. One of my co-workers once joked that you can use it as a baby's blanket! When I told Ryan this, he said "But that would be such a waste of food!" lol I quickly agreed. Nevermind the fact that the naan was burning hot (and would scald a child...or rather, anyone), the precious naan must not be wastedto cover a baby!!! hahaha We then were overwhelmed by the delicious sensation of Indian-ぽい (Indian-like) food. There isn't much spicy food in Japan, so I try to savor the flavor whenever I can!

Below is a picture similar to the food that we ate. We were too busy chowing down on the delicious food that we forgot to take pictures haha. There is a huge slice of naan, curry, salad, and a side of barbecue chicken. In our case, we had chicken kebab and also a glass of mango juice!

After that, we stopped by Bellshine, a huge department store/grocery store/100 yen store/arcade, to try out our hand at プリクラ. For those not familiar with プリクラ (purikura), it's a Japanese photobooth with lots of time-limitations on choices! You get inside the photo booth, and they give you about 10 seconds each to choose your preferences (beautiful-style or cute-style, how many photographs you wanna take, the frame styles, etc). Keep in mind that, while we know a good amount of Japanese (for me, if spoken slowly), this machine was blasting the instructions at us very quickly and gave us little to no time to translate and then choose what we wanted. There are so many options, and it was so difficult since we were indecisive! We had no idea what was going on, but we did our best!

Our time in the プリクラ was spent mostly like this:

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!  Whaaaat's going onnnnnn?!?!?!"

"What do you want?"

"You pick!!"

*computer makes an automatic choice*

"What?!?  Oh god whyyyyy?!?!"

"NOW WHAT DO WE DO?!?!"

*countdown until picture is taken*

"What should we do?!?!?!  AHHHH"

*smile, picture is taken*

[repeat process 1-6 times]

It was quite frantic and, quite frankly, really stressful! But, the kicker is that that wasn't the most stressful part for me. After you take pictures, you go into a separate section where you edit the pictures by doodling on them. We were really happy with our pictures...until we saw what kinds of automatic photo-shopping the machine did even before we were able to edit our pictures. Apparently, most Japanese girls like their プリクラ machines to make their eyes really big. I'm not quite sure what the appeal of this is (since it looks alien-like to me), but it made that effect on my eyes...and it was terrifying!!! MY EYES WERE HUGE. 0.0 I think I died a little inside when I saw those, but I guess it's a nice, laughable memory, so I'm not complaining...much...

I later showed my friend the pictures and she laughed so hard!! She told me they look nothing alike lol I don't have a scanner, but I think it's best if I keep those pics to myself...save your eyes from burning :P

After our Nepalese food/プリクラ excursion, we were pretty pooped out from all the walking we did that day, so we called it a night and went back to my apartment.

The last day he was here, we stopped by Delicia so that Pumpkin could buy omiyage for his co-workers, and then visited my base school for a little bit. He wanted to walk around, but I got nervous since it was untouched territory for me. It was then that he made me realize just how much of my school that I hadn't explored. It was kinda sad. How many months have I been here?  I only have 2 schools, so I am at this school 80% of the time, but I had only been on one side of it! I made it a point to go exploring at school next time I had a chance. At the time, we didn't have time to explore, so I took him to a famous restaurant in Komagane that served the town specialty, sauce katsudon (deep-fried pork cutlets over rice with a special sauce on it). Naturally, we ordered the sauce katsudon, but we also ordered another Nagano specialty, chasoba (green tea soba). It took a while for the orders to come out, and in the meanwhile, we listened to the restaurant's music, which included a variety of Beatles covers on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument. It was really strange, but interesting haha Both dishes came out eventually, and were really really good!!

Below is a picture of sauce katsudon with a side of salad, miso soup, and pickled daikon (not shown):

Below is a picture of chasoba (green tea soba):

While I was sad to see Pumpkin leave after that, I'm glad he got to depart on a full stomach from a good meal! :)

I wrote more, but I'll post more in a bit!! :] Thanks for being patient!!