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!!
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