ひなまつり (Hinamatsuri)

Hinamatsuri (Girls' Festival, also known as Dolls' Festival) and formally called Momonosekku (Peach Festival) occurs on March 3rd and is an occasion to pray for young girls' health and growth, good marriages, and happiness. Homes with girls as well as schools display dolls for the festival and dedicate to them peach blossoms, rice cake cubes, hishimochi (special colored diamond-shaped rice cakes), shirozake (sweet white sake), and other items. Leaving the hina display out too long is said to delay marriage. So it is customary to put them away soon after March 3rd.

The origin of the hinamatsuri is an ancient Chinese practice in which the sins of the body and misfortune are transferred to a doll and washed away by setting the doll in a river to drift away. When this practice spread to Japan, it was linked to girls playing with dolls and in the Edo Period (1603-1867) was developed into the hinamatsuri. Originally, the dolls were made of paper. Today, the dolls and the displays are quite intricate and can cost upward of 330,000 JPY (over 4,000 USD using today's exchange rate) for a seven-tiered display, such as shown in the top picture, which contains (from top platform to bottom platform) the emperor and empress, three court ladies, five musicians with different instruments, two guardians with hishimochi, three fellows, the bride's dowry, and transportation and obento boxes. The emperor and the empress alone can cost 85,000 JPY (over 1,000 USD).

To learn about this traditional aspect of Japanese culture, two friends and I attended an international communication society event. There we made our own origami hina dolls and ate hinamatsuri cuisine. I think I did a pretty good job making my lady, if I do say so myself. As a gift for all 30 of us in attendance, our origami sensei made each of us a lord for our lady.

The hinamatsuri feast was quite good -- an informal style of sushi whose name I can't remember along with specially-prepared cucumbers, strawberries, and amazake (a sweet, non-alcoholic drink made from rice). But my favorite part of the feast was the sakura mochi dessert -- pink-tinged mochi (sticky rice cake) with anko (red bean paste) wrapped in a preserved sakura (cherry) leaf. Many foreigners, as previously mentioned, don't like anko. And the flavor of the sakura leaf is quite sharp. But I love it!

To learn more about the hinamatsuri, I strongly recommend reading about it on Wikipedia.

'Til next time...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

There is an aspect of American culture that I know only through TV and movies -- the practice of bringing a plate of cookies or some other such gift (such as the beer one of my former coworkers gave to her new college-aged neighbors) to welcome a new neighbor into the neighborhood. In my (shhh!) years of living in the U.S., I don't remember experiencing this practice myself. However, I don't have the best memory in the world. So if you're someone who brought something to my home(s), please forgive me for my forgetfulness. And if you're one of the many people to whom I never gave a welcome gift, please forgive me for my rudeness.

Today I've just experienced something that I'd known only through my language textbook. In Japan, the new neighbor doesn't receive gifts but gives omiyage (gifts) to all his/her new neighbors to introduce him/herself and to lay the groundwork for any future interactions they might have. The omiyage doesn't have to be large in terms of size or expense and is usually practical (e.g., hand towel) or delicious (e.g., sweets). I don't know if neighbors in five-story apartment complexes like the one I lived in last year buy omiyage for everyone in the building or just those who live on their floor. And in a neighborhood of houses, I don't know how far the neighbor-radius extends from one's house. But as my new apartment building is only for four tenants, thankfully my new neighbor didn't have to spend a lot of money to give us her omiyage.

As I already have plenty of hand towels, I was happy that my neighbor opted for delicious omiyage (cakes, cookies, and a surprise)!

'Til next time...

Summer Training Is Oishii (Yummy)!

Today we completed our final day of summer training. While there were many great presentations throughout its eight days, the cultural aspects of training were most enjoyable for me. This year we made pottery, learned how to write our addresses in kanji (Chinese characters), made potato stamps, learned about old ways of maintaining the home, and made desserts. (No, N.P. and I didn't plan to be matchy-matchy for our cooking lesson.) If you've been reading my blog for the past year, then you remember that last year's food lesson was making sushi rolls, something most of us had never done. This year we again learned how to make something new -- traditional Japanese sweets made with anko (red bean paste). While anko is unappealing to many foreigners, I actually like it. It's an indescribable flavor, since it's unlike anything I'd eaten prior to moving to Japan. But it's only slightly sweet, since Japanese sweets contain much less sugar than American and European sweets. And it's found in a variety of desserts.

The first sweet that we made was a flower blossom. While the pink of the flower was not supposed to be variegated as mine ended up, I was quite pleased with my first attempt.

Unfortunately, my second sweet was less successful than my flower. Don't you think it looks more like a turtle than a maple leaf?

Until next time...

Kyuushoku (School Lunch)

While I've appreciated the return to normalcy my life has gained these last two months after experiencing the earthquake of March 11, I've felt that nothing I could write about here would be worth writing or reading in comparison. But I realized this week that I've not written much about Japanese school life on this blog. So I'll start with my favorite topic, according to the count of my blog labels -- food, specifically school lunch.
 

Kyuushoku in a Japanese shougakkou (elementary school) looks nothing like school lunch in an American elementary school. Here in Japan, kyuushoku is prepared at the school itself. There is no central kitchen where a single dietician works to plan the menu for the entire district, oversee the large team of cooks who prepares the food, and disperse it to the individual schools in the district where it is reheated before it is served. Each shougakkou has its own kitchen; and one dietician manages the school lunch program for a small group of schools. So each district's shougakkou no kyuushoku could be different on any given day. And a shougakusei (elementary school student) will never bring a lunchbox to school... well, that is unless his family demands that he be allowed to bring his own obentou (packed lunch) after a nuclear reactor disaster causes a radiation-in-the-food scare. (Kindergartners don't attend elementary school in Japan. They attend a youchien and have to bring an obentou to school. And junior high and high schools have different lunch programs as well.) 

Additionally, there is no cafeteria in which all the students eat. The cooks portion out the food for each class into large containers and send it to the classrooms, where the students eat at their desks that they have moved together into small groups. At the beginning of the lunch period, the students put on white smocks, white hats, and masks to cover their noses and mouths. They cover their desktops with their placemats. They wipe off the serving table. And they assist the teacher with distributing the food to everyone in the classroom. In the younger grades, perhaps the students just distribute the rice, bread, or noodles; milk; and straws. But in the older grades, they also dish the food into the bowls and plates. Each class manages the actual food dispersal differently -- some teachers choose to have all the students form a line while others choose to have only the group leaders queue up. But no one serves oneself, instead placing trays on other students' desks. And no one can eat before everyone has been served and the "Itadakimasu!" (literally, "receive gratefully") has been said, which means that food is sometimes taken from bowls or plates that have already been placed in front of other people. (Remember, they're all wearing hats, masks, and smocks. So no one is breathing on or touching food until after the "Let's eat!" signal.)

Through no fault of the school district cooks, I remember a lot of fried foods, hamburgers, canned fruits and vegetables, instant potatoes, and rolls from my elementary school lunch days. Even though I may not have taken my lunch to school very frequently (I honestly can't remember what I usually did.), I remember not really liking the hot meal options that I could get at school. And I can't say that I like every kyuushoku meal that I eat here each day, especially on the days when traditional Japanese food is served -- like stuff with lots of seaweed, whole dried baby fish, or fish paste products, to name but a few. But I do like knowing that the ingredients in my kyuushoku are fresh, for I can see the unevenness to the carrot slices rather than cubic perfection. And on the rare days when we are treated to fruit, I know that my two cherries, 1/6 grapefruit, or 1/2 kiwi are not sweetened with added sugars.

Kyuushoku isn't perfect. I think there's entirely too much emphasis placed on carbohydrates in the Japanese diet. (Potatoes and bread or potatoes and rice in the same meal is not very nutritious.) Non-soup vegetables are generally no more than 1/4 to 1/2 cup per serving. And fruit is served only a couple times per month. But the thing I most like about kyuushoku is the thing that originally most bothered me, which I hinted about earlier. When I first saw food being scooped out of the dishes that were sitting in front of students, I was upset, for I felt that the portion sizes of the non-rice foods allotted by the dietician were far too small. And my opinion became further solidified when my start-of-class question, "How are you?" was answered with, "I"m hungry!" in the two class periods following lunch. (American portion sizes are ridiculously huge, as I've already mentioned, so I'm not advocating American-styled or -sized lunches, either.) But the more I've experienced lunch in the Japanese classroom and have compared it with the Wednesday night dinner experiences I've had with the foreigners at church, the more I've grown to see its merits rather than its demerits.

In comparing and contrasting this kyuushoku time with our church potluck time, the more taken aback I am by we foreign Christians' actions. We serve ourselves during Wednesday evening meals at church, when shouldn't we serve each other? (If Hard Rock Café can get it right, should we be able to?) Some of us in the group gluttonously mound food onto our plates and then don't wait to make sure that everyone has gotten a meal before we start digging in, when sometimes the group responsible for the meal hasn't made enough food. And sometimes we fail to show altogether, which means that the meal-prep crew has spent too much money on too much food for too few people and the clean-up crew is reduced to one person.

Last August I wrote a post about how I felt that many of the Japanese people I've met often act quite Christ-like, despite their quickness to say that "Japanese people" are not Christian. (I enclose Japanese people in quotes because to be Japanese means that one is culturally Buddhist, whether or not one is religiously Buddhist.) I know this is because of the collectivist nature of their culture. And I know that good things can and do come out of an individualist culture like that of the U.S. But I wish that when surrounded by an others-first culture for more hours of the week than our own me-first culture on Wednesday nights, we Christian English teachers might learn by cultural osmosis if not actual study the truth behind the apostle Paul's instruction for how to behave when sharing a fellowship meal (a.k.a. love feast). In addition to the U.S. school lunch program needing a kyuushoku-esque Food Revolution á la Jamie Oliver, perhaps the foreigner population at church needs Paul to give us a Love Feast Revolution.

Until next time...

Are you sure this is Africa?

Did you know that when you step foot in an embassy technically you're stepping foot on the soil of that country? Well, when one of my AET friends, A.T., who is Ethiopian-American, invited me a few weeks ago to attend a Japanese-Ethiopian culture night celebration with him and his wife at the Ethiopian embassy, I was more than ready to go. I wouldn't get a stamp in my passport for walking through the doors. And the scenery would look a whole lot more like Tokyo than Addis Ababa. But I'd be attending a state party in Ethiopia!

When yesterday arrived for our 12-member party to travel for the event, we had to make the decision of whether or not to go due to an incoming typhoon. Many of us would have preferred to stay home. But A.T. was so excited to share his country's food, music, and dancing with us that none of us could tell him no. So we piled into two vehicles and took off for Tokyo at 1pm Africa time, which means that while we were supposed to leave at 1pm, we actually left at 2pm. Unfortunately, that late departure was an unknown-at-the-time foreshadowing of how our travel to the party would go, for when we finally arrived at a metered parking lot that was as close as we could get to the embassy, A.T. told us that the party wasn't at the embassy at all but at another location instead. After another hour of cell-phone-GPS consulting, hailing a cab whose driver couldn't find the building, and pulling one of two Ethiopian guys who were walking on the street into said cab to lead us to our destination, we arrived completely frustrated. But thankfully the event was very enjoyable and most of us were able to forget about the stress of our travel during the course of the evening.

The event was attended mainly by Japanese people, naturally. However, there were several Ethiopian expatriates at the party. And A.T. introduced our group to the ambassador from Ethiopia. Unfortunately, I only got to see him rather than meet him.

The Ethiopian food that we ate was good but very spicy. Having become accustomed to much milder food this past six months, I don't know if I would have found the food to be so spicy if my U.S. palate were still intact. But my mouth was on fire with just a few bites and I was unable to finish my meal.

The Japanese dancers doing both traditional Japanese as well as traditional Ethiopian dances were quite good. But the best part of the evening was when the people attending the party were invited to join in with the dancing.

H.V. and N.N. dancing on the sidelines, although H.V. earlier in the evening had been one of the people to get up and perform with the dancers.

Ethiopian dancing heavily involves moving the shoulders, which the two Ethiopians in this picture were able to do quite well. J.M. couldn't quite manage the shoulders, although he would have been more than happy to show us the hips-driven Latin dances that he learned while growing up in Honduras.

I never made it to Africa last night. So I guess I'll just have to go at some point in the future. But at one of the traffic lights on the way home, I saw what is surely the world's smallest liquor store (and its bored-looking employee). If I'd wanted to lie down on the floor to measure the store's width, I would have touched the exterior wall with my head and the interior wall with my feet. (Please don't fail to notice the store's name.) When you live and work in a city as crowded as Tokyo, you make the most of every square inch.

Until next time...

Agape Ministry

The foreigner population at church has been studying the Gospel of Mark since the beginning of September. In our study each week, we read through one chapter eight times and reflect on that day's reading using the lens of a different question, e.g., Where did Jesus go?, What did Jesus do?, What did Jesus see?, etc. Along with independent reading and small group discussion each week, we also have a discipleship challenge to correlate with something from that week's reading that was particularly noteworthy. For this week's challenge, my discipleship group decided that we would help with the Agape Ministry at church.

Once a month, some members of my church join with some members of the Catholic church to serve curry and a short Bible message to the homeless of the city. I don't know why the homeless in the city are homeless, since Japanese families typically live multi-generationally under one roof. And I don't know the ministry's long-term goal regarding the homeless of the city. But I'm very glad that my group decided that we wanted to help with the short-term goal of meeting physical needs this week. It was rather awkward, since I can't speak Japanese, to work alongside strangers (especially when it came time to introduce ourselves and I was the first non-Catholic in the serving line to do so and didn't know how to say anything other than my name, which none of them had been saying!). And when I reflect on the fact that Jesus not only gave food to the hungry but actually ate with them, I feel that my curry-dishing skills weren't enough. But after living here for almost six months, I've come to expect that I will have numerous awkward encounters and that I won't be able to do what I'd like to do as a result of the communication barrier. Regardless, partnering with members of the Catholic church, when there often is still religious tension between Catholics and Protestants in the U.S., in order to show love in the name of Jesus, was a wonderful experience. I hope to be able to be involved in this ministry on a regular basis.

Until next time...

Almost Famous?

Today I went to McDonald's for breakfast before school. As the cashier was placing my iced coffee on my tray, she said, "Rebecca?" I've never met this person in my life; so I was a little taken aback that she somehow knew my name. (This is a cash society. There's no such thing as a debit card. So she didn't get my name off of anything that I gave her.) When I confirmed that, indeed, I am Rebecca, she told me that she is the mother of one of the elementary school students whom I teach. After having another one of my students tell me that his mother delivered a package from my mother to my school several months ago and then they discussed it over the dinner table, I guess I should have remembered that being a gaijin (foreigner) in a small town in a homogeneous country like Japan doesn't allow for anonymity. Maybe the next time I venture out I should take a tip from Ke$ha.


Until next time...

Lessons learned on Guam

I spent most of the first week of August on Guam with three other English teachers for our use-them-or-lose-them five days of tokkyu (summer vacation). We flew out of Japan on Sunday's red-eye and flew into Japan on Friday's first flight out and packed all of our waking hours in between with sight-seeing, shopping, and stuffing our faces with American food. Although the trip wasn't a cheap one, I am proud to say that I was able to eat for four days at just around $100, thanks to splitting every meal but breakfast with my friend, H.V. (I highly recommend the California Club pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. But I strongly advise you to stay away from the CPK Cobb Salad. It's way too rich.)

Guam is an American territory that sits closer to Japan (three-hour flight) than it does to the United States (eight-hour flight to Hawaii). As a result, 75% of its tourism is comprised of East Asians (historically Japanese but increasingly South Koreans and Chinese); and the Japanese written language can be seen alongside its English equivalent on restaurant menus and mall directories and the spoken language heard just as frequently if not more predominately than English. Its interesting history has resulted in a blend of Chamorro (native), Spanish, Asian, and American family and location names. But rather than write a post that is a history lesson, I'll let you read more about that here and here. Guam has beautiful scenery; and I took too many pictures to post on this blog. So please click here if you'd like to see some of the views I saw while there. Instead, I'll use this post to enumerate lessons I learned/opinions I developed while on Guam:

1. Diet Coke really doesn't taste good and should never become an acquired taste.
2. The world's largest Kmart, while very nice, can't be all that boastful if it carries only two George Clooney movies (one of which is Return of the Killer Tomatoes!) and no York Peppermint Patties.
3. Stomachs shrink after living in Japan; and American restaurant portion sizes are sickeningly huge.
4. Omiyage, the Japanese art of gift giving to honor relationships, is a racket designed by Japanese companies to keep themselves in business.
5. Liev Schreiber almost wins the award for the perfect villain's voice. Sadly for him but happily for us, he's beaten out by Alan Rickman.
6. Touring World War II battle and memorial sites with Japanese people is somewhat awkward, even though the war is most probably the fault of neither of us.
7. Americans are very loud and need to be more discreet about or, even better, not discuss at all their spouse's reproductive problems and their "bastard child(ren) in the Philippines" over Chili's chips and salsa.

Until next time...

Teachers' Trip Activities

On the last Saturday of July, approximately 20 teachers and I went on the annual teachers' trip that occurs at the end of each summer term. We met at the school at 7:00am for the bus ride to Tokyo and returned at 8:30pm. I was uncertain about what to expect, since many other AETs have talked about their schools' party committees renting buses stocked with alcohol and some of their teachers embarrassing themselves and others when they over-indulge in beer, wine, and cocktails. But as I have been discovering with each enkai that I attend, the teachers at my school enjoy alcoholic beverages responsibly. Perhaps this is due to the influence of my school's administrators or party committee, I don't know. But it's a huge relief for me, nevertheless.

Upon arriving in Tokyo, we immediately went to the Nippon Television Network to see a clock weighing 28 tons, standing 36 feet tall, and measuring 54 feet wide. It was designed by Hayao Miyazaki, the man who runs Studio Ghibli, an animation house which created the recent Ponyo and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away. For fifty-five minutes of every hour, the clock is a regular, albeit steampunk-looking, clock. However, at five minutes to the hour during a certain window every day, the clock begins its magic, as seen in the clip below.



After watching the clock, we went to lunch at a restaurant in the Keio Plaza Hotel, an upscale hotel in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward. The meal was served buffet-style. But if you're picturing Golden Corral, you're doing an injustice to this restaurant. Yes, a salad bar and carved roast beef were provided. Would a buffet be complete without them? But picture also main dishes such as black spaghetti (which gets its color from squid ink) tossed with Genoan ham, green peas, and pesto sauce and Japanese beef curry served with rice; an assortment of gourmet cheeses; steamed whole shrimp and other Japanese seafood selections; white wine jelly (gelatin), a variety of small cakes, and vanilla or pumpkin ice cream for dessert. As I can never eat my money's worth at an American buffet, there's absolutely no way that I ate my money's worth at this buffet!

Had I known when I said I would go on the teachers' trip that the main event of the day was watching comedians rather than watching the filming of a Japanese game show, which is what I originally thought we would be doing, I wouldn't have gone on the trip since I was also leaving for Guam the next day and could have used that time to finish preparing for the trip. As it was, while the teachers watched the comedians, I fruitlessly searched all the shopping centers in the area (There were at least four in a one-square-mile area.) for a certain gift for my nephew. However, my principal was impressed with the fact that I came on the trip. So since he's the one who can make or break my future employment with this program and I did enjoy the time I spent with the teachers on the bus and at lunch, the trip was ultimately worthwhile.

Until next time...

Training can be fun!

Although summer vacation began for students last week, as mentioned in my last post, teachers don't get off for the summer break and are required to be at school, to attend seminars, and (for some) to assist with AET training (unless they are taking a one-day vacation, that is) during the six-week break. That is where I have been this past week -- in AET training. Having arrived in Japan just three and a half months ago and having sat through rookie training during that first week we were here, I didn't know what to expect with this summer's team training. I was afraid it was going to be a rehash of what we'd gone through in April, and while I was so jet-lagged that I don't remember the vast majority of what was shared with us during that first week, I wasn't looking forward to hearing it all again. But as I found out this week, when done right, training can actually be fun! Rather than bore you with all the details of what we did this week, I'll just share the highlights.

Every morning began with a game led by our self-monikered Wolf Pack (activities) leaders, B.W. and D.L. On Monday we played the game Take a Hike. In this game one person stands in the middle of a circle of people sitting in chairs; and there are enough chairs for everyone in the game minus one so that there is always a person left to stand in the middle. The person in the middle then says "Take a hike if..." and then all the people who can agree with that statement must get up and move chairs. Some of the best comments that caused people to change chairs included, "Take a hike if your home room teacher has ever fallen asleep in class." and "Take a hike if you've ever kanchoed a student."

Thursday had each of us writing a question on a slip of paper and then putting that paper into a hat. We each drew another question from the hat and answered it on a different piece of paper before putting the paper with the answer back into the hat. Then we drew an answer from the hat and matched it with the question we had held onto. The most hilarious question/answer was read by H.W., a female AET. "What would you do if women were the dominant sex?" "I'd cry and take off my shirt." Who knows what question that answer was really responding to!

In Friday's game, we each got a half piece of paper on which we were to write a statement. We passed the paper to another person who then drew a picture to match that statement. Before the person passed the paper to a third person, he/she folded the paper so that the original statement couldn't be seen; and the third person had to write a statement based on the picture. Then the fourth person, who couldn't see either the original statement or picture, had to draw a picture based on the most recent statement. I think we got about five or six people deep in our sentence-picture-sentence game before we were told to stop. By far the funniest sentence progression was, "I like babies with chubby cheeks." "I love barbecues!"

As part of our training discussions, we watched a couple episodes of the late-70s British TV show, "Mind Your Language," which is a series about a man who teaches English as a second language to adult students who've immigrated to the U.K. It's quite politically incorrect for the 21st Century. However, the attitudes, words, and actions of the characters in the show still can be found in the world today; so the clips were relevant for us to watch. We compared and contrasted the teacher's classroom behaviors and school relationships with those of our own. A clip of the show is provided below. Would you want these people to be your teacher and administrator?

After four days of job training, we ended on Friday with a fun Japanese cultural day and learned how to make California sushi rolls and fold origami at the International Center. Given that professional sushi chefs receive training for 10 years and still don't consider themselves to be masters, making sushi wasn't as daunting as I thought it would be. And it was quite fun! I don't know how frequently I'll make it on my own; but I'm glad to know how.

I'd spent a lot of time telling the others how to roll and cut their sushi, as I had been directly behind the instructor while she demonstrated how to assemble the ingredients of nori (seaweed), rice, avocado, imitation crab, and cucumber and they hadn't been able to see her actions from where they were standing. When it came my turn to make a California roll, I was afraid that I would prove myself to be all talk and no action. But my roll came together quite well, I'm proud to say.

The meal was served family style; and 24 of us AETs prepared sushi. So there's no telling if I ever got to try the roll that I made.

The shrimp, fish, egg, and tuna salad was do-it-yourself sushi that could be wrapped in lettuce leaves, nori, or the dark green leaves that are native to Thailand.

The instructors made the orange gelatin for us. They juiced the oranges and used powdered seaweed as the gelatin and then allowed them to set in the halved orange rinds before cutting each half into thirds before serving. They were quite good and didn't have a seaweed taste to them at all.

Until next time...

Even the kids get their own festivals in Japan.

In a country where the average teacher is expected to work six (or seven) days at 60+ hours each week and is rarely allowed to take consecutive days of nenkyuu (vacation) during the six-week break between the summer and fall terms, it's understandable that the teachers from my school weren't all that excited about assisting the PTA with the end-of-term festival that was held this past weekend. However, they recognize that the students have a lot of fun. And as Japanese teachers tend to be very committed to their students (Why else would a Japanese person want to become a teacher with those kinds of time expectations?), after having put in their 60+ hours during the previous week they worked an additional four to 16+ hours to help prepare for and host Sunday's festival. As for me, I miss my students and wanted the comp time so that I can have one work day this summer to take my driving test without having to use any of my nenkyuu days. So I worked the festival as well.

**The area festival was open not only to the kids (and their families) who attend the school but also to the surrounding neighborhood. In many ways, it was like a New York City street festival that one might see in the movies (You've Got Mail anyone?), albeit on the dirt field/playground behind the school building. There were ring toss games, cheap toys for purchase, food stands, a performance stage, etc. But then there were other things that I was somewhat surprised to see at a school event -- beer flowing freely, old women performing Hawaiian and Hokkaido dances, fireworks progressing from tamer Roman Candles to rapid-fire shells that arced across the sky. But one of the coolest things to see were so many of my female students wearing yukata, or summer-weight kimono. A traditional female yukata, as my teachers told me, would have had flowers or fish printed on it and been blue. A traditional male yukata would have contained geometric patterns such as stripes or squares and been blue, black, or white. Modern-day women's yukata come in many colors and patterns, including the ubiquitous Hello Kitty. The students above wore contemporary shoes with their yukata; but a few came in traditional geta. (See this article for more information about the geta.) Very few of my male students wore yukata, which wasn't surprising.

**A couple different variations of snow cones were sold. (They weren't on cones but rather were in cups or bowls.) And popcorn (my booth), pizza, hashed browns, cotton candy, and grilled marshmallows rounded out the more American-like food options, although the pizza had corn as a topping and the grilled marshmallows were allowed only to get sticky rather than brown. But traditional fare like okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes), yakisoba (fried noodles prepared with vegetables and often meat), and Gohei-mochi was also available. I didn't try the Japanese pancakes, as there's a really good okonomiyaki restaurant near my apartment that I want to try first. And I've eaten yakisoba many times before. But having never heard of let alone eaten Gohei-mochi, I decided to try it. 

According to Japanese tradition (and Wikipedia), mochi is made by rabbits who live on the moon. To make mochi, Japanese rice is pounded into a paste and then is formed into whatever shape is desired. It's usually fairly tasteless (by Western standards) and is so sticky that many non-Japanese people have to learn to like it or never learn to like it because it's so difficult to swallow. I don't know if Gohei-mochi is made by lunar bunnies as well, but it looks and tastes different. Hot rice is rolled into a ball in the palm of the preparer's hand and is then wrapped and pressed around two joined chopsticks, sort of like a popsicle. The rice popsicle is chilled and then dipped into a sauce containing soy sauce, sesame oil, sake, walnut paste, and another ingredient that escapes me before being grilled to be served. It was quite yummy; and I ended up eating two.

I can't remember having any events like this when I was in elementary school, other than field day. So while the teacher who took me home at the end of the day thought that it was a lot of work (which for the Japanese teachers it was more work than for me), I found the festival to be really enjoyable. I liked working alongside the teachers in a non-classroom setting. Seeing the students and their reactions when they didn't expect to see me at their festival was quite fun. Watching them show off their extracurricular skills in band, taiko (traditional Japanese drumming), and drill team allowed me to see a side of them that I don't get to see when they're in English class or get to ask about during lunch since I don't speak Japanese. And making the connections between siblings that I hadn't yet made was great as well.

Until next time...

**UPDATE (11/22/10): Photographs depicting school children and faculty/staff have been removed per the instruction of the teachers' consultant.

Nemo is much more appealing in the sea

Tuesday is the closing ceremony for the summer term at school; and last night was the teachers' end-of-term enkai. My first enkai back in April, the welcome one for new teachers and the start of the school year, was a great experience socially and gustatorily. (For tales from my previous enkai see this post.) While I can say the same about the social aspects of last night's celebration, I cannot even begin to say the same about the evening's gustatory aspects. (I wanted to take pictures of last night's dishes; but I left my camera at home and then forgot to use my camera phone. So my apologies that I don't have pictures to speak my 1,000 words. But trust me when I say that last night's dishes would have been quite the sight for you to see.)

Socially, I had a good time. Our tables at the first party of the evening (just as last time, there were two parties - one in a hotel dining room and another at a restaurant) were assigned not by grade-level as they were at April's enkai but by matching the package of candy or gum that we drew out of a box with the identical package placed at one of four dining tables. So I ended up sitting with the third-grade teachers, one fourth-grade teacher, and the principal. What began as polite conversation about our summer vacation plans, what cuisines we enjoy, etc. ended with me getting asked about my dating life and perhaps my principal making a pass at me. I have no idea how it happened, as the conversation that had been occurring prior to that point in Japanese and I had stopped paying attention. But after I got drawn into a flow of conversation that is too long to write about came to a close, I think my principal asked me if I would get a Japanese boyfriend and then told me that he is single, which I later found out that he's not. What is it with older, married men making (possible) passes at me? You're not my target demographic! But I digress. Back to the events of the evening.

The entertainment during the meal was BINGO; and I had the opportunity to experience some of what my students feel when I play it with them in English class, since, of course, last night we played it in Japanese. (The students do have the advantage of having studied 1-10 since first grade, 1-20 since second grade, etc. However, once you know how to count from one to ten in Japanese, numbers from 11 to 99 aren't hard to figure out, e.g., eleven is said as ten-one, 20 is said as two-ten, 39 is said as three-ten-nine.... ) But I did get a BINGO and win a Hello Kitty toothbrush, though I was slightly envious of the ninja mask that one of the special education teachers won and the punching cat ballpoint pen that the principal won, since both would have been great gifts for my nephew.

Gustatorily, I had a horrible time. It was heavy on the seafood, which I already struggle with eating, having grown up in the land-locked state of Kansas. But the seafood from the first enkai was really good whereas from last night's enkai it was really bad. Strangely enough, once again I liked the sashimi. It was everything else, including the Beef-Wellington-esque course, that I wish I wouldn't have eaten, especially since between the first and second enkai the evening will have cost me around $70 when I pay my share of the first enkai at school next week. But I was adventurous in my eating, which impressed the teachers and administrators, since they know that I don't particularly care for seafood. So I'm glad that I made the effort to try the foods that they like, even if I didn't.

During the first meal, lying on top of a plastic green leaf in my cubed tuna and salmon sashimi bowl served with rice, ginger, seaweed, and some other shredded vegetable, were salmon eggs. (To give you a mental picture, if you don't know what a salmon egg looks like, think of slightly small peas that are pink instead of green.) I ate two of them since everyone had been watching me pick around my meal all evening. While I don't plan to eat them again, they weren't as fishy-tasting as I'd expected them to be, nor were they salty like caviar. But once bitten into, the liquid inside immediately dissipated into my mouth since they have no substance; so other than any possible omega-3 benefits, I don't know why someone would want to eat a salmon egg. Other food served during the first meal included raw and cooked shrimp with the heads and, therefore, eyeballs still attached; noodles made from puréed whitefish with sticky fishy-tasting sauce underneath; a gelatinous substance made from fish whose name sounds similar to the word "cognac"; and who knows what else that my mind is trying to forget. The only thing I liked from this first meal was the course with the three meatballs in tomato and vegetable sauce and the one-inch square of watermelon that came with the dessert course.

At the second meal, there was a salad that I was looking forward to eating, until I realized that mixed in with the daikon radish shreds were tiny, translucent white fish, whose backbones (or waste veins, not sure which) and eyeballs could be seen if examined closely enough. I ate one little white thing that may have been radish or fish, I'm not sure which, before giving my plate to the administrator sitting across from me to finish, since he proclaimed that it was very healthy. I was offered some raw oyster that I initially turned down and then tried despite my misgivings, since even the aforementioned administrator said he doesn't eat raw oyster. However, I don't have the hashi (chopsticks) skills that Japanese people have when it comes to cutting. So rather than getting a little piece of raw oyster to try, I pulled off a huge piece. It was without a doubt the most revolting thing I have ever tasted. Well, I take that back; it may not have been worse than the toilet-flavored liver that I ate several weeks ago. I couldn't chew it up and ended up having to swallow it whole, helped along by a generous gulp of Coca-Cola. Another "traditional" lettuce and tomato salad had seafood in it; and the piece of (raw? cooked?) octopus that was on my plate was crunchy and gross, which was nothing at all like the octopus that I tried at my last enkai. So when that same administrator offered me some fried squid tentacles that came from the tank just inside the restaurant doors, I turned them down. (On a side note, I pass by this restaurant every Wednesday during my walk to my once-weekly kindergarten. I've always wondered how the food tasted and what was in the tank. Be careful what you wish for, right?) The only thing from this meal that I liked was the french fries and the Coca-Cola.

Seventy dollars is a lot of money to drop on food, especially on food that isn't good. And while enkai attendance isn't required, I do like the camaraderie of the parties since I don't spend as much time with the teachers as they spend with each other due to their 12ish-hour work day expectations. So I most likely will go to the next enkai-like party in September after the school's sports festival. But as I hope to travel somewhere in December, and the end-of-term enkai will be held just a few days before Christmas, I highly doubt that I'll be present for that one. So here's to hoping for an enkai more like the first and less like the last. Kampai!

Until next time...

Japanese bakeries

As I mentioned in a previous post, Japanese bakeries could go head-to-head, or perhaps I should say bread-to-bread, with French bakeries and be a strong contender in the battle. For a country that consumes exorbitant quantities of rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and regularly all three within the same 24-hour period), Japan (or at least the city in which I live) has a remarkable number of high-quality bakeries. And fortunately for me, there's a Dutch-named one right down the street next to the laundromat. I'd stopped in a couple previous occasions to buy something to snack on while drying my clothes; but doing so was as much for the ¥100 coins I hoped to get as change for the dryers as it was for the food itself. But when last Saturday K.H., a new friend from church who had stayed over the night before after our late return from The Hard Rock Cafe, and I ate at the bakery before going to the station for her to catch a train home, I discovered my new Saturday morning tradition - a leisurely breakfast/brunch with people-watching followed by Bible study.

In these two visits, I noticed that most people who frequent the bakery don't eat in, despite this being the rare bakery with a dining area. Judging by the amount of pastry and bread purchases they make, they must leave because they're a) taking things home to the family, b) making purchases to last them the weekend, or c) too embarrassed to let others see how much they're planning to eat. ;~) So today when I went for the second visit of my newly-found ritual, I was able to choose the best seat in the dining room with full view of the door and the shop while I enjoyed my cheese, ham, and onion tarts, berry cheesecake, and iced coffee. (I took a photo with my phone camera to show you what I was able to enjoy; but I can't get it off my phone without paying a high fee. So as soon as I get a USB cable to transfer the photo to my computer, I'll update this post with that photo as well as one of the shop itself. Or I'll just have to make another visit and take my real camera instead!)

My dad and his wife have a similar tradition - eating breakfast at the same restaurant each day for the past several years - and have been able to establish good relationships with the staff at the restaurant. And I found myself wishing that I possessed the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues so that I could not only tell them how delicious their food is but also so that I could get to know them. But since speaking in tongues is likely not a present-day spiritual gift and there's no urgent need for me to suddenly know another language like was present on the day of Pentecost, I guess I'll have to learn Japanese the hard way. And as Japanese is proving harder to learn than any other language I've studied, it's going to be some time before I'm able to say anything other than おいしい (oishii - yummy) to the staff.

Until next time...

UPDATE (7/10/10): As promised, a picture of the breakfast of champions, although this picture doesn't do justice to the meal's yummy goodness.

Below is a picture of the bakery itself. Although I don't know this to be true, I think that the bakery owner(s) may live above the store, since the upstairs level looks to be residential. I don't know if the woman who was at the register when I paid for my meal was the owner or just an employee. But she graciously told me that my Japanese was very good. If only that were true. I really wanted to talk with her, not that she had the time. The bakery was super busy today, which I hope means that they'll be around for quite a while!

Work Week Three

Work week three has come and gone and with it my memories of anything good that happened. Last week was rough. On Tuesday while I was eating lunch with one of the sixth grade classes, I was asking the students the questions that they've learned in their years of English study. How old are you? When's your birthday? What color do you like? etc. Apparently one of the girls had had enough of my questions because after a while she got up from her desk (There is no cafeteria in most Japanese schools. Students eat in their classrooms.) and said something to the teacher's assistant. He then said to me something along the lines of there not being enough time. So I told him that I'd eat fast. And I stopped talking. But later as I thought back on the lunch period that day, when she got up to ask him to tell me to stop talking, there were at least 25 minutes left of the lunch period. I guess she wanted to save her English for when it was required, which was to come during the next period.

On Wednesday, I went to my one-day-a-week kindergarten to teach. Since it was raining, I nixed the biking out of deference to the rain and bike's victory over me during my commute two weeks prior. While walking in front of the kindergarten, I noticed the playground had been turned into a parking lot; and when I tried to enter the front gate to the school grounds, I found it locked. Several buses were parked beside the kindergarten. But they appeared to be on the elementary school grounds, which is located next door. So I walked past them and through another closed but unlocked gate to the front door only to find a bicycle blocking the entrance. A teacher I didn't recognize got off the bus and started talking to me in Japanese. Following behind her were a teacher I did recognize and the principal. The principal told me that the school was headed to a nearby aquarium for a field trip. I told the principal that I would go back home; but she told me to get on the bus. So I loaded onto the bus and before I could even take off my jacket, we took off. I literally arrived to school moments before the buses departed. And upon getting off the bus at the aquarium, the other teachers were surprised to see me. Clearly they all forgot that it was my day to teach at their school. And I can't really blame them since I'd taught only once before at their school due to the Golden Week holiday. But apparently this happens with great regularity - schedule changes that aren't passed along to the AETs. And I so didn't enjoy myself at the aquarium, since I have a hard time seeing animals in captivity. Tomorrow I head back to the school. So let's hope that the third time is the charm for having a good experience there.

On Friday one of the fifth graders I was eating with told me that my hair looked like Michael Jackson's. (I think there was a curly lock that had fallen in front of my eyes.) When I asked her if she liked Michael Jackson, she hesitated and drew in breath through her teeth, which means no. So I'm not sure if she was telling me that she doesn't like me or just my hair. Then later that night while eating ramen with S.K., one of the AETs' contacts at the board of education office, I ate a piece of meat that I had thought was beef but quickly came to realize had to have been something else when it tasted the way a grossly unclean public bathroom smells. (That was my first and last time to eat liver.)

Thankfully the weekend ended up redeeming the work week, as I had a lot of fun at scooter safety school, shopping for furniture for my apartment, and spending time with other AETs.

Until next time...

Golden Weekend

Friday evening began Golden Week festivities. On Friday, A.T., a Japanese friend I met in 1998 while I was in another city doing Let's Start Talking, picked me up from work to take me to his home for dinner with his family, one of his wife's American coworkers who's an AET for a private company, a member of the church, and the missionaries in residence at the church. I had such a great time! We had good conversation, ate yummy beef curry and rice, and had completely homemade rice crackers (The rice was grown in the church member's mother's rice field, ground into flour, and then baked.) and store-bought pastries for dessert. (I'm amazed at Japanese bakeries. They give the French a run for their money.) Spending time with the other AETs is a lot of fun. And I'm glad that I have that network of other Americans. But spending time with the people of the country I'm visiting/living in/working in makes my experience of that country so much richer.

On Saturday I went to Yokohama with fellow AETs N.P., C.G. and C.T. We were going to Kamakura to see the bronze Daibutsu (Great Buddha) that has been standing since the mid-13th Century. It is one of the most noted images of Japan, having endured numerous storms that washed away the hall that contained it. And with it being the beginning of Golden Week, there were large crowds of people who wanted to see it as well. (Click here to see more pictures of my visit to the Daibutsu temple.) While we didn't have problems with the crowds on the way to or in the temple of the Daibutsu, we ran into problems with the crowds at the train station.

Japanese people are very polite most of the time. But when it comes to standing in line and catching a train, they can become downright aggressive. People were getting swept off their feet as people behind them pushed to get off or on the train. Children were crying as they got crushed by pushy people and torn away from their parents' hands. N.P., one of the guys I was traveling with, was literally carried onto the train under the power of the people pushing from behind him. He didn't want to board the train at that time, since there wasn't going to be room for all four of us to board. But one person's strength isn't enough to withstand the force of dozens of people from behind and around pushing to get on the train. I'd joked earlier in the day that I wanted to ride a train in Tokyo where the white-gloved train employees push on people to cram them into every available space so that the doors can close. But now that I understand first-hand how people die from the crush of the crowds at soccer games in Europe and how N.P. said that his left foot never touched the ground during that train ride, I never want to experience that again. (Unfortunately, though, I think it's inevitable, since most of my traveling will be done while taking advantage of these national holidays.) When all was said and done, N.P. and C.G. were able to make it on to the second or third train that left the station while C.T. and I weren't able to make it on a train until the fourth or fifth train came through, causing us to stand in line on the train platform for almost one hour.

Kamakura is a coastal town. So before heading back to our hotel in Yokohama to pick up our bags before catching the train home on Sunday evening, we visited the Pacific Ocean. I can't remember what the Pacific Ocean off southern California feels like, if it's warm or chilly. But the Pacific Ocean off this portion of Honshu was quite chilly and felt wonderful to our feet after our miles of walking that day and the day before. While there, we got asked by a Japanese girl if she and her family could have their picture taken with us. Since she said that they live in the prefecture neighboring Tokyo, we doubted that this was their first time to see non-Japanese people. And there were other non-Asians on the beach; so who knows why she singled us out. Maybe we were acting like typically obnoxious (read: loud) Americans. So perhaps she'll blog about us the way I'm blogging about them!

Today was a relaxing day. Tomorrow I'm off to a seaside park with the A.T. family and others from church. I've heard it's beautiful; so I'm sure I'll have pictures to share.

Until next time...

Oh, what a night!

When people say that the Japanese are hospitable people, they aren't kidding! Yesterday was my first full day at work; and shortly after I arrived, the brother of one of the teachers who sits next to me in the teacher's room arrived to serve as my translator for the morning. He returned to Japan three weeks ago, after having lived in the States for the past 17 years. And he will continue to come for the next month or so for 15 minutes each day to help translate while the teachers and I make plans for my English lessons during each day's morning break. I highly doubt that any of the other schools have hired a translator to come to school to work with their AETs, especially when a few teachers in the school already speak good English (despite their doubts!). The funny thing of it is that our paths appear to have crossed several years ago when I was living in Texas, as he competed in a college athletic event at the university where I was working at the time. Small world, huh?!

The type of enkai I'd been told might occur and had been nervous about the past two months never came to fruition last night. I actually had a lot of fun at my first enkai of the evening and am glad I made the decision to go to the second. The first enkai was more formal and was held in a reception room at a very nice hotel in town. The new teachers to the school were introduced to the returning teachers. The kocho-sensei (principal) said kind words about each of us. (But who knows what he actually said about me!) And the new teachers made a speech to the returning teachers. Thankfully, Japanese wasn't expected from me this time.

For as slender as the average Japanese person is, wow, do they know how to eat! I have never eaten an eight-course meal before. So to eat my first one in Japan and then go to another restaurant in the same evening to eat even more food was quite an amazing juxtaposition to behold. The evening's main meal, of which I tried and truly enjoyed everything I ate, entailed a green salad with salmon and octopus; shrimp, bream, and tuna sashimi (raw seafood; By the way, can anyone tell me what bream is?); roasted pork in a sweet sauce with greens and potato; shrimp and squid in a Chinese red chili sauce; medium-rare steak in a pepper sauce with potatoes; cold soba (buckwheat) noodle soup; and fruit and a small (think one-inch-square) piece of cake for dessert. (Yes, I know that's only seven courses; but I can't remember what the eighth one was!)

But now that I think about it, perhaps the reason for eating at the second enkai is because my coworkers didn't actually eat much at the first one! While I stayed seated at my table and ate practically everything of each dish that was put before me, my Japanese coworkers almost immediately stood up after the first course was served and floated from table to table as they refilled each other's drinks. So those who continued on to the second enkai of the evening at a restaurant across the street ordered more food. I had some wonderful chocolate soft serve ice cream for dessert and tried the fried chicken cartilage that another one of the new teachers ordered. Although the flavor was good (It really did taste like chicken!), the texture was disgusting. Chicken cartilage will not be going on my list of dishes to order again.

Although enkai does translate to drinking party, I was able to see last night that it didn't have the connotation I'd been expecting. That's not to say, though, that all enkai are the same. Some can be more like college or bachelor parties once the men and the women have dispersed into separate groups. But while large quantities of Sapporo beer were consumed (as were other alcoholic beverages, teas, and juices) nobody got out of control. In fact, the shy Japanese just became more extroverted, albeit with florid faces since their bodies don't metabolize alcohol well. And the Japanese who said that they spoke very bad English prior to the evening's festivities proved themselves to have more mastery of the language than they had believed!

The teacher whose brother is my translator drove me home. (She was one of the evening's emcees and is crazy fun while being a teetotaler.) As we pulled up to my apartment she told me that all of the Japanese teachers think that I am a very good AET. I laughed and asked how, considering that I haven't taught one lesson yet. She said that when I introduced myself at the school on Thursday, I told everyone that I must learn Japanese; and then when I said "Konban wa" (good evening) in my enkai speech, people were further impressed. I'm 100% illiterate and 99.9% ignorant of the spoken language. And my understanding of Japanese ways and customs is not much better. But I want to make good relationships with these friendly people. So I'm glad that my love of language learning and a casually tossed out phrase of greeting have prepared the way for that.

Until next time...

Food, Fridges, and Fellowship

Having arrived in Japan on Friday, my memories of these past three days are quite fuzzy. Physically I've been awake. But mentally? Most assuredly not always. I know I've done lots of eating - fried rice at a ramen house and at a Thai restaurant; edamame (Japanese soy beans), soba noodle soup, tempura shrimp, cucumber rolls, and "Mexican tortilla" rolls at a buffet-style sushi restaurant where one chooses from the food that passes by on a conveyor belt (quite fun!); and hot chocolate at Starbucks.

My buddy, C.G., who has been an Assistant English Teacher here for more than five years has been so great to help me start to feel comfortable in my apartment and with navigating the city. I've gone shopping to begin furnishing the homey touches to my apartment, since the apartment's three previous residents were guys whose tastes were more sparse than mine. (I wish I'd had my camera with me so that you could see the tricked out refrigerators that they have for sale here. I will be purchasing one since the one that comes with the apartment is a dorm-room sized cube, which considering the size of the apartment and the kitchen, is properly proportioned, I suppose. And the supplemental one purchased by a previous AET stands only waist-high.)

Although there is Japanese peanut butter, it is whipped and more like a dessert topping. So I was super happy when I found the natural peanut butter that I love at an imported foods store, considering that the traditional Japanese breakfast is mainly rice and natto (sp?) (fermented soybeans that one would hope taste better than their scent implies). However, buying a "loaf" of non-white bread constitutes three slices and a "loaf" of white bread constitutes eight slices. So peanut butter on toast for breakfast will be a treat; and oatmeal, thankfully supplied by C.G. and Costco-Japan(!), will be a regularity.

But the best experience that I have had so far was while worshiping with other Christians this morning. There is a large English-speaking group in the church, including people outside of the teachers from my AET program. So there is an English-speaking Bible class before the service; and the service is conducted in both Japanese and English. It was so amazing to see people of different backgrounds, nationalities, and languages united in worshiping God. At church today were native Japanese, African-Americans, Caucasian Americans, an Ethiopian American, a Honduran American, a Japanese American, a Canadian, and who knows what other hyphenated labels. Though we came from different places around the world, grew up speaking different languages, and may not have been able to communicate with each other without an interpreter, the realization that we all love God and were worshiping Him brought tears to my eyes.

Until next time...