omedetou gozaimasu!

...means 'congratulations!' and was definitely the phrase of the day at my friend's wedding two weeks ago.

When we resumed our "English circle" meetings after a short summer break, everyone went around the table discussing their summer adventures. Most of the members are farmers and late summer/early autumn is the busiest time of the year for them, so most people felt that their "vacation" had been anything but. Then we got to the end of the table, where one of our members announced that he recently got engaged! Naturally, we were thrilled and his wedding planning became the cornerstone of our weekly check-in.

All of the circle members were invited to the wedding, including me, and when they realized that it would be my first wedding in Japan, they went to great lengths to make sure that I would feel comfortable and understand exactly what was going on. However, even after all of this preparation, I was shocked to realize that I had been invited to the ceremony itself (I had expected to only attend the reception). The couple was planning a very traditional ceremony at a local Shinto shrine, which is usually only attended by family and close friends, so I wasn't sure that I belonged in that group, but they insisted. He said that our English circle gave him a great cultural experience and that he wanted to return the favor.

The wedding day was rainy and cold, but the ceremony was being held indoors and the bride arrived by car--protecting her beautiful white kimono from the elements. The ceremony itself was beyond my level of comprehension, yet it was much easier to understand when to bow, clap, etc. than I had expected.
The ceremony begins with the Shinto priest purifying the alter and beckoning the gods. Then there are a series of prayers, and although I can't remember the order, the bride and groom exchange rings, vows and each take a drink of sake from the same cup. Everyone in attendance is also given a bit of sake, which we drank at the same time. As I understand it, this symbolizes that their union is being recognized by all of us and that through their marriage, their family and friends are also brought together. (wedding bands are not nearly as common in Japan as they are in America, so I was interested to see that this couple had chosen to exchange rings)
After the ceremony, we caravaned over to the reception hall, where another 20-30 people joined the celebration. I dropped off my envelope (people only give gifts of money
in Japan) and headed upstairs to help at "reception" and tell the incoming guests where to sit. When the newlyweds made their way into the hall, the bride had changed into her second--more colorful--wedding kimono. We toasted to their happiness and started to eat.
At some point, I realized that the bride and groom had disappeared from their table to change their clothes for a third time. I remembered being told that she had wanted to wear traditional Japanese clothing for the ceremony, then a western-style gown for the reception, but the hairstyle for her kimono was so complicated that I couldn't imagine how the stylist would be able to change it. They definitely did change it though, just in time to cut the cake!

*as always, you can click on any photo to enlarge it*

little things to be thankful for...

I lead an "English conversation circle" that meets in a small, agricultural town just outside my city. The members are mostly middle-aged or older, with the exception of a pig farmer who is about the same ages as me. Almost all of them have a farm, or make their living doing a traditional Japanese craft (such as embroidery or paper-making), and every time we meet I am showered with gifts of produce. Off the top of my head, I have received: roasted corn, eggplant, apples, pears, plums, peaches, mikan (clementines), peanuts, daikon (the giant white radish in the picture), cabbage, potatoes and butter (lots of dairy farmers). 95% of the stuff they bring to share with the group comes straight from their farms, usually harvested that day. It's developed to the point where they worry that I don't know how to properly prepare whatever food they're giving me, so many of the women write down a recipe for me in English before class... then the men tell me how to make an even easier dish. They're so sweet!

Speaking of sweet--I now visit elementary school at least once a week and am getting to know my students much better than I could last year. This has lead to increased participation in tag, kickball, dodgeball and jump rope during recess, as well as a variety of nicknames along the lines of "kucchan" or "kurichan." The suffix "chan" is an expression of familiarity and endearment, often used for small children or between close friends. At some point it becomes used much more frequently for girls than boys, but some of my teenage boys still get chan-ed by their oldest and closest friends. (in Japanese pronunciation, my name ends up sounding like "kurisu" (Kris) or the semi-dreadful "kurisutiine," which most people mis-hear as "Kristy" and that makes me crazy, so I've started introducing myself as Kris)
I taught 3rd grade on Tuesday and we studied "family"--so when I introduced Thanksgiving to them at the end of class and asked them to draw a picture to complete the sentence "I am thankful for ____," I assumed they'd take the hint and draw their family. Some of them did include their families, but the stars of this exercise were friends, video game consoles, sports, ice cream and other sweets... I even encountered more than one rendering of poop. Then, immediately after my last elementary school class, I rushed back to teach third year (9th grade) elective English. Every class begins with 10-15 minutes of writing in an English journal, so we briefly discussed Thanksgiving and I gave the same thankfulness prompt (hoping to get more responses about family than about poop from this group). They wrote the sweetest entries about their parents, teachers and friends, and I had a breakthrough moment where I realized how much their English has improved since I met them over a year ago. Then I had another realization about how quickly time has passed and that they're going to graduate and leave next March... I'll be so sad!
(though the elementary school students still win the cute prize, as one of them included me in the things they are thankful for.. check me out in the lower-right corner of the first worksheet)

We also recently celebrated fall at the Harvest Festival at a nearby winery, which draws thousands of people each year to drink wine and picnic on the steep vineyard terrace. Most of the ALTs in my area decided to attend the Saturday festivities, when the weather was absolutely perfect. Unfortunately, it turned cold and rainy for the next two days, literally drowning out Kiryu's fall Ebisuko festival... which was a big disappointment. We went anyway though, and nearly froze to death trying to visit the shrine and enjoy some festival food.

I'm heading to Hiroshima this weekend and the forecast calls for rain. Take a moment, wherever you are, and do your best anti-rain dance for me!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kyushu Trip

In the past year, I have learned 2 important things about traveling in Japan:

1- Asking Japanese people "what should I eat when I visit ____?" yields much more useful/interesting results than asking "what should I do/see when I visit ____?"

It is my impression (largely influenced by the non-stop food on Japanese television) that sightseeing is something that Japanese tourists do to pass time between meals. Every region, prefecture, city and neighborhood in Japan claims to be *famous* for one type of food or another. For example: the neighborhood that I live in has *famous* sauce katsu (a type of pork cutlet), sembei (rice cracker) and manju (a type of Japanese sweet) shops. How my silly little neighborhood is home to not one, but THREE *famous* shops is a bit of a mystery to me, but probably wouldn't surprise a Japanese person (which makes me question the over-usage of *famous*). Another example: Osaka is famous for takoyaki (a type of battered octopus ball... it's better than it sounds!) and okonomiyaki (a... dinner pancake? it's cooked at your table on a wide, griddle-like surface and features seafood, pork and veggies in a non-sweet pancake-ish batter). I'm sure that Osaka has many other things to be proud of, but if you come back from vacation and tell your Japanese co-workers that you went to Osaka, they don't say "how was the new aquarium?" or "did you visit Osaka Castle?" Instead, 100% of the time, they will ask "did you have takoyaki/okonomiyaki??" It's the only thing that matters.

2- If you forget to ask a Japanese person what to eat, don't count on Lonely Planet to have the answers. Stop in the train station gift shop and look at the regional Hello Kitty charms, as they will give you all of the information that you need.

Starting in 2004, to celebrate her 30th birthday, Hello Kitty charms were made to commemorate the specialties of every region, prefecture, and famous city/neighborhood in Japan. Gunma Prefecture's Kitties feature Hello Kitty nestled in a cabbage (a famous Gunma export?) and wearing a raven costume (the crows are really big and scary in Gunma?). A city like Osaka has many Kitties, including Kitty in a takoyaki costume and Kitty making okonomiyaki. These big cities have dozens of different Hello Kitty charms and give an interesting overview as to what the ares is *famous* for.

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Kyushu was a whirlwind 4-day trip through 5 cities, with at least 20 hours spent on trains/planes. It was exhausting, but I'm so happy that we went! Here's a brief rundown, tailored largely to the 2 principles of travel explained above:









Thursday, November 2nd -- Nagasaki
*famous foods*
Nagasaki champon and sara udon--both feature a gooey mixture of seafood and veggies over noodle soup or crispy, dried noodles (in that order)
Castella--a cousin to pound cake, borrowed from Portuguese traders in the 19th C.

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a castella costume, inside some fruit/bean/seed (we had no idea what it was), inside a tulip... and a dozen others that I don't remember

Nagasaki City is now remembered best as the second (and hopefully the last) city to suffer the destruction of an atomic bombing, but before WWII it was home to the largest Church in all of Asia and was the only major Japanense port open to European trade during Japan's isolationist period... hence the tulips, castella cake and Christianity.
The Peace Park was much bigger than I'd expected and was filled with statues/sculptures from all over the world. It was fun to wander through them, looking at how the various countries decided to represent their hopes for peace. Most memorably, though, I thought that the sculptor's explanation of the main statue was really interesting... so I'm sharing it with you:
"After experiencing that nightmarish war,
that blood-curdling carnage,
that unendurable horror,
Who could walk away without praying for peace?
This statue was created as a signpost in the
cause of global harmony.
Standing ten meters tall,
it conveys the profundity of knowledge and
the beauty of health and virility.
The right hand points to the atomic bomb,
the left hand points to peace,
and the face prays deeply for the victims of war.
Transcending the barriers of race
and evoking the qualities of both Buddha and God,
it is a symbol of the greatest determination
ever known in the history of Nagasaki
and the highest hope of all mankind."
--Seibu Kitamura, Spring 1955
We wandered to the church that was once the largest in Asia, but from more than 1/2 mile from the bomb's hypocenter was completely destroyed, and from there to the hypocenter itself.
I'm a huge sucker for all of the paper cranes (they're so beautiful!), so I took a million pictures.
Then we made our way to the atomic bomb museum. The subject matter is obviously very serious and I was anticipating a solemn experience, but within minutes of our arrival, a school trip of about 200 elementary school students rolled in behind us, split into teams and armed with treasure hunt-style worksheets. I literally stopped walking and stood still in the middle of the first exhibition room as they rushed in and filled the open space around me like water. For about 5 seconds I was annoyed, wondering how I was going to get close enough to read anything in this sea of 9-year old children... but then I overheard them "whispering" to each other about whether or not they should practice their English on me. These are always the funniest conversations to overhear, because they usually feature a giggling rehearsal of what they might say: "hello. *giggle* how are you? I'm fine, thank you. And you?" *more giggling* In the end, I did my best impression of an approachable friendly person --eye contact, smile, small wave-- and ended up squatting down, talking to a group of school children in an excited blend of Japanese and English as some of the most gruesome war images I've ever seen flashed on the walls around us. Looking back on it, it's a bizarre memory that makes sense only in the context of my experiences in Japan. Sometimes it's easy to forget how old this country/culture is, especially when compared to America, and it's also easy to forget that only 60 years ago it was a country ravaged by war. Thinking about how much the world has changed during those 60 years is almost overwhelming, as I'm sure the bomb-survivors whose stories are echoed throughout that museum never imagined that their grandchildren would find themselves on a school field trip, speaking English to an American 20-something whose own grandparents include a Japanese war-survivor, as well as 2 American soldiers who served on the Pacific front of WWII. It's almost surreal to consider how small the world has become.
Anyway, after the museum we went in search for food (how's that for anti-climax?), deciding on *famous* Nagasaki champon with castella for dessert.
And wrapped up the day with a nighttime view of the city from atop Mt. Inasa.


Friday, November 3rd -- Kumamoto and Aso
We were on a train by 7:30am and checked out the city of Kumamoto in a 2-hour sprint. Due to the shortage of time, we decided to focus on Kumamoto's main attraction--the castle.
It was a pretty cool castle (though I think Himeji was better) and we got to see some cute kids visiting the local shrine for the holiday in November when 3-, 5- and 7-year old children get dressed up in cute clothes, and well... visit the shrine (maybe there's more to it than that, but that's all I know). Then we caught the trolley back to Kumamoto station and jumped on another train to Aso.

*famous foods*
milk

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a dairy cow costume

Mt. Aso is a 20km wide volcanic caldera, containing not only a city, but several mountains, cinder cones and stratovolcanoes. Japan has record of 167 eruptions from the volcano Naka-dake between 553 and 1993, making it the record holder for "most explosive eruptions" of any volcano in the world. These mountains/volcanoes seem to jump out of the otherwise flat landscape and vary dramatically from smooth, rolling green mountains to jagged, tree-less piles of rock.
We went to the top of Mt. Naka (which was covered in dry, red rock) by gondola and peeked into a crater of steaming blue water. The stench of sulfur was shocking, but Japanese tourists were delighting in buying powdered sulfur from the volcano to add to their bathwater at home (I should note that many natural hot spring baths have a similar smell, and sulfuric water is considered both healing and soothing).
We ran around taking pictures of the mountains at dusk, then caught our bus back to the train station.

Saturday, November 4th -- Beppu
*famous foods*
kabosu--a type of citrus fruit (that I'd never heard of before arriving in Beppu)
mushrooms and other mountain-y vegetables
hot spring-type foods--eggs boiled in hot spring water, etc.

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty enjoying a hot spring bath, dressed as a devil who is enjoying a hot spring bath, in a kabosu costume, in a pink monkey costume holding a kabosu (apparently Beppu is famous for rounding up all of the local monkeys who were terrorizing rural homes, sticking them in a "monkey park" and calling it a tourist attraction. They have sent Beppu monkeys all over the world as gifts to other countries... kind of weird)

Beppu is a *famous* hot spring city, which is not at all uncommon in Japan. Japanese people LOVE to visit hot springs, so it seems like there are a million regions that are *famous* hot spring getaways (including western Gunma). What makes Beppu stand out is that many of the pools are too hot for bathing, with water ranging from 80-100ºC (about 200ºF), so they have been dubbed "the hells" of Beppu and harnessed as a tourist attraction.
What's amazing about these hells is that they are all within walking distance from each other, but the content of the water is dramatically different at each location. There's red, cloudy whiteish-blue and chlorine-blue water, plus the various colors of the mud water (which produces huge gurgling bubbles) and the hell that features a geyser.
At each hell, there is a place where the water is cooled through pipes and run into a small bath where you can soak your feet in the different types of mineral water.
After visiting the hells, we went further up into the mountains to take a bath in a cooler version of the gurgling mud baths. It was definitely an interesting experience because the water was somewhere between the consistency of water and mud, but the mud didn't just sink to the bottom of the pool (if that makes sense)... I'm not sure how it works. Apparently it's great for your skin.
One of the things that I liked most about Beppu is that the steam from the various hot springs fills the skyline in every direction, seeming to come out of even the most random places, and is visible day or night.

Sunday, November 5th -- Fukuoka/Hakata

*famous foods*
mentaiko--a type of fish eggs, usually spicy
tonkotsu Ramen--my favorite ramen!

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a mentaiko costume, Kitty making and eating ramen, in a flower of some sort, wearing a silly festival hat that's covered in flowers...and a dozen or so more that I can't remember

We arrived in Fukuoka on Saturday night and had a mini-adventure trying to find our hotel for the evening... it was my first experience at a capsule hotel and we were pretty excited about it (they're usually only for men).
Having gone out to explore the city that night, we were exhausted and decided to sleep in on Sunday. By the time we woke up, showered and packed our bags, it was time for lunch. After a bit of wandering, we stumbled onto a ramen shop (which turned out to be famous?) and had a delicious bowl of tonkotsu ramen.
Then we took a loop of the shopping district and headed back to the airport, where we bought omiyage for our schools and caught our flight home to Tokyo.

...an incredibly long post for a very busy weekend!!

Kris runs a marathon.

...well, not really.

I did run in the school "marathon" last week though. It's an annual event, like the sports festival or chorus contest, where the whole school walks down to the riverside running path for an afternoon of running and drinking sports drinks.
The girls run 2.5k and the boys run 4k. At most schools there are a handful of young teachers who want to (or are peer pressured into) running with the students, but I'm the youngest at my school by more than 10 years, so our PE teacher was slightly ruffled when I asked to join the race. All week leading up to the marathon he repeatedly asked if I was really going to be alright, which only agitated me and started my campaign to run with the boys (which he was definitely not comfortable with). My mind was made up for me on Friday morning when some of my girls asked if I would run with them, so I bore the harassment from some boys about wussing out of the 4k and ran in the girls' race.
I ended up with a pack of girls running with/behind me, repeatedly shouting through the first 500m that they were NOT going to lose to me, but whining that I had started too quickly. So I slowed down a bit and we all ran together for the rest of the race. I ended up finishing 22nd of 65+ students and all of the girls in my group ran their fastest times ever! Everyone was happy.... and tired.
Then it was time for the boys to run, and since some of them had lined up along different points of the course to shout "USA! USA!" when I ran by (inevitably making me laugh), I decided to return the favor. I ran around to different points on the course to take pictures and shout encouragements as they ran past. There were a ton of teachers and PTA parents doing the same thing, but the students would laugh or shout back to me, or pose for the pictures I was taking... maybe this is why the cranky gym teacher didn't want me to run with them? In the end, my words of encouragement turned into running alongside one of my students for the last 1k or so, trying to cajole him into finishing the race without walking. We pretended to sprint through the finish-line in a dramatic fashion and once again, everyone was happy... and tired.
Everyone stood around trying to loosen up, then the kids had to sit on the ground and listen to boring speeches, but one of my students' legs were so tight that he couldn't sit... so I spent most of the speech-time giggling at him.
Then we were supposed to walk around the park and pick up trash before heading back to school. I started out with the best intentions, but ended up gossiping with some girls, taking pictures and looking for 4-leaf clovers. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing a good job at the whole "positive influence" part of being a teacher...
Once we finally got back to the school, we were greeted by a ton of PTA moms who had made massive quantities of tonjiru (miso soup with pork and fall veggies) for the tired runners, so I sat outside with the students eating, talking and taking more pictures.
It was a great event that I missed at both schools last fall due to my rotation schedule, I'm so glad that I got to participate this year! ...and much to my PE teacher's surprise, I didn't have any muscle soreness at all...

ALT Day!

To quote myself from a February entry:
Every now and then all [thirteen] Kiryu ALTs gather at one junior high school to do a big English conversation workshop. It's fun for the ALTs to visit a different school and meet new students, and it's wonderful practice for the kids--they don't get many opportunities to have an unscripted interaction in English, so these ALT days really help them to realize how much English they know and gives a lot of positive reinforcement and motivation to improve.
Last week my school played host to 11 ALTs from different junior highs around Kiryu. It was our first ALT day and the students were excited beyond even my expectations. We themed the event "Travel the World with English!" and I designed a "passport" where they could write the questions that they prepared for each ALT. My teacher and I assigned each ALT an international flag and wrote "travel itineraries" for each group of students--each group visited 3 "countries" (for 10 minutes each) to have an in-depth conversation with the ALT at that station. Then for the last 10-15 minutes of class, the students were encouraged to get up and wander the room asking each ALT at least one question in exchange for a stamp in their passports. We were thrilled that most students got somewhere between 9 and 11 stamps by the end of the activity and ended up having to forcefully throw them out of the room once the bell rung for the start of their next class.
These activities have a tendency to draw out even the quietest students and to give the best students room to be more impressive than usual. They asked silly questions and some of the more outgoing kids ended up dancing, hugging or asking ALTs out on dates. By the end of the last class, the ALTs were raving about how great my students are... things I obviously know already, but it made me feel like a proud momma to hear it from so many other people. (^-^)v

randoms...

Last month's Nagano soccer tournament was a great time, but it took ages for everyone to send their pictures around the team list. I finally got my hands on a team photo:

Apple season is starting up again and while Japanese apples are certainly delicious, I can't help but think that they may be a little bit too big. Seriously though, who can eat one of these in a single sitting? We need more fruit designed for single people in Japan. Bananas don't hit the shelves until they're already 100% ripe and they're sold by the bunch rather than by weight... this means that you have to buy 6 or 7 very ripe bananas, which is stressful when you know that they're going to get mushy and brown in barely 2 days. Around that 2-day mark, I come home from school to an apartment that smells like a banana farm and suddenly I hate bananas. On those days I resent Japan for forcing me to buy too many bananas, as well as $2 apples and $4 peaches.

Leaving for a long-weekend in Kyushu tonight, pictures and stuff to come soon...