Mom and Karroll Came to Japan!

Karroll and I in Tsu Castle Park

I think the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory.  For months and months now, I have been waiting for my folks to get here, and now they have come and gone in what felt like the blink of an eye.  They bought their tickets to come out here in April I think, and we have been planning this trip for them since I came to Japan last year.  So for basically my entire career in Japan I have been looking forward to them coming out here, and now they are gone!  So now here I am, sitting here in my room trying to recover from one serious week and weekend of travel and lack of sleep.  

Mom and Karroll outside some sort of Japanese building
on Okageyokuchou in Ise.

As with pretty much everything I plan, my parents' visit wasn't without adventure.  After much research and contemplation we decided that the best travel arrangement would be for mom and Karroll to fly into Haneda Airport in Tokyo, then take the Shinkansen (read: Bullet Train) to Nagoya Station where I would meet them and guide them back to Tsu City.  The way this all played out in my head was as follows.  My parents would land in Haneda around 5:30 am, deal with customs and baggage claim and be out of the airport by around 6:30 or 7:00.  Then they would, following my detailed instructions, work their way through the Tokyo train system from Haneda Airport to Shinagawa Station via the Keikyu line, arriving at Shinagawa around 8:00.  Then, they would take a bit of time navigating Shinagawa Station from the Keikyu line to the Shinkansen ticket area where they would buy a couple of tickets and hop on the next train to Nagoya.  They would then arrive in Nagoya at about 11:00.  This was a bit problematic because I teach in Tsu until noon, but it was the best I could do.  They would then wait for me in Nagoya where I would meet them.  We would then take a Kintetsu train from Nagoya to Tsushimmachi station and a taxi to my house.  Sounds like a great to decent plan, right?  Well, my mom being the highly intelligent and wonderfully efficient person that she is took my wonderfully laid out plan and managed to do all of the extremely difficult and foreign tasks that I assigned her in about half the time I expected her to, arriving in Nagoya at about 9:45 am.  I was sitting in the teachers' office at OBC when I got the phone call from my mom saying that they were in Nagoya, which left me about 4 minutes to decide what to do about it before I had to go and teach my first class.  We decide that mom and Karroll would do their best to get through Nagoya station and try and get all the down to Tsu without me.  They mostly succeeded.  There are two stations in Tsu city, one is Tsu Station and the other is Tsushimmachi Station.  I live near Tsushimmachi Station, but the folks only got as far as Tsu.  So as soon as I finished teaching, Sarah and I ran up to Tsu and found them waiting in the Station for me.

The three of us on Okageyokuchou.

So after that small adventure, I took my folks back to my apartment for a short nap before we headed back to OBC to start teaching English.  My first class is a small elementary class of three students, and I didn't want to freak them out by bringing two new people into class so my parents hung out in the office while I taught my first class.  The next two classes are adult lessons though, and all of my students were quite excited to meet my folks so my parents were welcome to join my last two classes.  The first class of the evening was a low-ish level class of three.  One of the students in that class is very fond of asking very blunt questions.  He is a weightlifter, so by Japanese standards he is a pretty big dude, but I am still taller than he is and Karroll is just a bit bigger than he is.  So the very first question my step-dad was asked by a student was, "How much do you weigh?"  Needless to say Karroll was caught just a bit off guard.  After that though, my classes went quite smoothly.  My second adult class of Wednesday night actually suggested that we skip the OBC portion of our class and hold our lesson at a local yakiniku restaurant.  Yakiniku means grilled meat, and Yakiniku restaurants are places where you order all of your food raw and the staff brings out a big charcoal bucket for you to cook on.  I love these places, but unfortunately my parents were so sleepy from the day and all the traveling that they weren't really able to fully appreciate it.  All in all, I think the first day was quite the success.  I got my parents home, and they were asleep before their heads even hit the pillow. 

Lunch!

We woke up the next morning bright and early to head back to OBC, but first we had to find breakfast. I took my parents to my favorite bakery in Tsu and we took our delicious baked good to Castle Park to eat.  My first class of the day cancelled because she was on vacation in Hokkaido, so we had plenty of time to eat and relax.  We asked a really nice lady in the park to take our picture, and thus I began to practice the most helpful Japanese sentence of my parent's vacation, "Sumimasen, shashin o totte kudasai?" or in English, "Excuse me, could you please take our picture?"  Of all the Japanese I spoke on this trip, that sentence was far and away the most heavily used.  We had to teach one class in the morning, so we eventually made our way to OBC so I could prepare and get dressed for school.  That class was a resounding success as mom and Karroll were greatly revived by rest and food and were very talkative.  The class was a high level/hobby class of four women about the same age as my mom.  We basically chatted for an hour then the folks and I headed for the train station to catch a train to Ise.  Our plan for the afternoon was to explore Ise city and the accompanying shrine.  You can read more about the shrine here.  (The link will take you to an earlier post on this blog about my first experience at the Shrine)  We made our way very easily to Ise and took a cab from the station to the mouth of Okageyokuchou, the street leading to the Shrine.  Okageyokuchou is a wonderful place.  It is a set of narrow streets surrounding the Shrine and is full of wonderful shops and restaurants.  We got my parents some Ise Udon (Ise Style noodles) and did a bit of souvenir shopping shopping before making our way into the shrine.  I think my parents really enjoyed the whole atmosphere of the street, it is impossible to feel like you are anywhere but Japan when you are so surrounded by the people and the architecture.  

Ise Shrine's main Gate (Torii in Japanese)

Our time in the shrine was quite nice.  It was a beautiful day as far as the rainy season in Japan goes, and since it was a Thursday afternoon, the crowds were minimal.  We took our time walking through the woods surrounding the shrine, washing our hands in the fountain, then heading up the steps into the actual shrine.  We watched as people paid their respects to the Shrine, then began making our way back through the woods to the gate.  We stopped for a while to watch some Koi swimming in a pond, and saw the infamous Ise chickens that I still don't entirely understand.  After a nice relaxing afternoon in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, we caught a cab and headed back to the station to begin our journey back to Tsu.  Once we got back to Tsushimmachi, we had about two hours to kill before we needed to be at OBC, so we decided to head from the station to Gontemba beach here in Tsu.  It was about a 20 minute bike ride (don't ask mom, she'll say it was 20 miles!) and we made it there in one piece.  We spent half an hour or just hanging out, then Karroll and I walked out onto the seawall to check out the view.  Mom elected to stay behind and play photographer because the wall is about 15 feet tall with no railings on either side, with a straight drop to the water just one stumble away.  We made it safe and sound, and upon our return to solid ground we headed back to OBC to teach my evening classes.  

More Ise Shrine

Ise Shrine Architecture

Seawall Adventures

Dinner at Karakatta Curry!

Okageyokuchou.

I just checked, and it appears I am at 1500 words for this post, and my fingers are starting to get worn out.  I think I will end this post here, and finish our dashing adventures in Kyoto and Tokyo sometime later this week.  Tune in next time for part two of my blog's parental miniseries!

Its Already the End of May?!?

The view out my front door.

I just counted it up in class today with some students.  I have exactly 61 days left in Japan.  The new teachers will be here in a month, we have to start cleaning the spare rooms in our apartment so they have someplace to live, my parents will be here in a week (a visit I have been looking forward to as soon as my mom said she might be able to make it out here after the school year was over) and I will be starting law school in about 75 days.  All of these things felt like they would never happen.  When I first got here, I couldn't even wrap my brain around the fact the eventually I would have to train in my replacement in the same way the Peter and Angela had to do for us.

STANDING ON A WAVE!!!

Apart from the existential crisis, I have been living the dream here the few weeks since I last wrote.  As I think I wrote before, I applied to six different law schools across the country, hoping that Sydney and I would both get into at least one of them.  Things were looking bad for a couple of weeks when the only school that accepted me was Gonzaga, in Spokane, WA and Sydney had decided to pursue a different educational course.  I decided not to go to Gonzaga, citing location and a lack of desire to live in Washington, seemingly dooming myself to another year out of school, trying to improve my LSAT score and earn some money.  I had been either wait-listed or rejected from all of my other schools, so I didn't have much hope of hearing good news from the corner.  Then about 2 weeks ago, I got an email from Case Western Reserve Law in Cleveland saying that a place had opened up for me there, and that I had until June 15th to accept it.  Case is a pretty good school, and though the location was not so good, I was pretty excited to have gotten in.  It also gave me hope for the rest of my wait-list schools, Wyoming and Denver University.  Last monday, I received more good news.  I got a notification from Wyoming that a spot had opened for me there!  As it stands now, I am planning on going to the University of Wyoming as a law student in August, unless I hear back from Denver before June 15th.

The timing of all of this is going to make for an interesting month of August.  I will start the month in Japan (I should fly out of here on August 1st), then move back to Lanesboro, MN for 2 weeks with my family (if you want to see me in MN, you should start emailing me now, because those two weeks will be crazy for me), then moving to Laramie, WY for grad school orientation which starts on August 15th.  So yeah, that should be fun.

Even without the good news on the school front, my last few weeks have been pretty good.  My coworker and roommate John has been dating a girl for a while now here.  Normally, I wouldn't be all that thrilled to have a happy relationship hanging out in front of me, unintentionally rubbing my own long-distance relationship in my face, but no this time!  Rita might be the best cook I have ever encountered, and the best part is, she shares!  I can't think of another time in my life where I have eaten so well on such a regular basis.  For lunch today:  Thai yellow curry and pasta.  For lunch two days ago:  three courses of thai pasta and soup.  Other highlights have to include this sort of seafood/cheese/soupy-sort-of-thing that was absolutely heavenly, grilled salmon with avocado, more different curries than I knew existed, and many other things that I can't quite pinpoint at the moment.  The food coma has become my natural state of existence almost every evening.  Ahhhh, life is good!

You can see my brace here.  Thats all I got
from the doctor.  Not even crutches. :(

I have also been surfing more, even standing up on a few waves!  I've been hanging out at the beach in Tsu, reading a lot, and even catching some of the playoffs that I thought I was doomed to miss this year.  Unfortunately, I ended last week on a sour note.  I was at a party on Saturday night, when, through no fault of my own, I tripped and hurt my ankle.  Fortunately, I was surrounded by friends and one of them (the HUman Alarm Clock, Jon Richards from the last post) was able to drive me home.  The Japanese hospital system is a bit different than the states from what I have gathered in my time here, and after much phone consultation from Sarah's boyfriend Kenichi, we decided not to go to the emergency room that night.  On Sunday, the hospital didn't have the proper ankle specialist on staff, so I ended up waiting until Monday morning until I could see a doctor.  Kenichi drove Sarah and I to a clinic near out house where I got some X-Rays and was told that my ankle was NOT broken and that I would be ok with rest and ice.  Good news!  Unfortunately, walking is still a little painful and I have to teach an elementary class this afternoon which will include a lot of running around chasing little kids.  Not to worry though, the doctor assured me that I would be fine by the time my folks get here next week.  I'm looking forward to posting about their visit, so be sure to stay tuned!

Holidays and Difficult Dinners

The beautiful Chikubu Island

Ok!!  I survived my trip to Shiga Prefecture!  I know that survival is usually a given when you go on a simple vacation, but this time I wasn't so sure.  So here's what happened.  I woke up extra early on Friday because in theory my ride was supposed to show up at around 6:30.  I don't know if you noticed, but I posted that last blog at 3:40 am Japan.  When I get excited I have a hard time sleeping, but I think I finally nodded off around 4:15 or so.  My alarm started ringing at 5:45.  I stumbled into the shower and, as I got out, I saw that I had missed a text from my driver's copilot Etsuko saying that they would be a little late.  They eventually got here at 7:10-ish and we began our journey north.  I was riding with Etsuko and Yukiko with Flo driving, and our other car had Jon, Chinatsu, Machiko and Matt bringing our group up to 8.  It was about a 2 hour drive from my apartment in Tsu to our first stop in Nagahama city. 

Buddha!

Ok, this is a Daruma Doll, and it is a
good luck charm.  You write a wish
on a piece of paper and put it inside
the doll then leave it in the temple.

The weather wasn't the best that day, so we decided to do our sightseeing instead of our cycling, because nobody likes to ride a bike in the rain.  Our first sightseeing stop was at the Chikubu Island ferry port.  We got our tickets for the ferry and started the 30 minute ride across the lake.  It was really a beautiful ride.  The rain had turned into more of a mist, and it really lent the whole scene a sort ethereal feeling.  Lake Biwa is surrounded by mountains, so watch the mountains grow out of the mist over the lake was really quite beautiful.  We  floated into the dock on the island to discover that the place is basically covered in shrines and temples.  The coolest part about that is that most them are devoted to giving good luck!  The bad news about the island was that it was basically just a big rock in the middle of a lake, so the whole thing was a sort of steep-sided hill.  That meant a lot of stairs!  But apart from that, the 80 minutes we spent there were about as enjoyable eighty minutes as a person can have on a rock in the middle of a lake.  

These discs are also good luck charms.  We write our name
and a wish on them and try to break them as we throw
them towards the Gate outside the temple.  Mine
went in the lake :(

After Chikubu Island, we took a ferry back to Nagahama City, which as it turns out is famous for glass making.  The girls wanted to look at all the pretty glass art, and Jon, Flo, Matt and I were more than happy to oblige.  At least, we were more than happy to oblige until we realized that obliging would entail a lot of walking through very crowded aisles surrounded by very expensive and very fragile art.  Me being the something of a klutz that I am, I decided to just wait outside after the first museum.  As fragile as the art was, I somehow managed not to break anything.  After seeing as much glass as the city had to offer, we found a nice pub offering a very reasonable happy hour, and much of the rest of the night is a bit fuzzy to say the least.  After the first pub we hopped over to a local brewery/restaurant combo and sampled (here I use the word 'sampled' very loosely) the various house brews.  Again, the evening and night are a bit fuzzy; I can report however that we all made it back to our hotel safe and sound!

Pitcher 1-3 of 8, all local brews.

The whole crew with our bikes.

The next day, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:00 am thanks in no small part to Mr. Jon Richards:  Alarm Clock Extraordinaire.  As ungodly of an hour as it was, it did give us plenty of time to start the days activities.  Our first order of business was breakfast, which we had at Micky D's!  I hadn't had McDonalds breakfast in so long I had almost forgotten how amazing it was.  After breakfast, we moved onto the bike shop, where we rented the battery-powered bicycles that we would take from Nagahama to Hikone City, follow the road around Biwako.  I don't remember exactly how long the trip took, because we stopped a lot along the way, and the whole trip was so beautiful I lost track of time anyway.  Hikone is home to the oldest original castle in Japan.  It was one of the only castles not to have been destroyed at any point in its existence, which began in 1622.  It was a really beautiful castle, situated on a hilltop overlooking the lake.  Its original purpose was to be a outpost protecting the waterway into Kyoto from the lake.  After a brief tour around the castle and the surrounding gardens, we got lunch at a local sushi place and hopped on our bikes for the ride back to out cars in Nagahama.  The trip was fanatastic, beautiful and very tiring.  Many sights were seen, much food was eaten, many steps were climbed, and many drinks were drunk.  I deem it a success.


When I got home, I felt like I could have used another week of vacation to recover from the previous, but that wasn't meant to be.  It was back to work for the OBC crew.  However, the next weekend proved to have some challenges of its own.  


That saturday, I decided to go to Toba, a city south of Tsu, in Mie prefecture, with Sarah.  We needed to buy some gifts for our mothers and Toba happens to be the pearl capitol of Japan, so we decided a trip was in order.  We go to Toba shortly after two in the afternoon and in desperate need of lunch.  Toba, being on the coast and home to many a talented fisher-person, is quite famous for its seafood.  So, Sarah and I set off in search of a restaurant that could meet my need for delicious sashimi and Sarah's need to be a crazy vegetarian.   (Sarah is one of those vegetarians who cheats by eating shrimp because, "they have really tiny brains and can't think.")  

The shrimp of death.

Well, we found a place, and walked in, finding it devoid of customers.  We sat down and got our menus, which were typically full of kanji.  Fortunately, there were pictures so we weren't totally screwed.  Sarah ordered some fried Ise Shrimp and I ordered a sashimi donbori which is basically raw fish on sushi rice.  Sarah's food came out first, and there we were met with our first surprise, a giant, raw, lobster head in the middle of her plate.  The waitress looked at us expectantly, and started talking in really fast Japanese.  We realized she was asking if we wanted to take a picture of the plate.  Sarah said "oh god no," and they took it away, we thought for good.  Then came my plate with the biggest surprise.  I had indeed ordered a sashimi donbori, but instead of the harmless fish that I had seen in the picture, the focus of my meal was on the still wiggling shrimp in the middle of my bowl!  The chef had simply grabbed a shrimp out of the fish tank and stuck it on my plate.  No knife, no boiling water, no grill, nothing!  The poor shrimp's legs were going a million miles per hour, and his little eyes were staring me down,  quite clearly and accurately accusing me off torturing it for my own enjoyment.  Well, needless to say, that did a number on my appetite, and forced me to leave a large portion of my delicious and expensive lunch untouched on my plate.  Then, right as I was beginning to get my stomach back under control, the waitress returned with Sarah's lobster head, now neatly boiled, but still whole, in miso soup.  I think the worst part of the whole ordeal was the fact that the four members of the waitstaff were basically just standing around waiting for us to get our food so they could watch our reactions.  I think they knew that we had no idea what we had ordered and were waiting until we left so they could laugh at us.  Anyway, we survived to hit the shops of Toba in search of the perfect gift for our mothers.

Marathons, Birthdays and Life in General

Well, the cherry blossoms have fallen and we are now in the full swing of springtime.  The weather is unpredictable as always, swinging dramatically between downpours, thunderstorms, near-typhoons, chilly overcast, pleasantly warm showers and gorgeous spring sunshine.  Its difficult to know what to bring when you step out your door!  The morning that starts cold and blustery has equal chances of ending in a typhoon or a glorious sunny day.  Ok, I will try to move away from the weather now, but as Sydney can tell you, it is one of my favorite topics.

One of the few non-blurry pictures

When I last wrote I had just returned from a glorious weekend of cherry blossoms and picnics.  I am still in awe of the beauty that is Japan in spring.  It was amazing.  Riding your bike to work could quickly become the most beautiful part of your day.  Going to the supermarket made you lament leaving your camera at home.  For two weeks, running became more than a necessary bit of exercise; it became an artistic adventure.  I am now the proud owner of a whole iPhoto album full of blurry pictures of cherry trees taken on the run.

2k in and still smiling!

Running through rice fields, soon
to head up the second mountain.

Now that is all over, and I am forced to find new motivations for running.  Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you feel about running) I was signed up for the Shima Marathon by some of my friends here.  Don't get too excited, Japanese people call any sort of running race a marathon regardless of distance, I only ran the 10k race.  Shima is a city about an hour and a half south of my current home town, in Mie Prefecture.  It is near the somewhat famous city of Ise which is the home of the Ise Shrines and lots of delicious seafood.  Shima is right on the coast, and is a great destination for scenic sightseers.  The whole area is particularly mountainous and the course was designed to take advantage of both elements.  That unfortunately involved a lot of very literal ups and downs for me while running.  The mountains of Shima are not particularly tall, reaching a very humble 700 meters at their highest, but when you find yourself running up one, it seems to channel its inner Pike's Peak.  The 10k course brought us to the top of two different mountains and let us run for about a kilometer along the ocean as well.  It was really the most beautiful run I've ever done.  Boulder, Co is beautiful, but that course didn't really take advantage of its scenic-ness to the extent the Shima course did.

Many, many people beat me
across the finish line!

Triumphant Machiko!

The race was on April 22nd, and that day with stay with me for quite a long time.  Sorry to get back on the weather track, but it really did shape that day.  I woke up that morning at about 5:30 am, and for those of you who know me well, that was quite a challenge by itself.  I looked out my window and was treated to a blast of cold, wet wind.   It appeared to be the start of an early spring tropical storm or something of that like.  I seriously considered calling up my co-runners and canceling, but decided against it.  I got picked up by my friend Machiko and we drove to the third member of our running party's house to wait for the fourth member.  At Jon's Chinatsu met us and informed us that she would not be running in this weather.  After much ridicule and name calling, we left Jon's house and started our 1.5 hour drive to Shima.  We got there around 9:30, registered, and got ready for the race.  Running costumes are already pretty ridiculous on there own (dudes in tiny shorts and tank tops, bright colors, and sports bras) but the weather had inspired some truly hilarious outfits.  People in plastic bags, parkas, ponchos, and raincoats were in great supply.  Somehow Jon, Machiko and myself managed to be late for the start of the race, so we had to go on our own.  Since the weather was so miserable, Jon and I decided to entertain ourselves for the first couple of kilometers by singing silly songs to each other.  The hits of the day included "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In," "The Man of La Mancha," and of course, "Singing in the Rain."  Needless to say our fellow runners thought we were ridiculous.  It was a pretty enjoyable race given the conditions and the challenging nature of the course.  I can honestly say that I enjoyed that race.

The view from my beach reading
session.  Its ok to be jealous.

I appear to be telling my story a little out of order, so let me apologize and skip back about a week before the race.  I've said it before and I will say it again:  I have fantastic friends.  My birthday is April 18th, and I was lucky enough to celebrate my birthday with fellow April babies Katsuya and Rika.  We  started the party with a barbeque at Jon's place, where we drank some beers and cooked some über delicious blue cheese burgers courtesy of our lovable Austrian friend Flo.  Post-picnic, we moved on to a karaoke house called Japan Rent-a-Car, which incidentally is the most random combination of businesses ever:  a car rental shop, mechanic shop, and a karaoke club.  We sang for a couple hours and then carried the party over to the Melting pOt bar.  It was quite the birthday experience!

Crazy, scary waves in the
 background

Wet-suit up!

Now to bring my story's erratic timeline up to the present, I am currently on vacation!  In Japan, we are currently celebrating Golden Week, which is some sort of collection of holidays that all happen around the same time.  I don't really understand the whole thing, but basically it means that I have 8 days off of work!  I started off on a sour note, substitute teaching for Sarah's weekend class because her brother is in Japan for the next 10 days.  Apparently, she thought that she could spend her limited time with her brother more productively than in the classroom.  Go figure.  I did manage to turn the day around pretty well.  After work, I rode my bike down to the beach and camped out under some pine trees to read my book relax in the shade.  It was a marvelous way to spend an afternoon.  I'm currently reading "Youth in Revolt" and enjoying it immensely.  The weather the next couple of days was not quite so forgiving, but Sarah, her brother Casey and I have still managed to have a good time.  Sarah and Casey went to Kyoto and I made my triumphant return to the surfing lifestyle!  My first time was on a gloriously sunny and warm day.  This most recent attempt took place in some of the biggest surf my friend Jo has ever experienced.  We were out in the ocean on the front edge of an incoming storm swell.  I don't know the proper surfing term for the waves, but they were ranging from 9 to 12 feet, and scared me pretty thoroughly.  I stayed close to shore and watched as Jon and his friend Masashi got their butts kicked by the surf.  I didn't manage to successfully stand up on a wave, but I had a blast anyway.  When we had had enough, we got lunch at a great little sushi place and headed home.  Now, I am sitting in my apartment waiting for tomorrow when I will be heading up to Shiga Prefecture for two days of exploring Japan's largest lake by bicycle.  Wish me luck!

Mmmm, sushi and tempura!

HANAMI!!

Well I promised to try and write more often than the last three months, so here we go!  Fortunately, this last weekend was replete with news and noteworthy events.  The most notable of these was the arrival of Sakura Season!  Sakura means cherry blossoms, and they are something of a national treasure here in Japan.   

Now, as I wrote last week, the weather has been from ideal here in Tsu this spring.  Its been colder, windier, and rainier than normal, and many of my students were expecting Sakura Season to suffer accordingly.  This is a big deal for most people here, because almost every single one of my students had some sort of Hanami party to go to this week.  Hanami means to look at flowers, and a hanami party is something to behold.  Mie, and I'm sure Japan in general, has many many parks that are designed to be as beautiful as possible during Japan's two most beautiful natural events:  fall color season and hanami season.  

In Tsu, we are lucky to have Kairaku Koen (Kairaku Park).  It has made one earlier appearance in this blog, and is the location of most of our recent laser tag battles.  Unfortunately, we have been forced into a tentative ceasefire on the Kairaku battlefield because it has been taken over by the hanami vendors.  Every spring, parks all across Japan get filled up with food vendors, beer vendors, candy vendors and picnickers looking to buy stuff.  It is quite a sight to see, and see it we did.  A group of us headed over there saturday afternoon/evening to have a late picnic and hang out. 

Saturday afternoon was far from ideal hanami conditions, but we still had a pretty good evening, eating and drinking in the cold and blustery wind.  The next day was substantially better.  My friend Koya planned a big hanami shindig in Yokkaichi at a riverside park.  I made the trip to Yokkaichi with Sarah, Chinatsu and Ashanthi.  Few men have ever been blessed with such lovely companions.  However, my joy was short lived, as all three of my fellow travelers take great joy in making fun of me.  Sarcastic train rides aside, the morning was beautiful!  The weather couldn't have been better, or more different than the previous day's as you can see from the pictures.  

We got to the station, where we were picked up by Koya's friend and driven to the park.  I wouldn't usually make note of such a mundane detail, but Koya's friend drove a GMC Yukon.  It even had the steering wheel on the proper side of the car!  It was a nice change from the teeny tiny Japanese cars I've been riding around in for the last 10 months.  We got to the park pretty uneventfully and found about 25 people waiting for us!  Koya and co. had done a lot of prep work for this party and it showed in the food.  They had coolers of beer, coolers of food, a couple of grills, and were already cooking when we arrived.  We ate yakisoba (that is what is on the plate I am holding above: noodles, carrots, cabbage, onions, pork and squid) okonomiyaki, beer, hotdogs, and potato salad.  The closest thing I can equate it to is the 4th of July if instead of freedom and fireworks we're celebrating springtime and flowers.  

Springtime in Japan

Well, it seems like its been ages since I lost wrote anything here.  I guess that's probably because it HAS been ages since I last wrote.  As a testament to that fact, my fingers are creaking across the keyboard at a particularly tepid pace tonight.  Anyway, sorry it has been song long since the last time to wrote.  It is unfortunate, because I don't really even have an excuse.  I haven't been terribly busy, but at the same time there has been plenty for me to write about.  I guess I am going through a bit a detached streak right now. I’m somewhere between homesickness, finally feeling like I actually live here, and being sad about leaving so soon.  It’s an odd place to be in. 

Outside of my minor existential crisis, my life in Japan has been pretty great lately.  When I last wrote, I had just taken the LSAT.  Now, that feels like years ago.  The acute, high-level of stress I was feeling leading up to the test has been replaced by a general low-level of stress about the future in general.  I finished all six of my applications at the end of February and beginning of March, and now I am waiting to hear back.  I should hear from the first school I applied to sometime in the first half of April, and everything should be figured out by the beginning of May.  I don’t know what is worse:  the days leading up to the test or sitting here waiting for things that I have no control over.  Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it, so I’m trying to relax.

In that vein, I have been keeping relatively busy in the last month.  The highlights of March have to include running a 10k in Nagoya, the resurrection of our Futsal games, a wonderful game of touch rugby in the mud, and watching the Chunichi Dragons play baseball in the Nagoya Dome.

The 10k was awesome, but brutal.  It was held on March 11^th, the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and was a part of the Nagoya City Marathon.  The City Marathon consisted of a 10k, a 21k, and a full 42k marathon, each starting from the same place at the same time.  Also running that same day at the same time and the same place was the Nagoya Women’s Marathon.  I think this race was a full marathon only, and as the name suggests it was only for the ladies.  So, with the four races that day there was something like 30,000 people running.  Combine that with the spectators, and it was pretty close to the most people I have ever seen in one place.  I ran with three friends, Chinatsu, Machiko, and Jon.  I was the youngest of my group by a few years (slightly more than a few in one person’s case!) and finished last.  It was a bit embarrassing, but it was a pretty wonderful day.  It was also just a training run for the next 10k we are running on April 22^nd in Shima, near Ise.  That race is going to be crazy, because apparently it’s all up in the mountains along the ocean.  I’m pretty pumped for the view, but I hope I survive the race!  Wish me luck!

FUTSAL!!!!

The next thing that has been keeping me busy has been Futsal.  Futsal is essentially indoor soccer played outdoors with a slightly smaller ball.  Now, anyone who saw me play indoor intramurals or outdoor for that matter might doubt this next sentence, but the last two times I’ve played futsal I’ve essentially been the next incarnation of Lionel Messi.  No exaggeration.  Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration.  But only slight.  I am a goal-scoring machine!!  Goal scoring prowess aside, futsal is a fantastic way to take your mind off the hook for a while.  We get together with 20 or people and run around like idiots chasing a ball for 2 hours.  It’s wonderful.  A lot of the people I only see at futsal, so it’s as much a social event as it is a sporting event, probably more so for some of us!

My time in Japan has been full of sporting firsts.  I went to my first rugby game last fall, and I played my first rugby game a couple weeks ago.  A bit of back-story first.  This spring in Japan has apparently been much colder and wetter than usual.  I say apparently because anytime I can get through March without a blizzard, I feel like I’m doing pretty well.  Anyway, it’s been persistently chillier than it’s supposed to be.  Being stubborn as we are, that didn’t stop us from organizing a game of touch rugby at a local park.  As has been the case for most of March, it was a cold and rainy day when we decided to go play.  We decided to tough it out and headed to the park.  About half of us had never played before, so we started with the basics.  Rules and basic throwing technique took up the first half-hour or so.  For all my newfound skills at soccer, I am terrible at rugby.  Something about having to throw backwards all the time seems terribly counterproductive and I just couldn’t get the hang of it.  Even though I was severely lacking in the skill department, the game was great.  It was muddy and sloppy and tons of fun.  I’m going to add it to the lists of sports that I love to play even though I am terrible at them.  That list now includes hockey, golf, basketball, soccer, and rugby!

To cap off a great month in Japan, I was lucky enough to go to a Chunichi Dragons game in Nagoya!  For those of you who don’t know, the Chunichi Dragons are Nagoya’s pro baseball team.  Last year they were central league champions, and this team has pretty high expectations.  It was also the Dragons’ home opener weekend, so the stadium was packed!  I went with China and Machiko.  China’s dad is a member of the Dragon’s fan club, so China had a pair of tickets to the second game of the season.  We had three people for two tickets, so we had to buy another when we got to the stadium.  Unfortunately, there were no tickets left in our area, so we were forced to buy a lower level ticket instead.  None of us really wanted to sit alone though, so we just sat together in the club level and hoped that none of our neighboring seats filled up.  We weren’t that lucky, but we got the next best thing.  A random college student came all alone and sat next to us in the seat that Machiko was illegally occupying.  China and Machiko asked him if he wouldn’t mind trading seats with us, and since the extra ticket we had was twice as expensive as the one he had purchased, he agreed, and we could all sit together happily ever after.  The game itself was great too.  The opposing team was the Hiroshima Carp, and they were about as terrible as their name suggests.  The game was over after the first inning with the Dragons leading 2-0.  The final score was 9-0 and the best part of the game was the fact the China’s crush was the player of the game.  Mr. Ibata was 3 for 4 from the plate and made some great plays at shortstop.  All in all the game was pretty great.  Both the Hiroshima fans and the Dragons fans were super entertaining.  They had songs for each of their players, and they brought instruments and flags into the seats.  It was really cool to listen to.  I even learned a few lines of the Dragons’ song!

Well, that just about sums up my last month or so!  Happy Easter everyone!

February, for Lack of a Better Title

Its been so long since I've written I almost forgot how to do this!

Let me start again by apologizing for the month plus its been since I last wrote here.  Its been crazy, so I hope you'll forgive me.  

The end of January and the first half of February were busy in a few different ways.  First, I was studying for the LSAT, which I took on February 12th.  Then we had to evaluate all of our adult students' English abilities and write progress reports for each student.  Then we had a week of Pen Pal classes for our elementary and junior high students.  All of those were much more time consuming than I expected.

John holding down the Pen Pal Fort

'Ooooh, pen pal letters!!!'

As soon as Sydney left Japan, I had to start working on OBC's progress reports.  I teach about 30 adult students each week, and each of those 30 students got an individual report from me. I don't envy real teachers who have to write quarterly report cards.  Trying to accurately judge a student's English ability without discouraging them or hurting their feelings is more difficult than I expected.  It took a week and a half for me to write all those reports, and for the next week, all of my classes started with my students asking me I ranking them as such in their report.  Of course, all of the students compared notes and tried to see who was the best at what.  It was high school all over again!  

Moe and Reina writing up a storm

These three kids are crazy.  Fact.

As soon as we finished the progress report process, we moved right into the elementary pen pal week.  I teach three elementary classes that did pen pals, and one class that didn't.  The class that didn't was apparently too old, but I don't really understand the logic behind that reasoning.  Anyway, OBC does pen pals pretty much every year with all of their elementary students.  This year was no exception.  One thing that does change from year to year is where OBC gets the American letters from.  This year and last year, OBC worked with Mississippi Heights Elementary in St. Cloud.  Sarah's mom teaches there, and she got the American students to write the letters. 

This is where Santa lives!

Sarah's kids laughing at my crazy
little boys being crazy.

 The way we offer kid's classes at OBC is pretty straightforward.  Preschool classes are offered at one time, elementary at another, and junior high at yet another.  So, when two teachers have classes at the same time, they are usually at least close to a similar level.  So, because when we do pen pal classes there is quite a bit of explanation needed, we join forces and teach our classes together when there is overlap.  In my case, I taught two pen pal classes alone, and one combined with one of Sarah's classes.   

Komei can't sit still long enough to
write a letter, so he had to stand!

The pen pal lessons were pretty fun to teach and I think our students generally enjoyed it too.  For the younger kids, we made a big letter with pictures, and the kids had to fill in the answers to questions such as, "My favorite food is____." and and "When I _____ my parents get annoyed."  It was pretty entertaining to watch 8 year olds explain what makes there parents angry.  For the older kids, we prepared a list of questions that they could answer in letter form.  We asked them what their favorite McDonald's food was, what Japanese thing they wanted to show to the American students, and other questions like that.  It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.  Below are some pictures of my elementary students

Yuki

Moe

Reina

Komei (he is crazy!)

Takaha (Also crazy)

Keito (captain of the crazies)

Kyohei

Ryota

During all of the evaluating and the pen pal-ing, I was also studying for the LSAT.  Hopefully when I get back to the States, I will have been accepted into law school and will start grad school in August.   Studying for the LSAT involved a lot biking to Starbucks and other coffee shops.  It seems the the Local Blend in St. Joe has spoiled my ability to study without a good cup of coffee.  I took the LSAT on February 12th in Tokyo, at Temple University Tokyo Campus.  It was pretty cool except for the test taking part.  I went to Tokyo the day before and stayed in a hotel overnight because my test was super early Sunday morning.  Super early here being a relative term.  I never start work before 9:30 am, so the 8:00 am start time was particularly painful.  The day before the test, I took a shinkansen to Tokyo station and arrived at about 3:00 pm.  I had a lot of time to kill, so I decided to figure out where my test center was.  I took a cab from my hotel to Temple University and found the test site in about 4 minutes because the entire campus appeared to be in one building.  That left me with a whole lot of time to kill before it got late enough to consider going to sleep.  So, I decided to go on an adventure.  I could see the top of Tokyo Tower poking over the buildings in the neighborhood, so I took off walking in that general direction.  It took me about 1.5 hours to walk all the way there (wouldn't you know it, Tokyo is REALLY big) and once I got there, I realized there was really much to do.  So, I looked at the tower for a couple minutes, snapped a few pictures with my iPod and started walking back to my hotel.  The walk to the Tower was simple enough, because I could almost always see it.  The walk to my hotel on the other hand, was a bit more difficult.  I had taken a cab to the test center and walked from there, so I didn't really know the exact direction I needed to walk in though.  A pretty good guess got me close enough to start asking directions at convenience stores, and after a couple hours of meandering, I eventually make it back.  I got dinner at a kebab stand on my home, and I am seriously going to miss the food here when I go home.  Good food id everywhere!!  The next morning, I woke up, took my test, and headed for home.  Since then, I have been slowly decompressing after a solid month of stress, so that is why I haven't written.