Heading to the Slopes

Hello again!  I'm sitting here in my apartment preparing to head Hakuba 47 and Goryu mountain.  I have once again been subject to some fantastic generosity at the hands of my friends here. I came to Japan in July, and when I packed I had no idea that I would eventually be going snowboarding here.  That might have something to do with the fact that in July, it seemed like December was so far away that packing for it would have felt like time traveling. However, December actually showed up and now it is almost over.  Time is flying.  All of you who said it would can now have a good long, 'I told you so!' session at my expense.  


Anyway, back to my friends' generosity.  Like I said, when I came to Japan it was hot.  Needless to say I didn't pack any winter gear.  So when the opportunity to head to Nagano to hit the slopes with my friends came up, I wanted to jump on the chance.  I hesitated to say yes though, due mostly to the aforementioned lack of winter clothing.  That is where the generosity part comes in.  As soon as I mentioned the problem to my friends, I found myself knee deep in gear.  Sitting here in my room, I have two snowboards, three pair of snow pants, goggles, jackets, hats and gloves.  My friends are awesome!  My wonderful friend Etsuko is probably sitting on top of the generosity pack these days.  She is the one who set up this whole shindig.  When our friend who was supplying the car backed out, she figured out how to get to Nagano without a car and booked us tickets on the night bus.  So, now I am waiting 'til 9:00 pm rolls around so I can head to the train station and catch my bus!  We will get into Hakuba sometime tomorrow morning.  


In other exciting news, I have been thoroughly enjoying my spare time on holiday here.  John and Sarah are off adventuring, and I thought I was going to be sitting here all alone.  That has not been the case though.  I have so far successfully managed to wedge myself into almost all of my friends' holiday plans :).  On the 27th, my friend Jon threw a Christmas dinner party at his house.  I got to help cook!  Jon made a delicious stuffed ham, freshly baked bread, and soup, and Machiko again supplied the pie.  Did I mention we also all supplied the wine?  Something like 5 bottles for the 6 of us.  I love wine!


I have also latched onto a few after Christmas plans of my friends'.  I saw a few movies, most notably the newest Mission Impossible movie.  Ghost Protocol?  Terrible name.  Highly entertaining movie though!  Despite all of this, I think the best part (besides Jon's dinner) of this whole holiday has been the fact that excluding today, I haven't woken up before noon.  I love vacations!  Who needs to travel when I can sleep for 12 hours a day?  


Anyway, wish me luck on the slopes!  I'm going to need it after two years lack of practice.  

Happy Christmas!

Ho ho ho!!  Merry Christmas!  It is the tail end of Christmas Day, and I have had a fantastic couple of days here.  This is mostly due to the fact that I have some of the most amazing friends and family that a guy could ask for.  Also, when I say mostly, I mean entirely.  Seriously; a sincere thank you to all the wonderful people who made my Christmas Eve and Day fantastic.  Etsuko, Machiko, Chinatsu, Hayato, Yukiko and Machiko's kids made Christmas Eve a blast.  Sydney's family in Nagoya made Christmas Day equal wonderful, so thank you Shannon, Katsumi, Donavan, Naoe, Julia, Conner, Liam, and Shannon's friend Bridget!  Ok, now with the thank you's take care of, let me tell you how I spent my holiday.


First, you should all know in advance that I am listening to 'A Vince Guaraldi Christmas,' so I am in a very good mood!  

Bartender Andrew!

So my holiday officially started at 9:00 pm on Thursday the 22nd, when I finished my last class.  The next morning, Sarah left for Las Vegas where she would be spending Christmas with her family.  Later that afternoon, John left for Thailand where he would be spending the holidays with his friend from SJU.  I was officially home alone!  Thankfully, I didn't spend much time by myself though.  Friday night, I headed to our local watering hole (The Melting pOt) where I have sort of picked up a part time job bartending and washing dishes and basically doing whatever they need.  Its a pretty cool gig, because I mostly get paid a bit to hang out, talk to people, listen to music and drink.  I have definitely had worse jobs in the past.  Friday night at the Pot featured a local band.  The place wasn't terribly busy, but the people that did come came for the band, so the crowd was generally into the music.  It was a pretty good night.  I stayed there until about 3:00 or so, then headed home.  


Christmas Eve day was a day of difficult decision making.  The crux of the issue was what to do with my newfound free time.  My choices were:  stay at home and do nothing, thereby taking full advantage of my newly started holiday, or actually go out and accomplish something.  Part of my decision was made for me when I slept until 1:00 pm, but I still had to figure out what to do with the rest of my day.  I ended up compromising and going to UniQlo to buy some winter clothes, because it is getting chilly, and I want to be warm when  I hit the slopes later this week.  I also attempted to make Eggnog from scratch, but failed miserably.  This was mostly due to my inability to read Kanji and Price Cut's inability to stock the necessary ingredients.  I could not for the life of me find heavy cream OR whole milk.  It was a travesty.  Oh well.


Christmas Eve itself was fantastic.  I got picked up around 6:00 pm by my friend Etsuko, who took me to my friend Machiko's house for a wonderful Christmas party.  We were joined there by Chinatsu, Hayato, and Machiko's kids.  It was wonderful.  Machiko cooked us a delicious dinner.  It was a bit different than the massive Norwegian feast I have become accustomed to over the years with the Gudmundson family, but it was amazing nonetheless.  She cooked two roast chickens, shepherd's pie and my personal favorite, a fresh apple pie!!  She earned herself a Christmas hug with that pie.  I was so happy to see apple pie.  Words can't express.  Thank you!!!  We had champagne, a few beers and capped it all off with cookies.  Machiko's boyfriend also added to the night, even though he is currently living in the States.  He sent Machiko's kids 'Wii Just Dance!' for their Christmas present.  That game is crazy!  We danced for a solid two hours, until no one but the kids had enough energy to move.  It was spectacular.  I learned that MC Hammer's 'Can't Touch This' is not as easy as it looks!  

My presents from Hayato and Chinatsu, from left to right.

Also, I apparently really do look like Anpanman.  Machiko's youngest daughter doesn't know my name and doesn't care to learn it, because she will call me nothing but Anpanman.  "Anpanman, play Wii!" "blah blah blah Anpanman, blah blah blah!"  Seriously.  It also didn't help matters any that Chinatsu and Hayato both bought me Anpan-presents.  Hayato bought me a candy bowl shaped like Anpanman, and Chinatsu bought me a cute little Anpanman charm.  I still don't see the resemblance, but there must be something to it.


Let me preface Christmas Morning by saying that Sydney Rajchel has one cool family.  On Christmas morning, I woke up bright and early and headed up to Nagoya to joined Sydney's Aunts Shannon and and Naoe, and Uncles Katsumi and Donovan.  On the way, I got to use my awesome present from my even more awesome mom!  She bought me a pair of Bose headphones because she knows I spend a ton of time on the train and she wanted me to spend it in peace!  Thanks mom!  You are super!!  But I digress.  Back to Christmas with Shannon's family.  I met Shannon and Co. at the Kanayama train station in Nagoya, and we went to a buffet restaurant for brunch/lunch.  The food was pretty good, and very wide ranging.  I had steak bits, lasagna, snow crab legs, seafood salad, oysters, some fried chicken type things stuffed with something or other that seemed vaguely cheesy, fruit, ice cream and cake.  Needless to say, I was stuffed to the gills.  All-you-can-eat buffets are timed in Japan, so we basically stuffed out faces for a solid 90 minutes. 

From left to right:  Shannon, me,
Julia and Katsumi.

 After the buffet, we returned to Shannon's apartment, and skyped with Sydney's family.  After a lovely skype session, we headed over to Shannon's friends house for more food, drinks and games.  Bridget, Shannon's friend, made fondue so event though we were full when we arrived, we pretty much continuously ate for the next 5 hours.  Shannon's brother and his wife have two sons, Liam and Conner, who are 8 and 3 respectively.  They are adorable, and in my vain attempt to avoid the food, I played Wii games with the two of them and Bridget's son for a while.  Fun times were had by all!

At Shannon's friend's house

I capped off a great day with a short chat with Sydney and a nice long chat with my Mom, Karroll, Neil and Brayton!  For Christmas, I sent Brayton some Japanese money, which pretty much made his day.  I also discovered that Karroll is doing his level best to kill himself before I get home.  For those of you who don't know, Karroll is my step-dad.  Apparently, he was slicing an onion to put on a cheeseburger and decided that his finger would make a better topping than said onion.  So Mom got to make a wonderful Christmas Eve emergency room run.  Karroll:  please don't die before I come home!!!


Sorry this post is so long and rather devoid of pictures.  As soon as I get pictures from the weekend, I will update the post!  Merry Christmas everybody!!

Its Beginning to Still Look Nothing Like Chistmas

This seems so long ago!

Well, it is December 15th, and the reason I know its anywhere near close to Christmas is because I just received a package full of presents from my mom.  The weather outside is indeed frightful, but only compared to the semi-tropical hell that the Japanese call July and August.  It is also made a bit more frightful by the lack of central heating, but I'll get to that later.  The average temperature for the last week has been around 50 degrees or so.  The lack of snow is starting to damage my Minnesota sensibilities.  However, the one thing we aren't short of here is christmas music!  Pretty much every shop has been pumping in a steady stream of instrumental christmas music for the past two weeks.  Actually, the Pricecut Supermarket where I do most of my grocery shopping started playing Christmas tunes as soon as they took down the thanksgiving decorations!  Pricecut has yet to play a song with words though.  I didn't know there were so many instrumental versions of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the world.  Tsu has also started putting up its city-wide Christmas decorations.  Route 23 (the main drag here in town) has been decked out in lights for two weeks now, and that at least mitigates the total lack of snow a little.  


Japan is great in many ways.  The people so far have been spectacular, with the notable exception of natto, the food is great, and it is a beautiful place with the ocean and the mountains.  However, there is one thing I don't understand.  Where in the world are the furnaces and the central heating systems??  It seems crazy that in a place that doesn't exactly have the year round beautiful weather of a place like hawaii they don't have central heating.  Or insulation.  Its crazy.  The only way John and I can heat our house is by using kerosene heaters.  I don't know if you have ever burnt kerosene in your house (I know everyone reading this in Japan has) but it doesn't exactly have the most pleasant smell.  It never really gets that cold here, but when your house is the same temperature as the outside, 55 degrees gets awfully chilly.  


One thing I do really like about winter here so far is that fact that it doesn't freeze at night.  This apparently leads people to plant all sorts of flowers!  So all the planter boxes in Tsu are filled with pansies and petunias!  It is really nice!  There are some gorgeous gardens in bloom along the road I run on.  It almost makes up for the cold apartment.  Also, a lot of fruit is coming in season.  Especially oranges.  I ran past a beautiful orange tree yesterday.  I was very very tempted to stop by and steal an orange, but my conscience eventually won out.  Unfortunately for my stomach.  


I have also been experiencing some pangs of homesickness, which isn't totally unexpected given that I will soon be spending Christmas away from home for the first time.  Don't worry too much about me though.  I have great friends here and we have lots of plans for the holidays.  Snowboarding in Nagano and Christmas parties galore.  So no worries family!  We'll be just fine over here!  Also, I am keeping my eye on the prize.  The prize of course being Sydney's visit on January 4th!  So, If I don't post again until after Christmas,  Happy Christmas and have a great New Year!!  

Weddings!!!

Aki and Asuka with their cake

It has been a very exciting weekend for me here in Tsu!  Congratulations to my friends Aki and Asuka who just got married on Saturday!  They actually got married for either the second or third time on Saturday, but this was the first time I had seen their wedding.  I don't entirely understand what the actual situation was, but I believe Aki was so happy to be getting married that he simply planned four different ceremonies and couldn't decide which he liked best, then decided, "what the hell, I'll just do all four!"  I think they legally got married a while ago, and have now been indulging their friends with ceremonies.  Anyway, The ceremony I saw was no less fantastic for being the third.  As far as the ceremony goes, it was all in Japanese so I can only report on what I saw and what my friends were able to translate for me.  The ceremony was held at a little place in Yokkaichi.  By little, I mean that it had a sort of sanctuary where the actual service was held, a cocktail lounge for drinks before the wedding, and a really beautiful banquet hall where we were entertained and very, very well fed.

Asuka and Aki holding their freshly
signed wedding document

Asuka's dress was beautiful!

The actual service was surprisingly short, and I didn't really have the best view of the proceedings because Sarah and I watched from the balcony to give the family members and much closer friends of the couple a chance to actually sit down to enjoy the event, but it was very nice.  Aki and Asuka hired a really nice string duo or trio (I can't remember exactly how many people) and they played quite a few pieces I recognized, and topped it off with the traditional Bridal procession song.  The action of the wedding was mostly limited to the signing of the wedding papers by the bride, groom and two witnesses.  In a brief side-note, Aki had actually asked Sarah and I to serve as his witnesses in case his two friends from the states couldn't make it.  I was happy for Aki that his friends were able to come, but I was really disappointed when they did.  

The 'Gaijin' Table!  Everything about
this place was beautiful from the
knives to the napkins.

The highlight of the ceremony for Sarah was the discovery that there were two babies in attendance.  We found one of them on the stairs to the balcony and spent a very enjoyable 15 minutes entertaining him with some spontaneous peek-a-boo.  It was glorious.  Japanese babies are adorable.  I almost had to physically restrain Sarah so that she didn't try to steal him!  


After the sanctuary's service, about half of the audience was called away, leaving the rest of us to mill about, wondering what we were waiting for and why the bride and groom apparently liked the other half of the guests better.  (Actually it wasn't that bad.  This was the time when Sarah and I found the baby!)  After about 10 minutes or so, we found out that we were waiting to get our turn taking a group picture with the wedding couple.  This was the first part of the weeding that seemed different from an American wedding.  Has anyone ever seen a wedding where  the bride and groom took group pictures with everyone who attended their wedding?  I haven't.  However, it was pretty cool and I hope that the tradition moves to the other side of the Pacific.  Hopefully, we will get a copy of the photo, because in the name of saving time, the only cameras used were those of the professional photographers.  After the photo op, we moved into the reception hall.  

I never feel bigger than when I stand
next to Japanese people.  Also, Sarah
must have missed the memo
about the colors for the night.

Thankfully, there were a few native English speakers at this wedding, and Aki was kind enough to group us all together for dinner.  One of the guests was former OBC teacher Stuart Gregory, who taught at OBC about 5 years ago.  It was really fun to get his perspective on the school and to gossip about our older students and their bad habits or funny stories.  The other foreigners in attendance were some of Aki's friends.  One of them was a teacher at Tulane University about 22 years ago when a young man by the name of Brett Favre was taking night classes in communication while playing QB at Southern Miss.  It really is a small world.

The band for the evening

The reception was fantastic.  Diner was at least 4 courses:  Sashimi, soup, some delicious beef, and cake, with as much wine, beer and other drinks as you could order in Japanese.  The presentation of all the food was amazing.  I shudder to think what the couple spent on food for the wedding, but it must have been ridiculous.  There was also some pretty interesting entertainment.  The surprise of the night was a puppet show to the tune of the 'Sound of Music' soundtrack.  Aki and Asuka also serenaded us with 'Edelweiss' that started out in English but switched to Japanese after the first verse.  There were also a few performers, including one man who played at least three different instruments over the course of the evening.  He started on something like a shamisen that only had two strings and was played with a bow, then moved to the actual shamisen, then he pulled out a beautiful accordion and played some Japanese polka-inspired tunes.  

The happy couple!

After the reception came another tradition that I sincerely hope makes the jump across the Pacific.  The after after party!  We took a bus to a bar in Yokkaichi called the Bar Mar Italiano, where Asuka tossed bouquet and we were treated to some more delicious food and drink. There were a few speeches, with Aki's father's standing out particularly in my memory.  Aki's dad is hilarious, with a tendency to forget that people might eventually want to do something besides listen to him talk.  I couldn't understand very much of what he said, but since the crowd kept on laughing, I will assume that it was a pretty funny speech.  Aki seemed happy anyway.  We ate, drank and played BINGO to our stomachs', livers', and hearts' content.  All in all, it was a pretty fantastic evening.  Congrats to Aki and Asuka as they prepare for their fourth and final wedding ceremony in Hawaii!

Giving Thanks in Japan

I'd like to start this post off by wishing Sydney Rajchel good luck.  She is taking the LSAT as I write this, and as anybody who has ever studied for that monster of a test can tell you, she could use the positive thoughts!  So, good luck Sydney, you'll do great and we love you!


Speaking of Sydney, I get to see her soon!  She won't let me start counting down the days on Facebook, so I'm going to do it here instead.  I get to see her in almost exactly one month!  Words cannot express how excited I am to see her.  I had dinner tonight with some great friends, one of whom had just returned from the States where she spent the better part of a week with her boyfriend.  Most of the time I do pretty well; not getting lonely, or sad, or depressed, but tonight it was especially hard to stay upbeat when I could Machiko's face light up every time the conversation turned to her trip or her boyfriend.  January 4th can't come soon enough, and January 15th can't stay away far enough away.  


Alright, lets move on before I get all emotional.  Back to dinner.  I am incredibly lucky.  5 months ago, I moved to a totally foreign country.  Not only that, but I was moving to a city I had never heard of before, and the only person I knew who lived even remotely close to me was my girlfriend's aunt.  I didn't really speak the language, I was starting a brand new profession, and my only prior contact with the people I would be living with for the next year was an hour long lunch and some emails.  Given all that, to say that I was nervous would have been an understatement.  So why do I think I am lucky? Within 5 months, I have met what has to be the coolest collection of people in Tsu.  Sitting in Minnesota, I never could have hoped that I would meet even a few decent friends, so I can't be thankful enough for the people that I know here.  Considering Thanksgiving was only a few short days ago, It only feels right to take a moment and say how happy I am here, and how lucky I was to come into such a great situation.  So thank you to all of my friends here that have made these five months of living 6,500 miles away from Sydney not only bearable, but wonderful. 


I know a lot of people back in Minnesota were curious about thanksgiving here.  Since the pilgrims stopped Mayflower about 10,000 miles short of Japan, the holiday isn't terribly big over here.  Most of my students' experience with the holiday came from past lessons with OBC teachers, and most of them had never even eaten turkey before!  However, there are plenty of Americans in Tsu, and we kept the holiday spirit strong.  Sarah and I joined our friend Jessica and her husband Hide for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night.  Since Thanksgiving is not actually a holiday here, we all had to work on Thursday.  Dinner was a nice mixture of traditional and unique.  They found a turkey somewhere, so we did get our yearly dose of tryptophan, as well as some chicken.  We mixed in some Japanese fare with some delicious fish, and the sweet potatoes were definitely not your mom's yams with marshmallows on top.  They were still quite tasty though!  Hide is also something a pizza connoisseur, so we added pizza to the menu as well.  Most Japanese kitchens don't come with ovens so Hide had to improvise.  Fortunately, his kitchen did come stocked with a blowtorch, and with the stove's burners and the torch, he made one hell of a delicious pizza.  We rounded out the menu with some pasta salad, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and bread.  Dessert was superb, with brownies and pecan pie, made by our neighborhood friendly Canadian.  


Well, its now 2:14 am, so I think I am going to head to bed.  Hopefully I'll be back to writing regularly again!  Good night!