Don't Worry

I have been getting concerned emails today about the 7.0 earthquake that hit Okinawa early this morning.

All I can say is don't worry. According to the newspaper (which didn't even report on the incident until six hours later) there were only two injuries (one older woman fell and another older woman rolled out of bed) and one burst water pipe. And that was IN Okinawa. We are about 750 miles away - that's like Seattle to San Francisco. Its not close.

Of course, Japan is earthquake central, so I'm sure we will feel an earthquake - maybe several - at some point, but there is no concern from the one that happened today. Japan is probably one of the safest places for earthquakes because they build with earthquakes in mind - and they rebuild frequently.

And if you didn't see any news today about the earthquake, don't worry. I don't think most people in Japan did either.

UPDATE:

You probably know that there was a huge earthquake in Chile that caused a tsunami. There is a tsunami warning here, but the predicted wave size for Kobe is 50cm. Probably not safe to be strolling the beach today, but we are way up a hill, so we are still in absolutely no danger. They are calling for 3 meter waves around the north side of Honshu island, so there may be some damage in that area (very far from us). Okinawa may be getting more action from the tsunami as well - they are not anticipating big waves there, but the whole island is on middle level alert for some waves and raised sea levels.

Hina Matsuri

Another traditional Japanese holiday is just around the corner. March 3rd is Hina Matsuri, or Girls Day. The basic idea of the holiday is to bring good fortune to female children (there is a boys day in May) and hopefully bring them good fortune in their lives. The main way Girls Day is celebrated is to put up a a display in the house of a red carped draped over a stair-step stand upon which a set of very expensive, very fancy display dolls are set up. At the top are dolls representing an emperor of many years passed and his empress while the lower stair-steps hold their attendants.

The dolls are very finely crafted and not meant to be played with at all. They are very expensive and it is not uncommon for grandparents to buy a set for a baby girl when she is born (assuming they can afford it). One of (Western) co-workers informed me that in olden days only the rich could afford the dolls, so they would put up displays were the poorer girls in the neighborhood could look in and enjoy them as well. I haven't found any reference to this online, so while colorful, I am suspicious that particular story may not be true.

In any case, one thing my co-worker was very right about was that the little treats that are often displayed along with the dolls are delicious! You can buy packages of crispy little rice balls flavored with sugar, soy sauce, seaweed, squid and others that are chocolate covered. Imagine sweet and salty KiX. I don't really know how tasty that sounds... but they are addictively awesome. Apparently they will be gone after the 3rd, so I'm going to have to stock up.

After the last two posts, I'm starting to get all nostalgic for my first year in Japan. There have been so many surprises. Pretty soon, I'm going to know what to expect... won't that be weird.

Not-barb

I have been all excited these last few weeks because a batch of rhubarb arrived in the grocery store. I have been too busy at work to make anything as elaborate as, say, dessert, but I grabbed some rhubarb today to make into a topping for ice-cream.

To counter balance the real main course of the evening, I decided to be extra healthy for dinner. I decided on spinach salad with a chinese-restaurant-style saute vegetable concoction on top and a slab of grilled fish. After a dinner like that you practically NEED dessert, right?

I tried to buy vanilla ice cream on my way home, but the 7-11 didn't have any and it was raining like it meant it outside, so I just trudged home. After dinner, I sent Russell out to get the ice cream and I started chopping rhubarb. All was going well until I decided to chew on a piece.

Celery. I got some kind of crazy big celery-tasting rhubarb impostor.

I was terribly disappointed. It wouldn't be so bad if I actually could get rhubarb here... but now I'm worried it won't happen. I guess its still early in the season. I should probably try to be patient - but I've been here very nearly a full year so far, and I don't remember any other likely rhubarb candidates.

I was also sad that I couldn't find beets. We're pretty close to Russia here, I was hopeful that beets would have made the little hop over to Japan, but apparently not.

The good news is that there is a wide variety of absolutely delicious vegetables in Japan that I'm really hoping I won't be forced to part with when I eventually return States-side. I don't really want to imagine a kitchen without goya, satsuma imo, young bamboo shoots and the wide variety of amazing mushrooms.

Vegetable Love.

I also still got ice cream out of the evening's fiasco, so that 'aint so bad.

Evening Out

Had a wonderful evening out with my co-workers. It was a good-bye party for three of my colleagues who will be moving on. I'm really going to miss them. There are some new people coming in next week, though, so I'm looking forward to meeting them.

We got a reserved table at a Thai restaurant. We all paid our part for a 5 course set menu and one of our co-workers (who could not attend) picked up the tab for drinks. The food was really good - actually spicy!

By a couple drinks in, everyone at the table was pretty relaxed and happy too. It was good. There was very little talk of work, which was also good. The co-worker who was actually celebrating his last day of work today was presented with a very large bottle of sake, followed by his presenting us with a very nice speech. The next co-worker who will be leaving gave a very short speech due to an allergic reaction that was setting in, and the third co-worker (who plans to leave but hasn't been granted a final day yet) also said a few words. It was nice.

I'm glad this won't actually be the last time I see everyone. Its hard to process the fact that people really won't be coming back to work. I wish them well in their future pursuits.

Valentine's Not-Gingerbread... Monster Church?

During Christmas, I was kind of disappointed to discover that most people in Japan don't know what a gingerbread house is. Most thought they were interesting, but not enough to make one. So sad.

A bakery in Osaka, however, did manage to build an all-baked-goods church for Valentine's days. There were even danishes sitting in the pews.

At least construction with confections is not a total loss.

They get extra credit for making it as tall as Russell and making sugar stained glass windows.

Happy Birthday to Me

We are just rounding out the end February 17th in Japan - and its just beginning in Oregon. I guess technically I was celebrating early. I woke up in a pretty bad mood, but things improved quickly with some hot-off-the-griddle French toast from Russell.

I caught all my transportation easily (no running today!) and got to have a very nice long discussion with my boss about textbooks in the morning. I had given up on the possibility of a textbook meeting because none of my colleagues managed to make it to work on time today. I've been anxious to get started on that project. Textbook talk was followed by two mini-classes for some students who returned from abroad and need to make up some extra credits. They were full of questions and while the whole class was a tangent to what I had planned it was really fun and energizing.

Russell met me downtown and we decided to go to yakiniku for dinner. We headed back to the place near our house (our favorite) but unfortunately it is randomly closed on Wednesdays. No yakiniku for us. Instead of getting back on the train to head downtown again - or settle for average food in our neighborhood - we decided to postpone the yakiniku until tomorrow night and opted instead for bento from the convenience store.

After dinner Russell gave me a pretty necklace for my birthday and a cake! The cake was awesome. Its spongy yellow cake on top with pudding in the middle. There are also chunks of strawberry and apple in the pudding and a crispy chocolate cookie bottom. Definitely unusual, but very tasty. I like it better than the traditional Japanese birthday cake. Russell also got me some imo-custard treats. These are custard in the center with a sweetened sweet-potato outer layer. Very Japanese and very tasty.

Very tasty evening followed by TV and snuggles. Nice.

Our Latest Visitor

For the long weekend this week (four days!) I make plans with Jamie Suter - one of the long standing Program Assistants I had the benefit of working with at Oregon State University. Jamie had moved to Japan to teach in the JET program a year before I came, so she is just finishing her second year now. We had been in vague contact for a while but hand't ever managed to get together since I had arrived in Japan. This was the last good weekend, though, so we made it happen. Jamie came all the way from Ojiya, a country town a ways north of Tokyo, and we spent the weekend having fun in Kobe and Osaka.

Jamie arrived Thursday late afternoon, so Thursday was spent mostly just walking around the (very rainy) city, then eating dinner downtown and going to karaoke.

Friday we got a little more creative.

First, we went out to my school so Jamie could see where I work. After that, we ate lunch at the awesome vegetarian restaurant in town and then headed to the cat cafe. I posted pictures of this before and if I ever get pictures from Jamie I will post the more recent set. Imagine the lady being swarmed by cats and then imagine its me in the middle of the cats and the cats are surrounded by Japanese highschoolers taking pictures. You get the idea. We jumped in early with the treats this time around and that really did make the experience more fun. The cats warmed up to us more than last time, too. I assume because they were hoping we still had a few treats hidden in our pockets or something.

After the kitties, we headed to Harborland and checked out tickets to ride the pink pirate ship around the bay. It turned out the we had missed the last normal ride and the very final ride of the evening would take a different route out to the Kobe airport and back. It was a longer trip, but the price was the same, so we went for it. Once the ship was back, we climbed on board. I have a poor quality picture of the boat (it was dark and my phone doesn't take good night shots) but you get the idea. To really get the idea look at the picture and play "My Heart Will Go On" from titanic loud and on repeat. We could sit in the bottom level, the top level, or walk out onto the deck on the very top (where it was crazy cold and windy). We generally stayed up top until we couldn't take it anymore and then retreated to the second story to look out the windows instead.

The trip was fun (once we learned to block out the music). We got to see my school on Port Island (from the water point of view). We also got to see the insanely large shipping vessel that's been parked outside the MOL shipping center next door to our school for the last week. Its 6-7 stories tall in the center and just massive. It kind of scared me when I first noticed it. Its even bigger when you are in a small pink pirate ship. As an unexpected bonus, we also got to see the Akashi-Kaikyou Bridge that goes from that goes out to Awaji Island. It is currently the longest suspension bridge in the world. At 1,991 meters its pretty impressive. It was all lit up in rainbow colors so it was easy to see at night.

Finally, on the way home, we had a beautiful view of Kobe all lit up. I really should have brought my good camera. The camera phone has its downsides.

Saturday was spent wandering around Osaka and enjoying the aquarium. (They have capybara! Huh?) The highlight of Sunday for me was watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics and making not-takoyaki at the end. Jamie is vegetarian, so she wasn't so excited about eating octopus balls. Unfortunately, we have this awesome takoyaki pan that gets far too little use, so we compromised. We made octopus balls with mochi and cheese inside instead of octopus. It was surprisingly delicious. We are ever honing our takoyaki skills.

We also slipped in some Go, SET and whiskey to round out the evening.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Russell and I have never been big on Valentine's Day - with one exception. We always order the heart-shaped pizza from Woodstock's Pizza in Corvallis. Why? Because there's only one day a year when you can get one and its kind of silly.

Otherwise nothing. No gifts, no cards. Occasionally we wish each other a Happy Valentine's Day, but that's really just as the mood strikes us.

I already posted on Valentine's day customs in Japan, and as far as I can tell those have held true. I didn't get to definitely verify the customs this year, though, because Valentine's Day falls both after the semester ends AND on a Sunday this year. Not only that, but Thursday was a holiday, so I took Friday off too and made a nice long weekend for myself. I was super disconnected from cultural activities (other than long lines for chocolate at the stores). I did drop by work for a few minutes on Friday and was presented a box of sweets from two of my students. She had made them for all the English teachers to share, but there was only one other English teacher in on Friday and she didn't want any of the treats. I was planning to leave them in the refrigerator until Monday, but my colleague convinced me to just take them home and enjoy them before they got stale. They were quite good. There were two homemade chocolates (like super melty center of a really good chocolate truffle, wrapped in saran and sealed with a pink pig sticker). A slice of chocolate cake and a half dozen chocolate and vanilla swirl short bread cookies. It was all delicious. I feel guilty for not sharing more at work. It was a very sweet gift.

This Valentine's Day, Russell and I plan to stay home and play video games, cook curry, do laundry, and generally not move much. We are looking forward to it. I did buy Russell a box of chocolates as a tip-of-the-hat to our current home. Plus, I fully intend to help with their consumption. I guess Valentine's Day isn't that bad.

For anyone out there still reading this blog, Happy Valentine's Day. If you are in Corvallis, have a slice of pizza for us.

My Students

My students drive me crazy sometimes, but then they turn around and do the cutest, sweetest things. Overall, in spite of some deserved eye-rolling, I have pretty awesome students.

Monday was the last day most of them were around school because it was the last official day of final exams. We had lots of students stopping in to say goodbye to the teachers who will be leaving and asking for photos.

I didn't figure out why they kept bothering me until close to the end of the day. Here I was, trying to get papers graded and they wouldn't leave me (or my co-workers) alone! Sheesh!

Then I realized that even though I would be at work for the next month and beyond, this was there last day for a while and they wanted to chat. They would scoot up to my desk with big expectant eyes and I would ask them if they had a question and they would maybe say "no" or maybe ask me some question like, "are you going back to Oregon during the break?" I'm not the brightest bulb sometimes, but once I realized they just wanted to make a last connection before they finished their first year of school, it made me feel all warm fuzzy.

Monday was also Russell's birthday, and there was only one bus running from the school since most of the other schools had already finished their finals. Even though I now realized my students wanted to chat, I explained that I had to get home to celebrate with Russell. They all got very excited and told me to wish him a happy birthday for them, which I promised I would.

Then, today, one of the students showed up with a bag. She asked me if Russell like "sweets." I told her he did and she said she had some sweets for him for his birthday. She started pulling out little snack pouches of barbeque potato chips, prawn crackers, peanuts, etc. She asked me if he liked salty sweets better or sweet sweets better. I told her he like all snacks quite a lot and we discussed the finer differences between "sweets" and "snacks." She told me I had to tell Russell the snacks were from the "Japanese Jokers." I offered her some paper to write her message herself, so she set to work. The final paper says:

Happy Birthday Russell (With a smiley face and a bow)
Please eat snacks with Jaci (Heart)
I hope you have a good year with Jaci (Star)
From Japanese Jokers

I'm not 100% sure what the "Japanese Jokers" part is about. I suspect it is the result of Russell's visit to the school last Friday. He met up with this same student and at some point in the conversation she asked him how old he was and he returned the question. She accidentally told Russell she was 9 years old instead of 19 years old which got everyone laughing. She was embarrassed about the mistake, but my boss covered for her insisting that it was a "Japanese Joke" (never a mistake!) That caught on and pretty soon they were all laughing.

We have an awful lot of fun sometimes. I enjoy the students a lot.

Happy Birthday to Russell

There are five minutes left of Russell's birthday here in Japan, but since it is only 7am in Oregon I'm not going to worry if I'm a bit late.

Russell had a rather unfortunate birthday in some ways - namely getting food poisoning from a restaurant in Osaka yesterday when we went to get one of his birthday presents. He's okay now, but he spent most of the day less than happy.


On the other end of things, he is one lucky boy when it comes to all other aspects of the day. He managed to get three pretty sweet prizes for his birthday this year. A Play Station 3 console, the new Final Fantasy game (in Japanese, so the voice acting is excellent) AND a multi-effects stomp box for his guitar. The last gift probably shouldn't count since he gave it to himself as something he needs and wants for playing with his new band, but I'm tacking it on the list anyway.

Russell was a little sheepish that his stash was going to be posted online, but the way I see it, all he got for Christmas was a $10 takoyaki pan.

We run a little hot and cold in the 'ole gift giving department in this family. The way I see it, he should revel in the fact that he is making out like a bandit because it may not happen again for a very long time.

We also celebrated with a classic Japanese birthday cake. The standard white cake with strawberries on top is emblematic of birthdays in Japan. All the television shows, animation and movies show exactly this kind of cake. It seemed very important to follow tradition. It was tasty, too! All that "frosting" is actually whipped cream, so its not super sweet. Just right.

Happy Birthday, Russell!

Weekend Stuff

The last few weeks have been really tough at work. Good, but tough. The students suddenly realized they had to take final exams, give final presentations, turn in papers, redo rough drafts, etc, before the end of the term. (Monday is the last day of Final Exams week - not counting second chance and third chance tests... but that's another post) .

Long story short, I have been swamped in the office. This is partially my fault for being as transparent as possible for my tests. Students knew exactly what they have to do, and realizing it will be difficult, decided they actually did need come see me. Many were also writing students with questions about their final reports. This has resulted in a revolving door of students. From 9am to 6 pm and sometimes later, I have been fielding questions, giving practice questions and giving feedback on papers. On good days I can squeeze drinking coffee in before the 9am rush and buying rice balls for lunch while someone is in the middle of working on a project in the office. I generally eat at my desk between students or occasionally while helping students. Being a good American, however, I have so far refused to skip lunch.

This has made weekends all the more precious. While I wish the last few weekends had been a break from the chaos, they were really more of a staging ground for the following week - still good, though.

Weekends give me a chance to catch up on grading and get laundry done. Of course, always one to procrastinate, I also get some web surfing an blogging in between grading projects. Today a case in point.

This weekend things are finally starting to wind down. I have to give final grades to the 50 reports I collected, but I am finished giving and grading my listening exams and the oral presentations on Monday should be graded before I leave school that day. Its nice to see the light at the tunnel. So nice, in fact, that Russell and I have been putting extra energy into getting organized this weekend. We finally did a good job cleaning the house (as opposed to just straightening). This hasn't happened since before Russell's sister came in November - and wasn't even done especially well then. It is a huge relief.

We have also been doing mega-ammounts of laundry. Three loads yesterday and two loads today. Its almost finished. Of course, the quantity is partially due to washing all the bedding in anticipation of a guest next week. We have also been airing out beds and trying to de-fume the large futon (the one that got the bleach treatment a few months back). We think the bleach smell has been thoroughly baked out now.

Finally, on Saturday night I finished grading my last listening tests while Russell launched into a PlayStation3 game he bought to go with his shiny new PS3 console. We are waiting for Final Fantasy XIII to come in the mail, but in the meantime Russell found a samurai game to tide him over.

Hanging out in a fresh and shiny home with lots of snacks and something interesting to watch felt awesome.

Round Two for Rockstar Russell

Russell's first band (Green Day cover band) wasn't really working out. The bass player quit before Russell started (he had to get a job) and the drum player was sick and then too busy. Russell met up with the other guitar player a few times, but it had fizzled out lately.

Finally having given up and reinvigorated by Rock Fujiyama, Russell went searching for a new band. He seems to have found one, too. Now, instead of Green Day covers, he's going to try covering Ai Otsuka. She would be more in the "super sugar coated Japanese pop" category. All of her albums include the word Love. Of course, her name, Ai, also means love, so she isn't JUST being girly.

Russell met with the band today (or at least some of the band members) and he has hope for this group. He hasn't played with them yet, but he seems impressed so far. I think what he's really hoping for is a band where he's not quite up to snuff and can rise to the challenge. In the meantime he will assume as much and hope he is good enough to at least be kept once they do meet again and start playing.

Time to tune the 'ole axe.

English to Japanese word of the day: "Akogi"

Submit your guesses in the comments. Your hint? Russell learned it today when he met with the band.

Stealth Holiday

We damn near missed one of the coolest Japanese holidays ever!

Thankfully, my co-worker tipped me off at work, so we were able to salvage some of it.

Today is Setsubun! Setsubun is apparently the last day before Spring according to the Japanese lunar calendar. It can fall on February 3rd or 4th. This is a day to get rid of bad spirits and bring luck into the house.

So how do you do that? From what I hear:

1. Dads around the country come into the house wearing a demon mask and their children throw roasted soy beans at them until they leave the house.
2. While throwing soy beans, the chldren yell "Oni wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" or "Devil out, Good luck in!"
3. The children eat their age's worth of the beans (on the floor?) I think so...
4. Hang burned, dried sardine heads outside your house so the strong smell will drive away evil spirits (not largely practiced anymore).
5. Clean the house extra super good.
6. Various regional traditions. In Kansai, (where we are) someone offical announces what the lucky direction is for the year (as my co-worker pointed out, this seems not unlike Mr. Punxatawny Phil). Everyone then eats a futo-maki (long rolled sushi) facing that direction. They can't talk until they finish.

I didn't have a demon to throw beans at, unfortunately, but I did throw peanuts at my students. That was fun. It was their idea, by the way. Four of them took one bag of peanuts to the bottom floor of the school (outside) and the rest of us stayed upstairs on the deck and we threw peanuts at each other and yelled "Oni wa soto!" A couple of us threw a few peanuts at the school and yelled "Fuku wa uchi" for good measure.

Russell and I also ate our age in - well, not roasted soy beans but peanuts again. I thought I had found soy beans but I was lead astray.

We also ate our futo-maki facing West Southwest, which I was informed was the direction for this year. I made the mistake of assuming that I should eat it fast. My tummy kind of hurts now. In retrospect, I don't think there was anything about speed in the directions.

In the end, we are hopefully a bit better off for luck this year than we would have been otherwise. Hopefully if we did anything too grievously unlucky today we will get a few passes for being foreigners. Next year I will be better prepared!

I tried to take pictures, but they didn't turn out - and my computer is currently refusing to recognize my iphone when I try to transfer photos...

End of the School Year... Almost

The school year in Japan starts in April and ends right around now. We are in the middle of finals week, but after next Monday I am done with my first year of teaching.

Of course, there are plenty of other projects to keep me busy until the new year starts in April, but its hard to believe my classes are done.

At the moment I am buried in nervous students wanting my help before they take their final exams. The only reason I got lunch today was because I ran downstairs and bought two rice balls while one of my students was working out how to change a passive sentence to an active one. I ate while I talked with her and then was quickly spirited off to interview returning study abroad students. I don't think I stopped moving for more than 2 minutes today. It was exhausting.

I also haven't had an evening without work to bring home. I think I complained about that earlier as well. It shows I'm getting soft. I used to do hours of take-home work every night when I worked in Oregon. Now I'm getting pretty used to having my evenings free.

Once the week is over, though, things are going to get real quiet. I will still be busy, but I will be able to focus on just textbooks. No more balancing final exams with paper checking, presentation checking, grammar help, interviews, test writing and voice acting. I look forward to the monotony.

Remind me of that in a few weeks.