Finishing off July

If I type fast, this will still be a July post... 12 minutes to go until August!

I apologize for not writing on the blog more this last month. Things have been hectic to say the least. It is the end of the term here, and since I was teaching mostly first year students this time around I got sucked into the abyss of attendance modification. You see, students must have a minimum number of class hours to pass, but if they are short, the teacher can make extra assignments or teach extra lessons to drag the students to the finish line. This becomes especially important for first year students because if they fail first semester, they have to wait a full year before they can start the English track again. Since English is at least half of the first year curriculum, most students that fail the first term of English don't bother to continue - and that reflects poorly on our school. So there's at least a little pressure to help students that are close to the mark.

Our method of choice this year? 8;00 special classes to make up credits. Great in theory, but someone has to teach them. I already come in before 8:00 on most days, so I volunteered to cover the classes. A few kind souls did volunteer to take some of those from me so I didn't need to teach all 5 classes, but it was still a lot of extra work. That coupled with panicked students packing the office and all the test writing and paper grading has kept me pretty busy.

Other than school I have done very, very little of late. The one thing Russell and I have kept up is running, and Swing to a lesser extent (though we skipped this last week for band practice and paper grading). I am proud to say we just ran our first 5k tonight. Hooray! Now to do it faster and with less dehydration at the end!

I am so glad its almost August... August means a trip home and I am seriously ready for that.

Peanut Butter Love

One of my co-workers went home to Guam for a wedding last weekend and brought us all back our most yearned-for American/Western products. Most requested was deodorant (the stuff here is somewhat less that adequate for big sweaty westerners - especially in the deep humidity of summer). I also requested some peanut butter. The last few guests we've had have brought us peanut butter and we always polish it off quickly. We can get crappy peanut butter (like Skippy) here, but its super expensive, comes in small jars and is full of preservatives.

What I really miss is fresh-ground peanut butter. We saw an add in a magazine for a place on the other side of Osaka that appears to grind its own peanut butter, but we didn't write the address down and now we don't know where it is. In the meantime we have made due with the generosity of our friends.

Interestingly, all of our friends are of the opinion that chunky peanut butter couldn't possibly be what we want. We always get creamy. That's not bad - we'll take anything and enjoy it thoroughly - but there's nothing like crunching on real peanuts. Creamy just doesn't seem like it ever came from a nut.

Oh well. Its certainly still delicious.

I'm starting to make a list of the things I want to eat when I am back in the US. Whiffies fried pies is at the top of the list, followed shortly by a wide variety of stouts, American Dream pizza, Dutch Bros. coffee and Panda black licorice.

If only I could have a buffet of said treats in the middle of Powell's Books.

A Very Rainy End

Supposedly rainy season has now ended. We had one week of drizzling with a few decent showers - but nothing compared to the downpour we had a few weeks back. On predicted last day of rainy season I got sick of wearing my rain boots to school (walking 3 miles in rain boots is kind of a chore) and decided to leave them home. I hadn't really needed them on any other day.

Of course, you can imagine what I will say next.

About 3:30 it suddenly decided to rain. There was thunder and lightning. There were evil black walls of clouds. This was no regular rain storm. The rains got heavier and heavier. At one point the water was coming down so hard and there was so much wind that streams of water were being pushed UP the windows. It looked like someone had turned a garden hose on the 2nd story windows from the ground floor.

This carried on for about an hour/hour and a half. By the the time we were ready to head home the rain had mostly passed on and we were able to make it to the bus without getting too wet. The regular path to the bus was deeply under water, though - easily a quarter to half foot of standing water. We followed the office workers and went overland through the bushes to get to the bus. Squishy, but not too bad.

It was hard to believe that a storm like that would be the last of the rain. It may be too early to tell, but the last two days have been dry and sunny. Yesterday was perfect, with a nice breeze. Today is getting pretty hot. Russell and I are hiding in our air conditioning.

This may be the beginning of some serious weather complaining. Prepare yourselves.

Arashiyama Adventure

A few weeks ago, over a lovely French dinner, our two fellow diners decided that it would be fun to go to Arashiyama. I didn't really know what Arashiyama was, but I knew it was close-ish to Kyoto and I am always up for an adventure.

Russell was invited as well, but he had band practice on the appointed day, so he opted out of the trip. It was just me, my former Japanese teacher and her friend.

We took the train to Kyoto and stopped there for lunch. We went up to the restaurant floor in the station and poked around for a good Japanese restaurant. We finally chose one that had a tasty looking bento lunch option. It turned out to be all vegetarian with soy milk and edamame croquettes, rice with beans mixed in, miso soup, a kind of side salad made from the soy bi-product that develops when you make soy milk (its delicious), a bit of fancy tofu, and some yube (made by taking the skin that develops on the top of the hot water where tofu is being made and piling the skins up until you get a kind of layered tofu-skin cake. It is also delicious.

It was one of the best lunches I've ever had in Japan. We were all pretty happy with ourselves after that.

Then, as we were on our way to Arashiyama, my friend spotted a poster advertising a special scenic train ride. She and her friend decided that the scenic train was not to be missed. We actually had to go to Arashiyama to get ON the scenic train, and we decided that instead of taking a full loop on the train, we would go half way and then take a boat back. This was turning into more of an adventure than I had imagined.

The train was fun. From what I could tell, the path the train was taking (along a river) was a main trade route over 400 years ago during the Edo period. At that time, the main mode of transportation was by boat. The boat drivers (using a rudder, a paddle and a pole) would take people down the river to Arashiyama and then some other poor souls had to pull the boats back up river. During the Meiji restoration, when foreigners were allowed into the country, one of the projects that were started was a set of tracks and at least carts, if not a train to expedite trade along this route. The carts (train?) were called "torokko" which was a foreign word presumably taken from "truck." Now, the train is called "torokko". It may have been a steam powered train, though if it was, it was very small scale.

The train ride was fun. The scenery was beautiful and only hinted at how beautiful it must be in autumn when the leaves turn colors. I took tons of pictures, but they really don't do it justice.

Once we got to the other end of the tracks, we took a taxi to the boat landing and headed back! The train ride had only been about 20 minutes, but the boat ride ended up being much longer and more exciting. The river was high that day, so we got some decent rapids. The drivers were very good, though, and there were plastic covers to keep us from getting wet. We were still dry on the other side (though had we been among the rafting groups heading down the river, I doubt the outcome would have been the same. Those groups looked pretty wet, and pretty happy about it.

The rudder guy was in the back, so we quickly forgot about him. The oarsman and the pole guy were in front. The guy using the pole would push off of big rocks and occasionally ground the pole and run along the front half of the boat to push us along and take some strain off of the oarsman. There were several more shallow areas with pretty weak current, so this was clearly a good strategy. Otherwise, the guy on the giant wooden oar was our main form of propulsion. He was also easily 60 and probably older. He joked with us the whole way and generally made the trip awesome. He had a quip for everything and shared a lot of history of the river. I was sad I didn't understand more, but what I did understand was really cool.

For example, he pointed out a number of rocks along the way that were famous for looking like various animals. He also pointed out some defined holes in the rocks, which were apparently from 400 years of pole men ramming their poles in the exact same spot. Now, it appears to be a kind of sport for the pole men to try and hit the little holes as they go by. There were also some rocks we passed that had gouges in them from the ropes that used to be used for hauling boats back upstream.

And of course, it was also absolutely beautiful scenery.

Once we got back to Arashiyama (at least an hour and easily more than that later) it was about 4:30. We took pictures of Togetsukyo bridge (famous, though I never heard why). After that, we decided to stop at a cafe and have some traditional desserts. I had the zenzai with yam ice cream in it. zenzai is the sweat bean soup with little mochi dumplings in it. The ice cream was not a traditional addition, but it was tasty nonetheless. This was accompanied by some chilled matcha green tea.

After the break, we headed to our destination, Tenryuji Temple. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we kept going and took an evening stroll down a famous bamboo grove path. Apparently it is the most famous bamboo grove in Japan. It was really cool. I will have to go back earlier in the day to see the grove with sun poking through. Tenryuji Temple is also a World Heritage Site, so I want to make sure to get back and see it during open hours.

While we didn't get the full effect of Arashiyama, we had a great day out. I also have lots of new ideas for future adventures.

Anniversary!

July 9th has once again come and gone. 4 years prior, Russell and I got married and we have had no end of adventures since. Here's hoping the adventure keeps coming - in the best possible sense.

For a brief time, we thought we might be sharing our anniversary with another friend - Nicole (who came to visit us just about this time last year). She just tied the knot in Ecuador. It turned out she was actually married on July 8th, though, so no sharing after all. Both Russell and I are super happy for Nicole and wish she and Oscar all the best. Wish we could make it to New Hampshire to celebrate the second time around! We'll be there in spirit.

Our last anniversary left something to be desired. We remembered around 11pm and had to scramble to celebrate our anniversary because we had both forgotten about it on the actual day. I believe we ended up buying a rather large family box of chocolate covered ice cream bonbons and devouring them all in the park.

This year we were a bit more organized. While we were both working all day, we did meet up after work to go to a lovely Italian dinner at the fancy Italian place near our house. We hadn't been there since the first visit over a year ago, but it was just as good and at an amazing price for the amount and quality. Its too bad our waist-lines can't take more of that.

We both ordered the set menu - Russell ordered the meat and I ordered the fish version. The meal started with a tuna tartar pate as an appetizer. I wanted to take a picture, but the chef was humming around (probably concerned to make sure we were the kind of foreigners who wouldn't shy away from raw fish). They had carefully checked with us before the meal that we liked everything they were offering, but I think they were still worried until we started effusing with delight.

After the pate we got a spicy italian sausage appetizer, then a dish of seafood pasta followed by a dish of gnocchi and then the meat/fish. After the main dish we got a dessert plate loaded with a sampler of tasty desserts (including grapefruit sorbet, tiramisu and some kind of custard) and we rounded it all out with some delicious coffee.

If I haven't said so before, I really love this place.

So we are off on the right foot as we start towards year 5.

Speech!

When invited to a dinner party in Japan - especially a business related dinner party - it is all too common to be asked to give an introduction and say a few words.

This has got to be the most terrifying experience I have ever had to deal with in Japan. I had the honor of introducing myself - in Japanese - to a bunch of people I vaguely recognized but didn't know so well today. I did, however, know that they were way higher up in the food chain than me. They were all very kind, but pretty darn intimidating.

My boss helped me prep a few sentences and then assured me it would be okay to finish in English. I almost forgot to think of something nice to say in English I was so busy repeating the Japanese lines over and over again.

Here's what I said. The part that was in Japanese is in brackets.

[My name is Jacqueline]
[I started working at this school last year in April.]
[I worked in Oregon in America before that]
I think teaching is one of the most wonderful things we can do.
I feel honored to work for this group.
[Its very nice to meet you]

I'm sure I was beet red the whole time and I shudder to think of the errors I undoubtedly made. Even so, it went far smoother than my self introduction to the study abroad parents last year. That was a royal disaster. It still gives me nightmares.

Parents are easily as terrifying as powerful businessmen. Probably more so.

I was rewarded with a delicious buffet dinner, cake and coffee.