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.

French cuisine

Today is an uninspiring, very wet day. While I don't have any new stories, I did think of some old ones! About two weeks ago, my previous Japanese teacher invited Russell and I to go to a French restaurant. We had been talking about it for some time, but had never gotten around to it. Keiko also invited another friend who she had met while they were studying abroad in the same program in Canada.

The four of us together headed to the restaurant. When we walked in, Russell and I instinctively feared for our pocketbooks. There were cherrywood cabinets lined with fancy china and heavy silver. The place was small and sophisticated. We had been assured it wasn't that expensive so we hesitantly continued. As it turned out, the restaurant was awesome. It was fussy, with the aforementioned place settings and tiny, tiny portions, but the set menu was only $40 which was much less than we were worried it would be, and actually included so many tiny, tiny dishes that it was very filling.

We had a small appetizer, two courses we had selected from a menu, a tiny ball of sorbet, a meat (or fish) course, two rounds of fresh baked bread, dessert and finally a cup of coffee. All of this was spread out over about three hours - so we took our time, got to know each other REAL well, and felt like we had had quite a feast on the way out.

Russell and I don't make a habit of going to fancy restaurants, but we will definitely go back to this one some day.

A Taste of Home

Just as I finished my last post and published it, I remembered something interesting that we did on Saturday.

On my walk to work in the morning, I go past at least 3 interesting looking cafes. They are often full of people and not too full of smoke - a good sign. They also have reasonably priced breakfast menus. I thought it would be fun on Saturday for Russell and I to go out to breakfast at one of these establishments.

Russell had been down this road early on in our Japanese adventure and the cafes had not jumped out as being especially tasty. After some prodding, though, he agreed to go take a look. I blew right past one place because I was doing too much talking and not enough observing of my surroundings. The second place was closed for the weekend, but the third place was open and doing a brisk business. A couple left just as we were walking up, so we grabbed the open table.

Inside, the cafe was a cheerful American/country style with wood chairs and chalkboard menus hanging on the walls. The menu was also surprisingly American. Keeping in mind that traditional Japanese breakfasts consist of rice, fish and vegetables and common "wester" breakfasts consist of coffee with two tiny slices of toast or (for those with an appetite) and egg salad sandwich, I was more than a little surprised to see "bacon and eggs," "pancakes" etc. Of course, there were more traditional Japanese choices and several hybrid options, but all the breakfasts seemed to be filling portions (though not gut-busters). I had the bacon and eggs and was quite pleased with the result. It tasted quite authentic but had the added perk of not being too huge and including a lovely side salad. Russell got the lunch special which was more leaning toward the Japanese side of things. There was some delicious chicken with onions, a small bowl of rice, miso soup and bacon.

We will definitely have to go back. The only drawback for Russell was that there wasn't internet available. Which means he can't camp out there and work during the day. It says a lot that he was disappointed by this realization. It did seem like a good place to park for a while.

Nothing Exciting

I feel like I've been horribly negligent of the blog lately... I just can't think of anything new to post. Life has been going along like normal. I did "get" to help out with Open Campus this weekend. I have probably explained Open Campus before, but to sum up, Open Campus is a weekend event - usually on Sunday - when high school students can come tour the school, meet current students, take a few short sample classes, chat with teachers and get one-on-one time with the school counselors. There's also free lunch and an all-you-can-eat cake buffet.

This year is a bit more refined than previous years. There is an organizational meeting at 9am now - something the English teachers have not managed to attend yet due to a mix of inability to follow directions and general lack of information. Hopefully we will get that fixed up the next time around. There's more selection of classes for the students to sample and an "English Party" in the afternoon after lunch. This weekend was my first English Party. It consisted of American-esque snacks and everyone sitting around chatting and grazing. It actually went quite well. It was a good way to give the students a sense of confidence (safety in numbers) but get them talking in English. The proud parents looked on over their endless selection of cake.

The sad news is that Open Campus has stretched from 10am to 3pm to 9am to 5pm. It is now a full extra day of work. No chance to sleep in, no chance to leave early and still do something fun with your Sunday before work on Monday. We have set up a schedule in advance this year, though, so everyone knows when they are on duty and can plan ahead. None of us have to come in too many times. That's a big improvement over last year.

Other than Open Campus, I can't think of anything novel that's going on. Just lots of teaching and not enough sleeping. I'll try to think of something more interesting for my next post.

Laundry

You may recall the unfortunate laundry wars of 2009.
In case you forgot, or weren't interested in that drama, here's a recap:

Russell and I moved into our apartment. We were thrilled to see a shabby little coin laundry less than a block from our house. One less appliance we would need! Hooray!

Within a month, it had been bulldozed.

We kept an expectant eye on it, hoping a new shiny coin laundry would replace the old one. In the meantime, we were hauling our dirty laundry 5 blocks down hill to another little coin laundry, paying about $5 to wash two loads and then hauling all the heavy wet laundry back up the hill to hang at our house. A couple months after this, Russell and I had been in enough laundry related fights that Russell finally went out and found a used laundry machine. He had it delivered and installed and life turned all rosy again. We kept an eye on the extensive construction project where the first laundromat had been, but no luck. After 6 months, they started building a large apartment complex and there was clearly no coin laundry in the floor plan.

No problems, though. We had (and still have) a perfectly good way to clean our clothes that doesn't involve too much planning or physical exertion.

Of course, there's a reason I'm telling this story again. A month or so ago, we were walking by the apartment complex (recently finished and almost fully populated) and realized that the construction crew was back and was building a small out-building. The cover came down last week, and sure enough, its a little coin laundry. It looks quite swank and has a stylish sign hanging outside. It hasn't been set up inside yet, and clearly we don't need it anyway, but both Russell and I got a twinge of "ooh! should have waited!"

Gotta love irrationality.

What the weather's up to

The weather has been pretty unpredictable lately. We didn't get much of a spring. It continued to be cold until about April, then it warmed up a bit, then cold, then some rain, then a little humid, then cold. It certainly wasn't predictable. All the rain kept us thinking we were hitting an early rainy season, but in spite of a few humid days, the weather always cleared up. Often we had our nicest weather right after a rain.

That has now ceased. The temperatures and humidity are now steadily building. Our air conditioner is on and its less than pleasant to stroll around outside. It isn't bad yet... if this were as bad as it got we would have nothing to complain about. But this is just the beginning. And its only June. August and maybe even September is usually the peak of the heat and humidity, so we've got a ways to go.

Of course, the weather hasn't been predictable yet, so maybe there will be some respite.

Beer Garden

Last Sunday's swing lesson was really good. The instructor (who we had heard glowing things about) was a bit hung over when he arrived, but even so, clearly knew what he was doing. We learned a lot - almost too much. Its hard to keep track of all the things we are suppose to be doing. For the moment it feels like we are doing even worse than before... but maybe that's the "ignorance is bliss" bubble popping.

After the lesson we were invited to go to a beer garden. No problems there! We ended up meeting up with a bunch of other people from the Wednesday Swing group and heading to the Hankyu Department Store roof. It turns out a "beer garden" in Japan is an all you can eat, all you can drink extravaganza with a field of plastic picnic tables and chairs covering the rooftop. The regular price was just under $40, but we got a nice discount because the group leader is awesome.

We spent the evening eating and drinking too much while chatting extensively with the people we have mostly only danced with before. Everyone is super friendly.

Once the beer garden closed, a group of revelers decided to continue the party in the form of a game night (DDR, etc) at one guy's apartment. I had to work the next morning (and it was already 10pm with a 1 hour ride home) so I pled out. Russell went with them, though and had a good time. He crashed on the guy's couch for the night and then came home Monday morning when the trains started running again. He was pretty zombie-fied the next evening when our paths crossed again.

Strangely Familiar...

So it turns out that tuna innards and mascarpone has a strangely familiar flavor... In fact, while not crunchy, it is identical to Cheetos.

Its nice to find substitutes.

Pop Quiz

Pretend you are coming home from work. Your spouse pulls the mail out of the mailbox and and says, "Nice. A Happiness Realization Party."

What is the appropriate response?

A. Huh?
B. Well, we should certainly go to that!
C. No thanks, I'd rather vote for Everyone's Party.

Correct answer?

C.

Japan has a certain knack when it comes to naming political parties. For those of you who guessed B, you are in good company. That was Russell's response.

Swing

I know I've already said quite a bit about Russell and my new swing adventure, but its just so much fun! We are still dancing every Wednesday and now we've signed up for a beginners + workshop on Sunday. Three hours of focused lesson should help a lot. We are looking forward to it.

To prepare, we finally dug into the Charlston YouTube videos Russell's friend Phil sent us. A couple of hours practicing and we are doing pretty good.

Unfortunately, we had to pass on the Lindy Exchange in Korea this August - we are hoping to be visiting Oregon around that time (not confirmed). We're missing out. I guess there's always next year... and other exchanges.

Outstanding Story #2

It was brought to my attention that I kind of left you all hanging with only one of my several Outstanding Stories from our adventures with Phil.

Let me fill you in on another (though I don't know that the ones to follow are quite as outstanding as the first).

Outstanding Story #2

When my dad was in town we noticed something interesting. We were walking down on of the shopping streets in Osaka, when we saw one store devoted entirely to straw hats - the kind of straw hats you might expect to see someone wearing while attending to a soda fountain or making a sundae. The store was totally empty. Dad and I didn't hold out much hope for them. It turns out, Dad and I did't understand the subtlety of fashion trends.

I started to see straw hats in all the stores.

When Phil came, he also noticed a straw hat and laughed about it a little. We explained that straw hats were the latest trend and then he started seeing them everywhere. They are often paired with white-washed denim dresses or skirts, big brown leather accessories and feminine floral prints on white fabrics. This is the look of Spring, come to find out - at least, it is this year.

Phil decided he needed pictures - or at least one good picture to show people at home. The problem was getting a picture. It seemed creepy for a guy to take a picture of some girl on the train. Unfortunately, Phil didn't speak enough Japanese to ask, charmingly, if he could take someone's picture. Russell wasn't helping. Phil decided to be covert. He started trying to catch photos of people secretly. They weren't turning out too well, but eventually we got a display in a store window that summed things up. The mass of pictures with straw hats in large crowds should be enough to confirm that yes, this fashion had been adopted by the masses.



Oh, and we also saw Carmen Sandiego.

I ♥ Kasuganomichi

Russell has devoted a great deal of time over the last year to try and find groups to join, friends to talk to, events to enjoy - anything to help him meet people and use more Japanese. He's been a trooper, but his socializing scheme has not panned out so well. You have followed some of the "Join a Band" saga (I have a happy update coming), but there have been so many more attempts that have gone the same direction.

Conversation partners: Russell was lucky enough to meet an awesome friend who he spent a lot of time with for the first 6 months... until that friend moved to LA.

Bands: Russell joined one band only to have almost everyone else become to busy or quit before they could rehearse together. He auditioned for another band, but their lead singer quit and they disbanded, and finally, he tried out for another band where he didn't get a call back.

Local bar: This one worked okay. He always has somewhere he can go to chat. He also gets the benefit of chatting with men, which is good because men's speech and women's speech is not the same in Japan. Its a problem when men learn to speak with women Japanese friends.

Mixi: Mixi is an online social network in Japan, not unlike Facebook. It took Russell a lot of work to get an account (he finally had to contact his old university to reactivate his student email address) but he managed to get in. He decided to search for groups to join and typed in Kasuganomichi (our neighborhood). Lo and behold, there was an "I ♥ Kasuganomichi" club. He joined. He was then invited to come to an I ♥ Kasuganomichi club party.

And that's where our latest adventure begins.

Last night Russell and I went to meet some of the other folks in our neighborhood. The party was a house party (our first in Japan). We met the party planner at the train station and headed to the next station over. The party was in one of the members' apartments. When we arrived there were three low tables set up with a big electric skillet in the middle of the table and tons of plates heaped with meat and bowls full of vegetables. We were handed beers and chu-hai (a sort of carbonated, fruit flavored alcohol) and sat down to talk with people and wait for the crowd to gather. It turns out there were about 7 other people at the party (apparently a low turn out).

Who else was there?

There was the party planner - a third year university student, the owner of the apartment (a nurse), a preschool teacher, a local mafia guy (this might have been a joke, but he did have a giant dragon tatoo on his arm), a tennis instructor, an international automotive businessman, a gas station attendant, and a guy who was certainly the life of the party but I have no idea what his job was.

It was a very mixed crowd of 20-30 year olds and it was a LOT of fun. They were all very welcoming, the food was AMAZING (and extremely plentiful). We gorged ourselves on grilled meat and vegetables, then the hostess started making grilled onigiri (rice balls) and since two birthdays had just gone by, next came two big (delicous) cakes. At some point after this, one of the guests realized that we hadn't made the yakisoba yet! It was voted down. We were all a little over stuffed.

We also spent the whole evening speaking Japanese. Russell is able to actually do full on Japanese, now, I was able to follow the conversations pretty darn well, but I'm still not quick or confident enough to participate. I need to work on that.

We were invited to go camping with them in August.

That's some rain...

So the rain was hard enough this morning that public schools were shut down and the train was an hour delayed.

I didn't have any problem getting to work (sometimes its nice to live close) but I did take a change of shoes, imagining I would need them. I wore my Dansko's to work because they keep me the farthest away from the puddles. I made it 90% of the way to work, but just as I was going down the last set of stairs outside our school, I managed to step in a two inch puddle that went up to my ankle. Thinking I had just hit the deep part of the puddle, I took a leap towards the school. Turned out the whole walk was under two inches of water. At this point both feed were completely under wanter and my pants were thoroughly splashed with rain water.

I was glad I had my spare shoes. Of course, the water had soaked through the bag they were in, so they didn't LOOK like my dry shoes... but at least they were dry on the inside.

We get a week of dry (hopefully not hot and humid) weather after this.

Highlights of Months Past

As I'm sure you've noticed, my blogging has been spotty at best these last couple of months. A lot of that has had to do with the new school year starting. The additional responsibility of acting as contact for four study abroad schools on top of a full teaching schedule has kept me quite busy. I feel like I barely find time to fit in sleep anymore - let alone blogging. Hopefully that will improve, though, now that everything is up and running.

In the meantime, I have failed to post some outstanding stories. Better get going on that, eh?

Outstanding Story #1: Nara and Fushimi Inari Shrine with Phil.

Phil headed home weeks ago... a month ago? Russell and I really enjoyed the company and we managed to get out to do quite a bit of sight seeing even though Phil worked most of the week days with Russell. One of the last trips we made was to Nara (to see the deer and giant Buddha) and then on to Fushimi Inari for a hike through the Torii-lined trails of the shrine. (Torii are the red gates found at Shinto shrines.) This shrine, as you may remember from Carolyn and Dad's visits has thousands of torii and is quite beautiful.

Unfortunately, Russell's leg was acting up and he didn't think he'd survive a hike. He had brought his computer, so he headed off to find internet somewhere while Phil and I took on the shrine. I'm afraid prior knowlege of how daunting the hike at this shrine can be has caused me to see this particular stop as a hiking challenge more than a sight-seeing destination. This meant I charged up the hill with little regard for whether Phil might want to, you know, enjoy the scenery or take a few odd pictures. . I'm not always the most thoughtful hostess.

It turned out to be a good thing that we had raced through the shrine, though. A couple hours later, just when we were on our way out, I got a message from Russell. I quote:

Russell: "Status?"
Jaci: "On our way out. I"ll text at exit."
Russell: "I"m at a bar nearby: Asonia." "Bartender is trying to feed me Absynthe"
5 minutes later
Jaci: "Just finished"
Russell: "What should I do?"
Jaci: "About the absynthe?"
Russell: " Ha. He gave me some. I think I have to drink it. Mottainai"

So Russell sent us a map with directions so we could find him. Phil and I set off. Just as we were arriving, though, we saw the previously mentioned bartender and Russell exiting the bar and going into some sort of business next door. It looked like a display room or storage room for antiques. We couldn't really see in very well, but there was another older guy there. Everyone took their shoes off before going in and we saw them all kneeling down at a low table where Russell was getting instructions on something (proper neighborhood shrine etiquette we later found out). Phil and I weren't so sure we wanted to join in, so we hung back a bit to see what would happen (and took pictures, of course).

After showing respects, the older fellow go up and started untying something we couldn't quite see. It turns out he was responsible for this little neighborhood shrine and had an extensive collection of samurai armor on display there. He wanted Russell to try on one of the helmets. Once the helmet came out, Phil and I knew we needed to get close enough for a decent picture - no more covert footage. The bartender saw us and we explained that we were with Russell. At this point, Russell was all geared up, so we took some pictures. We weren't disappointed. Along with the helmet, Russell was given a sword (sheathed and tied down after a long explanation of how dangerous the blades were). More pictures. Then the "God of the Shrine" (as the bartender had apparently referred to the older man) offered to suit Phil up as well. The helmet switched heads, and more photos were taken.

The "God of the Shrine" explained that the armor was going to be used in a parade that weekend for Golden Week. Apparently the parade was the start of a rather large festival which would include horseback acrobatics - of the kind designed to avoid getting shot by arrows. Apparently an ambulance is needed every year. We were invited to come watch (which we unfortunately had to pass on- hopefully we can go next year). After that, we headed back to the bar. The bartender was awesome. He spoke quite good English but was happy to use either language - which was good for Russell, who wanted to practice Japanese, and Phil and I, who couldn't keep up. Overall, he seemed a very friendly, laid back sort of guy, and we will definitely visit his establishment again when we are next in the Kyoto area. Phil also sampled the Absynthe (tastes like black licorice) and we all agreed it was a perfectly decent spirit - presuming you like black licorice.

Thank goodness Phil and I didn't dilly dally at the shrine!

Rainy Season Year 2

Guess what time of year it is?

Early this year instead of late, we have reached rainy season. It is currently dumping buckets outside. The nice part of this is that it is not hot. Its just good honest cold rain. I have no problem with that. I know all the water is going to mix with some hot weather next week and things are going to get ugly, though, so I am experiencing our weather today with a solid dose of pessimism.

Apparently, rainy season is usually in July. This might just be a surprise spring shower and not actually rainy season yet, but no one seems to believe that.

Last year Spring was lovely and the rains didn't start until almost August.

Needless to say, I don't really know WHAT to expect from Japanese weather. There seem to be 10 distinct seasons and they start whenever they darn well please. It does keep things interesting, though.

Now if only the oppressively hot summer will surprise us all with a short stay...

More to come soon. I have great things to post but we are coming up on Midterms and life has just been crazy. I'll do my best to get some more posts out soon.