Playing catch-up from Japan

Hello! Wow. I'm not sure where to start! Suffice to say that I am most definitely, officially in JAPAN! I am way behind on this, so there will probably be a lot of information crammed into this post. I was going to make individual posts for all the catch-up stuff here, but at this point I'll never get it done, so it's all going here. Woo!

I successfully landed in Tokyo Narita Airport on August 3, 2008, about a month ago now. The next morning marked the beginning of Tokyo Orientation for Group B. This meant hours of workshops, listening to panel discussions, and eating sneaky tofu-soybean mash disguised as meat. Some people went out on the town that night, but I was wiped from the plane ride so I opted to go to bed early. The next day was more of the same, but ended with a prefectural night out (all the new Yamanashi folk) to an izakaya. Munchies and drinks and lots of fun! The next day, it was off to Yamanashi! The trip took about 1.5 hours by bus. I am quite close to Tokyo!

The day after arriving in the Nash, I went with many other Yamanashi JETs to the Ichikawadaimon Fireworks Festival. If you didn't already know, fireworks are hugely popular in Japan, and generally easily blow fireworks from the States out of the water. This particular festival, though, happens to be the biggest fireworks festival in Yamanashi, and I believe I heard there were something like 30,000 fireworks used. Needless to say, this = awesome fireworks insanity. Someone even proposed through fireworks! It was a nice night out.

The next week I began settling into my new placement and new house, did various paperwork, recovered from jet lag, etc. Then on the 12-14 all the new Yamanashi folk had another smaller orientation in Kofu, the capital city of Yamanashi. This was much more fun than the Tokyo orientation, as it included lots of time for going out and a sightseeing trip to Minobu Temple. This particular temple is up in the mountains, and visitors climb about 200 steps of "enlightenment" to reach the top. You might be thinking, "aah, 200 steps isn't so bad," but what you don't know is that each step is at least one and a half feet tall. Needless to say there were a lot of sweaty exhausted JETs at the top of that temple. It was worth the effort however as the grounds and temple were quite scenic, and we got a guided tour from two Japanese monks. Minobu Temple was founded by Nichiren, a very famous figure in Japanese Buddhist history. It is said that he is buried there as well, though visitors are not allowed to go to that particular part of the templel.

After orientation we returned to our placements, and like many of the JETs I began working at my school the following Monday, August 18. The first week consisted of lots of jikoshoukai (introductions) and just learning the ropes of the workplace. Some of the time I was left with little to do and had to find ways to look busy, but that has past now. More on that later...

That week also marked a busy week of social gatherings at various festivals around Fuefuki. On Tuesday the 19th was a cormorant fishing festival in Isawa along on the Fuefuki River. The cormorant are trained to catch fish and spit them back out. They are put on a kind of leash and led down the water after the river has been blessed by monks. It was interesting to watch, though I'm not sure they caught many fish that night. The next night, the 20th, was a street festival in Isawa (still part of Fuefuki). It was an awesome night. The streets were packed with game and food vendors, and festival goers could partake in the tastiness that was yakisoba, chicken karage, grilled soysauce corn, castella, chocolate banana, cotton candy, squid on a stick, chicken on a stick, fried potatoes on a stick...ok, I like food. Anyways, the food was of course not the main attraction, though I quite enjoyed it. The festival consists mainly of a big parade. Portable shrines are carried by groups of men in traditional happi. They kind of bounce the shrine up and down at they go and chant Irasshai! ("welcome") as they go. There were about 5 big shrines and also a number of smaller ones carried around by the kids. Another awesome thing was that taiko drumming randomly erupted from various corners of the street throughout the entire night. I love watching taiko, and if you've never gotten to witness Japanese drumming, it's definitely something to try and see! Finally, there were also random groups of guys with tall bamboo ladders. Every so often they would stop in the middle of the street, prop up the ladder (this consisted of about 10 guys holding strategically placed bamboo poles supporting it), and then one or two guys would dart up the ladder like Spiderman and proceed to do various insane stunts. To top it all off, those of us in the Fuefuki gang that attended even accidentally met the mayor, who was handing out candy to festival-goers. Great night!

This of course all led up to Japan's favourite summer activity--more fireworks! The 21st marked the Fuefuki Fireworks Festival. Though there weren't as many fireworks used in this as the Ichikawadaimon festival, it was still amazing. Most of the time there were three sets of fireworks going off side by side. The river bank, where the food stands and seats are, was jam packed and we barely found seats as unbeknownst to us people had been saving them since early that morning. It was a good end to a great week of hanging out and getting to know the Fuefuki area. Unfortunately that night ended for me with my worst bug encounter to date...the dreaded mukade. Ah, mukade. They are surrounded by legends and wive's tales in Japan. For a much more horrifying / hilarious account of these critters than I could ever provide, please consult this web site and this one. Luckily I was able to kill it with spray fairly quickly, but I hope I never have to do it again. Needless to say, I didn't sleep that well that night and continue to scour my house for the buggers still.

The next Monday, the 25th, was the Opening Ceremony at my school and the real start of my new teaching career. I gave a short Japanese speech in front of the entire school (about 40 staff members and 400 students) in the gymnasium and managed to get through it with only one major gaff which I corrected (if you know Japanese, I said けど instead of ので, a pretty big difference...). After that the students had tests for the next two days to see if they were studying over the summer. Wednesday was the real start to teaching! I spent the next week doing my introduction for all 17 classes. A bit repetitive but fun, and many students asked me a lot of questions (unfortunately some of those questions were embarrassing things like "Do you think so-and-so-male-sensei is hot????" ).

Another big event was on September 5th, when a few of us Yamanashi English teachers went to a nice onsen (hot bath) in Yamanashi City, called Hottarakashi. The onsen was located up in the mountains and as the bath is outside, it had a great view of the Fuefuki area. After a nice relaxing soak we headed out to a restaurant in Yamanashi, where we met up with even more Engilsh teachers. A big group of us, perhaps about 20, had dinner together at a houtou restaurant. Houtou is a Yamanashi speciality, and is quite tasty. Basically it is a hot steamy bowl of deliciousness, and the houtou we had in Yamanashi-shi was amazing. For more info, see this wikipedia article.

Well, that doesn't quite catch you up to date completely, and I'm sure I've left out some things, but as the next adventure probably deserves it's own post, I'll be stopping here for now. More to come! Thanks! :)

Pictures!

Tokyo Orientation Opening Day:

The Yamanashi corner at Tokyo Orientation:

View of Tokyo from my hotel room. A bit blurry, but you get the idea:

Tasty shrimp-tempura udon from a restaurant near the hotel we stayed at in Tokyo for orientation:

Some food from the YETI (Yamanashi English Teachers International) welcome party. The crab scared me a bit o_o hehe

Pile o' sashimi (raw fish) - shrimp, squid, octobus, tuna, and some other things I couldn't identify.

Fellow Yamanashi English teachers enjoying the party:

I got my first peek at Mount Fuji from another town in Fuefuki (in my town, the view is blocked by mountains). Just the tip, but you get the idea!

A nice sunset:

Some hanabi (fireworks) from Ichikawadaimon:

This one's a bit funky but I like it. I looks like the kanji for big! 大:

A video of some of the Ichikawadaimon fireworks:

The first meal that I actually cooked other than pre-made stuff in my new house. Chicken stir-fry!

Next is cormorant fishing in Isawa along the Fuefuki River. This is a video I took from the bridge overlooking it. It's hard to see and there's an obnoxiously loud car at the end, but you get the idea. The priests are blessing the river here:

And here's a short video of the actual fishing:

The Isawa festival!!
Here's one of the kids' shrines. I love the kid with the giant fan about halfway through:

The first big shrine made its way toward us:

Here's a shot of some food vendors along the street before things got busy (later the road was closed to traffic):

Here you can see a huge pile of yakisoba being fried up...yum!

A bit past this gate was the shrine that the festival revolves around.

We saw some kids doing taiko!

They were super cute, but then some adults came and showed them up:

As the night went on it got more and more crowded:

One of the floats in the parade was a music stand! Is it sad that this music makes me think of Ewoks? Yes, yes it is.

At one point the guys with the ladder showed up and started doing various craziness 12 feet in the air:

Better hope the guys at the bottom like you:

At one point they carried this kid on the ladder. We were a bit surprised but the kid wasn't even phased. I'm betting he can already do all the stunts, haha.

Here comes another shrine:

At one point, some fellows JETs were convinced to help carry the shrine! Here Adam gets pulled in:

Next Rachel joined!:

The shrine carriers needed a break:

Which allowed us to meet them and have a photo shoot! The guys were a bit tipsy. They gave us all cans of green tea and talked about the Olympics. Fun times! This was supposed to be a photo but my camera was apparently on video setting. Funny nonetheless:

At the end of the festival we saw this. Off camera is the gate in the pictures above. We weren't sure if they were actually trying to pass this through the gate or if it was just a symbolic thing. It definitely wasn't going in, though:

After the festival we went to the Sports Cafe for desert. I had orange ice cream:

Unfortunately for me, after that I returned home to find this guy skittering across my bathroom entrance. When I darted out to the get the bug spray and then returned I couldn't find him for a few seconds. Scariest few seconds ever! He was about the length of my hand. Here he is, quite dead (the white stuff is the bug spray). This picture is not for the faint-hearted!!

The day after the festival was the fireworks! We thought the festival was crowded, but we were wrong. This was nuts! In these shots you can see maybe a fifth or sixth of the insanity, and this was before it got really crowded.





Say hi to the English teachers!:


The fireworks begin!



Shiny.



Some funky fireworks pics:







More videos.





I think this was the reason my supervisor at the Board of Education literally told me to be careful not to catch on fire.



The finale, and probably the other reason I was told to be careful not to catch on fire. This was so big I couldn't fit in on my camera! Three sets were going off at the same time. We had ashes falling on us!



I also tried cooking an actual meal that week, instead of just buying pre-made stuff. I attempted to make Japanese curry rice from the curry roux cubes for the first time. Chicken, potatoes and carrots. It turned out well!



One more shot. I really like food.



A few of us also went to the "Kofu Daisuki Matsuri" - "I love Kofu Festival." We got there towards the end, when about 20 different groups danced to the same song over and over. This group was a little less traditional than the others:

Turns out it was a competition. One of the kids' dance groups won second place. Hello Kitty showed up to give them their award and then proceeded to hug them against their will:

Well, that's it for this post. Leave comments if you like! Catch the next one! ^_^