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| i went to tokyo. hooray!
new year's in tokyo
all in all, a great trip. | | |
| after a stern admonition from monica lauren thompson, i am writing on this blog right now.
i will leave the bulk of the entry to be described by pictures. please visit this link:
my sha la la la locker's stuck
ok so! fukuoka was actually really great. we left at 6:00 am one saturday morning, ran to the train station, missed the train we wanted, but caught the second train and just made the ferry to kyushu. we then took a bus to fukuoka, arriving at around 2 in the afternoon. as i mentioned, we got lost a LOT. it was a toss-up who had a worse sense of direction between nathan and i. we slept in a "capsule" hotel. we went to an AMAZING ramen restaurant two times. oh yeah, and we both played pachinko for the first time -- i.e. japanese gambling. we lost 10 dollars in about 5 minutes, and promptly left. but it was fun.
on sunday we spent a little more time in fukuoka, and then in the evening had to take a bus back to oita, where would leave on the ferry the next morning. we arrived in oita at about 10pm sunday night, and chose the "walk around aimlessly" method of finding a place to sleep. we happened upon a hotel where we could share a queen bed for a reasonable price and free breakfast, so we chose that one. we had to catch at 7:30 ferry the next morning, so we got up at about 6. however, the free breakfast didn't start until 7, and i wasn't prepared to give up a free breakfast so we waited, chowed down, caught a taxi, and boarded with seconds to spare. we hopped back on the train in matsuyama to go to the medical school, where we made it just a few minutes late for chat club, our weekly informal lunchtime chat session with medical students who want to practice english.
so good times. christmas really does start early here. we went to fukuoka on november 2 and 3 i think, and as you could see from the pictures, christmas decorations were already up. obviously it's completely commercial, not religious, but people really seem to have the christmas spirit. my office has a miniature christmas tree and wreath all set up. so i'm definitely getting my fix. actually i was in a bookstore in matsuyama the other day, and they had this loop of really bad arrangements of deck the halls and one other carol. and as much as i love christmas music, i wanted to throw myself out the window after the 20th chorus. anyway, with that merry thought, happy holidays! | | |
| japan! i am in.
two weekends ago i think, mrs. kobayashi took nathan and i to her town to see their autumn festival. so different towns in japan do different things on different days for their autumn festival, but most have some sort of "mikoshi" -- an extremely heavy miniature house that sits atop wooden bars and lots of men carry around. supposedly a god is inside the house, and so the mikoshi is brought to the temple. or something. i don't really get it, but that's what happens. in matsuyama, there are mikoshi fights. the men carrying the mikoshi run at each other and try to knock the other team back. but these mikoshi weigh like, a ton. it takes maybe 20 men to carry one, and even with that many, they are struggling to stay up. every year, somewhere in japan a few men die from being crushed under the mikoshi. but i guess it's like the running of the bulls in spain...it just happens. anyway, in hojo, mrs. kobayashi's town, the mikoshis do not fight. instead, the mikoshi is thrown into the river?! i don't know why. but, all the men just counted down and threw the thing into the river...5 times. sometimes a man climbed on top, and jumped off just before the mikoshi hit the water. so it was very thrilling to watch, because there were many people who could have been killed at any time. but no one did. and also just imagine something that weighs 10 tons hitting the water. it's fun. and wet.
a few other interesting notes on japan
1) throwing things away is difficult. there is no real "garbage". things are either burnable, plastic, pet bottles, glass, metal, bulky, paper, or other nonburnable. there are special bags for the burnable garbage on which you must write your name and town section. so if you mess up, you get your garbage back! don't you dare put a plastic coke bottle in the burnable bag. or else it's, sorry please try again. you also have to wash basically everything before you throw it away. empty milk cartons must be washed, cut open, and brought back to the supermarket. all the garbage is collected on very specific days and times. you miss the day, oops, wait another month.
2) the bike and motorbike are nearly as popular as the car as a means of transport, at least in this area. jaywalking is very rare. and there's a bird chirping sound that plays when pedestrians can cross the street.
3) at night there are groups of teenagers who sit in circles with guitars and sing, right on the sidewalk. and almost everyone between the ages of 15 and 30 have really just the coolest sneakers you've ever seen.
today is the first cold day i've had here in japan. before today, it's been almost hot during the day. but now i'm freezing in my apartment.
well that's really it for now! | | |
| so ok!!
friday night! the anesthesiology dept. had a party, and my office is in their department, so i got to come along. actually, they said it was also a party to welcome nathan and i. so we went to a super nice restaurant where we were served ENTRAILS.
actually the entrails were delish. who knew? bring on the intestines! then we had some like tofu soup and ramen and soba. mm mm good. plus beer, and my first ever sake drinking! also great. i conversed at the first table with dr. arai, the bigwig of the department, nathan, and some other random people i didn't know sitting next to me. sometimes i find that i want to practice japanese and whoever i'm talking to wants to practice english, so it ends up with me speaking japanese and the japanese person speaking english...and things get pretty wackola. actually later on in the evening i was speaking to another japanese woman who knew some english, but knew french even better, so whether i spoke in japanese or english, she would answer any yes/no question with oui or non. and ikuko wants to learn spanish so we've been saying a lot of hasta luegos and such.
also at the restaurant i switched tables so i could talk to some nice people i knew from the office and they ended up singing lots of english songs, except with japanese lyrics, with me singing along in english. and drinking more sake oops!
then some people left but other people were going to the after party at some nearby bar, so i went with them. we had gotten to the restaurant at 8 and we left at about 11, even though the last train out of matsuyama was at 10:30. so i really didn't know how i was going to get home. nathan suggested we stay out until the first train of the following day, at 5ish. so i was considering that. but i put it out of my mind, as i was at another bar. we had wine and cheese and little pizza ma bobbers and prosciutto sumpinsumpin. and one of my students (a doctor in his 30s) was there, so we talked about language things. somehow we got on the topic of how to say "you must NOT do that!!" in japanese and he told me, but warned that it is not to be used lightly...it's very blunt and rude. so as a joke nathan and i started using the expression all night, and it was a laugh fest i say.
then it was maybe 1 or 1:30 in the morning, and most people were going home, but 3 other people invited nathan and i to go out some more, so i though what the hey, maybe i will make it to 5 in the morning after all. so we went to this really trendy bar, that was some sort of scottish-japanese combo bar...japanese lights and bamboo and such, but the japanese bartenders wore plaid jackets and some sort of scottish music was playing i guess. we were served delicious drinks prepared with fresh fruit right in front of us, very delicately. the ice cubes were big and spherical and quite entertaining. we struck up a conversation with the bartender and found out he went to the high school that's literally right next to our apartment in toonshi, so we joked about that. the bartender ended up giving nathan and i small bottles of whiskey as souvenirs.
we left at maybe 2:45, and finally every one was ready for bed. and luckily for nathan and i, 2 of our cohorts lived near us, so we all split a taxi, the fare turning out to be 4000 yen (`$40) to get from matsuyama to toonshi...the exact same train ride costing about 400 yen (`$4). yes that's right. you can understand why nathan and i were tempted to wait for the first train of the morning.
however!!! any attempt by nathan or i to pay for ANY of this was quickly and stubbornly spurned. i can assure you these restaurants, bars, and clearly the taxi ride were VERY expensive. but no. all free for us.
the night before i had been invited to one of nathan's private lessons with a bunch of doctors because they were having a party rather than a lesson, and wanted to welcome the new teachers. so even though i had only met them once before, i was fed sushi, karaage, various kinds of fish, vegetables, wine, champagne............ again without paying. it's kind of crazy how much i am treated to.
my last escapade was last night. nathan and i went to "riraku onsen". an ONSEN is a naturally occurring hot spring. i really had no idea what to expect. we went into a building and bought a ticket for 850 yen (`$8.50) though there were other priced tickets to choose from...i'll have to find out what those get you. we first had dinner at the small restaurant they had there and then proceeded into a hallway, marked at the entrance with a hanging banner you have to walk under, with the symbol ‚ä (yu) which means "hot water". luckily i chose the right one...i was now in a men's locker room. nathan had arrived ahead of me and i didn't see him so i didn't really know what to do. but, i could see into the onsen area, and yup everyone was a noodie noodle! so i did the only thing one can possibly do in this situation: strip! so i put my clothes in a locker, and attached the key ring to my ankle, as an anklet. luckily nathan had been to the onsen before, so he found me and gave me a mini hand towel that those of us who are not yet accustomed to baring it all can use. so i at first abashedly held this in front of my not-so-private area and proceeded into the onsen area. i took at sitting shower in one of the little booths they had (also not private). then i went into the water! whee hot!! hot water. but nice. then i realized i was actually outside...some of the area was covered, so at first i had not noticed the night sky above us. i then played around in the bubbly area, and started to get comfortable with not using the 5x5 inch cloth to cover me up so much, as almost all the other men there seemed to be. again, it was only by chance that i ended up in the men's onsen...there apparently was also a women's and family one that i deftly avoided.
i also tried the sauna. this sauna was...A FIERY FURNACE. okay so the onsen area was HOT. the sauna was the same HOT, but it also had BURNING COALS in the room. yes, just in case you weren't hot enough already, someone thought to have themselves a little bbq in the sauna too!! well, i could only stay in there for a minute or two tops. it was nice mostly i think, but breathing in the air was the hard part. want to get rid of unsightly nose hair? come to riraku onsen and singe it off in the sauna!
i needed to cool down after that, so they had a nice little cold water pool in the same area. except cold feels like arctic tundra ice fishing water cold after sitting in dante's inferno for a few minutes. so after i dunked in that i started to feel a little funny. i noticed my heart was beating rather quickly in the sauna. but i seemed ok. while i was lying back in the cold pool, things were okay. but then when i got up to get out of the cold water, i totally stumbled and needed to hold on to the rail. i had gotten very woozy very quickly. i had to sit still and breath deeply on a bench for a good while before i started to feel better. nathan said he experienced the same thing...he thought he was near passing out. so next time, gotta pay more attention to that good ole heart rate and perhaps not go from so hot to so cold that quickly. or stay away from the 4 o july cookout sauna altogether.
i finished my onsen time by dressing and dozing around in the nice comfy chairs they have with your own private tv. and then, by using the DELIGHTFUL massage chairs. that perhaps was the best part. maybe because my back has been achy recently but...mm. i need to get me one of those.
so fun times! nathan has promised to show me his vocoder sometime, so i'm excited for that. and medical english classes start this week! so i need to get some sleepers. l8a | | |
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