Things you can't do in Nashville

Tuesday, another day off, I got a great start to the day by skipping my Japanese class and sleeping in. About 1, I sauntered out of the house to meet my friend Ben for some galic ramen.

Now Ramen is quite the antithesis of the American dish you may know. The ramen you buy in the states is 1)cheap, 2)small, 3)not good or 4)filling in any way shape or form. Just some quick eduaction, for those who can't know this delight, Ramen is actually a Chinese dish. I believe it means Chinese noodles, or pulled noodles or something. These are also the places you may have heard about where you quantity of you slurps reflects on the quality of the dish. They start with these thick, long noodles that they've pulled by hand, and finish with this soup of noodles, vegetables, meat, egg (sometimes), spices, and all sorts of deliciousness. And it's so freaking hot. They bring the bowl out and it's just steamin away. We start digging in with chopsticks for the noodles/veggies/etc, and a big spoon for the broth; and halfway through, we're both sweating, faces red and noses running. It's fantastic. So a full bowl will last you all afternoon and sometimes late into the evening, and will run you about 700-1000 yen, less than 10 bucks. Not exactly cheap, but pretty good for what you're getting.

So when our bodies are wondering what to do with all this garlic and hot soup they've just been given, we head off to a temple to watch kids sumo. 4-6 year old boys sumo wrestling each other. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen, and definitley one of the most entertaining. I took over a hundred pictures of these little boys wrestling each other. So funny.

In the meantime, there's a fall festival going on to celebrate the beginning of autumn, so everyone's out in the streets with carnival style tents lining the road, and people are dressed up preparing for a parade with these huge wagon-shrines and small shrines that are carried by 10-15 kids. So while we're watching the kids wrestle each other, other people are bringing these shrines by the temple to get them blessed before carrying them into the street.

I apologize for the lack of pictures. I'm having trouble with blogger and/or my choices in web browsers. Apparently both Safari and Mozilla are inadequate to perform a simple task like loading pictures on the internet. Whatever. They'll get here soon.

On My Birthday/ Trip to Tokyo.

So, Sunday was my birthday, as all of my real friends already knew. I had to work, but afterwards, we went out to dinner with some of the other teachers. There's a type of restaurant here in Japan, that is apparently pretty popular, as there are a lot of them, but I can't quite figure out what they're called. So you go with some friends, and they give you a room or table. There are no entres per se, and all the portions are kind of small, so everybody just orders a ton of stuff and you pass it around.

Some of the things that got passed around: tuna sashimi (that's just plain raw tuna, a little different from sushi, which has rice and other things); octopus in an egg dumpling (a sort of mini-octopus omelette); gyosa, which are kind of like tiny egg rolls, but less crispy; and many others. The winner for strangest dish of the night was raw octopus with wasabi. It was pretty disgusting. I've decided I don't like octopus, but I felt I had to try it. (By the way, if you're already grossed out, you might just want to skip to the next paragraph.) So they're about nickle sized, and in a bowl, and they could honestly pass for eyeballs. But not human eyes, they're too small. You grab one with your chopsticks, which is a feat in itself, as they're all slimy, toss it back and start chewing. Well, octopus is really chewy, so you can't really bite through it, but then there's this hard crunchy thing in the middle. So as you're chewing, the wasabi starts to burn your mouth and sinuses, but you feel you have to continue chewing because you haven't yet gotten to the crunchy bit in the middle. In the end, you just have to swollow it, having not really chewed it to a satisfactory pulp, and not being granted the satisfaction of knowing why this country loves octopus so much.

Sashimi on the other hand is sensational. You can get all kinds of sashimi, but tuna is possibly the best. It's dark red, almost purple, and oh so tender.

Monday, after a good morning of rest, I went down to Tokyo to meet Lorene and Randy. I rode the Shink (Shinkansen, or the bullet train) down for about 70 bucks each way. it takes about 75 minutes to get to Tokyo station. I get off the train, go down and greet Lorene and Randy. It's then that I realize that my digital camera has slipped out of my pocket on the train. So, thank the Lord, Lorene knew enough Japanese to get us back up to the platform and talking to an official who could help us find it. Lucky for us, Tokyo station is the last stop and Japanese people don't have a habit of stealing things like that. So they guy tells us he'll know if they have the camera in about an hour. We give him Lorene's number and head out to Tokyo tower.

Tokyo tower is kind of like the Eiffel Tower, but it's red and white and looks more like a radio antena. Pretty sweet though. You can go up to the middle deck and then up to the top and get some pretty incredible views of Tokyo. On a clear day (not this Monday) you can see Fuji.

By this time, we'd heard that they had my camera, so we went back to Tokyo station to pick it up, then headed over to Sensoji Temple. I wish I knew some facts to tell you about Sensoji, but for now know that it comes highly recomended by guide books and Nova students alike, as being a very beautiful place to witness Japan's Buddhist heritage. If that's not enough, apparently the temple is visited every year by many foreigners and Japanese.

From Sensoji, we went in search of English books. Lorene knew of a huge bookstore that had an entire floor devoted to English books, so we headed towards Shinjuku, which is maybe the largest train station in Tokyo. I don't know which one is larger, that one or Tokyo, but both of them are pretty huge. While we were in Tokyo station, Lorene made a comment, "it's crazy that there are probably more people in this station than in all of Tuscaloosa." Believe it, people. Believe it. Shinjuku was a mess. Imagine the largest mall or outdoor concert/sporting event you've ever been to and you have a picture of an average ten minute span in this place. It's absolute madness. But beautiful all at once. Seriously, it was incredibly busy, but something tells me I might really like to be living there. I'm crazy, I know.

Anyway, to wrap up the story, we got to the store at 8:05 and it closed at 8. So we went back to Tokyo station to catch the last train back to Koriyama. While it may seem that the whole day was a fruitless effort of trains, walking, and dodging people, nothing could be farther from the truth. I freaking love Tokyo. I think it may be my home away from home, and who knows, with time it may even pass London as "favorite city on the globe."

Pictures coming soon...

Cell phone

I got a cell phone last week. It's pretty freakin sweet. The phones are actually a lot bigger here than I imagined. But I guess it's permissible considering all the things they can do. I paid less than $10 for my phone and about 40 bucks a month, and get 20 minutes of talk time, (I know, not much, but I'm only charged for outgoing calls) and unlimited emailing It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera on it, a video camera for video phone calls, and of course internet. And a huge color screen. Oh yeah, and it's got Blue tooth and an infrared scanner. So if I wanted to give you my info, I could just scan it next to your phone.

I haven't quite figured out the best way to call the states, yet, but emailing seems to work fine. If you want my number or my address, ask me, I'll give it to you.

Barbeque

I went to a barbeque the other day with Robert, my roomate, and his girlfriend Yoko. We drove up to Fukushima city to one of Yoko's friend's house. It was a little random but really sweet. The Japanese people were so hospitable; they kept offering us drinks and food. They had all these questions for me (a couple of them could speak broken English). They asked me if I'd had this food called natto. It's fermented soybeans; it has a pungent odor, quite a bitter taste, and a very sticky, stringy consistency. So they ask me if I'd like to try some, and I'm like "sure," and quick as that they run off to get some. It was pretty disgusting. A little later they asked me if I'd had sake. I say no, so they run in the house and grab a bottle of sake. Then they find out I like spicey foods, so they run in and get all this hot stuff; they had curry popcorn and these hot potatoe chips called Mama Zuma's Revenge. What the heck. Anyway, it was really sweet. Their house was kind of on the edge of town, so there were these hills right outside their front door. I felt very much like I was in Guatemala on a misty, foggy day.

This was their front porch. It was tiny, and yet they somehow made it feel very comfortable.


This is the man and woman of the house


That's Robert in the yellow, if you couldn't guess. Yoko is the one nearest him.




Apparently, just through that fog, there's a big mountain that is famous for its cherry blossoms in the spring. They said last spring, there was a ridiculous amount of people that came to see it, something like 50 or 70,000. I can't remember exactly.


Natto

Mmm. It's so good.

And good for you.

Koriyama

The tallest building in Koriyama is called the big-i. It's 10 or more stories taller than any other building and on top there's a big planetarium, so it looks like a huge lower-case i. It's kind of funny. Anyway, you can climb to the top and get a great view of the city and the valley.

By the way, in case it comes up in trivial persuit, or other life or death situations, it's the highest planetarium in the world.

The blue sign you see is for Nova. That's our building. We have the first two floors. I really can't imagine how much Nova spends on huge light-up signs.


Don't think I'm trying to be cool with this picture. I know it would be easy to think such. Anyway, though it may be very pixilated, the enlarged portion is my apartment complex.


Looking East


To the North


I'll let you guess

My place

Pictures of my apartment. Or flat, depending on what country you're from.
Here's a rough drawing of the place. Not quite to scale, but you get the idea.

This is my room. They measure room sizes in tatami mats, those you see on the floor. One tatami is roughly 3ft by 6, and my room is 6 mats. So you can guess that it's about 9 x 12.





The kitchen/dining room.

The living room.

Waterfalls

This was a natural stream coming out of the rock. The bamboo and tin cups are for drinking

This is Joanne; she's one of the teachers here. The other guy is visiting his girlfriend, also a teacher. Apparently, if you put a rock on top of the others without knocking any off, you get good luck. The bigger the rock the better the luck.




The ladies' fall. Sorry there aren't more pictures; it just wasn't as photogenic.




The man's fall. 30 meters wide and 10 meters high.

Five colored waters

That looks like two mountains in the very back, but it's actually one volcano. I think it's called Bendai. It could be Bandai, though.

Welcome brethren

Thank you all for taking such interest in me and my everyday thoughts, dreams, heartaches, and aspirations. It means a lot to me that you're going to bookmark this page and check it every day to see what adventures are unfolding in, Nihon, the Land of the Rising Sun. Here's a few pictures so far.