Japanese BBQ

Last night I went to a fellow teacher's house for a BBQ. He had a bunch of friends over who used to teach at Maenishi as well as one who still does. It was nice to be invited so I'm glad that I have decided to relax my vegetarian ways while I'm here, otherwise I would have had to pass.
I was the first guest to arrive so I helped wrap potatoes in tinfoil and played a few video games withe the kids. I think I was super scary for them because they had to speak English to me but once they figured out that the universal language was Playstation everything was chill.

The actual BBQ itself was really good. I loved the fact that no matter where you go around the world and how little you understand the language, you will find a group of men standing around an open flame with giant slabs of meat. It was oddly comforting. Food kept appearing on my plate and didn't know how to say "I'm full!" so I had to keep eating. It was really good but there was SO much food. Everytime I thought the meal was done our gracious host would pop back inside for another package of meat. The main course was a bag of guts. He produced this bag and came up to me with a big grin and said "GUTS! Main course!" Yippee! So on the grill they went. Thankfully I know the word chotto (a little bit) and I was able to scarf it down and keep it down. Although I was a little worried at one point that I would pull a Bush Sr. and be sick on my gracious Japanese hosts.

Oh and the beer! Once he knew I liked beer, and his favourite beer Kirin, the lager kept on coming. This was a bad thing because I was starting to feel it and no one else there seemed to be drinking much. I needed to figure out how to graciously say no. About 5 beers later I mashed a sentence together and the beer stopped coming but my host then said that he likes screwdrivers, did I like screwdrivers? Well, yes, yes I do. Damn it! He sends his wife inside and out come 3 screwdrivers for me >.<'

The evening rounded out with sparklers, cake with whipped cream and fruit and cockroaches and caterpillars. Cockroaches in Japan are a fact of life. It doesn't mean that a place is filthy or gross. There are just everywhere. We were sitting outside on his patio when we see one of the little buggers come around for any scraps that might be lying around. Up jumps our host and he chases the cockroach around with a can of roach killer, man those things can move. Then a gianormous caterpillar comes along. He just picks it up and flings it back into the trees. I kept my composure but he asked me if I liked caterpillars anyway. I replied,"Iie, kowaii desu." (no, they are scary) He looks at me and then corrects me with "kawaii desu" (they are cute). We go back and forth like this until I act out being afraid. Then everyone laughed at me. Oh well, whatever, it was big!

The Quest for a Bed

I just got back from Nitori from buying myself a nice western style bed. Unfortunately, it looks like I have to wait until September 18th to actually get it :( Boo-urns. And it was twice as expensive as I was hoping. Oh well, at least I won't have to continue sleeping on a hard futon on the floor for the next year. I don't know how the Japanese do it.

I'm really rather proud of myself though. I did it all by myself. Well, ok I had a little help from the guy who stocks the shelves...I randomly picked this guy to ask how I buy a bed and it turns out he majored in English at college so he knew what I was asking. Score! So he directed me upstairs and I went to go and have a look around. Once I picked the bed and mattress I needed to find a sales associate. So of course none were anywhere to be found so the guy sitting at the delivery desk will have to do.

I got up to him and manage to convey that I want to buy a bed. I show him which one and which mattress and say the Japanese word for delivery. He understands what I'm asking and then stands there and starts rattling off a bunch of sentences. I tell him I don't understand and then he says it all again. I'm still not getting it. Why is he not just making me fill out my address and point to a date on a calendar? What is he asking me? He doesn't seem to want to play charades with me. So I motion that there is a guy downstairs that speaks English and he calls for him over the headsets. Up comes my knight in shining armour from earlier. He seems to think that it's rather funny that I need help again. Oh well, at least now I have a translator. Turns out he's the only guy in the store that speaks any English. I know how to pick em!

After paying for my fancy new bed (and floor chairs!) it was time to bike home in the dark. That was a fun experience. Half of my ride was on poorly lit streets with little or no sidewalk. Thrilling. About 100 meters from my house I swerve and catch a wall and proceed to scrap my left hand up as I try to save myself from becoming a tangled heap of a stupid foreigner. Thankfully I maintained control and made the rest of the trip home safely. I deserved that Chu-hi I cracked open when I got home.

Fuji-Kyu

After having a good night's sleep on Saturday it was time to head out to Fuji-Kyu! Our dear keepers at the hostel woke us all up with really loud elevator music at 6:45am and we were loaded into our cars for 7:30am. Bring on the amusement park.

The first ride I went on was called Fujiyama. It is aptly named. I'm still amazed I voluntarily got on that rollercoaster. It held the record for the world's tallest rollercoaster until something like 2006. And it uses a lap-bar and a seatbelt to keep you in. That's it. I gotta say, I could have kissed that seatbelt. The ride operator made me take off my glasses before we were allowed to take off. I never thought I would be so happy to be blind. I nearly hyperventilated as we were going up on that chain. It seemed to last forever. Every time I thought we must be near the top we still had a while to go. I just stared straight ahead at the seat in front of me. I didn't want to take in the view. I'm sure it was amazing but I would have lost control of my bowels. Seriously. Then came the inevitable drop. It was nearly vertical. I had no idea I could scream like that. The amount of speed we built up from that drop was enough to send my glasses flying if I had been wearing them. I'm really glad I had to take them off. By the time we finished our 2.5 minute ride of terror I was shaking like a leaf and was told that I went deathly pale pretty early on as we were on our way up. I believe it. And just as with Fuji-san, never again.

There was another rollercoaster at the park that people went on that I was quite happy to watch from the ground. I actually had a vertical drop in it. Pure. Vertical. And here's the kicker, you chair spins so you are facing the ground as you hurtle towards it. Count me out.

We had a great day and were absolutely dead by the end of it.

As we were meeting up to head back home to Gunma one of the veteran JETs got a phone call from his supervisor to let him know that a JET in his town had been killed in a hit and run the night before. A few of the JETs with us were friends with him. It hit us all pretty hard but I can only imagine what they must have felt.

It was a rather subdued ride home and we found ourselves stuck in a 4 hour traffic jam outside of Tokyo. I managed to catch my last train home from Takasaki but most people ended up missing theirs. Luckily one of the JETs with a car volunteered to drive people home but he wouldn't have made it home until at least 4am. His Monday must have sucked.

Fuji Climb

On Friday 24 Gunma JETs took to the road and headed towards Fuji-san. The plan was to head out right after work on Friday and get to Fuji around 10pm to start our climb. We made good time but got a little turned around trying to find the road that would take us to our starting camp. Once we were ready to hit the trails it was 11pm. That gave us 6 hours to reach the summit before the sun rose. I was determined to get to the top! I had my Fuji stick complete with bells and was ready to go.

I took an easy steady pace because I didn't want to get altitude sickness and have to stop before the top and I quickly found some hiking partners. The hike was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated! And I use the term hike loosely! There were large sections of trail where you had to scramble up rock faces and do some light bouldering. In near total darkness with a 20 lbs pack and nothing but a stick and a headlamp I soldiered up the mountain.

If you've never climbed Fuji before let me tell you this one thing, Fuji sucks your soul dry. As you climb you start to realise that you've been awake for far too many hours and there is a hell of a lot of mountain left to climb. You have to make goals for yourself that start of grand, like making it to the summit for sunrise, and end with "just don't die up here!" You become frighteningly aware that there is no way for help to reach you if you slide over the edge or break an ankle. You are on your own. Sure there are thousands of people struggling up the volcano with you but unless they had a really well packed med kit and know trauma procedures, help is going to be a long way off.

I lost my travel companions a little past have way because one was suffering from asthma and altitude sickness and the other realised that trying to climb Fuji was crazy so she stayed behind at a shelter. So I trudged on alone telling myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other and to rest when I got dizzy. All I had were my little jingle bells for company and they merrily jangled away as I contemplated my sanity. But I can be hella stubborn sometimes and I wasn't about to give up.

The sun poked its head above the clouds when I was between the last 2 stations. I could see the summit and only had another 15-30 minutes till the top. I could make it! After a brief pause to watch the sunrise to gasps of "sugoi!" from all around me it was time to conquer this beast! But wait! What's this?! Why am I standing in a 45 minute traffic jam at the top of Japan's highest mountain?! And now that it's sunny out I can see how high up I am and how little there is between me and a really crappy death! Oh god! Cue my vertigo. Or it could have been altitude sickness. I have no way of knowing. All I could do was stare at my shoes and hope the line moved quickly as people jostled for position.

But I finally made it and all was well with the world. I had a really crappy ¥900 bowl of ramen and spam, looked at the crater and then realized that I had to head DOWN the mountain TT_TT

Thankfully there was an easier path to follow that didn't involve climbing over rocks but it was steep and covered in really slippery, loose rocks. The only thing that kept me on my feet (mostly) was my trusty companion stick. After almost 3 hours of zigzagging back and forth in the hot sun I reached a bathroom. Halleluiah! Now I could drink some of the water I had been carrying all over the place that I couldn't before for fear of exploding! There were plenty of washrooms on the way up, just not on the way back down. So after the pit-stop I figured I was almost home free because I couldn't see anyone further down so I figured the rest of the hike back to our starting point would be fairly level. Wrong! Well at least it would be close right? Wrong! Fuji hates you.

An hour later I stumble into the starting area and nearly collapse. Ever muscle in my body is screaming at me. The little jingle bells that kept me company all night abandoned me somewhere along the decent and all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a thousand years. But we had to hike back to our car which was another 20 minutes away. I could have cried.

In the end I don't really feel that I conquered Fuji. Sure I made it to the top and back down again without resting or much food but the amount it took out of me can't be put into words. I take my hat off to you Fuji-san, you kicked my ass.

Maebashi Fireworks and the Shibukawa Dashi Matsuri

I spent this weekend with a few people from the surrounding areas because there were some festivals going on in Maebashi and nearby Shibukawa.

It started off with the Fireworks competition in Maebashi. But our adventures started when we decided to try and take a bus to the park instead of walking. We got on the right bus and away we went. Unfortunately we missed the call out for our stop and ended up going a good 10 minutes further down the line than we needed to. Once we realised that we didn't know where we were we had the guy with the most Japanese go and ask the bus driver where our stop was. We took the laughter as a bad sign. After about 5 minutes of people trying to figure out how to pay the fare we were on our way again.

At the bus stop we met a nice girl who said she would tell us when to get off the bus. Yay! But when the bus came and we got on the bus driver announced to us over the intercom that he would tell us when we got to our stop because the other bus driver had radioed him about a group of lost gaijin -_-' Once we got to our stop the nice bus driver waived the fare and wished us well. It was really nice of them, but super embarrassing at the same time!

After that we found the park without any further incidents and met up with other JETs from Gunma who had set up a tarp. I got to meet some really great people while watching the fireworks and sharing one guy's iPod. For all of you who have never listened to music while watching fireworks, I highly recommend it! Magical! The whole show lasted almost 2 hours and had some really great moments.

We decided to walk back to the apartment after the bus ordeal and I'm glad we did because we met this really awesome Japanese guy in a fedora who had had enough to drink to try talking to us in English and he was a hoot! When we were scrambling up a dirt slope he kept yelling, "Danger! Danger!". Once we made it to safety he asked what we thought of yukata (casual kimonos) so we said that we really like them and that they were pretty. When we asked him why he wasn't wearing one he said, "I HATE yukata!" Oh well. He pointed us in the right direction and we found our way safely back home.

The next day we headed over to Shibukawa to see the Shibukawa Dashi Matsuri. This festival only happens every 2 years so we figured we should check it out. This festival involves groups of people pulling giant wooden floats full of people playing taiko drums through the streets. We didn't stick around too long though because it was disgustingly hot and humid and we needed to seek the sweet refuge of a store with AC. I felt bad for everyone who had volunteered to pull the floats!

First Day in Maebashi

Let me start out by saying that nothing could have prepared me for the heat here. I don’t consider myself a sweater but I definitely was one today. I had to wear a suit because once we arrived in town all of the Gunma JETs were whisked away to meet their supervisors and shake hands in a ceremony before we were all carted off to our new homes. I have no idea what the temperature was outside but suffice it to say that my shirt now has salt stains on it! I’m not joking! I was the very picture of what refined and classy should be.

Seeing as how I arrived here without a home to be taken to they took me to the school. Here I was given a pair of un-breathable fake leather slippers which made me lose fluids at an alarming rate through my feet - they quickly became dangerous to walk in. I met a fair number of the teachers and they all attempted to speak English to me, I really appreciated that :) I fumbled my way through introductions in Japanese and was shown my desk with it’s inherited mountain of papers and an ancient laptop.

The computer guy told me that I could log in and change my password but when I went to open it I noticed that I was already logged in. I didn’t think anything of it and proceeded to poke around. The OS was all in Japanese so I asked if there was a way to change the menus to English and the computer guy noticed that I was logged on as my predecessor. She had left me a folder on her desktop full of who knows what but they were probably rather important/useful documents. He logged me out before I could say anything so now that resource is probably gone for good :( Let’s hope it wasn’t a treasure map to untold wealth.

At 2:30 it was time to take my disgusting self apartment hunting. We met up with the estate agent and had a look at 3 places. I ended up taking the place with the best view of the mountains, nearest my school, and right by the grocery store and shopping area. Tomorrow I will get to move in and have the school’s staff haul all my stuff from the school’s garage to my 2nd floor apartment (no elevators). Let me just mention that among my belongings that will be moved are a fridge, washing machine, and couch. I wish I knew how to adequately thank them.

Right now I am staying in a hotel called The Long Sand. Apparently, that’s what the owner’s name is in English. I have a shoe box of a room and will be getting a traditional Japanese breakfast tomorrow. Fingers crossed it tastes ok!

I went out for dinner with my supervisor’s family because it was her husband’s 40th birthday. It was really nice of her to invite me out but I felt really awkward because her husband spoke only slightly more English than I do Japanese. Her kids were super cute but couldn’t speak a word of English because they are pretty young and haven’t learnt it in school yet. We had eel because it is supposed to give you energy to fight the heat. I somehow managed to get a mini bone stuck smack in the middle of my tongue like a splinter and had to pretend it wasn’t killing me throughout the evening. I think it still might be there :(

Tokyo Orientation

I’ve made it through the first day of Tokyo Orientation alive. It started with salad and french fries as breakfast options and ended with a rowdy evening of karaoke and drinks with the Gunma crew. I have to say that all you can drink + cheesy English songs = awesome…and dangerous! You really don’t notice your glass getting refilled, but there it is, always full :)

The orientation part of my day is rather boring. It doesn’t help that everyone is sleep deprived and running on pure adrenaline either. But I only have one more day to endure and then I’m off to my new hometown. Hopefully I can get my apartment tomorrow and avoid having to spend too many nights in a hotel.