Funny!

One adjustment that I have had to make while teaching English to Japanese students is to learn how to t-a-l-k m-o-r-e s-l-o-w-l-y!! Having taught children in kindergarten and first grade...and being a generally energetic person (with lots to say!)...this has been quite a task for me! Anyway, I was sitting on the train the other day and talking to Naomi. She speaks English very well, so I can pretty much talk at a normal (native speaking) pace with her. We were sitting next to an older couple and they said a few things back and forth to Naomi (in Japanese) during our two hour train ride. Naomi and I talked for most of the rest of the ride. At the end, the man leaned over to me and in pretty good English said..."I don't speak English very well, but I tried to listen to you and understand what you were saying...It was very difficult for me because you talk like a bullet train." (those are the trains here that go over 200 miles per hour!) Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" kind of things....but I thought it was very endearing and funny too!

Nikko Pictures...

The "big lantern" temple in Asakusa (a section of Tokyo)


Curry soba (buckwheat) noodles for dinner...YUM!!! (*NOTE: my chopstick skills have improved, but are still NOT very good!)


Lake Chuzenji...at the top of the road with 48 hairpin turns.


Toshogu Shrine... built almost 400 yrs ago, it is now considered a national treasure.

Nikko

My friend Naomi and I decided to trek off to Nikko on Saturday and do a bit of autumn sight-seeing. Nikko is a city in the mountains and it's located about two hours north of Tokyo. There are lakes and waterfalls and many shrines and temples to see there. Unfortunatly, since it's such a great place to see autumn folliage it was packed with people, but we still had fun traveling by bus and train and hiking around to see the colors and sights around the city. To get from the town area to the lakes and waterfalls, we took a bus up a very steep and narrow roadway that included 48 hairpin turns! It was a crisp and clear day, so it was great to enjoy the outdoors and do some exploring too.

Taste Adventures...

'Tis persimmon season here - oddly enough - and rather than having apples ready to harvest, many of the trees here are drooping under the weight of ripe persimmons and oranges! That being said, there are an abundance of apples available at the markets here...which feels nice and autumn-like to me! I did feel the urge to pick up some persimmons the other day though, when I noticed that they were on sale and seemed to be the "in-season" fruit of choice. I had to track down one of my Japanese friends to get advice on how to eat it. (which is a little silly since they're not exactly exotic!) Turns out, they have the consistancy and taste of a peach/plum combination - though they look like little pumpkins hanging from the trees in our neighborhood. Maybe every one of you has tasted a persimmon in your day, but I thought I'd share my first taste experience with you.

In other tasting news, one of my students shared a bag of Japanese sweet potatos with me last week. She is very cute because she's probably one of my oldest students (mid 50's or so) and I get the impresson that she is one of the more self conscious ones when it comes to speaking English since everytime she tries to say something to me she breaks down and giggles no matter what we're talking about. Anyway, she had gone to a sweet potato farm and wanted to share some of her goodies with me. I think they're very similar to the ones you would find in the States - only the color seems a bit more yellow than orange. ...With a little butter and salt they were a yummy side dish to have with dinner!

Trashy!

Okay...here's what I like to call my "Ode to Trash"...

Japan is about the size of California and the population of Japan is about half of the population of the United States...take a minute to think about that...Can you get a little picture for how crowded it is here?!?! Yes, half the population of the entire U.S. living in a country the size of California!

So...with that in mind, trash disposal becomes a unique issue for this country to tackle. Here's what they decided to do about it: Everyday we sort our trash into 6 different categories - 5 of those categories contain different kinds of materials that can be recycled. Some of our trash-time activities include cutting off the tops of toothpaste tubes (because the cap and the tube part fall into different trash categories) and rinsing out, cutting apart, drying, and binding stacks of cardboard milk containers. (my least favorite!) We even have trash calendars and books on how to sort and remove trash from our house.

Anyway, the down side of this is obviously the time factor and the fact that every night is "garbage night" since we take out one kind of trash each day. On the upside though, we only have one very small bag of trash every other week that is considered "non-recyclable." So, I guess that the industrious Japanese have come up with a pretty good plan to not have themselves taken over by landfills! (though they do use landfills to add more land mass to their country from time to time!)

Congratulations - you have now completed your lesson in Japanese Trash 101.

Just like home... (sort of!)

So, I'm trying to keep myself busy and enjoy both the similarities and differences between the Japanese and American cultures. Plants and flowers are something that I enjoy no matter where I am and many of the flowers and plants here are very similar to those in the States. This week I bought a few trays of pansies to put in our little garden and in a planter that we have by our front door. And....if I may be cheesey for just a minute....some of you may remember that Josh sent me a card full of pressed pansies when I lived in England (well before we were dating)....to send "some North Carolina spring" to cheer me up. And then my mom reminded me the other day that she had planted lots of pansies around our house when we were getting ready for our wedding (in "honor" of the England story)...so I was feeling a bit sentimental as I planted our little Japanese garden full of pansies and since we are about to celebrate our 2nd anniversary!
Another fun reminder of home came today with the delicious smells of hot applesauce that filled our house after I made a frech batch this afternoon. It's one of those smells of autumn that always feels like home! Yum!!
I imagine that the leaves at home are in full color by now... I don't think ours will change here until mid-November. I'm hoping we can venture to the mountains for a day to enjoy the color-filled views that we've only seen in pictures so far!

Chinatown

After a very full and tiring week we decided to take it easy on Saturday morning - sleep in, call family...Josh worked on music while I ran some errands and did stuff around the house. Then we headed up to Yokohama in the late afternoon to check out the culture of Chinatown....yeah, who knew....they actually have a pretty well-known Chinatown in Japan. There was a lot to see and experience there and we really enjoyed our evening.
Colorful lanterns hung across many of the streets, ornate gates stood over the roads and welcomed us onto streets lined with dim sum carts and barrels of roasting chestnuts. There were lots of "treasure" shops and Josh was very kind to wander through several of them with me. We picked out a few Christmas gifts and had dinner at one of the million Chinese eating establishments in the area! Then we headed back home via the Minato Mirai part of town, which is home to Japan's tallest skyscraper (not terribly impressive because it has to meet the strict earthquake codes here) and the world's largest ferris wheel. (quite cool as you can see in the photo!)

Travels ...continued...

On Sunday, we spent the morning at the orphanage with a group from Officer's Christian Fellowship and had fun playing with the children. We first shared a church service with them and then spent time playing basketball, running races, and swinging until the children had to go to lunch.
Then since Josh had off on Monday we had planned to travel by train and ferry to the Chiba prefecture (kind of like traveling to another "state") which is directly across the water (Tokyo Bay) from us. There we met up with the owner of a lodge (an American who has lived here for 30 years) who took us back to his cabin where we were spending the night. It was the first time we could remember when we didn't hear a constant flow of traffic around us, so it was nice to escape to the "country" for a little r and r! Dinner and breakfast were included in our stay, so that was a nice treat. We woke up early enough on Monday to "watch" the updates on the Eagles - Cowboys game....woo-hoo! Then we got some mountain bikes that were available at the cabin and headed out to explore. In the end we biked about 12 miles along the sea and hiked about 4 miles through the mountains along the coast. It was a beautiful day filled with sunshine and cool breezes. Other than a little trip over the handle bars for Rebecca (oops!), we had a lovely tour of the Pacific coastline.

Travels...(last weekend!)

(No wonder we get lost so easily!!) Over the weekend we decided to seek out some greener spaces and try some new kinds of transportation, so here's a quick recap of our weekend adventures! On Saturday, we wanted to locate some hiking trails near where we live so we grabbed a map, packed a picnic, and hopped in the car. During this venture we were reminded about the differences in how Japanese roads/maps are structured because the roads that we needed to follow were not marked or named, so we just had to kind of meander through little villages and hope that we were following the right roads to the trail. (Probably knowing how to read some Japanese would have helped - oh, well!) We finally found the path that we wanted after 3 or 4 times of not making the correct combination of turns and then we enjoyed a great afternoon of hiking up along a ridge line where we could see the whole coastline of the Miura Peninsula. (including our first glimpse of Mt. Fuji - which you can see faintly on the right side of the background!)

Yummy Yakiniku!

Josh and I hopped on the train tonight and headed for the center of town, since we were so tired of spending every evening cleaning and organizing our house. We went to a Korean BBQ restaurant (aka Yakiniku) and enjoyed a feast of meat and seafood that we cooked and marinated for ourselves right at our table. The squid was a little crazy, but the beef, scallops, and shrimp were quite good! Unfortunately, the shrimp came with its head, shell, and everything and we weren't sure if we should cook it like that or take off the shell and head and then cook it....Anyway, like most of our other eating experiences here we do a lot of trial and error and hope that we're not offending anyone with the way we eat. We've gotten a few hints on chopstick etiquette, but will continue to learn how to navigate the eating establishments of Japan! Josh enjoyed mixing up a bit of soy sauce, garlic, pepper, and spices that we used for marinade and dipping sauce and we had a nice relaxing meal before returning home so we could clean and organize for a few more hours.

Our Japanese Home!

Thought you might like to see a few of the cool Japanese perks that we're enjoying in our new place! So, here it goes! First another little picture of our garden spot because I like it so much! Then on to the entrance to our house...you come into a little tiled area (kind of like a "mud room") where the Japanese custom is, of course, to take off your shoes. (We actually had to sign a contract stating that we would not wear shoes in the house!) On the door you might also notice our mailbox where we receive all of our bills in Japanese - fortunately the numbers on the bills are the same and we know the sign for Yen, so even if we don't know what we're paying for at least we know how much we owe. Also, all the bills come with bar codes and we just take them to the 7 - 11 down the street, scan them, and hand over the cash!
And now an introduction to the Japanese "Robo-toilet"....you might notice on the side where the toilet plugs into the wall - that's because of all the amenities it has to offer - heated seats, automatic flushing sensor, and a bidet (bottom washing function for both men and women!) If you look closely enough you can also see the sink at the top of the toilet where you wash your hands with the water that is refilling the toilet bowl. (Josh has to work pretty hard to convince me that the water was actually clean!) Aaaah, Japanese ingenuity!! We have one toilet like this upstairs and another one downstairs. Then we have another room with a sink and vanity that are connected to the "shower room" - literally a room that is the shower. All you have to do is close the door, turn on the water, and wash away! The bath tub is also in this room, but they function a bit differently than at home. Here they are equipped with a special circulation device that constantly heats the water and keeps it at the temperature you have set. Because of this device, bath tubs are used for soaking and relaxing only and soap is not supposed to be used in them.
A few other things worthy of noting are the storage unit that we have set into the floor of the kitchen - we use it for storing sodas, canned goods, and coolers! Our mini washer/dryer unit is interesting as well! It takes a few hours to get through a load of wash, but it gets the job done eventually! (I guess I wouldn't mind anything, since last year I walked down 6 flights of stairs to do laundry and the year before that I had to drive down the road to do wash!)
Two traditional things that are found in Japanese houses that we do not have are tatami mats (straw mats that act as a carpet or covering for wooden or cement floors) and rice paper coverings over our windows and doors. While both of these things make houses look very cool, they are both difficult to maintain, so we're kind of glad that we don't have to deal with them. Hope you enjoyed your little tour! We'll send more pics when we have everything really clean!

E-A-G-L-E-S....EAGLES!!!

Woohoo! Nothing like a little Tuesday afternoon football to add a bit of excitement to our day! (For some reason that's not quite as catchy as Monday Night Football, but what can we do?!?!) Josh and I scouted out a t.v. on base so we could watch part of the game during his lunch break. It was like a little taste of home to be able to sit and cheer on our Eagles - definitely made our day....it helped that we happened to see most of the best plays of the game too!! Hopefully we'll have our satellite set up at home for the next time they're on national television. We might just have to get up at 3 am for that!!

Moment of silence for the Phillies......we were really cheering for that wild card spot....but here's hoping we make it to the post season next year!!