Sakura!

The cherry blossoms have arrived! The time has come to gather your friends, colleagues, people you met on the street, and total strangers to celebrate Hanami. Bring your picnic, sake, and something to sit on under the trees because this is going to be a beautiful day. At least that is what I will be saying this weekend.

Almost all of the sakura (cherry blossom trees) are in bloom though and it is beautiful. I will be participating in some Hanami and general blossom viewing this weekend. So excited!

I have been getting back into shape (maybe?) for this bike ride coming up. This has included some jogging which may have ended up at Bodai-ji Temple about 5 minutes walk from my house. There is a cherry tree in full bloom there, so there were obvious ulterior motives in my run. Trick yourself into exercise- it's the smartest way. Anyway I took some pictures of it so here they are. I'll post after this weekend's festivities! (Also other pictures can be found on my facebook photo album here)

Temple in the background

 Bodai-ji Temple

 Another tree outside Saika Elementary, 1 minute walk

 Outside my apartment. Dead and alive

Also outside of my apartment

Weeks and weeks

What a neglectful blogger I have been. This post is going to be exciting because I am going to write it in reverse chronological order.

Does updating my Linked In account mean I'm grown up?

By the end of the work day today, I had been assured for the umpteenth time that I would have April 13 and May 7 off no matter what. Glorious. The plans are back on- April 13th and 14th I will be participating in a charity bike ride on the Shimanami Kaido bike route. Saturday the 13th we will bike one way, stopping for lunch and fresh citrus, then stay the night at the end of the trail. The next morning we bike all the way back! The charity it is benefiting the 2013 Tohuku Artist Caravan which helps with art projects in an area hit hard by the 2011 tsunami. Here's to hoping for good weather- yeah biking! And of course, May 7 is when I will be visiting my friend Sarah in South Korea for and extended weekend. It is very uncommon for Japanese people to take days off for travel, so getting these two days off were a big deal (and a big ordeal).

We have had our first real lessons (those not with our boss). There is a beginner level business man who is very friendly and nice and a duo of intermediate business men who are also apparently nice (I have yet to teach them). Very exciting!

There is a traditional Japanese food called okonomiyaki that is like a pancake with a bunch of extra lovin' inside. I tried this magic for the first time last weekend. The one I got was pork and kimchi and it was obnoxious how delicious it was. Look at these pictures.

The one closest is mine, with a lovely slice of cheese on top and okonomiyaki sauce drizzled with mayo. The cake of wonder on the right was my coworker Alaina's which was a mochi and cheese flavor- surprisingly delicious. The left circle of happiness was Alaina's boyfriend Luc's seafood medley. All 3 were masterpieces and I can't wait to eat it again.

I went to the sunset spot again with Alaina to test out her new tripod. We were joined by a surprising amount of people considering how cold it was. I got some cool pictures on my iPhone, but nothing compared to hers. It was really fantastic and I did a lot of unhealthy staring at the sun. Don't tell my eye doctor.

How many sunset pictures can I add before it gets obnoxious? 2 is enough.

Probably other interesting things happened in the past weeks, but the St. Patrick's Day Parade is the one worth commenting on. There were some really fantastic characters running around and it was all a mess of fun. It began around noon with the Irish Ambassador to Japan (or some title that sounds similar) making a speech. He led the parade along with his wife and some others. Next in the parade came the bagpipes and the foreigners. After us was the flag team then the marching band that played the same little bit from a song over and over. Last were different groups and dance teams. Eventually some of the foreigners began to sing along to the notes the band played because, wow, it was not a long song and we heard it so many times. It was pretty frigid but still a lot of fun. There was a little food fair after and some dancers and people performed. Highlights were the group of children who sang different versions of if you're happy and you know it (angry, sleepy, sad...) along with their names and birth months, a cool group of dancers that looked like it was spread across 3 generations, and a "flash mob." I put the flash mob in quotes because I don't think they really had the idea down. It was more like one person started then a bunch of people rushed out. Still pretty hilarious with their Michael Jackson dance. It was a lot of fun and here are a few cool pictures.

 Two men, the pope, the Irish Ambassador, his wife, and another man

 One of my coworkers signed up in a team and it was so cute

 Your guess is as good as mine

 Bacon wrapped rice YES

 Little children speaking English is the cutest

 One of the cooler dances

Girls dressed in kimono doing some traditional dances.

Maybe I won't wait as long between posts next time.

Remembering

I was going to write about the festivities this weekend, but this day calls for another topic. Today marks the two year anniversary of the massive earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. I feel like there is not much that I can say other than how much I am impressed and actually not surprised by how much the Japanese people supported each other through the whole thing. A few things that I can share are what has been shared with me over Facebook. This is a link to a website that is a bunch of twitter entries from around the time of the quake. This is a link to a website that shows a lot of before and after pictures. They are both incredibly moving.

I hope that you can find some time to think about all of the people who lost their lives and loved ones two years ago--and equally importantly, those who gave so much of their time and effort to recovering from it.

I'm a teacher, mother. I really am!

I hope that reference to 101 Dalmatians was not too obscure- I don't know how many people have also watched it 100 times.

I wrote this blog yesterday but forgot to post it so every time I say today, I mean yesterday. You're smart. You can change it in your mind.

I taught my first lesson today! It was a real lesson, not just a demo. Technically the class is a "group" lesson, but there is only one student so it is really a cheaper longer private lesson. I taught my branch manager who is so nice and was a very good student. It was so enjoyable and felt very natural. Can't wait to have more students!

Today I went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant for lunch and MAN those things are fantastic. Hamazushi is about halfway between work and home. When you walk in, you sit right by the conveyor belt and can either grab what comes by (usually not as impressive, especially at the 4 pm lunch hour) or find what you want on the screen in front of your face and the kitchen sends it out. You almost never have to interact with another human except when you are ready to pay! That phrasing sounds depressing but it's actually so fun and just under $1 for one plate. A plate comes with two sushi pieces. Still- you can get full for under $5.

I ordered this sushi special- wasabi mixed with the sticky rice, shrimp, avocado, and onions with a delightful probably mayonnaise-based sauce.

Then coming back from lunch I thought I would take a picture of the pollution. This is not a camera exaggeration, this is what it looked like. Those are pollution clouds. This is my life. Except for I love my life besides the pollution part so I'm not really sad- this is just such an unfortunate display of man's effect on nature. Whew, we're getting a little too deep.

Tonight after my dinner of frozen pizza made on the frying pan (success) I ate green tea ice cream with kindof chocolate sauce on top and sugary gelatin things that I can't remember the name of on it that I got at the Mishimaya. That is the grocery store. It was delicious.

And I had a bag of chips that was cherry blossom flavored. It is not uncommon to find things flavored like cherry blossoms. I had cherry blossom cookies a few weeks ago and they were magnificent. Just as these chips were. The cherry blossom festival is a'comin and there will be so many pictures when it does.

A new friend I made in Japan posted this quote on facebook and I thought it was fantastic:

"Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles
It empties today of its strength"
-Corrie Ten Boom

Lungs and Languages

Bear with me, you are about to be exposed to a good ole fashioned rant. If you're not in the mood to be ranted on, skip to paragraph 2.

I hope that everyone knows by now that China is basically the most polluted place ever. They have some crazy pollution dust or something that troubles surrounding areas when it travels by wind. In Matsue, we get a haze sometimes coming across the Sea of Japan. Let's go back in time to the beginning of February. I was just beginning to get settled when I developed a cough. I felt totally gross and diseased but attributed it to the amount of travel I had just endured and the stress that comes with moving countries. The strangest part for me was that I only had a cough. I feel like usually when you are sick you have other symptoms such as runny nose or sneezing. I took some medicine and the cough did improve some but not all the way. Jump forward to about a week ago. I had a coughing spell that left me unable to breathe for a short period of time. This girl has taken enough kinesiology/ health/ first aid classes to know the symptoms of an asthma attack and my friends, this was one. It happened maybe two more times before I went to the doctor (real smart, Vanessa. Let the temporary inability to breathe happen multiple times before getting help. Whatever). Thank goodness I have the nicest coworkers in the whole wide world because Izumi translated a letter I wrote about everything that happened into Japanese, found me an English-speaking doctor (well, he spoke enough English), and sent me on my way. After incorrectly navigating the near-impossible bus system of Matsue and hitching a ride with a police officer, I arrived at the clinic. We talked and he agreed that it was probably caused by pollution but also essentially told me that my spiritual, mental, and physical self were not aligned and that the respiratory system is sensitive to such misalignment. Maybe I can find somewhere to get my chakras aligned. Anyway, the nice doctor man put me on a bronchodilator to stop the scary stuff, and two other medicines to finally rid me of the remnants of my cough sickness. I go back Monday to tell him whether it's been working or not (it has). What an ordeal! Luckily the health insurance in Japan is pretty good so the whole appointment and 5 days worth of 3 medicines was just over $20.

Now on to the happy part of the post! I was reading online about how to learn Japanese because it is so ridiculous living in a country and not speaking any of the language. It had some tips like study every night and setting attainable goals (duh), but one I thought was worth paying extra attention to was to be accountable to someone and make bets with them. Of course this sparked my interest- betting is something that I think is fun and maybe I'm close to the worst person to play poker ever (thus making me the best to play with?) but why not try it? I got my coworker Alaina to try this out with me: we have made it our goal to learn hiragana then katakana, giving ourselves 2 weeks for each, then 5 kanji a week until we can't take it anymore. We are about halfway through week one of hiragana and I have learned 10 symbols! It is definitely hard but I learned 5 during my lunch break today with the help of some great iPhone apps and it was so invigorating coming back from lunch with more knowledge than when I left. When I was walking around I even recognized a few characters on signs. What a fantastic feeling.

If you are confused on the difference between the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, click here for a definition of hiragana and here for katakana.

In other news, I will officially be visiting my very fantastic dear friend Sarah Feather in Seoul, South Korea during Japan's Golden Week. Lots of holidays in Japan all at once and I will use my days off to be jolly, Gangnam Style.

Tomorrow I have my first real lesson where I will be teaching my branch manager. This weekend is the big St. Patrick's day parade and festival and beer drinking goodness. I'll be walking in the parade and I'll take pictures to show you friends. Yes, I realize this is a week before St. Patrick's Day, but that's how much Ireland has an influence in Matsue. We have two weekends of celebrations. See info on Lafcadio Hearn for more knowledge of the connection between the 'sue and Ireland. Did I link wikipedia enough today?

I made Japanese curry and it was so fantastic. This is what it looked like before I gobbled it.

Friends, y'all

I have started to dip my toes into the close-knit community of foreigners and friends. Last night was an event called the World Chat Party. Somewhere around 40 or 50 people showed up at the Matsue International Community Center and ate food and chatted! Some of the food was traditional Japanese style- rice wrapped in tofu, calamari, other rice dishes- but there was also homemade pizza, little sandwiches, pasta, and more. There were a lot of foreigners and a good amount of Japanese people as well. It was an excellent way to meet new people and enjoy some delicious food.

Food!

Friends!

Earlier that day, I met my coworker Alaina to go shopping at a resale/ thrift store called Doki Doki. It is perhaps a more stylish version of the Goodwill- or at least it only has stylish things instead of having to sort through a mass of 80s and 90s clothes that were not "in" during their decade to find the good ones. Thrift stores are almost always very fun and it was nice to start thinking about warmer weather (I had to buy some warm weather clothes as my collection is very limited here). After we went shopping, we went to a little cafe for lunch. This is a picture of the beautiful piano in the cafe. I got a mango soda float which was absolutely delicious, while Alaina got some sort of Irish caramel coffee I think. It was all quite good. I was hungry for a little bit of food so I decided to look through the menu and try to order some food. One of the written languages (katakana) is, for the most part, an alphabet of the Japanese pronunciation of English words. Or so I understand. The waitress was very helpful and would read the katakana and we could usually understand what she was saying. The last thing on the menu was something that sounded like a crepe. Thinking that this was a relatively classy little cafe, I thought 'why wouldn't they have crepes? Crepes are delicious!' After my order came out, we understood that the word that sounded like crepe was actually cream as in ice cream! The ice cream was very good, but I did have to find some substantial food later.

<- mango float. Mmmm.

Everything that we did was a part of the town that is farther north than my apartment so it was really nice to be able to explore a new part of Matsue.The location of the chat party was much farther north than I had ever been. It was just under an hour walk from my apartment (luckily, I never made the trip all at once). It was up near Shimane University which seems like an interesting place to explore sometime when I have the day to walk around.

My ice cream, so nicely displayed.

 

These children were being pushed around in these big carts. It looked a little silly.

Canal

The night before the chat party, I went out to dinner with some other foreigners. It has been so nice to be introduced to so many new people, each with a wealth of knowledge about what to do in Japan, how to get around, what to expect. It is fun to get to know people from other places because not only do you notice the things that are different about them, but they notice what is different about you. I didn't realize how often I say y'all until it was pointed out by a new friend from Australia. That night we went to a restaurant that had some Japanese-Italian food. I actually had a Mexican pizza (Japanese-Italian-Mexican) because it was the first sign of jalapenos I had seen so far in Matsue. How is a Texas girl supposed to resist those tasty jallies?

Living by myself without many familiar cooking options is pushing me to be adventurous. Tonight I decided to try making my own fudge. I did a bit of walking around the normal grocery store and to the imported goods grocery store and finally found what I thought were enough of the correct ingredients. I had to do some research on conversions, but I think I ended up close to the recommended proportions. It turned out to be very good! Fortunately or not, I am now stuck with a tray full of fudge. Of course I will take some to work to have as a treat for my coworkers, but I am hoping to find someone else to share it with so I won't eat the other half of the pan by myself. After this post, I am going to take on the task of making Japanese curry. Much of what I am learning about cooking, and I suppose you could compare this to what I am learning about life, is that you can be given ingredients and instructions, but how you follow them is sort of up to you. Things really don't need to be exactly how you planned; following strict directions is just one means to an end. I can take this slightly cliched, cheesy metaphor even farther and say that I am getting more adventurous with how I prepare my food as I get more adventurous with how I live my life. Alright, I'm finished relating my life to my cooking. I don't want this blog to turn into Like Water for Chocolate (Junior year English class, anyone?).

This is the view from the balcony of Alaina's apartment. The lake is difficult to see in the background from the picture, but is visible. Beautiful!

 A bar near the station brings little scallops out with your drink. A nice touch!

My fudge pre-refrigiration and cutting. So many dessert doors have been opened now- the flavors of fudge are limitless! Probably the next flavor will be banana and then I have to try to make green tea flavor.

The rest of March should be pretty exciting. Next weekend is the big St. Patrick's Day parade with a few performances by local bands at one of the two Irish pubs in town. It is actually a pretty big deal here- I think the Irish ambassador even comes out for the parade! The next weekend is yet another St. Patrick's Day event at the other Irish pub in town and will be a classic green beer-drinking time.

I am going to keep up with my Tales at least once a week, as long as there is something to tell. Keep your eyes out!

Homesick is overrated

Its very easy to get caught up in what things from home I miss. Barbeque, Mexican food, days without rain. Last night I was reminded of one reason why I am here and why I can still really enjoy myself. So far when I go out places, it doesn't take very long for someone to come strike up a conversation. A lot of people are interested not only in the fact that I am foreign but are looking to practice their English a little. In Japan, children study English for a certain number of years in school but may not use the language again after that. Their rusty English skills paired with the practice I get communicating with a lower level non-native speaker makes conversations much more exciting. Every bit of successful conversation is a reason to celebrate, so the further it goes, the more celebrating that gets to happen! Language barriers can be frustrating when something very important needs to get done, but can sometimes be fun, adding a little extra. I love little reminders like that of how cool it is that I am living in Japan. I must remind myself that I could be experiencing things at home that feel so safe, but I am here to learn what I can make of the unfamiliar.

Next week, my branch manager begins her lessons as the first student Coco Juku Matsue has ever taught! I am splitting the lessons in half with the other instructor, but having something to do once a week will hopefully help. With no students, the job drags on a bit. I am still just getting to know the textbooks and making lesson plans to be prepared for students. Luckily, getting to know the textbooks means getting to know the interactive web-books which have some really excellent pop songs. They have a song for every chapter, covering topics such as "Anything Goes" ("I wear my socks on my fingers and my gloves on my toes") or a whole song complaining about a travel experience and how the person's romantic interest ditched them. Many of the lyrics are actually a little depressing, but the songs themselves are pretty hilarious.