Blueberries and Magic Mountain Water

Hello friends!

I had such a cool day. Part of what I do in Japan is to volunteer to help people practice English. I have some friends I meet up with occasionally, and also meet with a group of people every once in a while. Yesterday, I met with the group of people.

We started out early - well, early for the first day of my weekend (9 am). We drove for about an hour east to the next prefecture, to the area around Mt. Daisen. The drive was, of course, incredibly beautiful. I appreciate the green, mountainous landscape so much here. It's a nice change from home. Everyone except myself spoke Japanese in the car, and the language spoken easily moved to it. That wasn't a problem though...I got to look at the scenery more. We finally arrived to our first destination: a blueberry... orchard? Is that what you would call it? Grove? English is difficult. It was all you could pick for about an hour. To me, that meant fill up the little carton they give you, then eat as many as you can. It was the greatest thing! Blueberries are delicious and we only had to dodge one Asian hornet! Wait, what??? Those are scary! But blueberries rule.

The gang setting out

After our hour was up, we drove over to this lovely little cabin in the woods that did not look at all Japanese. A friend of one of our hosts built the cottage with his wife. Just them, no help. Daaang. It was an adorable little cottage and was so nice. We got there and the grill was already hot. Japanese style BBQ is the most fun by far. It's over a charcoal grill and you keep throwing thin slices of meat, cabbage, onion, corn on the cob, mushrooms, shrimp, and more. You have a bowl with sauce in it and when something is ready on the grill, you pick it off with your chopsticks, dip it in your sauce, and eat it. Watch out, American friends and family. When I return, I am throwing a Japanese-style BBQ. Something new on the menu here was a shellfish called sazae which is a slimy, soft, bitter, salty experience. The wikipedia site says it is a delicacy, so you know, that's cool. I came to Japan and said I would try anything put in front of me and I tried it. It really wasn't bad, it was just strange and much mushier than I expected. The cool thing about sazae though is how it is cooked. You buy them while they are still in the shell, and quite possibly still alive. There is water in the shell where the creature is, and when you put it on the grill, the water starts to boil. When that happens, you drown it in shoyu (Japanese name for soy sauce). Once it cooks a little more, it is ready to eat. How to get it out of the shell, you ask? Simply take the kebab skewer that you ate your chicken kebab off of and stab it out. A little gruesome. A lot exciting. Another interesting food we ate was a sausage - more of a mini hotdog - on a bone. Yep, hotdogs how they naturally come off the pig. And we could wash it all down with natural spring water from the mountain! So so cool.

View from the balcony of the cabin

BBQin'

Sazae, post shell removal

The beautiful cabin

After growing some food babies and taking a few group pictures, we wished our host well and began the adventure back home. The language of the car again switched to Japanese, which gave me a great chance to take a nap. Picking berries and eating delicious food is exhausting! Such a fun day and a great experience.

Hanabi boom!

I have met my second friend from Couchsurfing! My new pal was in Matsue for a big physics conference. We hung out once during the week and I took him to my favorite bar, St. James Gate. Sunday after Suigo-sai round two (see next paragraph), my pal and maybe 5 or 6 of his pals and also my 3 pals (pal party!) all went out for a drink and then we took them to karaoke! It was a lot of fun to show some foreign - UK, Finnish, Israeli - friends around the little city a bit. Hooray Couchsurfing :)

So, as I said, this weekend was Suigo-sai. That is a huge fireworks (hanabi) festival in Matsue over the lake. It was so so beautiful. And really cute! They made faces, fish, Mickey Mouse shapes, and many others. There were some really awesome ones that shot out and stayed lit on parachutes which was even cooler when the parachutes floated over our heads and looked like jellyfish in the air. As you could guess from that, though, we were sitting downwind. A little (or a lot) smoke in the lungs and some ash sprinkled on us, but mostly not too bad. I went both days, Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday after the fireworks, we walked over to the other side of the lake where there was a stage and I saw an anime concert! Sounds like it could be pretty strange, but it was really just a Japanese girl dressed as a famous anime character, wearing an awesome blue wig, DJing anime songs. Some people got pretty into the dancing and I joined right in. The next night, the fireworks lasted twice as long and there were about twice as many people. I really don't think I've seen that many people in one place in a long time. It was crazy. We sat behind a little family with the cutest little girl who would watch with her mother and say "hanabi boom!" but instead of boom would use the Japanese version of the word. It was so adorable. But it was so fun and we went to one of my favorite restaurants after, Wara Wara. They have some American food, like a tower of onion rings and "spicy" fries that really just taste like Arby's normal fries. Still great though.

This is as good as iPhone 3GS cameras get when trying to capture fireworks.

Festival massage, anyone?

Who would have thought that children trying to stand inside of beachballs on water would be the cutest?

First anime concert. Pretty awesome.

These photos were borrowed from pals on facebook with much better cameras than mine:

I think I can safely say these were the best fireworks I've ever seen.

Although it is very easy to get caught up in how frustrating some things are in Japan, yesterday I spent some time walking and could easily take the time to appreciate the place I live. On my way to the pool for my almost-always-weekly swim, I saw a black kite carrying an eel between its claws and saw it land in a nearby tree. On the way home, I saw a giant heron fly into the same tree on a lower branch. There may be spiders everywhere, but they wont hurt people except for maybe a heart attack if you run through the web. They really do look cool though. My walk home from the pool usually includes a stop at Aeon, the mall in Matsue, and the closest place to get relatively cheap groceries. Walking home from that, I walk three blocks along the little river near my house. Adorning the edges are sunflowers, and in the water are turtles and ducks making quiet nighttime noises. The shortcut down a side street I take runs along a little waterway where, if you look hard at night, you can see little crabs run into the water away from the approaching footsteps. Japan can be pretty cool sometimes.

A Bird of a Feather

I've had my first visitor from far away!

One of my very greatest friends visited from her teaching job in South Korea this weekend. We got to do some really great stuff! Here we go...

I had finished my lessons for the day and was waiting for her bus to arrive. That proved to be very difficult, so I had to watch videos of kittens to pass the time. It sure worked because all of a sudden my best friend was walking through the doors... to my work... in Matsue! After a hushed reunion (classes still in session), she set her stuff down and we waited a few minutes for my shift to end. That night, I showed her Lake Shinji (although there was no sunset due to clouds) and we went for okonomiyaki and yakisoba. If you don't remember, that is fried pancake with veggies inside and fried noodles, respectively. Mmm so good! Of course, that night I had to show her my favorite bar and then we took a night trip to the castle. Unfortunately, there aren't any lights on the castle at early hours of the morning, so we didn't stay long. 

After some delicious pasta from the station the next morning, we made our way to the neighboring city of Yonago. Just after we arrived at the station, however, it began to pour. Well, that wasn't about to stop us. We were equipped with some pretty sturdy umbrellas. After the 45 minute train ride, we adventured around the city in search of the festival location. The festival scheduled that night was a fireworks festival called Gaina Matsuri. On our way to the lake where the fireworks would go off, we walked by a stand that was being cleaned up, I imagine due to the rain. As we were passing, the guy working there hands us each a chocolate-dipped banana and says "free!" Of course, we took them and said thank you thank you over and over. After walking away, we decided that there weren't many countries where we would just take some free treats from some random person and have no worry about safety. We continued on our way, through the rain and puddles. It was down these 10 blocks or so that we began to comment on how wet our feet felt. Well, friends, that was just the beginning. We finally found the main street of the festival with vendors all setting up their stuff (it was early afternoon). No one was really ready to sell their food yet, so we walked along the water and eventually took shelter under a little covered area with an old lady and her old dog. She kept talking to her dog and it was really sweet. After some rest, we walked along the lake to another area with tents and saw that they were also not serving food yet, so we walked back to the original spot. By that time, some places were open and we scored some shaved ice and french fries and roasted corn. We heard some commotion at the stage nearby and went to check it out. To our delight, four adorable members of a boy band were ready to perform. We saw some of their songs and they had these awesome dances and just looked so cute. Obviously, they are our new boyfriends. After that, we decided that walking around for 3 or 4 hours in wet shoes was bad enough, and it wasn't worth it to stay for the fireworks. That was ok though, we belted out some karaoke that night with some of my friends.

The next day, we woke up and saw the temple in my neighborhood. That day was particularly windy, and we went over to the lake to see all of the cool stuff. It was so windy that the waves were splashing up over the sidewalk near the water. Just like the ocean! After sorting out a bus ticket and wandering a little more, we met what turned out to be a lot of friends at my favorite spicy nabe restaurant. I'll remind you all that nabe is vegetables and meat cooked in a broth right at your table. It was so. so. good. What was funny about this dinner is that my friend who was visiting had actually met one of my friends from Japan once when they both happened to be in Busan. They were both at dinner and had a little reunion. So cool and such a small world. One of my Matsue friends went out for another beer with us after and we tried some local Shimane beer. It wasn't bad! The next day I had to work.. laaame. Sarah explored maybe a little, we grabbed lunch, then she took a night bus to Tokyo that left around 8. She stayed there and had a little vaca for a bit before going back to Seoul.

Not many pictures, but...

Best friend and local temple

The Buddha statues were surrounded by water! So windy!

Wind makes the waves go over the sidewalk.

So great to see best pals!