石川県ー　Ishikawa

I finally arrived in Ishikawa prefecture, my new home, last Wednesday and now that I have internet I can start posting!

When I arrived at the airport there were two members of the Board of Education and the other assistant language teacher waiting to pick me up. I walked out to see them holding a sign up, and when I started walking towards them I was met with cheering and high fives. I was then whisked off to start meeting people at the Board and preparing for life here in Ishikawa.

My apartment is very large by Japanese standards, three 8-tatami mat rooms, a great kitchen, and bathroom. I am on the first floor of a small apartment building, in an area notorious for insects. My predecessor left me prepared with plenty of bug spray and even a bottle of special mukade spray for the poisonous centipedes here. Hopefully none of those come into the house while I am here.

I am in a very pretty area of the Japanese countryside. Noto-cho is a coastal town full of fishing boats and rice paddies. The coast is within walking distance to my west, while we are surrounded by dense forests to the east. I have never seen so much green and so many trees in one place! From the ground all the way up high into the sky there is a wall of foliage and trees.

I have started to meet people here already, and everyone has been very kind and welcoming of me. In many cases, they were looking forward to my arrival! I am certain that the community here will be nice to live in especially once I get more involved.

On the second day after I arrived in Noto-cho, I had an appointment to meet the mayor. Our meeting consisted of a formal recognition of my appointment as an English teacher here and then time to sit down and chat for a few minutes. Also in attendance were three reporters and a cameraman who televised the entire affair. After the meeting was finished, the reporters interviewed me directly to include on air. Also, they will be printing a magazine article about me. I have not been so nervous about speaking in Japanese since the first time I came to Japan over a year ago! (Also, I am going to see this all aired on tv tonight!)

Later that night the Board held my welcome party at a traditional sukiyaki restaurant where we ate beef tongue, veal, and intestines. Sukiyaki restaurants are a lot of fun because the servers bring dishes of raw vegetables and meats to your party sitting at the long, low, tables that have built in grills for you to grill your food as you eat! It was incredibly delicious food and a lot of fun, as enkais (after-work parties) always are. We went to a tiny snack bar for the second party of the night. It was a little bitty place barely big enough to seat our party of eleven. There was a bar tended by one Japanese woman and seats of red velvet.

On Friday night I met up with some other JETs and we went to two festivals in Nanao.  At the first we saw gorgeous portable shrines on display. These shrines are comparable to American floats in that they are paraded at the festivals. But these mikoshi are unlike any floats we have in America. These are truly works of art, and instead of being pulled by motor vehicles, they are carried on the shoulders of townsmen. We also saw a brilliant firework show. They even shot fireworks that were in shapes, like a kappa, sunglasses, and a butterfly.

After the show was over we went to the second festival, this one was much rowdier and was scheduled to last all night. We went to see the main event which consisted of five huge lanterns, about 4 stories tall which were carried on the shoulders of about 50 men each. When parading, the men would chant in unison, lift up their float and take a few steps while attempting to maintain the balance of the float and keep it upright. They had pillows tied to the rafters of the float where they carried i on their shoulderst, and they paraded it through the streets of town all night. Every so often they would put their float down and take a break to drink beer and smoke. 

 Yesterday my coworkers took me to Koijii beach, one of the little beaches in our area, to enjoy the scenery and look at the shrine there for a bit. This beach is famous for the huge rock out in the water which looks like a ship approaching shore. Also there is a legend of a tragic romance that ended here. As the story goes hundreds of years ago one of the lovers was tricked into drowning by a jealous suitor of the lady, when the girl found out she also threw herself into the sea to die. Visitors can ring the bell so that they may enjoy better luck in their romances than this couple had.