Matsuri!

This weekend was full of festivals and awesome sightseeing around the Noto!

On Friday evening I went to Wajima for their famous Taisai festival. Taisai is a lot of fun, and very exciting well into the night with kurriko teams carrying their huge lanterns up and down the streets while drinking, chanting, and talking to people. The other JETs I was with and myself even got to help carry a kurriko for a little while which was very cool. 

On Saturday we did some excellent sightseeing of different spots around Wajima. First we went to a great little beach spot that features awesome rock formations right on the coast and a little "natural" swimming pool.

Next we went in search of waterfalls. The first one we went to was gorgeous and hidden in the woods. It was really off the beaten path, you must have someone with you that has been there before to be able to find it. While there we climbed the slippery rocks to the top and halfway slid down on our return to ground level. After leaving that gorgeous waterfall we drove on and went to another very pretty and very huge one that was right by the road.  

鵜川祭り

Sashimi

Whale meat

On Saturday evening I returned to my village for our niwaka festival. The other ALT here and myself had invitations to pre-festival dinners so at 5:15 off we went. First, we went to the house of one of our co-workers. We were led into the party room which was a traditional tatami (bamboo mat floor) room that housed the toconama (family shrine) and a long low table where everyone sat to eat, drink, and socialize. Then we went to another house we had an invitation to, from someone who formerly worked at our office. Three of the other guests were university students doing a home-stay visit. There was a German, a Tanzanian, and a Taiwanese person all studying at a university in Tokyo. At each dinner party we attended the hosts and other guests were so welcoming and excited to talk to us and have a great time even though some had never met us before.

After spending some time there we went to the house of an elementary school teacher I work with. At 8:30 we stepped outside to see the fireworks which were awesome. Watching them pop over the lined up niwakas was a sight to see.
Niwakas are two-story tall lanterns that are hand-built every year for the festival, and feature huge ink drawn depictions of samurai. During the festival the niwakas are pushed up and down the streets by teams of people in order to honor the gods. After they started the parade of niwakas, the teacher I know (whose husband is a leader for one of the niwaka teams) rushed back into the house excitedly exclaiming that they started and said "Let's join!" So she ran to the back of her house and came out with two hapi coats that she dressed the other ALT and me in and then led us out to find her husband's team. When we found them she asked permission from an elder to let us join which he granted, so for the next 4 hours we helped the team push the niwaka through the streets of our village. All the while there were children piled on top and riding the niwaka, chanting, and beating the taiko drums as we pushed.

The energy of that festival was magnificent. There were 9 niwakas in the procession and everyone was having a blast! We would push the niwakas sometimes at a walk, sometimes at a flat out run! At one large intersection each niwaka team took turns going to the middle to spin their niwaka as fast as possible!!! It was AWESOME. So much fun and it was so incredible to really feel like I am a part of the community. The exhilaration from the energy of the people around, the sounds of the drums and flutes the kids were playing, and the atmosphere of being part of something great in your own village is indescribable. It is rare and special for foreigners to have this kind of experience in Japan because it would only ever happen in a community small like mine. This festival has truly made me feel glad to be living where I am.

Blessing at the Shinto Shrine

Later on I met a gentleman who has been doing ink drawings for the festival for 45 years. We were discussing different festivals and he told me that ours is special because of the community involvement. Entire families participate, from grandmothers all the way down to the toddlers riding on the niwakas. And he was adamant that everyone puts their whole heart into the festival. After having experienced it, I am sure he is correct. It is so evident that everyone there was completely excited to be partaking with sheer pleasure in the event.

My Car (^o^)/

I finally got my car! I am so happy to have it; now I have the freedom to drive myself around and explore the area. It is a 2003 Mitsubishi Minica, and it is tiny! It is a Japanese "kei car," which are very small, much more efficient, and have a less powerful engine than regular full size cars. I am quickly getting used to the differences between American and Japanese driving. Driving on the opposite side of the road was an easy switch to me, however in Japanese cars the blinker and the windshield wipers are reversed from American cars so that has been harder to become accustomed to. So sometimes, when I am going to turn, I automatically reach for the "blinker" and the wipers come on out of nowhere! Also they roads here are very narrow, many places especially in neighborhoods there is only enough room for one car to pass, so I'm not sure what happens when a car is coming from each direction! Another thing you have to be careful of here are the "Gaijin (foreigner) traps." Along most of the roads there are deep uncovered gutters, for some inexplicable reason. If you happen to pull too close to one your car can fall right into the gutter and take some considerable damage. In a lot of places there is even grass and weeds grown over it to carefully conceal the gaijin traps so unsuspecting drivers are unaware of their existence. Take away- do not pull over unless it is specifically a pull over spot! Luckily, these are found frequently along Japanese roadways in my experience.

This week I had the opportunity to try many interesting foods and see some new places. I spent two nights in Kanazawa which is the "big city" of our prefecture where we had a prefectural job orientation. Each night we went out in groups of JETs to try different restaurants and bars in the city. The second night I went with an awesome group of people who started at a bar called Jigger St. Louis. This is a very classy "host" bar that specialized in cocktails and attractive waiters to attract the female clientele. Also, if someone is having a birthday they put on a special bar show. Since my birthday was recent our leader decided we would tell the bar staff we were celebrating my birthday. So two of the bartenders put on a great show for us. They turned up the music and turned down the lights and had the strobe lights going while a bartender danced and juggled bottles while making a drink for the birthday person. Afterward when we were leaving many people wanted to congratulate me or give me a high five on my way out. It was a lot of fun.

Next our group went to a traditional Japanese ezakaya where we ordered a bunch of different dishes for everyone to share such as grilled octopus, whole grilled shishamo smelt fishes, grilled mackerel, horse sashimi, yakisoba, chicken skewers, and more. It was all delicious!

Horse Sashimi (Raw)

Grilled Octopus

Grilled Mackerel

Our last stop for the night was a karaoke place, where we sang for four hours! Everyone joined in for almost every song anyone chose; we were all singing and playing the tambourines and having an obnoxiously great time.

On Sunday, I met up with some other northerner JETs and we hung out at a beach up here. Swimming in the Sea of Japan was wonderful- the water was so warm! We spent a lot of time out in the waves and even found a random eggplant on the beach which we then used as a toy to play keep away. After spending several hours on the beach getting sunburns, we showered and readied ourselves to find dinner. We walked around town in search of a restaurant and the first three restaurants we tried were full for the night- probably due to the O-bon holidays which people may have been finishing up their celebrations for. We kept walking, determined to find dinner, and stumbled upon a little place that could have been a snack bar or restaurant. After another and myself peering in the window for a minute we decided it probably was a restaurant since they seemed to have a menu, so we decided to try it. Our party of six filed in and filled the front bar of the tiny restaurant and we were promptly served our drinks and snails. After eating those we started ordering different dishes for dinner. The owner would prepare and serve us one dish at a time so we could keep ordering different things until we were satisfied. The food was delicious! That little restaurant was a gem of a find. We ate sashimi, katsu skewers and chicken wings, stir fried vegetables, and baked potatoes. All of the food was fantastic. When we were finished and started paying our bill, each person threw in money to pay for it and somehow we came up with 600 extra yen. Everyone insisted that we had paid our exact amount and we could not figure out where the extra money came from, so we decided to go to the store and buy ice cream for dessert. So off we walked to the supermarket where we bought two boxes of ice cream and then took it and ate it while sitting down by the river. By that time it was getting late and we all headed home to sleep before work in the morning. 

Snails.

Eating a snail.

Delicious sashimi

家ー　My House

I live on the first floor of a building comprised of six apartments. My apartment is pretty large, considering Japanese standards for people living alone. Of course, I am out in the country so houses and apartments tend to be much bigger here since there is more room available. My place has three rooms and a separate kitchen and bathroom. Also the room with the toilet is completely separate from the room with the shower, it is very common in Japan to separate these two functions of the "bathroom area." Also there is no dryer, all the clothes are hung out to dry in a little room on the balcony area. Here in Japan they are very particular about sorting the trash, everywhere. At home, the office, in public areas- you just sort your trash. And if you put something in the wrong bin, you will be kindly corrected and shown where to put trash correctly. Taking your trash out to the road is also serious business. If you sort your trash wrong and/or take it out on the wrong day(?) the trashman will leave it there and stick a yellow tag on it explaining what you did wrong. And it will be left there until you solve the problem.

Kitchen

Trash- burnable, non-burnable, steel cans, plastic bottles, and the fifth I am not sure what it is for...

Clothes drying room

My bedroom/all-purpose room since it is the only one with AC/heat

Bento I took to work one day

I have also been cooking a lot now that I have my own kitchen again. I am excited to learn more about Japanese foods and how to prepare them. I even make my own bento (Japanese lunchbox) to take to work. The other day when the boss saw that I had made my own bento he was impressed and later brought me three goya fruits, known in the Western world as "bitter melons." He explained how I needed to cook them and remove the seeds and that chanpuru is a popular Okinawan dish that features goya. He asked if I would like to try cooking them and of course I accepted his gift! Here are the results of my cooking experiments:

Chanpuru- the Okinawan dish

Onigiri (rice balls)- salmon, seaweed, and green tea/plum flavored

Ramen- Classic.

Tofu, vegetable tenpura (I bought that already made though), salted salmon and somen noodles

Breakfast- cut fruit and rice porridge. Added WAY too much dashi stock the first time I made it, man was that salty!

Chicken teriyaki, sauteed spinach and mushrooms, tangerine, and somen

観光ー Sightseeing!

This weekend I did some great sightseeing around Noto and met a lot of great people!

Saturday night I met up with other JET teachers and we explored the Anamizu area. We started at Senmaida, which is a place by the sea that has hundreds of rice paddies growing on it. Next we went and saw the local Daibutsu (huge Buddha statue). And we finished our night with dinner at a ramen shop and ice cream from a nearby stand. 

Today I had another awesome day of exploration mostly in the Wajima area with two girls that work for the Board of Education. We went to Asaichi, the morning market which is a long street lined with shops and vendors selling fresh fish, knick knacks, and other goods. We had lunch at a well known soba restaurant, then went to see the Sojiji temple which is one of the most famous Buddhist temples in this area. Sojiji teaches Soto-zen and are part of a network of Buddhist temples around Japan. One of the sister temples (the main one I believe) is located in Tsurumi, where I lived last year. And I visited that Sojiji temple during a festival last summer. After seeing Sojiji, we went to Gannon, a scenic viewpoint of the sea. It was a gorgeous coast area and we also took a bumpy ride on the sea around the area.

Dried squid stand at the Morning Market

Lunch!

Sojiji Temple Grand Gateway

Inside the main temple building

Gannon

Dried squid we snacked on

Short Stop in Tokyo

Also, I forgot to mention, I had a three day detour in Tokyo for the JET program job orientation when I first came to Japan two weeks ago. We stayed at a gorgeous hotel in Shinjuku and spent every day going to meetings and presentations to help prepare us for our jobs as language teachers.

While in Tokyo I had some free time and was able to reunite with three of my friends that I made during my internship last summer. As soon as I arrived in Tokyo and was checked into the hotel I ran up to my room to get ready to have dinner with one of the ladies I met during my internship. We went to a very nice restaurant located in a tall building very close to the hotel and had a great time catching up with each other on what we had been doing the past year. I was so happy to hear about how everyone at Toshiba is doing these days.

Two days later, on my birthday, I was able to meet up with two of my other very dear friends from Toshiba. We went to one girl's house to have a takoyaki party. Takoyaki is a food that is made of a batter filled with all kinds of things such as octopus meat, ginger, green onions, cheese, sausage, or mochi; and is grilled on a pan with several spherical molds, so your food comes out in little balls. It is delicious and fun, everybody helps cook it at right at the table! Visiting these girls was so much fun and it was awesome that we were able to fulfill our promise to meet again after exactly one year after my leaving Japan. They even remembered that that day was my birthday and surprised me with a cheesecake!

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.