Kelly, In Kagoshima

Rice, Rivers and Rafts

2010-06-22T21:18:00.007+09:00

One of the things I love in Japan almost as much as I love the food is the countryside. Japanese countryside can have it all - incredible hiking, volcanoes, quaint cafes with tables set under trees (ha, ok, that's not a standard thing, but something we have stumbled upon), hot springs, wide rivers to swim in, cute grannies hauling heavy loads of vegetables, local produce stands, pachinko parlors (the pseudo gambling known as pachinko seems to be the countryman's pasttime), temples and shrines, and a whole host of attractions waiting to be discovered by curious foreigners.

Thanks to Justin's car and our combined inquisitiveness, we have been lucky to get to know the countrysides of Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkaido.
This last weekend we were invited to plant rice with my co-worker's family. They own two of the visible rice paddies and it feeds all of their extended family (in rice) for a year.
Justin was outfitted with these special rice planting rubber tabi, but as my feet are too big for women's shoes and slightly smaller than men's, I had to slop around in the mud barefoot. Which felt really good...
First we were instructed to prepare the rice by sprinkling some good old chemicals on it.
A neighbor hand plants the edge of his tanbo (rice field).
These days, rice fields are no longer completely planted by hand. A machine that is basically a lawn mower with hands plucks bunches of the plants from the flats they have grow in and punches them into the soft mud. First we had to lay out the flats of rice along the edge of the field where the machine could pick them up. (My coworker and I)
My coworker's family doesn't sprout their own rice anymore, but buys it from a local farm store.
We took a break at lunch time and walked over to my coworker's grandmother's house down the street and had a simple and delicious Japanese feast.
All of the water that feeds the field is from a stream up in the nearby mountains. It was clear and fresh and the neighbor caught a fish in one of the aqueducts that looked like the cross of an eel and a catfish.
In these hot, sticky days, it is so lovely to sit with the windows open where the house meets the garden and eat together.
The ramen delivery man. The neighbors had ramen delivered to them after planting their rice, and I love this ramen balancing device. The ramen noodles and broth are assembled and cooked at the restaurant, then driven to the customer and this device keeps the bowls perfectly upright so that they don't spill.
Right, so the rice planting machine. You can't see them, but on the bottom of the machine are basically two hands that grab a perfect about of rice stalks and plant them into the mud. The mud is super squishy and soft, so its really easy to push the plants in. Like most things, driving the machine looks easy but is actually really difficult. The machine propels itself, but you have to keep it going in a straight line, through thick soft mud which wants to pull it in any direction.

This is my coworker's cousin in-law and she explained that when he first married into the family one of his first tests was whether or not he could plant a rice field. He apparently struggled a lot with it while everyone laughed at him except his father in-law, who stood at the edge of the field in disapointment.
Mid-afternoon we broke for a snack alongside the field. Oh delicious Japanese watermelon, you are soooo おいしい (oishi which means delicious!)! I really love the Japanese custom of eating pickled things when you are tired. Apparently something in pickled plums and vegetables is purported to perk you up. Fine by me, I just love pickles.
Justin drives the rice planter. Everyone LOVED how concentrated he was, in the way that it is always fun to watch a novice try their hardest at something you have mastered.

The machine isn't perfect, so you have to go in by hand and plant spaces it has missed as well as rows along the edges. It was tiring work, but a lot of fun.

In November they will harvest the rice with another ingenious machine that cuts the rice and ties it in bundles. The rice will hang to dry for about ten days and then another machine separates the rice from the stalk. On our countryside drives, I have often noticed small buildings that house what looks like a funnel and a mill, and after asking a local I found out that these are rice mills. Like paying for water at the store, you pay in kilograms to put your rice through the mill and have the husk removed. You can set the machine to "white rice" or "brown rice" settings depending on how you like your grains.

After planting was done, the entire family loaded into the car and we went to a local hot spring. My coworker's mother scrubbed all the women in the family down with a scrubby and then came over to me and asked if I'd like a scrub down. That naked hot spring scrub down made me feel close to them and part of something. Ha, a big I love you from Japan.
On another note, 露　（tsuyu) the rainy season started recently and it feels more like a monsoon this year than it did last year. It rains in buckets all day, all night. I woke up recently and felt different and realized it was because the rain had stopped... for a few hours. The moisture is making my house grow and when I go swimming at the gym it feels like I have just given in to the state of moisture that is around me all day long.
We over optimistically tried to go to the beach on a rain day. Snorkeling in the rain, we found out that the shallows are also effected by rain, no one seemed happy (though we did see a bunch of rays and an eel). Here we are trying to look warm, about to go hop in a hot spring to actually get warm.
Before the rain started, we headed out to northern Kagoshima and had this river beach all to ourselves. After swimming we ate somen noodles out of a machine that swirls them around a racetrack on your table, by far the best way to eat noodles ever invented.
On another sunny day of long ago, we met some interesting folks who were ocean kayaking and brought us some awabi (abalone) to barbeque and told us about their travels as medics and teachers to Ghana.
Justin built a raft out of bamboo collected from the forest around his town and set off to sea...

Warm Heart of Africa

2010-05-12T21:19:00.015+09:00

Due to considerably lower airfare options if one chooses to change planes innumerable times, our journey began with a comparative tour of the airport systems of five countries. The Hong Kong airport looked like the future and in true Indian fashion it took an hour to move through a 20 foot security check line in Mumbai.Our destination: South Africa, and later Swaziland and a bit of Mozambique. The travel was worth it all when we finally got to relax on a walk into the hills where Justin was tickled by a chongolo crawling across his palm.
We started off in Johannesburg and then headed quickly out to Hazyview, a town bordering Kruger National Park. Hippos lumbering out of the river, zip-lining through the tree tops, and massive breakfasts!
We stayed in a rondavel, which is a southern African style of house that is made of stones and mud with a thatched roof. It was interesting to compare to our earlier Big Sur yurt experience.

Making friends with the locals.
We then headed into Kruger National Park, which is larger than Wales and one of the biggest game reserves in Africa (and the site of the infamous "Battle at Kruger" video)! When in Kruger you stay in "camp" that is a fenced safe zone (safe from the animals of the park) and at night we could hear the hyenas yipping and the hippos snorting in the river nearby. This is another version of a rondavel that we stayed in.
The ceiling of the rondavel.
I have to admit that going on safari has never been something I lusted for and and envisioned in the way I fantasize about other travel experiences I want to have, however after having experienced it I feel almost addicted! There really is nothing like being out there and stumbling across animals as they are in the middle of their own routines - by comparison, zoo animals seem dead, or props at a nature theme park.

We went on dusk and dawn drives with guides into the park, as well as a dawn hike into the bush.

I learned that cats like to use the roads as their highways because they don't like walking through vegetation that has collected dew (how alike all cats are!) and because they can walk almost silently on a road. We came across a small pride of lions one morning as they were laying in the road, bellies full of the night's catch. We would inch up on them in the jeep until they got uncomfortable (and so did I) and walked a few meters away and laid down again, at which point we would creep up again.

The guide explained that as long as you don't make exaggerated movements or stand up out of the vehicle, the animals tend to view the vehicle as one unit, rather than as a car full of potential lunch. But at one point, a woman in the car with us couldn't resist and stood up for a close shot of a lioness near us and the lioness feinted an attack and I almost peed my pants! Half the time we were near the lions I kept cursing humans for being so secure in ourselves that we put ourselves in situations to purposely make ourselves less secure.
The taking pictures of animals you see on a safari is a little mysterious to me. You can find much better pictures of the same animals anywhere (in gift shops, online, in magazine, etc.) but I guess it makes a difference to take the picture because you were actually there next to that animal. Also, a picture of an animal can never really convey how incredible it is to see them out there doing their thing, full of so much spunk and energy!

I include these two pictures because 1) man! just look at that pattern on the giraffe! Stellar! 2) This bird was sooooo cool! So I guess the taking picture of animals sickness gets us all in the end.

At one point we drove on our own around the park (mines armed guides) and crossed paths with another small pride of lions who were crossing the road and heading into the bush. A few hundred meters later there was a lookout point where we stopped the car and we all got out. By we I mean, not me, because whaaaat there were just lions there and now we're just going to get out of the car and let them pounce us? No way, nah uh.
The best way to experience the park was hiking into the bush at dawn. After riding around in jeeps and harassing animals with the sound of the car, it was great to be on the ground and walk quietly (ok, never quietly because humans are incapable of being that quiet) through the bush in the hopes of finding someone interesting. On ground level you can see all the beautiful flowers and inspect all the kinds of poo (did you know that hyena's poo is often white because they eat and can digest bones?).
Our guide showing us how coarse elephant dung is. He explained that elephants can only digest a little over half of what they eat. They will pass huge thorns through their system and people drive over the dung in the road and get a flat tire and don't know why.

Elephants only have a set amount of teeth and so they run out of teeth by around 60 and die of starvation.

Our guide letting us know it was safe to approach a river.
From Kruger we drove to Swaziland! The change from South Africa to Swaziland could be felt on many levels. Everything and one became more colorful and cheerful and suddenly we began to climb a big mountain range. In Mbabane we stayed with Justin's dad's incredibly amazing friends who live in one of the most incredible houses that I have ever seen (which they built).
Their house was sort of a modern, hippie, art house version of a rondavel and was set in a valley where at night the only lights were all the way in the opposite hills.
I could have spent days exploring nooks and crannies, and we spent hours running around with their daughter Sophia, chasing the dogs chasing the chickens.

A view of Pine Valley from the back of the house.
Outside wall detail.
Swaziland is home to one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, and Sibebe (right across the road from where we were staying) is the largest exposed granite dome in the world.
We hiked around the area - a lot of Swaziland looks like a giant scattered fist fulls of huge boulders everywhere.
It's amazing how when you stay with someone in a new place, your knowledge/impression of that place really is shaped by that person's version of life in that place. For me, Swaziland became a sort of hippie paradise where it seemed that if you had the will you could make any project happen.
From Mbabane we crossed the border back into South Africa and then into Mozambique, where we stayed in Ponta d'Ouro. Ponta is a low key beach town mostly frequented by South Africans and famous for its resident dolphins. We went out one dawn with guides from an NGO who have been studying the areas dolphins for 16 years. We found a pod of wild dolphins and joined them in the water and it was a truly spiritual experience (pictured above). It would be much more accurate to say that the dolphins were investigating and interacting with us than we them - a dolphin would sort of choose you and the two of you would would have a partner swim until another individual or group of dolphins would choose you. They swam alongside me, under me with their bellies up or did circles all around me! So incredible. I could go one for hours with tears in my eyes about it, but this picture basically captures it all. Ha, no but really...
The place we stayed seemed like a remnant from a bygone era, but it had its rustic charm.

Wandering around the market at Ponta.

One "charm" being brown water and a cockroach that ate my soap in the night. But in the evening, the bats that lived in the eaves of the buildings flew out to see and it was a beautiful exodus to behold.
When we were out at sea we saw several beautiful butterflies and our guide told us that the winder winds blow all the coastal butterflies out to sea in the morning and they spend all day chugging back to land. You can be several miles out to see and come across a huge cloud of butterflies slowly fighting their way back.
We drank cider and played bananagrams in the evenings before feasting on fish and prawns.

John looks out at the sunset.

Oh hot African sun, and open spaces! I think come from the States really allowed me to appreciate all the open space, all the wild land. Japan or the UK are packed in comparison.

We drove back for a quick trip to Swaziland where we parted ways with Justin's family and took a van to Johannesburg. The neighborhood of the friends we stayed with - in the right corner you can see the hut for the guard who is stationed on the street. I had a hard time separating my preconceived ideas about Joburg from what I was actually observing, but I have to honestly say that for me it was a city with a very strange vibe. Luckily the friends we stayed with were incredible - walking encyclopedias of African histories, politics and culture. I could have listened to their stories for years and eaten one million ostrich burgers with them and their kids!
But alas, five different airports and Kagoshima called us home. I am still thinking about it all, letting it sift through me and settle as it will, but this trip was huge.

Kyoto in the Spring

2010-04-21T14:35:00.025+09:00

Justin and I recently spent a week in Kyoto and a few days in Nara (Japan's ancient capital) and were lucky enough to be there at the peak of cherry blossom season.　　Japanese people are wild for cherry blossoms and never seem to tire of taking closeups of them on their cell phones or using the most intense lenses I have ever seen. I fell in love with cherry blossoms as well. I never knew how moving a two hundred year-old weeping willow cherry tree in full bloom was before, and now I can partly understand the cherry blossom mania.

Kyoto was exactly how I had pictured Japan would be before I came - traditional buildings everywhere, a spotlight on traditional art and crafts, a mix of international and traditional cuisine - ha, basically everything that I have tried and failed to find in Kagoshima.We spent most of our time in Kyoto visiting temples (there are SO many!) and riding our bikes around the city. Kyoto is in a big valley and the temples were often in the hillsides and had trails you could hike to smaller temples tucked away in misty canyons. Picture above, someone else's wedding at the Sanjusangen-do Temple. This temple houses 1000 guilded status of the Buddha in a huge, dark, freezing but very impressively austere wooden hall. The famous Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. Inari is the god of business, and so companies purchase these gates called tori to place at the shrine as an offering to bring them good fortune. So many tori have been and continue to be put at the shrine that you can take a 2 hour hike into the hills and walk under the tori the entire way.

The entire time we were in Kyoto the weather alternated between sunny and beautifully misty which was the perfect weather to spent time in hillside shrines.
We walked through the hills and through the sub shrines of this massive temple, stopping at a tea stand for boiled eggs and tea.
These are called ema, and are decorated pieces of wood that you write your wishes on to communicate them to the gods. Each temple personalizes their ema and you purchase them, write your wishes on them and hang them at the temple. I especially liked these because they were blank fox faces (the fox is the messenger of the god Inari) that you could turn into any kind of face you wanted.
A view of Kyoto from the top of Fushimi Inari-taisha.
Genius bike racks.
Kyoto was had a thriving cafe culture (something I really miss in Kagoshima and seems to be a telltale sign of Westernization in any country) and tons of cute local restaurants.
Ah, Gion. The first hostel we stayed in was in a converted machiya, or traditional wooden townhouse, on the edge of Gion, which is Kyoto's entertainment district where geisha still entertain guests at restaurants. Most restaurants in this area are exclusive and therefore off-limits to us, but it was enough to catch glimpse of geisha walking to their appointments as we rode through these beautifully lit streets.

Cherry blossoms at night. Despite the freezing weather (it snowed once while we were there) everyone was out at night to check out the illuminated cherry blossom trees.

We decided to take advantage of the vibrant local craft scene and get some experts to teach us some tricks of their trade.
We wove bamboo baskets with a man whose family had been bamboo workers for ten generations and had us write down English phrases he could use to teach foreigners.
Kyoto terroir is especially prized and famous for producing delicious things, but I can't find any justification for $18 strawberries!
Kyoto pickles...mmmm! We had some of the most delicious food in Kyoto - foreign and Japanese. My favorite dish was sashimi cut and folded to look like a flower.
Nishiki Market is a covered market that has everything from tourist trinkets to local produce, pickles and small restaurants. Justin and I were drawn to what looked like popsicles, but really were bright cubes of maguro sashimi on a stick.

Shibori is the Japanese take on tie die, and leave it to the Japanese to take something like tie die and turn it into a laborious, intricate art. First you tie tiny tiny knots in the cloth and then die it. For a kimono died in this style, something like ten people will work for two years just tying the knots!
Ah, cherry blossoms and cell phones...

Here we are at Kinkaku-ji, called the golden temple because it literally is covered in gold. There were so many tourist here though that it was impossible to really enjoy it - it's so hard to get into temple space when you are crowed by all kinds of loud tourists. It was different in India where people visiting mosques and temples had a religious reverence for the space, but despite the fact that these places are religious spaces, people don't seem to treat them in quite the same awed silence that I would expect. This and the fact that I am honestly not impressed by buildings covered in gold meant that the real stars for me were this heron and this amazing old woman pulling weeds with the temple as her backdrop.

One of the most beautiful temples (and most thronged with people) we visited was Kiyomizudera. No nails were used in building the temple!
Justin purifies himself before entering the temple.
The main hall of the temple.
Winding down from Kiyomizudera and over to another set of temples was a quaint road of the most delicious tourist treats (freshly grilled rice crackers, sween bean deserts, etc.).

This is one of my favorite snacks - grilled marinated bamboo and konyaku which is a food impossible to describe but is basically a chewy savory jello made out of a plant called devil's tongue.
Our last couple nights in Kyoto we stayed in an old woman's house and she made us amazing breakfasts in the morning and drew our baths when we came home at night (and gave us an amazig pajama set to wear).
We visited Riyoan-ji, the temple where the first zen sand garden was created. Ah, the mother of that awful sand garden kit that someone always thinks will be a good present... At the time this garden was built it was quite revolutionary - can you imagine being a 15 century garden designer trying to sell your proposed garden plan: "ok, there aren't going to be any plants, just rocks and small pebbles, maybe some moss." We were of the first people to enter the temple and so we got to see Karesansui (the sand garden) in relative peace. The walls around the garden were built with clay that had been boiled in oil so that over time their colors changed as their absorped moisture and dirt. I am continually impressed by Japanese attention to natural detail and to the rusticness that the palaces and temples we visited had to them. I found the gardens and architecture much more beautiful than a drafty European castle...
I was impressed by this guy selling takoyaki (a grilled bal of dough with octopus in the middle) out of his truck in a back road of one of the temples.
The mist, the blossoms, the color! Ah, everyone must go to Kyoto! I know I'll be back and I'd love to live there someday.
At the end of the trip we went to Nara, which was a more peaceful, park-like version of Kyoto. Nara's temples are all in a huge hillside park that is overrun with tame deer who beg for you to feed them like pigeons. Nara is another place to fall in love (in and) with and we spent our days wandering in the massive park watching cherry blossom petals fall and the deer harass people.
I wanted the deer to work for their food.

The deer eat "deer senbe." Senbe are a kind of rice cracker that are delicious and can come with anything on them or in them (you've had them in any "Asian rice cracker mix" you've tried), and the deer's senbe (which I tasted) were sort of like the whole wheat unsalted version of what we eat. Too much cute!
There were vendors everywhere selling deer treats and the funny thing was that the deer had a sense of etiquette about being fed - their crackers would be in plain sight sitting in stacks on the vendor's table and the deer wouldn't try to go for them. But once someone bought them and had them in their hand, mobs of dear would crowd around waiting for handouts. Basically anything small and flat in your hand was up for grabs - I saw a deer grab a folded map out of a Frenchman's hand and chew and swallow it (I tried to pull it out of the deer's mouth but that sucker would not let go).
Todai-ji Temple is the largest wooden building in the world (it's hard to tell how big it is by this picture, but yeah, pretty big) and houses a massive Buddha statue.
Ah, on a stone in the sun in a park in the afternoon, deer strolling by, blossoms falling.
We stopped for tea in a garden tea house.
I could't resist feeding them over and over!
With Todai-ji in the background.
Nigatsu-do, another beautiful temple on a hill with a great view of Nara.

You can see the ema from many temples in the area.
Beautiful buildings and a sweet shiba that made me miss Kobe...
A deer sneaks up on some buyers in hopes of a snack.
Outdoor tea drinking.

Afternoon sun, beautiful temple in the woods.
Wishes from temple goers are stacked up waiting to be ceremonially burnt and offered to the gods.

The stretch to give and receive!
During cherry blossom season Japanese people go for hanami 花見, or cherry blossom viewing. This is usually a daytime or evening barbeque and lots of drinking and its fun to walk around and get invited for drinks by groups of drunk cherry blossom appreciators. In the background you can see a couple taking wedding photos...
Some extra cheese on this one, but what a better partner could I ask for?
Hanami by the river.
Waiting in the Osaka airport for our flight home with a full belly and heart.

For the Love of Onsen

2010-04-11T18:33:00.013+09:00

Now that spring is finally here, time to post winter pictures that I have been meaning to post for ages. Though it doesn't snow heavily in Kyushu, winter seemed bone chillingly cold to me and so Justin and I survived this winter by going to as many onsen (hotsprings) as possible. The map above is of Japan's number one onsen village, Kurokawa Onsen, which is tucked in a small valley to the west of the largest caldera in the world. Kurokawa Onsen is basically a town made up of dozens of traditional style hotels with hotsprings along the main river. Those who come to Kurokawa spend the day walking from hotel to hotel trying the different onsen using a wooden "onsen pass."
A common onsen snack - eggs slow cooked in onsen water. It is such a satisfying feeling to come out of the onsen, clean and wobbly from soaking in hot water and to eat a perfectly cooked egg.
At one of the onsen hotels there was a traditional fireplace (this is the kind of fireplace that you would have inside a traditional Japanese house) to keep warm by contemplating which onsen to go to next. We stayed in Kurokawa for two days and went to about three onsen a day.
An onsen by the river. It's hard to see, but those open parts in the fence are windows for you to look down onto the river through.
An onsen hotel. I have come to deeply admire Japan's onsen culture - older generations swear by soaking in hot water to cure all kinds of ailments and prolong life. I think it is great that one of the main tourist past times in Japan is going to onsen! It seems like a very healthy way to spend vacation and it is really common to see whole families and couples hitting the hotsprings. If I tell any of my coworkers that I spent the weekend at an onsen, they immediately gush with jealousy and understanding of how good a time it was.
We stayed at an onsen hotel, which was a lot of fun. Inside the hotel all the guests wear yukata (a loose fitting robe) while strolling around. We were served a multiple course meal in our room, which was both novel and delicious!
Its all in the details - I loved the fabric bag you had to open to reveal a savory custard called chawan mushi inside.
Tiny bites - it may seem strange to pop a whole crab in your mouth, but it's so good!
For breakfast we had our own private breakfast room. I've gotten so into Japanese breakfasts (which usually consist of rice, fish and miso soup) because it makes a lot of sense to me to start the day savory and with protein! Sometimes so much fish early in the morning can be a touch overwhelming though.
We spent the day walking from onsen to onsen along a pretty forest road that connected everything.
We saw this neat looking fluffy ice on a hill.
Another onsen. Such a great feeling when the air is freezing (it snowed while we were there) and you are soaking in the most scalding water with a river running right by you.

Ooooh la la, some scandalous shots taken when we were all alone. Most onsen are separated by sex, except for some where you wear a robe into the water.

Another onsen hotspot we visited is Beppu (on the northern coast of Kyushu). Beppu is famous for its mud baths and monkeys...

We went to three onsen in Beppu: a mud onsen, a fancy hotel onsen with beautiful views (seen above), and an onsen that this guy built in his backyard (that's how much hot water is around and just waiting to be tapped) where he served you lunch after your soak.
The mud onsen was funny because both men and women were naked in the same area but while the women had a sheltered privacy cover to enter the water under, the men just had to run out in the cold and dash into the water while we all laughed and watched. It was a really funny feeling to sit in mud and slowly sink into it and I think my clothes smelled like sulfuric mud for weeks after.
Beppu is also home to the largest population of Japanese macaques in all of Japan. There was this open park where you could go and walk around amongst them all and watch their antics.
Justin befriended a baby.

No mountainy town in Japan is complete without a ropeway, and of course we are always suckered into riding them to the top in hopes of a view.

All of Beppu below us.

Snow Day

2010-04-07T17:58:00.004+09:00

The books that I have accumulated during my time here. I am trying to find homes for them all, but of course, it is like parting with dear friends.
The nature of living in a shoe box house is that I have a serious space management problem. Justin built me this great spice rack to help keep my spices in order!
Pictures from the last time it snowed in Kagoshima. It rarely snows in Kagoshima and this year it did twice! Will I ever survive a real snow place? Yet to be told...
The market near my house where I do all my shopping on my way home from work. I hope I can always buy from such quaint markets where all the produce is sold by sweet older gentlemen and ladies who give me snacks! Note the giant daikon (those white radish-looking things) that are a specialty of Kagoshima (the largest radishes in the world to be precise!).

Girls in the park near my house rolling snowballs.
Beautiful powdery snow covered the hills around my school.
My students at the school's entrance.
The neighborhood around my school.
Walking to school with one of my favorite sassy students.

The SUN, Cooking Classes and Street Dancing

2010-03-09T09:20:00.010+09:00

We had one freak day of incredible sun and warmth a week ago and so we headed to the sea. This was actually the day of of the Chilean and Okinawan earthquake so Japan was on the lookout for つなみ (tsunami). The police came and told us to clear the beach but Japanese people are so cautious and there there so many other people around that we figured it was fine to stick around. That probably is how people get wiped away by tsunami but luckily (and anti-climactically as we wanted to see some kind of wave) there was no tsunami.

Oh, to have the sun on your bare skin after months of going about in layers and layers and layers!

But alas, we are now back to ten degree weather and rain, rain, rain.

Recently, Justin and I have been taking traditional Japanese cooking classes at a cooking studio. The menu has been really interesting... here we sliced our first なまこ(sea cucumber). I really don't recommend it! Really bitter tasting and too much to chew for too long.

Our teacher shows us the proper way to clean ぶり　(yellow tail) before stewing it with 大根　（daikon, a Japanese raddish).

Cleaning the blood out of big pieces of the yellowtail.

Slicing the sea cucumber.　This is the first live thing I have put a knife too and even though a sea cucumber is just a blob I felt a bit squeemish about cutting it open while it was still moving.

Justin makes fresh 　さつま揚げ (Satsuma age) a kind of fried sweetened fish paste mixed with vegetables. Satsuma age is hard to describe (though it is made out of fish paste it doesn't taste at all like fish) and often isn't the most delicious of Kagoshima specialiaties, but when made fresh it was so tasty!

Serving up the yellowtail raddish stew. Mmmmm so good!

A clear clam soup with なのはな (canola flowers).

Our teacher shows us the proper way to make sushi rice.

Last weekend we went to the　初午祭　（Hatsu-Uma Sai) First Horse Day Festival at a famous temple in the northern part of Kagoshima. By "went to" I mean, we danced for hours in the festival with a group of various international folks living in Kagoshima.

Japanese festivals are a lot of fun! Everyone dances a traditional dance that everyone in Japan seems to know and the street is lined with festival foods (grilled squid on a stick anyone?). Festivals are the one time that usual public behavior rules (no eating or drinking in public! No sitting on the ground!) fade away and everyone gets real dressed up and dances.

This festival features horses and ponies decorated and made to "dance."

Though the dance we were doing was incredibly simple, I kept forgetting it (too many things to watch around me? Too many old ladies cheering me on?) but luckily there was a troupe of stockinged older ladies in front of us that knew their business. When you don't know the right moves at a festival in Japan, always look to the spunky older ladies!

One of my favorite festival foods - mochi filled with cheese that has been fried! Mmmmm!

Dancers dancing!

We danced straight up to the shrine and then right in front of it, stopping of course to wash ourselves before entering temple grounds.

I really liked these hats, and I love how the traditinal music at these festivals.

California

2010-01-25T17:48:00.008+09:00

San Francisco: park walks, large portions of food, climbing that hill.

New Year's Day: recovery through reflection, a view from the Berkeley hills, a dry movie.
Who threw us together?
Before hitting the Bay Area, we spent some time in Big Sur in this mobile Mongolian housing turned into a stationary cliff side Big Sur get away. Pretty amazing space to sleep in, beautiful light coming in through the ceiling.

One of the coolest tree houses/nests ever at the Big Sur yurt hotel.

On the way back home, a stop through Yosemite to romp in the snow under Half Dome.
A mossy icicle snack.

Justin and crow, and a salty tamale lunch in the snow.
Pink apples packed for our lunch, eaten with a tinge of sadness (for the house and family left behind) in the LAX airport.
And then, like nothing we were back. Half of me was so happy to be back, and the other half couldn't help but fixate on where the next place will be, what the next adventures of Kelly and Justin will be...
Oh, but so wonderful to have the first meal back at our favorite organic home style Japanese restaurant. My stomach knows where home is.

Purple sweet potato, carrot salad!

Winter Snow, Winter Sun

2010-01-13T20:04:00.009+09:00

I woke up in the dark and opened the front door to find that everything had been covered in the finest powder snow. It was falling like thick fluff, and can you imagine, it was my first time in falling snow since I was 5 or so. The most incredible powdery snow, the kind that outdoor malls in Southern California try to achieve by blowing fine foam into the air, fell all day today.
For reasons that would be scoffed at by anyone who is from snow country, school was canceled (my school is on a "steep" hill and public transport didn't want to brave it) and so I spent the morning walking along the river near my house in awe of this stuff. Apologies for my naivete, but as a Southern Californian who has not had enough experience to teach me otherwise, snow has a magic for me. I spent this morning laughing like a child at the snow falling and the sound it made when I walked over it and the sound it made on my umbrella and how fluffy it was.

Too joyful to focus.
I never knew!
I couldn't get the best picture because there aren't too many old houses in my neighborhood, but there is something about how the snow settled on the traditional Japanese houses that was so incredibly beautiful and fitting. A sort of "yessss! I am in that calender picture of Japan" moment.
Views out my window.
Mmm, but it is absolutely freezing in my tin can house now, a freezing that my heater can't defeat. My usual tactics of sitting in the sauna for half an hour to ensure that my body heat doesn't drop before I get under the duvet have failed to save me and I am glad to also see this side of snow.
It seems like another world now, but on Christmas Eve there were tamales on Bates Beach.
And Christmas breakfast on the sunny deck.

Oh, to need a sunhat in December and a basket of cactus fruit!
Big Sur Beach walk at Jade Cove.

Real bacon, cinnamon roles, and salmon omelette in the sun.
Walking dogs on the beach. Walking dogs in the hills.
California, you leave me conflicted. I can never return without thinking "why did I leave?" And simultaneously, "I am leaving again."

The idea of California seems to be absurd to others - a warm sunny Christmas? But from here, bundled in all of my sweaters, contemplating how to best weatherproof myself tomorrow, this all seems absurd.

24 Hours in Osaka

2009-12-01T13:13:00.006+09:00

I recently spent 24 hours in Osaka taking the GRE and wandering around the city. It was a surreal experience (ah, curse you scam of a test, GRE!), but I always enjoy a solo trip to an unknown place. (Above, a solo bus ride)

I was feeling rather gloomy after a night of sleeping in a bed right under the train line and truly failing the GRE, so I decided to wander around Osaka castle and its surrounding park. These bushes seemed like they should be in some Tim Burton creation.

The castle was surrounded by two moats with heavily fortified entrances guarded by flower arrangements!

Approaching the castle.

Bridge from castle to park to skyscrapers.

Moat! I love the idea of moats.

Castle walls made of amazing stones. Pondering the stones.

The castle. I have been disapointed so far in my visits to Japanese castles - the historian in me who grew up going to Plymouth Village and other historical reenactment towns always wants to see the inner workings of the castle along with people dressed as lords and servants. But most Japanese castles seem to have suffered seiges and bombing and have often very recently been repaired, so their insides were turned into museums full of miniature models of the castle you are in. I have yet to see a floor or even a room of a castle that is completely preserved as it was, but lots of funny videos.

The view from the top of the castle.

I guess iguanas like castles too? These people brought their iguanas to the front of the castle.

I was feeling really awful after my GRE failure, but after reading about the last seige of Osaka castle, where the lord and lady of the castle commited ritual suicide when they knew that they had lost, I couldn't help but brighten a little and think "Well, hey, at least I'll never marry a man whose status will force me to commit suicide in the face of defeat."

Goodbye October

2009-11-03T20:43:00.010+09:00

The weather in Japan seems to be all about extremes. From May-September I was sweating when I woke in the morning, and then for a few weeks we had the most pleasant Fall weather, and then overnight it became frigid! The air has that biting chill to it that I remember all too well. When the evenings were warmer, Justin and I took a walk through his neighborhood, which is full of kitchen gardens and children at play.

I'm not sure if anyone here knows what "palatial" means...
The town that Justin lives in is called Kokubu and is about an hour north of Kagoshima city on the north side of the bay. It's a mediumish city that feels very agricultural - you can't miss the rice paddies and grandparents gardening. It's easy to forget that everyone at home who can has a lawn when in Japan everyone who has the extra space has a garden. Speaking to my home-owning, out-of-the-city-living coworkers, the idea of turning open space into a lawn (even when Japan gets a huge amount of rain) just sounds like a waste of space to them. Gardens aren't feasible in larger cities, but even in Kagoshima city my neighbors who have tiny slivers of land have turned them into patches of garden that change seasonally. They are all so right! Who needs a lawn when you can grow eggplant, chives, lotus and burdock root?! Driving through the countryside on a weekend you are bound to see ancient looking folk bent over their plots, perhaps pulling up a fresh carrot.

That said, I am now growing broccoli on my balcony!

The Kokubu rice fields.
Every year Japanese schools have a sports festival where all of the classes and clubs compete against each other and a "culture festival," which is more like game day/skit and song day. Different classes will turn their classrooms into haunted houses, game rooms, cafes (pictured above) or themed rooms vaguely connected to trying to have fun at school.
The waitresses at this classroom's cafe.
The school band played songs in the courtyard, my favorite was "Champs Elysees" in Japanese (it's a really popular song here!).
There are always unreal looking cute dogs around.
The sado (tea ceremony) club served us tea and sweets.
We fished things out of kiddie pools with chopsticks...
The courtyard of my school.

Justin has been perfecting soup-making. Since the cold front came in we have had garlic soup, French onion, and Japanese nabes (a kind of stew that you cook on the table and serve as indvidual items are cooked).
Riding in front of my house.

A recent festival in Kagoshima city.Onigiri are balls of rice that can be wrapped in sea weed, cabbage or meat and stuffed with pickles, fish, meat, or seaweed. They are basically a Japanese sandwich that can be eaten at any time of day. You can buy them anywhere and are such a good breakfast, lunch, snack! Also my friend Taelor and I decided that they were the perfect thing to be for Halloween!
We made these giant pillow onigiri, and with one in front and one in back, I was more comfortable and warm than I have evern been on Halloween. Japanese people LOVED it. Halloween hasn't been celebrated in Kagoshima for too long, so it is still in that stage where girls just wear cute animal ears and a cute dress, so they seemed really surprised to see us in these giant pillow costumes.

In downtown Kagoshima these fortune tellers sit in their kimono and for a pretty penny you can have your fortune told. The really popular ones usually have long lines at all times of day, but this 3am hopeful was in need of some business.
It's difficult to see, but behind the buildings there is a huge cloud of smoke that is coming from Mt. Sakurajima, our resident active volcano. Last month it erupted so loudly that I heard it in the kitchen and ran to look outside. It was pretty scary... I am not sure what the protocol is if the volcano erupts and lava comes across the bay at us...
Eating at our favorite organic restaurant. I am really in love with eating each piece of a meal in a separate dish.
A few leftover pictures from our hiking trip in Shikoku. The afternoon fog rolling in on top of the mountain.
Sitting in silence in front of our cabin.
Me, down by a river we ate lunch by.

Shikoku Travels

2009-10-15T14:46:00.017+09:00

Last month we took a road trip from Kagoshima to Shikoku (ignore the routes drawn on these maps). We drove from Kagoshima to a town near Oita and took the ferry to southern Shikoku. We hung out around southern Shikoku snorkeling and beach camping and then headed north along the coast until we hit Nasa, a beachy area with more surfers than I've seen since CA. From there we headed inland and over the mountains to Iya Valley, a winding river valley where the treeline ended right at steep river canyon cliffs.
One of the cool things about Shikoku is that is is home to the Henro Pilgrimage, which is a path that follows 88 temples in a loop around the island. People of all ages walk the path (it takes about a month and a half) in all conditions. The next time I have a month and a half free...
Taking the ferry from Kyushu to Shikoku.
Cars in a boat on the sea!

Our first night in Shikoku we set up the tent and swam out to an island in the bay where we were staying. There are enough small islands along coastal Japan to really awaken my childhood dreams of island survival skills and having an island all to myself...

This amazing 1960's futurist building happened to be around a cape from us. We were wondering what its deal was and I hoped that it led to a sea-floor viewing room at the bottom.

And it did!

An amazingly named pachinko parlour.
The rice fields ready to be harvested.
For quite a ways the highway followed the Henro Pilgrimage path and we could see the pilgrims in their uniforms walking alongside the road. We kept honking and cheering them on though I am not sure if you are supposed to do that for people on a spiritual journey.
I love how before people enter the sandy part of a beach, they take their shoes off in the same way as they would before entering a house.
Nasa beach surfers. We were there on a national holiday so it was packed!
For lack of surf board, Justin made a raft out of bamboo driftwood.
That didn't really hold up...
Wives of the surfers video them from the shores.
We headed inland, following a road that was barely big enough for our small car through mountain passes and villages that seemed like they were from another time. We would turn a corner and scare monkeys in the road and I started to get spooked by constantly being in dark forest.
We stopped along the road and cooked a riverside lunch of mabu-dofu, a sort of Chinese tofu dish.

We finally found ourselves in Iya Valley - a winding river valley that seemed like it was cut off from the rest of Japan where they grew their own buckwheat to make soba and once built bridge made out of vine to cross the steep river canyons.

Vine bridges!

The rivers were an incredible clear blue, but pretty frigid.
For the last few days of our trip we embarked on a mountaineering trip. With Lonely Planet's Hiking Guide to Japan as our main guide/map (never use this as your only map! What a shitty guide!), we managed to get ourselves thoroughly lost from morning til afternoon. Luckily our goal was the mountain ridge, so once we made it to the top we were able to followe the ridge to place where we planned to camp. However, hours of wading through steep hillside bamboo grass, and being bombarded by fierce monkey calling were demoralizing...

Our map made mention of a mountain "hut" near where we wanted to camp for the night, and we thought we'd check it out as there was a spring nearby. The "hut" turned out to be a deluxe cabin with loft and wood-burning stove that we had all to ourselves.
We heated a big pot of water over the stove with water from the spring and took showers outside.

After a day of uphill abuse, the fog rolled in and it felt so cozy and nice to be tucked away on top of a beautiful mountain range.
Mountain trail signpost.
Taking a gander in the fog.
Our hut.
The next morning we headed off again!

Houses along the river.
Narrow road.

On the way back to Kagoshima, we drove across a bridge from Shikoku, to Honshu, the main island of Japan and drove down through Hiroshima and back to Kyushu.

The bridge we crossed, like a great grey Golden Gate Bridge. Driving the eleven hours home, I marveled at how little the landscape changed - mountainous and foresty, with big cities coming up every half hour (because of all the mountains, driving on Japanese expressway most often means that you are spending a lot of time in tunnels). If I drove eleven hours in any direction from Ojai, the landscape would change really dramatically into high desert, or huge moutains, or redwood forest. I have really grown to love the Japanese mountains, bamboo forests and volcanoes.

To the Sea!

2009-09-28T21:11:00.006+09:00

The weather continues to be hot and muggy, and the best way to escape is to the sea! Kagoshima has some incredible beaches (this fact seems to be mostly ignored by most Kagoshima folk, aside from the fishermen, maybe because Japanese women are afraid of the sun?) that just need finding.
We took a boat to a hidden cove where we were greated as the celebrity foreign guests by all of the people picnicking in the sand. Fish had just been caught, so we were served fresh 刺身 (sashimi) and beer. The super prepared Japanese beachers (Japanese people seem to be incredibly good at always being prepared for outdoorsy encounters... We show up to a campsite lucky to have the bare essentials and are frequently saved by treats received from those around us who seem to like sharing foods as an excuse to start up conversation) showed us their catch of spotted eels and mahi mahi and we headed into the water for a snorkel.

Kagoshima has turned out to be an incredibly snorkeling spot! The waters are tropical-ish and we have found spots with great corals and puffer fish and millions of neon blue fishes and vast schools of little silver fish that are often served mixed with rice for cafeteria lunches at my schools. My favorite has been swimming with squid! They have the funniest goggle eyes that seem to give them a lot of personality.
Another weekend, another boat. A boating event organized by the local yachting club - get some foreigners and some Kagoshima folks onboard sail boats and race them around islands in the bay!

After the race and sailing lessons, we stopped at an island for a huge 焼肉　(yaki niku - grilled meat) picnic and a swim. So much sun, so full of meat, such wonderful warm waters!
Me and this guy loved trailing our toes in the water as the wind pushed us along.

Our great captain.

Another work-related feasting and drinking, another boat. The Japanese work environment is all about work parties and especially work drinking. To celebrate new foreign English teachers coming to Kagoshima we had this year's 宴会　(enkai, or welcome party) on a boat! It seemed like the best idea ever until we got on the boat and realized how tiny it was and how seasick we all quickly were becoming. Once the boat scooted into the bay and we had more alcohol in our bellies, it was again, a great way to get drunk with your co-workers.
At an 宴会　(work party) there are always many speeches given (Japanese people seem to love speeches and formality) and everyone waits to drink or eat until the first unanimous かんぱい　（kanpai!).
The table was laden with 刺身　(sashimi), から揚げ　(Japanese version of fried chicken that is eaten really often, in fact too often for my stomach) and other fish and rice dishes.
Our work party boat!
Exploring other beaches... we came across this beach that had an island shrine. A perfect spot for juggling practice and praying for future happiness!

Kinkoan Bay

A few last pictures from out countryside, granny bike rides in Hokkaido.

Hokkaido Contd.

2009-08-26T15:17:00.008+09:00

Mmm, someone's bum!
I started taking pictures on something other than a disposable (though I love thee) while in Hokkaido.
The view from a cheesy "chocolate" factory we were tricked into going to. By tricked I mean we willingly found ourselves trapped in a place that was not a chocolate factory at all, but a scary depository for fake antiques and out-dated museum displays where they happen to make cookies that have some chocolate on them. My favorite part of the museum was a fact on a wall somewhere that stated that though Japan is one of the largest producers of chocolate in the world, it exports only a small portion of this chocolate because "Japanese chocolate is made most suitably to Japanese taste," meaning that Japanese chocolate really isn't that great and only something that people can eat because they have grown up doing it. That being said, the chocolate produced in Hokkaido was incredible. They have this thing called nama choco which means "raw chocolate" and is kind of like the love child of caramel and fudge and chocolate and is sooooo delicious.
The view from the Sapporo guesthouse we stayed in while studying Japanese at a school in the city.
Volcano climbing. Mountain climbing seems to be quite popular in Japan and you can always count on everyone being prepared to last out a storm on deserted island for their morning walk up the mountain. While we often are hiking in funny foot gear, lack warm clothing and enough food or water, the other hikers we pass consistently seem to have just spent a few hundred dollars on this season's outdoor gear and carry with them small feasts. I really admire how common it is to see people climbing steep mountain trails who are in their 60's and 70's in numbers that you would never see at home. I'm going to keep this Japanese example dear to me for my whole life... Gotta keep that body moving!

We visited a very volcanic area in southern Hokkaido where canyons were yellow with sulfur and the steam boiled up all around us. It is usual for hotels in volcanic areas (where isn't it volcanic in Japan?) to have onsen, or hot springs inside of them arranged in varying degrees of relaxing to rustic decor. Near this area we went to one of the most amazing onsen I have ever been to, which seemed like it was a giant indoor naked hot water park. Each pool was fed by a spring with a different mineral make up and we spent ages just trying each pool out. You could order alcohol on little floating trays and the outdoor pools looked into an alpine wood. Naked beings of all shapes, sizes and ages were running about and it was absolute bliss after a long day's hike.

Instead of the rollerskating rink, can I have my birthday there next year?
Looking into a pool of boiling and belching sulfur water.
We camped by a beautiful lake and awoke to mists and children catching small fishes.

Near the lake was a particularly active volcanic area. During WWII a volcano grew out of the ground in a field but local authorities kept it on the hush because they thought it was a bad omen. I can't even imagine a volcano just growing out of the ground one day! Isn't that supposed to happen over thousands of years? Barbecued eggs anyone?

In Sapporo I soaked up as much cute coffee shop and amazing coffee as I could get (Kagoshima is sadly lacking in great coffee, but the green tea is top rate).

Toward the end of our trip we headed north to central Hokkaido to see the countryside. We stayed at an enchanting hostel in the middle of fields, fields, fields, run by a New Agey family who cooked two meals a day straight from their garden. At night I could hear a brook outside our window and I don't think I've slept that well in ages. The grandmother of the house knocked on our door for breakfast at 7:30 each morning and I felt like I was in some kind of dreamy wholesome countryside camp.
Queen Anne's Lace - one of my favorite flowers and reminds me of summers in New England on my grandparent's farm.

Onions onions everywhere.

Hokkaido

2009-08-23T17:31:00.004+09:00

We went to Hokkaido for a couple weeks to escape the subtropical Kagoshima heat, study a little Japanese, climb volcanoes and eat some of the famed regional specialties. Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan, with cool weather to show for it. Hokkaido was a different Japan than I have experienced thus far - tall Japanese people, "fat" Japanese people, Japanese people with tattoos, natural parks in the middle of the city, proliferation of international foods and locally made dairy products!
Most larger Japanese cities I have been to are all too commonly "concrete" themed, but Sapporo had lots of herbs growing in the middle of the city. Blackberry bushes even! In Kagoshima a friend found a blackberry bush for sale for $300 and in Sapporo they were in people's front yards everywhere.
There was a beer festival in a downtown park for the weeks we were there. Sapporo Black label is definitely the best Japanese beer. I love you drunk Japanese girls.
The countryside was pastoral and dreamy in a very Pennsylvania way.

There was still a a little jungle.
We studied Japanese and it was hard. Nothing new about that.
One of Hokkaido's specialties is many varieties of crab. On my birthday we went to a crab restaurant where we had our own personal server dish us out dozens of kinds of crab cooked in as many ways.

I had never had crab sashimi before, but mmmmm creamybutterydelicious!

One of my favorite Japanese snacks is senbe, rice crackers, that come in all sizes, flavors and levels of delicious and crunchy.
Before our crab feast we had champagne and cheeses at a lookout point with all of Sapporo below!

Me, Brian's reflection.
Every weekend we headed out to the countryside to check out nearby volcanoes, hot springs and lakes. A lake dreaming of Disneyland.

We climbed a volcano steaming with sulfur and couldn't walk for days after.
Sapporo's parks: A land of long-haired dachshunds!
Inner-city lake-ing.

Get in my stomach!

Summer Festivals and Beaching

2009-07-21T19:42:00.008+09:00

The weekends are for exploring unknown beaches where we meet no one else but the fishermen who walk past our tents at 6am.
Our friend Tomo brought some uni from his snorkeling and chopped them open and we ate them right there. Countless experiences of being subjected to eating strange raw sea life with my dad had prepared me for this moment, and I did him proud.

Justin prepares the barbie skewers.

You know, beach stuff.
Eating the skewers.
The yogurt lady. Every day at lunch a yogurt lady brings a messenger bag full of yogurts to my office and I buy her dairy treats. The yogurt carts park outside office buildings and grocery stores and their existence are a mystery to me in a country that doesn't on a whole eat too much dairy. But I love having yogurt delivered to where I work, so I eat all kinds of strange flavors: aloe, grape, aloe and grape together.
The town where Justin lives had a summer festival where all of us civil servants dressed up in happi and learned a coordinated traditional summer festival dance and danced for hours in the street and drank a push cart full of beer.
All kinds of groups got all themed out and we all did the same dance together. Summer dance, sweaty dance, beer dance.

We were supplied with mini cans of beer because apparently it is easier to hold them while you dance.
Best group outfit.
Our beer cart that followed us everywhere/that I followed everywhere.
Our dancing soundtrack.
Justin and I with Miss Kokubu (Justin's town) and Miss Kirishima (bigger town nearby). What fine ladies.

Summer festivals are basically the best - one of the only times that Japanese people get really wild in public. Oh, but the nights are so hot and so sweaty! You've got to do something like dancing in the streets really drunk with your co-workers and students to take your mind off it.

Oh yeah, and an article about Japanese cell phones. (My phone is in the picture!)

Island school, shrines, lambchops, and some good country livin'

2009-07-13T20:03:00.006+09:00

At all Japanese elementary schools that I have been to tooth-brushing at lunch time is a big deal. The teachers check the kids mouths to make sure they haven't missed a spot and each kid has their own tooth-brushing kit. With all of this attention on the teeth you might think that Japanese kids have excellent teeth, but its exactly the opposite. I have never seen more people with rotting teeth in their mouth (aside from India) in my life. Japanese dentistry seems to be inefficient and unused, so I had my teeth cleaned in Thailand. Shady? Not at all actually. More on rotting Japanese teeth later.

One of my favorite island kids who is too young to go to the only island school but at every lesson she watches from the window or peeks in the door.Miniature island cars coming to get me from the boat.

Arriving at the island.Akusekijima island with a hat on. On July 22 at around 11am there will be one of the longest total eclipses right over the southern islands of Japan. From Akusekijima the eclipse will last around six minutes! Currently, around 70 people live on the island, but for the eclipse about 400 will storm the island. While I was teaching a French camera crew came to interview the islanders about how they plan to handle the influx of people. Answer: everyone is sleeping in the school field and gym.
The twelve hour boat trips get a little long after the sixth hour. The sea was really rough this trip and I projectile vomitted off the deck of the boat a few times and the wind was so strong that my puke flew straight out in front of me (thank god the wind wasn't going in the other direction).
My first balcony-garden tomatoes! Thanks to Justin's master carpentry skills (building me planter boxes out of bamboo), I have basil, lemon thyme, dill, cilantro, chocolate mint, zinnias, and bell peppers. The balcony is a harsh climate though - super hot and windy so my crop isn't as glorious as I had hoped for.
A recent visit to Kirishima Shrine. This shrine has something to do with marking the spot where the creator goddess gave birth to Japan so the emperor visits every year.
Washing hands and mouth before entering.

Takachiho Farm. We stumbled across this "farm," me in high hopes of a massive petting zoo, to find that it is a place mostly where people eat animal products and laze around in clover fields while Johnny Cash is being piped in on speakers set in trees. Which was also really great. Also kind of surreal, to close my eyes in a field and let Johnny Cash convince me that I am definitely not in Japan anymore. Open them, and ah! Surrounded by Japanese people picnicking and eating in psuedo "Bavarian" eateries!

After hanging out with some lambs I was really pleased to see that we could eat them! Lamb in Kagoshima is hard to come by (everyone I've talked to complains that lamb has too strong a smell), so we feasted.
I love being able to grill meats at my table! So interactive! Fresh!

Feeding farm animals of all kinds. These animal feed vendors could only exist in Japan, or Switzerland maybe.

Countryside house.

June

2009-07-06T21:30:00.006+09:00

June brought...outdoor excursions to rivers running through canyons that looked like China,

hydrangeas in bloom everywhere,

enough rain to grow moss in every crack and crevas,
rice planting season,

and a trip to my Island! These are tera-tera bozu, little ghosties made of cloth and cotton that are hung in the house during rainy season and prayed to to keep the rains at bay.
Visiting Akusekijima is probably the best part about my job. I take an overnight ferry and arrive just in time for mid-morning classes. An idyllic school day ensues: completely enthusiastic students who love English class after class and then after school I get led around the island by a pack of 6-11 year-olds who show me all the new baby cows and goats. Preparing to roller blade the bumpy island roads. Good thing for elbow, knee and wrist pads.
Itsuki petting a new baby cow. Itsuki's mother would only let him walk around with us if he drew sketches of things he saw along the way for his homework. He had this great sketch board around his neck and would stop and concentrate so hard on a tree or a cat in the road.
That's my school off in the hills.
And the market near my house. I am extremely lucky that I live right near a market where I can get the cheapest seasonal produce in town and all the folks know me there as the token foreigner who buys the fishes.
I did not buy these kinago, a special fish of Kagoshima. But they looked really nice and shiny in their box.
The fish lady.
My favorite neighborhood fruit stand.

Surviving the Sun

2009-06-03T21:03:00.008+09:00

There was a trip to the mountains and a some kind of daytime dance party at a campsite next to a hot spring.

We are slowly being given access to some of the more psychedelic sides of Japan...
Tea fields.
The ferris wheel on the mall next to my house.
Enjoying shabu-shabu: thinly sliced pork or beef that you swish in a delicious a broth at your table to cook it and then you dip it in a sauce and orgasms burst across your mouth and you think about how it would be difficult to not eat meat in Japan.
My students, waiting for the bus. Applying common sense-defying amounts of makeup.

The lotus plants are in bloom! Glory!
Beaching and camping! A nice little spot to the north of Kagoshima in Miyazake-ken. The funny thing about Japan is that so far it seems that rarely does a Japanese person spend time on the beach. Imagine! A sunny Sunday/Saturday at a nice stretch of sand and we are the only ones lounging and swimming! (There are surfers, but they never just hang out in the sand, it's car to wave and back)

Why is this you ask? Here ais my main theory: Japanese people are afraid of the sun. This is true. Japanese people are obsessed with maintaining very white skin and with not getting skin cancer (props on the last obsession, we Californians could use some sun protection awareness). Now that its sunny and warm out, everyone carries sun umbrellas and even young people wear long-sleeved gloves to keep their arms from seeing the sun. If you are driving along the expressway and look to the car next to you, you are likely to see that the woman driving it is wearing long gloves and a hat to shield her from the sun coming into her car. It's a little nutty if you ask me. And I do think that tanning is the greatest, so I really can't emphathize.

When Japanese people get out into nature, they seem to prefer taking to the hills as opposed to the sea, which is really odd behavior for an island country. That being said, it means that we get all the sand to ourselves!

You can see here, so folks who came out to watch the surfers... but won't sit in the sand and are fully clad in regular clothing. It's not uncommon to see the girlfriend of some surfer stand in her getup complete with heels and umbrella in the sand to take pictures of her bf... One time a couple wearing all black (woman in heeled boots) walked past us all laying out in the sun and sat on a log a little ways away under their umbrella and seemed to cast horrified glances at our outrageous submission to the sun.

After I came back from Thailand all of my students said to me "Kelly-sensei! Oh no! You are so tan! Aaaaah! But don't worry, you are still cute!"
Mt. Sakurajima and some fish farming?

This kitten is wild and has decided that it has a taste for jeans - at any given moment if I am jean-clad it will climb my leg, biting all the way. We have this game we play when we are all alone where she attacks me and I throw her as far as it is humanly possible to throw a kitten in a small Japanese flat and then she runs back and attacks me again. I never realized how peaceful my apartment was until I invited this little devil in to live with me and bite me in the night while I am trying to sleep.

PS Check out Maira Kalman's recent editorial for the NYTimes.com, "At Ease."

Catastrophe!

2009-05-27T20:08:00.004+09:00

Last Friday Justin and I were walking up Shiroyama (white mountain) headed to the hotel on top for dinner when we met a distressed nurse who had just found this kitten all alone. I told her we would take the kitten to the top of the hill where there is always a lot of cat food left out for the feral hill cats, but when it came down to it I couldn't leave her on the cold, windy hill, all alone with no food. I fell in love.

When she's scared she sits on my shoulder.

She settled right in!
Taking refuge after her bath.
Got to wash you wild kitten!

She's incredibly affectionate and can't be out of physical contact for too long. I couldn't hold her while washing dishes so she fell asleep on my foot.
Kitty cleaning!

Thailand Leftovers

2009-05-21T09:15:00.004+09:00

A line of tuk tuks.
A temple in Chiang Mai.

Reserved seating.

The gas station.
The sadness of domesticated birds: people seemed to be really into keeping wild birds in cages.
Justin feeds carrot cake to this beach dog.
Back in Kagoshima, acrobatics in the park near my house.

Spring Break '09 Woot Woot

2009-05-11T22:15:00.004+09:00

Justin and I headed off to Thailand for two weeks of spicy street food and tropical paradise. The first two days I couldn't get over the fact of being in NOT Japan - people were jay-walking, eating in the streets, not wearing shirts, talking loudly, there was trash on the ground and good and bad smells in the air! There was a touch of chaos! It was not Japan! We headed to Chiang Mai in to spend our first week taking cooking classes, having daily massages and mountain trekking! Here we are on a tour of the vegetable market where we learned about Thai spices and vegetables and were outfitted with funny hats.
The focus of of being in NOT Japan was definitely the food. I LOVE Thai food and as it is nonexistant in Kagoshima I set about eating as much of it as possible. This resulted in many incursions with massive amounts of chilli pepper which in turn led to the daily ring of fire. It's so easy to spoil yourself when the living is so good and so cheap - fresh fruit juices every day and tropical deserts! Right after this picture was taken we bought a spicy chicken on the side of the road and licked her clean.
In Chiang Mai you can go to a Buddhist temple and have a chat with a monk! The monks like to practice their English with foreigners who want to learn about Buddhism so they set up a little outdoor convo that you can drop by for. Our monk mostly wanted to talk about what the US is like and what traveling was like. He seemed really ready to have his time as a monk be up so that he could go out and do a little exploring.
From Chiang Mai we headed to Koh Phangnan and Koh Tao, which are part of a group of islands in the Gulf of Thailand. The only way to get around these island is taxi or renting a scooter for about $6 a day. I was a complete wet blanket about this scooter adventure and made us wear helmets and drive really slowly because you know, the other people out there are crazy drivers!

We stopped off in Bangkok to hang out with Steve and check out a few sites. This is Wat Phra Kaew.

Spicy fish with Steve!

Er, apologies, these pictures are out of order. Back in Chiang Mai we took a couple days trekking trip in the mountains. We hiked through some jungle action and villages where you could pick lychees off the trees! Its hard to see them, but there they are! So delish!
Silly hiking wear, dirty feet.
We slept in a bamboo house made for travelers in the village.
And bathed in the stream nearby. At night, fireflies floated around the river and we sang every pop song we knew with our guide. Ah, the sweet melody of Hotel California will now always remind me of that rainy night in the village.

And of course we forded rivers on the backs of elephants.
And no Asian country would be complete without some funny signs.

Mmm, delicious spicy soups. This was similar to Pho soup but had lots of different types of fish balls in it. I still don't quite understand the logic of eating really spicy food in hot hot countries... the locals always say that the spice makes you sweat, which cools you off, but I don't feel like being even more sweaty in addition to my already incredibly sweaty state really makes a difference. Here's to the food anyway though!
Toast with a myriad of delicious to strange toppings seemed to be a favorite snack.

Ooooh, sweet sweet street curries! The depth of flavor in this was just mindblowing and the green one was so spicy that it made my ears pop. I don't even know how that's possible, but it happened!

A beachside hut we stayed at in Koh Phangnan.
And our resort walkway in Koh Tao. Why do I only have a picture of the walkway and not our luxurious resort room? I was way too busy reveling in my first bed of nine months (I sleep on a futon in Kagoshima) and raiding the mini fridge or lounging on our porch watching the gekkos walk by...
Koh Tao, you were so beautiful. We spent about a week here taking water taxis and scooters around the island to great snorkel and dive spots (I went scuba diving!) and lounging on the beach tropical drinks in hand.

Eating tropical breakfasts by the sea!
At our resort...
Water taxi nap!
Oceanside lunch.
Me, battling Christy.

Underwater camera action. These are my favorite pictures taken the entire trip. Out of the corner of my eye I would see Justin swimming as fast as possible, arm outstretched to try and get a picture of the fish. There are a lot of these.

I felt like crying when it was time to leave this unreal island paradise. But I do feel like Japan has become my home, and it is always nice to come home after a trip.

(Nearly all pictures aside from those with him in them were taken by Justin)

Volcano Eruptions and Field Trips

2009-04-22T17:09:00.007+09:00

As you may recall, Kagoshima city is on the west side of Kinkoan Bay (that gray area on the left) and right in the middle of the bay is our resident volcano, Mt. Sakurajima. Recently the old Sak has been sending her ash our way (normally when she erupts all the ash gets blown to the East) and making quite a mess. Here's a clip of a more significant erruption a couple months ago.
It has ever ashed on us quite as heavily as it did this last time, and from the bus I thought in my post-workday haze that my bus home had descended into some kind of strange soupy smog cloud (did that idea seem so feasible to me because I grew up near LA?). As soon as I stepped off the bus I was covered in a thin layer of ash as was everything, everywhere.

Everyone had different ash protection methods.
Looking down a street it seemed like this must be what a light dust storm in the Middle East would be like, minus the part about being in the Middle East.
The Prius' were covered in ash!
Suit people sweep it up!
And then there was a field trip I took to the countryside with my second year students.
They didn't really seem to know how to interact with nature. Bugs were a big problem, as was crossing these wild rapids.

Eating snacks with some of my favorite students.
May 5th was Boy's Day. All over the countryside you see these carp hanging over rivers, blowing in the wind. I hear that there is a Chinese folk tale about a carp that swims up stream and when it gets past all the obstacles of the river it turns into a dragon. I also hear that the carp often symbolize each member in a family. I think they look real nice!
This shrine is at the foot of the hill that one of my schools is on and is a memorial to a student who was killed in a car accident. Every week the flowers change to match the countryside flowers that are in season.

Outdoor Happenings

2009-04-14T17:24:00.007+09:00

The kind of Spring that my Californian sensibility longs for (a warm, sunburn worthy, whimsical dress-wearing one) has finally hit Kagoshima. So we hit Nichinan beach, a couple hours north of Kagoshima in Miyazaki prefecture. Near Nichinan is Udo Jingu (shrine), which I think is by far one of the most beautiful shrines I have been to in Japan.

You walked a path right along the cliffs that leads down the the main shrine which is inside of a sea cave!

It's hard to see in this picture, but there is a hole in this rock that you try to throw blessed clay stones into from the cliff above. Women throw with their right hand and men throw with their left hand (because women need all the help they can get?). If you make it in, then you know, eternal happiness and good luck and all that jazz. And I made it!
The shrine inside the cave. So cool and nice in there...
A different weekend, a different outdoor excursion! A canola flower snack!
Takachiho gorge!
Lounging by the river. Oh river nap, you are so nice!

An early Saturday morning, heading out to the beach... and wild dachshund attack! There were at least four wiener dogs in this car who all wanted to jump out and bite our ankles. I can still hear their barking ringing in my ears as we sped off.
A pachinko (annoying Japanese fake gambling) parlour that I drive past every morning on my way to school. It reminds me of an aging casino in Carson City, Nevada, and that makes me like it. What a tragedy that they don't have breakfast buffets or lobster and steak dinners in pachinko parlours.
These are pictures of 2 out of the 3 legit cheese sources in my city. Now you know how dire my situation is. Gone are the days of artisanal goat cheese and farmer's market splurges.
Holding the largest block of cheese available. Not very large. Also called "Extra Extra Mild Cheddar," which isn't good news. Most cheese that Japanese people eat comes pre-shredded and is labeled either "pizza cheese," "cooking cheese" or "toast cheese." I can never figure out which one sounds better or will meet my cheese needs most appropriately. I am now used to paying at least $10 for a wedge of cheese that is too minuscule to do anything with but take small nibbles of.

Mostly, I try not to think about cheese.

Marry Me

2009-04-03T18:25:00.006+09:00

My cousin's cousin's wife's aunt's sister's cousin (ok, I kid, but our relation is just about this complicated) got married last Sunday at Meiji Jingu, the largest Shinto shrine in Tokyo, to a Swiss banker.

What an affair! Half the wedding party were Swiss, speaking mostly French and bieng quite flamboyant, the other half Japanese, speaking NO French and being quite reserved/Japanese. The couple, pictured above, in traditional wedding kimono and hakama.

The Shinto wedding ceremony. Though I understood hardly any of it, I was impressed by the feeling and the structure of the ceremony itself. It all felt so deliberate and fully of thought and great intention. I couldn't help but feel that the seriousness of the ceremony conveyed that this marriage was being taken in equal seriousness, and it made me wonder if the casual way that we conduct weddings usually is part of the reason why marriage itself is often taken so casually.

My cousin Aki.
Cousins Aki and Yuko in all their kimono splendor. I am still mystified by kimono - I have absolutely no ability to tell the difference between a high price kimono and a knock off poleyster deal (I don't know if they actually make kimono in poleyster, but I'm sure someone thought of this in 1963). Often the most expensive ones look the cheapest to me and vice versa. What I do know is that the one's my cousin's wore cost as much to rent per day as a ten year-old used Volvo. Am I too practical? I would rather have the Volvo.
We arrived at the shrine and all the kimono cousins were the darlings of the tourists visiting the shrine.
Cousin Yasuko.
We all met in a reception room of the shrine and each side of the family introduced themselves.
Then we marched across the front of the shrine to another private room where the priests would conduct the marriage ceremony. The line on the right: us. The line on the right: tourists gathering round to snap celebrity pics.

We were served sakura cha, which is a tea made out of dried and salted cherry blossoms. It looks pretty, but it tasted like... salt. No way man.
We moved from the shrine to the Hotel New Otani, to a fancy recetion room complete with automatic curtains that would be drawn or let down dramatically to showcase the gardens through the windows or the entrance of the bride each time she had an outfit change.

This was my favorite dish served at the reception: personal igloos with sashimi inside!
The family hired Japanese interpretors for many of the French speaking guests and at one point a man who looked like he only ever wore clothes suitable for yachting (silk scarf tucked into the shirt and fancy boating shoes... oh, how I love boating shoes!) stood up and gave a long speech. Throughout the speech he waved his hands the air, made kissing gestures, cried a little and spoke as effusively as a French-speaking yachting sport knows how. Oh, haha and the poor Japanese translator had no idea what to do with him. He would say something emotionally gripping and swivel around wildly and she would time after time translate into the most polite, kurt Japanese. Even for those who couldn't understand Japanese it was a hilarious scene. Everyone could see the comedy of this, and like a scene from Lost in Translation, the more he said, the less she said. I don't think the Japanese guests quite got the joke though...
Weddings in Japan seem to often be a Japanese interpretation of what a Western style wedding is. This wedding carefully stuck to traditional Japanese wedding style and so instead of four different dresses, my cousin changed into four different kimono. All of the food was Japanese and each dish had symbolism relating to the union of the new couple, prosperity, future happines, blah blah.

Me and the women in the fam.
Aside from the wedding, there was Tokyo. I am not sure if I like Tokyo yet. I always get those excited shivers of "I am in a big city!" when I first arrive, but I don't think Tokyo is a very beautiful or magnetic city in the way I want a big city to be. Or at least I haven't learned how to understand it for itself as opposed to how I usually understand other big cities, because I think Tokyo must call for some other kind of understanding.
The cherry blossoms were just starting to do their thing and everyone was out to check it out.
I went shopping like crazy woah! Ah, for the love of international stores! In Harajuku.
In Omotesando.
Sat in front of a crepe restuarant and ate a goat cheese gallette and a pear and pear liquer crepe a flambe. The man who own the restaurant basically makes it his job to act as flamboyantly French as possible when welcoming patrons and I watched group after group of Japanese people enter the restaurant squeeling with delight at this man yelling at them in wild French. I tried to pretend I was sitting in Passy at a cafe and I had a coffee so strong (no one makes good coffee in Kagoshima) that I thought I was going to have a panic attack.

Volcanoes, Cherry Blossoms and a Castle

2009-04-01T16:06:00.009+09:00

Map of my Japanese Island. Remember this. I am making a solid effort to learn all of the prefectures of Japan, but its way hard! There's a whole bunch!
Map of Mt. Aso, the volcano!
The sakura (cherry trees) are doing that blooming thing and it is oh so pretty!
The thing to do when the sakura are mankai (in full blossom) is to portion off a space under them for you and your friends to barbecue and drink under. I really appreciate Japan for this - it seems that every season there is a new flower blossoming or tree changing color that needs to be viewed while eating and drinking in the company of friends and family. Many butcher shops will deliver a BBQ set complete with meat, veggies and rice to your designated sakura viewing spot and pick it all up when you are done feasting. Brilliant!
We went on a camping expedition to Mt. Aso, an active volcano in northern Kumamoto prefecture (see the above map) that boasts the largest caldera in the world.
It all began with shrieks of excitement over a Starbuck's with a drive thru in the middle of nowhere Japan that looked like a carbon copy of something you would see off the 5 in between SF and LA. How did I get here, to this point where Starbuck's excites me? All I can think of are other times of desperation: eating Subway in Delhi, or conversely, all the shitty Japanese food I have eaten in NOT Japan.
And then, my prized loaf of "French countryside bread" purchased from the only store in Kagoshima to sell such a thing flew out of the trunk and it had to be saved a mile down the freeway. When it was rescued it had tire marks across the top but you don't just give up that kind of bread for lost.

Some anti-drug propaganda on the front of a convenience store. Be broken! Flashback! Ha, what I would give for a nice flashback once and a while here...
Feeding the lazy koi. Lazy fish!
We skipped over to Takachiho Gorge in northern Miyazaki prefecture because there were rumors that you could kayak through it, but the kayaks turned out to be rowboats with a one and a half hour wait and you had to stay in a roped off area. So instead we just watched Japanese people run their rowboats into the sides of the cliffs
Funny English is so prevalent that I rarely take pictures of it any more, but I always should. It's often quite poetic.
There was a bonfire accompanied by the usual Bob Marley covers, lots of expensive cheap wine, mystery guests (I wish they had been of a supernatural nature), and sentimental marsh mellows. I woke up unsure of quite a few moments.
I saw the stars for the first time in ages. Growing up in Ojai, CA, seeing the stars really means something to me and Japan is so overly lit that I had given up on them. At last!
Some delicious BBQ treats! Sweet, sweet salmons!

At the volcano you could ride these beautiful draft horses in a sad circle around a hill that all the Japanese tourists walked up in high heels.

We walked up the "real hill" to try to get a view into the steaming volcano but it was too smoky to see anything.
Part of the caldera. A face, anyone?
The volcano smoking in the distance.
Looking shockingly sporty (a look I won't ever really feel comfortable with) after summitting the hill.

At Kumamoto Castle. Flowers. Castle, Japan style. Rainy day.

Hello Spring

2009-03-23T20:12:00.005+09:00

I forgot what it felt like to have my windows open in the evening and to feel the sun on my shoulders! Not quite spring yet, but here she comes!
I have a wicked taste for umbrella thievery which is the outcome of not being able to hold on to my own umbrellas. If I have walked into a building when it was raining and walk out when it is not, it is absolutely garanteed that I will forget my umbrella. As it turns out the two acceptable forms of thievery in Japan are bike and umbrella theft, but I haven't taken to stealing bikes just yet as its too rainy to really enjoy bike riding.
Waiting for the bus in the rain with my students.
A recent going away party for two of the teachers I work with. All the teachers get rotated to different schools something like every 4-7 years to ensure that the schools around the prefecture have an equal chance at having good teachers. We gathered and drank and drank in honor of the leaving teachers and at times it was quite the solemn event. We all had to give speeches about those leaving and they had to give speeches about us and many tears were shed.
On the way home from the drinking/crying party I saw this guy playing his "guitar." I didn't realize that he was clearly nuts until I got right up to him, I was just so drawn in by his outdoor jamming enthusiasm. I guess this is an indicator of how rare it is to see nutters in the streets in Kagoshima... the fact that I am now taking pictures of them. A far cry away from good old Santa Cruz.
This is what the beach looks like. Swimming? No!

A small town recently visited where the descendents of Korean potters who were kidnapped and brought to Kagoshima by the local lord still live and make pottery.
Chillin' in the park on a sunny day. Japanese kids are always unbearably cute.
Ew, these dogs are terrible. Why are their faces always tear-stained and frozen in a pout?
An amazing self-decorated house (I am guessing?) near one of my schools.
Oh for the love of mechanized food production (or not?)! What a great machine! These sweets are like mini thick pancakes with sweet white bean on the inside and you eat them when they are warm and gooey and make you need at least ten more.
A cemetary on a rainy day.

Weddings and Workdays

2009-03-14T17:29:00.007+09:00

One of the English teachers I work with got married last weekend. The reception was a carefully staged show of dress changes, tearful speeches (during which everyone cried) and all of the formality that accompanies any ceremony in Japan. First, the bride came out in traditional wedding kimono and marched solemnly around our tables while we all cheered her on.
Some of the other teachers I work with eating the twelve course meal that was served. Luckily the champagne never ran dry...
After the kimono affair, the bride changed into a Western-style wedding dress and cut the cake with her husband. As you can see they were very serious about documenting this wedding, no drunken best friends giving speeches into the camera allowed! Unfortunately, no shoving cake into each other's faces either.
In true Japanese form, rather than have a messy throwing of a bouquet, we each held the end of a ribbon, only one of which was actually attached to the bouquet so that when we all pulled someone was left attached. Is it weird that I wanted to be the one who got the bouquet? Obviously I have no intention to get married in the next years, but that little girl/prize winner in me always wants the bouquet!
(Off with their heads!) And then a change into a third dress. All of her dresses were something that the six-year-old me would have dreamed up... 1980's over-glorified prom dresses accompanied by some amazing changing hairdos.
When the last dress came out, the bride and groom walked to each table and symbolically lit the center piece candles. When all of them were lit, they lit the master candle at the front of the room and sparks flew everywhere and everyone clapped. To my delight, this was all choreographed to many classic '90's love ballads!
The bride and the groom each gave tearful speeches addressed to their fathers about how much they loved and were thankful for their fathers. The emphasis was definitely not on their mutual love, but on thanking their families for getting them there, which is nice, but seemed a little dry to me. Like Indian weddings, it seemed more focused on the sadness of the bride and groom entering a new stage of life rather than their love. I can't complain about getting champagne drunk at a Sunday brunch affair, but as far as weddings go it was much too serious and formal. All of the fun parts seemed to be missing. No dancing! How are you supposed to move in on the groom's friends?
Last week. For various reason's some of the other foreign English teachers and I had to report to our central headquarters for four days instead of going to school. Our supervisor told us the time was meant for "lesson preparation," but he must be hugely out of touch with what our job entails (we can never plan lessons before our Japanese English teachers who we are partnered with give us the lesson info, which they never do ahead of time). We had nothing to do and were put in a hallway room with one window for four days, 8:30 to 4:15.
So we practiced juggling tankans, the most delicious orange grown specially in this area.
Watched David Attenborough nature documentaries.
And Slept. On the second day of this tedium, myself and three others ran from the bottom floor to the 16th floor and by the 8th floor my lungs almost gave out. We talked about God, wrote collective stories, French-braided each other's hair, and generally felt like we were at a really bad office summer camp, or that our parent's hadn't been able to find a babysitter and we had to come to work with them all day.
The gloom of the headquarters. This is the prefectural office building. As part of some policy to save public funds, the building is very poorly lit and never heated or air conditioned. A general state of gloom prevails. We found ourselves surveying the office workers and saying things like, "Boy, we will never work a job like this!" and then pausing, realizing that in fact (though also not really) we all are working that job.
I've grown fond of calling this building the "death star" as you can see it from almost any point in the city and is god awfully ugly. I sing Darth Vader's theme song whenever I approach it.
Da da da duh da duuh da da duuuuh!

Graduations, group tooth-brushing and ferrets on leashes

2009-03-08T14:54:00.004+09:00

View of Kagoshima City from the Shiroyama (white mountain) lookout point.
Schools in Japan are on a year-round schedule, March marking graduation time. I was pretty curious to see what a high school graduation ceremony would be like and kept describing to my teachers the chaos of graduations at home (chickens under gowns, blow-up dolls, moonings, drunk boyfriends staggering onto the stage, hang gliders, the usual).

Let's just say that the only thing that Japanese and American high school graduation ceremonies have in common is that for the most part they are incredibly boring. This graduation was really long with many speeches given by various public servants and noted officials and very little emphasis on any individual student. There were no student speeches or recognitions - one student from each homeroom class accepted a diploma on behalf of their entire class and there were absolutely no rebellious antics (not surprising at all). Yet at the end, when all of the students were singing the long and dull school anthem, about half of them burst into tears and sobbed through the entire thing. The other half seemed nonplussed or super bored and filed out of the gym like they would have for any other assembly.
Formal, formal, formal ceremony. I was pretty disappointed... there should at least have been celebratory whoops of glee that high school was over...peeling out the parking lot, ripping off shirts, throwing books in the hall, pumping up the base... (my student's don't drive, would be severely reprimanded for removing an article of their uniform, and you can't just throw your books way, you have to sort them into one of the six appropriate recycling receptacles).
My favorite graduating students.
Cleaning up the gym after the ceremony.
I recently found out that there is a "jazz bar" in Kagoshima City. The music was the usual cheesy jazz standard stuff, with of course the ever popular "Girl from Ipanema" (I hear some horrible cover of this song at least once a week piped into a public space/store around town. Japanese people love this song!), but I ate it all up because it has been so long since I have been in the vicinity of live music.

Photo (left to right): My friend Mayumi, the piano player, me, my friend Virginia, Mayumi's friend, a local professor, and a really really drunk guy (trying to keep himself from peeing?).

This drunk guy wandered in with his friends and at first I thought he was lost on his way to a snack bar (a bar where you pay ladies to sit and have conversations with you), but it turned out that he was a big jazz enthusiast. He could barely keep his eyes open but he could yell "Yeeeeaaaaah!" in a really deep voice at inopportune moments and got up several times to dance traditional Japanese dances to the music with his eyes closed. Fantastic!
My favorite local grocery store where I can find all kinds of cheap local produce and fresh herbs. And a woman wearing a turban.
A woman walking her goat. She carried a little whisk and dustbin with her so she could sweep up after its poop, which seemed like way too much effort, I mean those goats basically poop every time they take a step!
Ferret and fat long-haired dachshund interaction in the park, Sunday afternoon.
Brushing my teeth after lunch with fellow English teachers.

On Okonomiyaki and Other Bits

2009-02-20T18:51:00.006+09:00

Okonomiyaki is a kind of savory pancake that usually has cabbage and many goodies mixed into the batter. "Okonomi" means "however you like it" and "yaki" means "grilled," so when you go to an okonomiyaki restaurant you choose from a menu of toppings and ingredients to have mixed into your pancake.
You order your ingredients and either your server dishes it up for you on a grill at your table or you dish it up for yourself and do all the grilling. The ingredients offered vary depending on what region you are in, but mostly consist of different sea foods, meats and vegetables and green onion that all get mixed together into a grill-up. We ordered the local Kagoshima black pork on top of ours and when the pancake was flipped all the juices sizzled into the batter and it was mouthwateringly delicious.
Our server took care of us, flipping at the right times, removing grease and putting up with me high fiving him in excess.
When they are done you slather various sauces on them and cut portions off to eat in a smaller dish. Mmmm!
Its hard to see what's going on in this picture... but in my office there is this tooth-brushing cabinet that you can open and make use of whenever the tooth-brushing mood strikes you. People brush their teeth a lot here... which should mean that everyone has really good teeth, but in fact it is the exact opposite. Japanese people have THE worst teeth I have ever seen. Literally, rotting away, huge holes and murderous breath. It's still very shocking to me because everyone seems to meticulous about their phsyical appearance but for this one (very important) area...
This is also hard to get a look at, but one of my teachers wears these removable arm sleaves when he works to protect his shirt from getting dirty while he pushes paper. These Japanese folk, so fastidious!
Characters on the tram.
Album cover/ dreaming of some California psychedelia.
Ladies lunching.
Album Cover Part II/ A recent visit to an open air art museum. Quite a drive into the hills there is an outdoor sculpture garden where sculptures made by various international artists are places on lawns and in woods and you can wander around exploring them. A good place for a picnic!
Iron tunnel to nowhere.
Outdoor sculpture.

The Middle of February

2009-02-15T18:56:00.009+09:00

First, look at this map of where I live! To the left is Kagoshima city, my city, and to the right is Sakurajima volcano, an active volcano that has recently been sending a decent amount of ash in our direction. Ok, now check out the circumference of this volcano-island. The road that runs around its coast is about 36km ( approx 22.36 miles!).
Take a break from that geography lesson and check out today's funny use of English spotting! Haha, both of those toilet paper names are brilliant. I love the idea of wiping away the sweet memory of meals past with a toilet paper to remind me of their "sweet memory." As well as wiping with a toilet paper called "Fine Lady," because you know, there has got to be a toilet paper for fine ladies.
Why is the circumference of that volcano-island important? Because along with a hundred or so high school students, I ran around it! We started off at nearly dawn and what an oddessy it was! Despite the fact that I was Sporty Spice in a 1997 taping of the Spice Girl's "Wannabe" performed by Jennifer Good, Emily Burger, Serena Handley and myself, surprisingly, I have never quite lived up to any kind of "sporty" persona. However, I did my best to put on some kind of funny version of a "sporty" outfit and ran around that volcano in about 4.5 hours!
It was a gruelling march of many many hills, but the momentum of the downhill is what saved us.
Taking a rest near some giant daikon.
And they're off!
Running up that hill.
There were beautiful views!
This daikon (Japanese raddish) is the largest raddish in the world, weighing in at over 30 kgs! Also, there was lots of volcanic rock for sale which I would have purchased had I not had to carry it for the next four hours (though I suppose it was really light). When you are coming in the harbor the volcano-island you often can see lots of these floating rocks riding the waves.
I ran and ran, and looked at these oranges in little bags.
And some really nice dry grass in the sun.

I completed the run, ate a sandwich in a parking lot at the finish line and passed out on a sunny sidewalk, only to wake up with many of my students hovering around me, anxious and mocking looks on all their faces.

For the next two days I hobbled around like an old lady and had zero inclination to do anything vaguely sporty.
Yesterday, there was a trip into the Kirishima mountains to the north of me. Winding mountain roads that everyone drives impossibly slow on (excepting us of course) and fields of tea. The volcano was blowing ash in our direction creating a never-ending twilight effect that gave the day's adventure an epic golden-hour feel.
Catching a shot of Mt. Takachiho. In Japan it's acceptable to pull over and stop anywhere as long as you have your hazard lights on (or not). I often see a car stopped in the middle of the road because some lady has left it there to run in and grab a bakery treat.
There were many waterfalls, some with hotsprings gushing out of them, and some with fallen trees to traverse. It was wonderfully warm, that perfect weather for exploring unknown roads and listening to a good song.
Another day, after school, waiting for the bus.
There is a steep hill on the other side of the road and my students love to take each others' bags and throw them down the hill to pass the time waiting for the bus.

Nagasaki

2009-02-02T19:56:00.009+09:00

The trip to Nagasaki began with my first ride on the Shinkansen.

And a strawberry, cheese and honey sandwich made by a Welshman.
Nagasaki is a beautiful, hilly city, vaguely reminiscent of SF and trying its best (for the sake of tourism) to cling on to its heritage of having had contact with foreigners while the rest of Japan was under government regulated contact with the outside world for a couple hundred years.
There was wine to be had in a funny tower overlooking the city.

Sky cable cars to ride up the hill to the lookout tower and the wine.

The Glover Gardens. Some sort of historic (historic because its association with Nagasaki's foreign trading community) house and garden owned by some Dutch?Scottish? trader from the mid 19th century. We started seeing lots of people dressed in funny versions of 19th century garb and found that for $5 you could be dressed in period attire and walk around the gardens for half an hour. And why not, right?
So don't worry, this isn't me turning into some kind of Ren Fair looney in a Japan-induced mental breakdown. Haha, why do I always find myself in situations where I am drawing even more attention to myself as a foreigner when I already get enough?! This strapping sailor and I strolled the gardens and found out that that if there is one thing that Japanese people love more than dressing up in funny costumes, it is seeing foreigners dressed up in funny costumes and we became instantly famous.
These two girls who absolutely crying with delight at seeing two foreigners dressed in these odd semblances of period outfits. Having Japanese girls scream over us at every turn of the garden, it really was a moment of, "ah, so this is what the Beatles must have felt like." Ate it up with a spoon and many celebrity style photographs.

Garden-goers.
And in true Japanese form, there were escalators to ease your journey on the steep ascent up the hill.

Shrines on a hill!

High school kids run up and down the stairs of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

The atomic bomb epicenter memorial.

Epicenter of the bomb explosion + monolith.
Our trip coincided with Nagasaki's Lantern Festival, a big celebration of Chinese New Year. So there were parades, and lots of lanterns everywhere and we wandered the streets following the lanterns and feeling very much like it should have been a summer night.

Steam buns! Delicious, delicious steam buns!

People were wild for them!

In a Chinese temple: I have no idea what this was about. Apparently pig decapitation is a felicitous way to ring in the New Year.

End of January

2009-01-26T18:23:00.008+09:00

Last week I paid another visit to my dear island, Akusekijima. Here I am, sleeping on the ferry with my one true love, the New Yorker.
I woke up and took pictures of other people suffering the 12+ hour ferry ride. While Suki is off cruising in tropical waters on yachts, I was stuck in the middle of a grey, grey sea.
Class in the gym! We ran around throwing dodge balls at each other, yelling commands at each other in English: cry! sleep! jump! laugh! dance!
My students prepare for lunchtime. I have no idea why they are required to wear these outfits whenever food is involved. It's like there is some secret epidemic on the island that only they are susceptible to.
Grim school lunch.
I got off the boat and this 4 year old permanently attached herself to me for the next day. I also got off the boat with a massive fever and took a large handful of mystery pills so that I could function in the classroom setting. During one of my first lessons my cold medicine high hit hard, but luckily the schedule for the rest of the day was running around and yelling things in English.
So after school, riding my cold medicine high, I joined a gang of 3-6 year old kids and ran around the island. I hung out with these cows, hunted the island's wild goats and ate sweet potatoes in the bushes with the kids.
The island started reminding me of a trip to Big Sur... remember the ice cream? The burritos on the beach with the setting sun? Calling in to the radio station on the ride home?
Dramatic cliffs at Big Sur!

We picked up some familiar hitchhikers!
Ok, back to the island and me wandering around with a gang of kids.

I have been telling everyone that if I could only have a psychedelic experience here it would really give me some answers as to what I should do with myself and the future, etc. I am guessing this is the closest thing to a psychedelic experience that Japan will afford me... After cruising the island, I went back to the inn I was staying at and drank wine with the old lady who ran the place. I found that mixing cold medicine and wine really improved my language skills and watched a two hour soap opera with a group of construction workers, in complete awe that I could understand as much as I could. At the end of the show, when the main character's girlfriend was crying beside his paralyzed body, I surveyed the room and found that all of these men around me were crying and so I started crying with them, with the show, and with the old lady who was drunk on bad Japanese wine. Then I decided it was time to go to bed.
A couple weekends ago I went to a place that specialized in somen nagashi, which is a thin noodle that they put in a whirlpool of water on your table and you sort of just scoop it out with your chopsticks, dip it in a sauce and slurp it up.
Adding noodles to the whirlpool.
Scooping noodles. The best part about this place was that they had a lot of koi ponds and if you didn't finish your noodles you got to feed them to the fish!
I also visited a lake nearby that is famous for giant eels! Ew, sick!
I was told they don't eat the eels because they are too big, but that seems like a giant waste of eel. What do I know about eel though? The Lochness monster's cousin is supposed to live in this lake, and my friend told me that when he was little and lived by the lake, he saw its head poking along the shore. I'm not sure if I believe in lake monsters, in fact I specifically don't want to believe in them because I love swimming in lakes and they are scary enough without them.
I went to an incredibly beautiful Buddhist temple in the mountains

Tokyo Pics, Last Round

2009-01-17T14:42:00.005+09:00

It is traditional in Japan for a family to go to the husband's mother's house on the first of January and the wife's mother's house on the second day of January. This mean that I had two days of feasting with two branches of family! I didn't miss Christmas at all! (This is my mom's family, me in the back row, clutching my stuffed belly)
Mmmm, New Year's food.

Haha, there is a huge section in the medicine store dedicated to these face masks that everyone wears in public here when they get sick. No way, not every going to wear one. Not even if you paid me.
At my cousin's husband's mother's (haha, dog's uncle's sister in-law) New Year gathering. We ate these raw shrimp that you peel and eat whole. I was a little wary of this dish at first, but the meat is really creamy and delicious.

We drank sweet nihon-shu (sake) out of this ceramic cow, which delighted me, but truthfully I would have been more delighted were I not so hung over from the day before and could actually enjoy contemplating drinking alcohol.
Slicing sashimi.
This is a snack made of dry fish mixed with sugar and soy sauce and cashews. I don't think its the worst thing you can eat, but its not my fav, so I stuck to the cashews.
My cousin chooses New Year's decorations to hang at her front door.
More karaoke-ing. This is the device that tells the karaoke machine which song to chose.
Campai!

Belated Tokyo Update

2009-01-11T20:02:00.005+09:00

Unlike karaoke in the US&A, karaoke in Japan can be crazy fun. You rent your own room with a group of friends and usually for somewhere around $25 you get two or three hours of all you can drink. They seem to have nearly every song I can every think of, and my favorite way to spend the karaoke fest is by enforcing a "only songs from Jr. High" policy. This rule works really well and it is something close to bliss to get blitzed and sing Sugar Ray.
On the 31st I went with my cousin and his friends from high school (who all went to the American School in Tokyo, and many are Japanese or half or from the US) to a karaoke bar in Shibuya, which is sort of Tokyo's Time Square, but with a lot of cool bars and tons and tons of people. I forgot that I cannot drink as much as business major bros and got really drunk and the countdown crush of hundreds of people in the streets screaming is all sort of a warm fuzzy blur. What is not a blur is my struggle to find the right train home, and once seated on my train the guy next to me turned to me and puked all over me! By the time it hit me that yes, a stranger had puked on me, he was off at the next stop. The humiliation of being puked on (and then handed tissues by passers-by, and then backed away from, oh and lets not forget arriving at my family's house covered in puke) in this super polite place is something that will make this New Year's Eve unforgettable.

I was in a tall building in Shinjuku.

One of my cousins asked me, "Kelly, what is your fashion style?" I told her, "Well, in the winter time I wear as many bulky, unflattering layers as I can squeeze under this thrift store find of a jacket, lots of bright off-colors that clash, and try to look as outdated and as possible." As irony is non-translatable and my cousins only seem to wear things with large labels on them, I had to follow that comment with "Just kidding, I am really into Marc Jacobs."
At a lot of convenience stores you can buy pre-made oden, which is a kind of soup made up of a clear broth and various fish cake and seaweed items. It never really looks that appetizing in the convenience store... However, I would say that convenience store food in Japan is of amazing quality compared to the old US&A. I actually like eating food from convenience stores here.
Zoom Zoom Zoom.
Train Train Train.
Setagaya, the neighborhood in Tokyo where one of my cousins lives. I stayed here for the majority of they time.