The End of a Great Decade

It didn't cross my mind that this year's New Year's celebration would take us into the next decade until I heard an NPR All Songs Considered show titled "Best Music of the Decade." Since then, I've been noticing loads of "Best ____ of the Decade" lists. Everyone wants to tell you the best movies, news stories, medical breakthroughs, heroes, and on and on.

I tend to think more about the future than the past, but I wanted to take a moment to share the most important moments of this, the most important decade of my life thus far. I was 14 when 2000 began, and I had just moved to Missouri. I wasn't too excited about being in Missouri. I had just begun to get settled in Vancouver, Washington when my parents informed me that we'd be moving to Missouri, a state I knew nothing about. Moving to Missouri turned out to be a great change in my young life. I met so many amazing people and had great opportunities I might not have had otherwise. Though it happened a few months before this decade, it is a very important part of the 2000's.

In the first three years of the decade, I had so many fun times at Liberty High School, but most importantly, I met two wonderful ladies who have been great friends ever since and accompanied me on so many adventures. I'm glad I know you, Lauren and Sam.

Not to discount my high school years, but attending college at Missouri State University was such a life-changing period for me. I know that just about everyone considers this part of their life important, so it's a bit cliche to go on about how university opened me up to so many different opinions, cultures, and people, but it did.

This decade is the decade when I became a vegetarian, and that has been very important to me. Besides making me feel healthier and happier, it has also opened up a whole world of food to me. Before becoming a vegetarian, my cooking skills consisted of opening up a box of Rice-a-Roni and adding butter and water. Since then, things have gotten considerably better, and I can now successfully conjure up a main dish, a side dish, and a salad relatively painlessly. (Though as Dustin would reveal, I usually skip the salad and the side dish and make a really scrumptious main dish, but I CAN make and HAVE made all three.) I even bake now, though I haven't yet mastered meringue. It is a project for the next decade.

In this decade, I have had the amazing opportunity to travel to Europe, twice! Both trips were so amazing and I saw so much, took way too many pictures, saw a slew of musicals, ate a crazy amount of pain au chocolat, and drank a few too many glasses of unbelievable French wine. I had the joy of studying Shakespeare and analyzing the songs of The Beatles in London. And I studied la langue française and French history in France. My professors on both programs encouraged me to begin writing, and it is completely because of them that I did. I caught the travel bug this decade and I don't plan on getting rid of it any time soon.

I've attempted (and not quite succeeded) to learn two new languages in the 2000's, French and Japanese. French was a bit easier to understand and remember than Japanese is proving to be. I've lost much of my French, but at my peak, I was speaking to my French parents about politics and the anatomy of a baguette. Compare that to the most recent conversation I had with some Japanese teenagers during which I got flustered and mistakenly told them I was 14. I've got a long way to go with my Japanese, but I hope that I have not yet reached my peak.

Most importantly, I met my future husband this decade. Nearly 3 years ago, Dustin and I were introduced to each other by my friend and his coworker, Sarah Scharfenberg. After a very fast romance, we moved into a nice little loft in downtown Springfield together, much to the (silent) dismay of our families and friends. Though few people said it, most of the reactions we got when telling people we'd be living together after a few short months of knowing each other was a look that said, "Whoa. That's waaaay too fast." Well, it turns out that our fast paced relationship has lasted the test of time and we're going to tie the knot. It is the first time that I've fallen in love, and that is undoubtedly the best thing about this decade.

And then, of course, we moved to Japan, which has been a grand adventure of its own. Once again, I moved to a strange new land, with a bit of trepidation, and turned out to love it. I doubt that I'll spend the next decade in Japan, but I'm glad I've come to experience this crazy country, and I'm willing to stick around for a while longer.

As with anyone's life, there has been the occasional disappointment and sadness over the past ten years, but this decade has been truly amazing. I've met some of the most important people in my life, and I hope that we will remain important to each other in the next decade. I've discovered some life long loves of my life: vegetarian food, traveling, writing, and Dustin.

Though it's been a great decade, I expect the next decade to be even more important than the last. There are a great many things I wish to do in the next decade:

-have my very own classroom

-continue to see the world

-continue my writing

-go back to France and finish learning French (hopefully with Brigitte)

-become a debt free citizen

-learn to sew and knit and make wearable garments

-have a house with a big garden

-be a mother (but probably in the latter part of the coming decade, so don't get too excited yet)

We'll see how the next decade turns out! Stay tuned.

Happy Holidayssssss

Dustin and I hosted our very first Thanksgiving feast. As it so often happens, Dustin's birthday fell shortly after the holiday. A few weeks before, he'd told me that he wanted a turkey shaped caked that also tasted like turkey. Little did he know, I had already ordered a bird from a website that Tracey shared with me, and it was due to arrive a few days before our Thanksgiving party.

I know that Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, but all of us English teachers in Japan typically work on Thursdays, so we planned Dustin's birthday party/ Thanksgiving dinner for the following Sunday. After a few rousing games of bowling, we planned on having around 15 people over to our little Japanese apartment for a fabulous feast.

Since I am usually the lone vegetarian at Thanksgiving dinner, I have made the occasional dish to bring to the table, but I have never been responsible for the majority of the meal. Neither Dustin nor I have ever had anything to do with cooking a turkey. Having observed my mother over the years, I understood that you must start the cooking the day before if everything is to be finished in time. I spent most of Saturday night cooking up a storm. I continued in the morning, and somehow finished everything in the nick of time. I made glazed carrots, gravy, stuffing, cheesecake, brownies, and about 3 pounds of garlic mashed potatoes! The gravy was lumpy and the brownies exploded all over the oven, but they were gobbled up nonetheless.

Dustin did the turkey. It was quite a task, with a few problems. First problem, this tiny 3.4 kg turkey was too big to fit in our even tinier Japanese oven. Second problem, our oven is a bit finicky. It never seems to think the suggested amount of time is appropriate; sometimes it thinks 25 minutes should be 40, at other times 5 minutes into a 20 minute cooking time leaves something burnt to a crisp... So we weren't really sure how long it should stay in there.

Dustin solved the first problem by chopping off the wings and legs, and cooking the torso on its own. The second problem was solved by lots of observation. The instructions that came with our roasting bag said to cook it until most of the cooks agreed that it was done, probably between 2.5-3 hours. Well... neither of us knew how to tell if it was done, but it looked brown, so we took it out. And thankfully, it was done. And then the rest of the poor disassembled bird was stuck in the oven, and an hour later, it too was enjoyed by the carnivores in the room. Everyone happily ate the turkey without complaint, but once the guests left, Dustin admitted that it was much drier than the turkey he's used to. It was his first attempt and it was edible, so I declare it a success.

The evening turned out to be another lovely potluck in Japan. We had more dessert than we knew what to do with, but there were very few complaints about that. And our Japanese guests brought sushi, which was a welcome addition to the dinner. Someone even made Sangria! And luckily, our American friends rounded out the dinner with a few other Thanksgiving staples like macaroni and cheese and sweet potato casserole. In a single word, the night was delicious.

And of course, after Thanksgiving the next holiday is... CHRISTMAS! Which I am so very excited about spending in the U.S. that I talk about it far too much these days, so I will refrain from blabbing on and on about all the great fun I will be having in a short week and a half (like eating burritos and seeing the Nutcracker and attending more Christmas "events" than I have ever attended in one year and seeing all of the people I miss the most)!!!

I don't know if any of my faithful readers are familiar with David Sedaris's short story "Me Talk Pretty One Day" from a book of the same name, but I found myself in the midst of a remarkably similar situation the other day. Only we were talking about Christmas traditions around the world in broken Japanese, instead of Easter traditions around the world in broken French.

I have been taking a Japanese class at my local Civic Center since April. Currently, my class consists of me, my American boss, a middle-aged South Korean man who works at a restaurant, a 19 year-old Chinese girl, a middle-aged Chinese woman who I think is a doctor, and a mysterious middle-aged Spanish man from Madrid, who recently joined our class. At the end of each chapter, we take a little quiz that involves filling in the blanks of a story. The one we completed last time was a sort of guess who passage. It was about a man who has a wonderful job where he only has to work one day a year. He wears a red suit, and has white hair. I don't recall what else was in the passage, but I was giggling about half way through having realized that we were talking about Santa Claus here.

After we finished our quiz, my adorable little old Japanese teacher asked, "Who is this?" I said immediately, and a little too enthusiastically, "Santa Claus!" To which one of my Chinese classmates replied, "Who?" Who?!?!? Always prepared, my teacher pulled out a plush Santa and showed it to the Chinese girls who seemed to have recognized the face, but didn't know a thing about him. My teacher starting giving the run down on Santa, and she began by telling us why Santa Claus brings toys to all of the children in the world. She said that Santa Claus is single, but he loves children. I interrupted her to say, "That's wrong. Santa Claus has a wife." My teacher asked her name, and I replied, "Claus San," which could translate to Mrs. Claus or Mr. Claus, so that did nothing to quell her confusion. I broke the normal "Japanese only" rule, and said, "Mrs. Claus" in English.

Being the only American in the room (my boss was absent that day), my teacher felt that I was the authority on Santa Claus, and thus began asking me a multitude of questions about him. "Where does he live?"

"Umm... very north with lots of snow and countryside."

"What does his wife wear?"

"Mr. Santa the same, but dress and glasses."

"Does he have any children?"

"No, but he has many small people friends."

(There was a very confused expression on the face of everyone present at this point.)

Luckily, my teacher understood and said, "Erufu," the katakana version of elf.

Suddenly, the man from South Korea piped up, "Santa Claus very tall. He has blue clothes."

Next the Spanish guy chimed in, "His name is Papa Noel in Spain. We get two days presents. In January, three men put presents in children's shoes."

The Chinese girls continued to insist that they had never heard of this Santa character.

It was a very interesting cultural discussion, but I have a feeling there was an awful lot lost in translation and none of us came away with a complete understanding of the Christmas traditions observed in each others' home countries. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to visit you all in person and talk about all of the things that have been happening that haven't made it to the blog, and hear about your own live in the past year and a half. See you all so very very soon!

Brigitte Invades Japan!

Last week, we had the great fortune of our very first American visitor. The lovely Brigitte came over to Japan for a week and a few days. I met her in Tokyo for the weekend before she came with us to Niigata-ken.

The week flew by, and unfortunately, Dustin and I both had to work, so it was a bit crazy, but we were so lucky to finally have a visitor. It was great to see a familiar face, and hear what we'd missed after we left Springfield. It was also wonderful to have someone to show around, because we did a few essential Japanese experiences that we rarely make the time for... all in one week.

First, Brigitte and I had an exciting weekend in Tokyo. Since we hadn't seen each other in over a year, the majority of our two days in Tokyo involved lots and lots of talking. In between all of the gabbing, we somehow managed to see the National Museum of Modern Art, visit an old school onsen, eat Indian food twice, do a wee bit of bargain hunting in Harajuku, see a lovely night view of Tokyo from the top of Roppongi Hills Tower, and traverse half of Tokyo on foot.

We both REALLY wanted to see the crazy fashion of the Harajuku girls, but despite having searched for them up and down the streets of Harajuku and running all over Yoyogi Park, we didn't see any of these fashion wonders in their natural environment. We did see two convincing "Harajuku girls," but they were both pretty blonde Westerners. We saw a tamer version of the Harajuku girls we sought out, but they were employees at a store who sold these crazy fashions, so they still didn't feel authentic. Disappointed, we met my friend Ryo at the train station to go to Roppongi for dinner. In the crowd, I spied a girl dressed in all pink, complete with a frilly pink tutu, and topped with a shocking pink bob. In excitement, I exclaimed, "Ryo, look! I found a Harajuku girl!" He looked her up and down and said, "Eh... not quite. She's trying, but..." Apparently, there are still a few Harajuku girls hanging on to this street fashion, and they meet at Harajuku Station around noon on Saturdays and Sundays, but most of the fashion craze ended five years ago. Westerners just clued into this delightful style a little too late. Boo.

Tokyo was fun, but eventually we had to leave for the countryside of Niigata-ken. To lessen the shock of Nagaoka compared to Tokyo, we went straight to Niigata-shi, the biggest city in our prefecture. We met my British friend, Ellen, and my Japanese friend, Kyoko, for lunch at a soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) restaurant. It was an extremely rainy day, so we decided to do our sightseeing inside. We went to the top of the Toki Messe building, one of the largest in the city. The view wasn't nearly as impressive as the one in Tokyo, but it was interesting nonetheless, because we were right on the coast of the Japan sea. I could see the outline of Sado island in the distant fog.

When you think about Japan, it's pretty hard not to think about video games. They are such a huge part of the modern Japanese culture. I knew Brigitte wasn't too fond of video games, but I thought she should really experience Japanese arcade games. It was a bit of a hard sell, but when I told her that Round 1 had massage chairs, she agreed to give it a try... and she loved it! She had a lot of fun playing all the wacky Japanese video games. And we both relished the chance to use the massage chairs after two days of endless walking.

Once we got back to Nagaoka, we started showing Brigitte the typical Japanese lifestyle in the inaka. We did so much during her week in Niigata-ken. She had the chance to try so many different types of Japanese food, and she liked almost all of them. We went to an izekaiya and did karaoke. We even took her to a Japanese garden in Kashiwazaki where she got to enjoy the lovely fall momiji. At the garden, we did a tea ceremony with my friend Yumi. It was very interesting. We drank from cups that were around 400 years old. Thanks to Yumi's translating, we learned what each slow and calculated movement meant. My legs fell asleep about 15 minutes into it, but it was interesting.

I'm so happy that Brigitte got a chance to visit! It was great fun. You can see all of the pictures on facebook by clicking the new album on the list to the right!

Honeymoon Madness

A few months ago, a travel agent from Springfield e-mailed me about our honeymoon. Assuming that I'd given her my e-mail address way back when Dustin and I went to a wedding show in Springfield, I excitedly sent her my dream honeymoon and budget and awaited her reply. She got back to me quickly, "excited for the challenge" I was presenting, since we needed to get from Japan to Springfield, MO to (hopefully) Thailand and back to Japan again. AND I needed to be ensured that where we'd be on our honeymoon week, there would be vegetarian food available. I e-mailed with her for about 3 weeks and even had a phone conversation with her, but all of a sudden, she disappeared. Whenever I e-mailed her, an "out of the office" e-mail would be sent to me. I tried calling her a few times, but she never answered. It's been about a month since the last time I had contact with her, and still no word. It's very mysterious.

So, I decided to take the honeymoon planning into my own hands. I began researching resorts on the internet. I quickly discovered that Thailand had plenty of amazing resorts, but they were all out of our price range. Reluctantly, I ditched my dream of honeymooning in Thailand, and started looking at other options in Asia, since we'd have to come back to Japan anyway. I found many more reasonably priced resorts, but when I checked the airfare, it was all outrageous, or it required an extra day of traveling that I wasn't willing to accept.

I'll go ahead and apologize for sounding spoiled, but I really did not want to honeymoon in the Caribbean. Both Dustin and I had been to the Caribbean more than once (and we're very grateful for each opportunity to have done that) and we wanted somewhere new for our honeymoon. I didn't want my honeymoon experience to be tainted by any past vacations' memories, good or bad. The only thing I didn't want more than a Caribbean vacation was one of those cheesy resorts whose commercials you see full of smiling models with a martini in one hand and their sarong waving in the wind in the other hand, like... Sandals for instance.

After weighing the options in nearly every part of the world, and getting really excited about the possibility of honeymooning in Hawaii for a split second (before realizing it was even more expensive than Thailand), we finally settled on... Sandals Grande Ocho Rios in Jamaica. I know what you're thinking, "That is both in the Caribbean and the cheesiest resort you can find." Well, it was a deal we couldn't pass up. It was affordable, and neither of us have been to Jamaica. Plus, we won't lose too much time traveling, since it's so close to the U.S. And it's all inclusive, so all drinks and food is covered, inclusing special vegetarian fare. Our honeymoon will begin shortly after our first day of marriage does, which is something I prefer to spending the first 17 hours of married life on a plane.

Deciding where to go took about 3 hours of "discussion," but actually ironing out all the details and booking our room and flight took twice as long. We started out by calling Sandals to ask about the differences between two rooms we were deciding between. We talked to Arol, a Jamaican gentleman. He made us feel like respectable royalty instead of the young bums we actually are. He called me ma'am and Dustin sir. He insisted we upgrade our room, because we deserved it. He "could tell" Dustin was a man who enjoyed golf, which he is, so he suggested that at some point on the honeymoon, Dustin take some time at the golf course, while I spend the day at the spa. Well, Arol, that sounds like a great idea! We booked our ocean front suite and felt very special and appreciated. As soon as we hung up with Arol, however, Dustin reminded me that Micheal Scott and Jan (from The Office) had gone to Sandals in Jamaica, and I no longer felt very special, but I did laugh for a few minutes.

Next step: plane tickets. We had quite an agenda what with flying into Springfield, MO from Japan, and then to Jamaica, and back to Japan. When I'd looked for one-way flights to the U.S. from Japan 2 months ago, the cheapest I could find was $2,500 each, so I was most nervous about this step. Miraculously, we found tickets for the entire itinerary for less than two grand. Whoo hoo! We'd bought our tickets for our upcoming trip in December from Cheapoair, so I was confident in their ability to provide us with the tickets we wanted. They provided us with more tickets than we wanted. There were so many options. All of them, unfortunately, included an overnight stay on the way back to Japan, because no planes leave Jamaica before 11:00 a.m., and no planes in our price range leave after 5:00 p.m. That meant we could stay at O'Hare in Chicago, JFK in New York, or DFW in Dallas. We looked up all three on a website that rates airports. JFK was voted the dirtiest airport and Chicago got bad marks for friendliness. Dallas didn't have as many amenities as the other two, but it looked the most promising if we were going to have to spend the night on cots in an airport.

I clicked "Buy Ticket" next to the itinerary that included a stop in Dallas, and got a message saying "That ticket is no longer available." Drat. So, I clicked "Buy Ticket" next to the one with a stop in Chicago... same message. Grrrrr. JFK, here we come, ugh... "That ticket is no longer available." WHAT?!?! I tried about 10 flights and all of a sudden, none of them were available. I decided to call the 800 number on Cheapoair's website and see where these tickets suddenly disappeared to.

The friendly phone operator at Cheapoair conducted her business a bit differently than Arol from Sandals had. She made jokes, often at our expense, but there was an amiable tone to our conversation. She congratulated us on our engagement, told us about her mother traveling to South Africa (though I'm not sure why), and joked with us about having to see things for ourselves since we were from "The Show Me State." She did eventually help us find the tickets we wanted in her database. She asked us which flight we wanted and noted that the biggest difference was which airport we'd be staying at. I explained that we'd already researched the three airports and found that JFK was too dirty and Chicago was too mean. Suddenly, her voice lost all of its warmth and friendliness, "What's wrong with New York's airport?" I told her that reviews said that JFK airport was really dirty, and suggested that it probably had more to do with the heavy flow of traffic than anything else. She informed us that she lived 15 minutes from the airport and it was a very nice airport thank you very much.

She then quickly put us on hold, made the reservations, put us on hold a dozen times more, took down our information, and hung up with us. Oops. At least we had our honeymoon all planned out! Or so we thought... When I checked the e-mail confirmation the next morning, I discovered that our friendly phone operator at Cheapoair had reserved a ticket for Dana and Duston. Dustin's name was spelled correctly in all of the Cheapoair customer information, but misspelled with the airline, which meant the ticket was useless for anyone but Duston Asby. NOOOOOOOO!

After speaking with the credit card company and several different men in India for another 3 hours that day, we finally had everything settled. Phew.

In about six months, we'll be flying from Tokyo to Springfield, MO, preparing all the little details I haven't yet anticipated for our wedding, getting married, then flying to Montego Bay, Jamaica for a week, and then flying to Dallas, TX (where we decided to to splurge on a room at the Hilton outside the airport using all the points we'll rack up from our reception), and then finally going back to home sweet home, Japan. It's going to be the busiest, craziest, funnest two weeks of my life. I can't wait! Hooray.

Sado: The Old Japan

I'm on my very first long term business trip. I'm teaching on Sado Island, an island off the coast of Niigata-ken. In total, it will be seven days, six of which I had to/ have to work. I'm half-way through my business trip. So far it's been... まあまあ (so-so). I loooooooove sleeping in a bed. I didn't realize how much I missed a thick mattress until I spent a few nights on one. I like seeing a new place. I like having piping hot rice and green tea ready for me as soon as I get out of bed. I like getting paid $25 a day to go out to eat. BUT, I don't like being awoken at 5:46 a.m. by noisy construction workers almost every morning. I don't like waiting an hour for the next bus, because there are so few. I don't like not knowing where the heck I am or where in the world I'm going. I don't like not being able to cook. So, there are pluses and minuses to business trips. I'm glad there's usually only an opportunity for one a year, but then again, that option is nice, even if I don't take it again.

The best part of the business trip is the free time. My hotel is a 5 minute walk from the classroom, so the time I usually spend traveling is all mine. It's been nice to be all alone for such long uninterrupted time periods. I've been studying Japanese and reading to my heart's content. After two days of blissful alone time, Dustin joined me for the weekend. I take the blame for our weekend being a bit less eventful than we'd both hoped. I researched all of the possible destinations on Sado and chose the ones that seemed most intriguing to me. Once I got to Sado, I took out a map and marked all of the places I wanted to go. At that point, I realized that all of the things I wanted to see were on completely different parts of the island.

Before I got to Sado, I hadn't realized that it was so enormous. It's about twice the size of the greater Springfield area. That might not seem too big, but when you don't have a car or a bike, it's enormous. I suggested renting a power-bike, but the threat of rain caused us to nix that plan. So, we rode the bus everywhere. But the buses only came once an hour or once every 2 or 3 hours. I'm staying in a central area on the west coast of Sado, but even getting to the northwest coast (a mere thumb print on the map) took almost an hour by bus. We quickly realized we had to prioritize our destinations.

Due to indecisiveness and neither of us admitting that we really didn't care about certain tourist spots until halfway there, we changed the plans a lot. In the end, we ended up spending a good portion of day one figuring out which bus routes we'd need to take to get here, there, and everywhere, and didn't actually end up going to all of those places. We did go to a bunya puppet show. A nice little old lady (who we ran into about a billion times after we met her) was explaining the difference between Osaka bunrakyu puppets and Sado bunya puppets and then the show began. I understood very little of the song that accompanied the performance, so I made up my own story. I shared that story with Dustin after the performance and learned that the puppet I deemed the "lover" was actually the mother. That put a very different spin on the story.

After the puppets, we headed to the Sado Gold Mine. There was a modern tunnel and and Edo era (1600-late 1800) tunnel. We took the Edo course. There were really interesting animatronic models of the workers extracting the gold. Kind of cheesy, but surprisingly interesting. The best part of the experience was the brick of gold in a box with hole big enough to stick your arm through. The challenge was to lift the brick of gold. I watched as an endless line of elderly folks (most of the fellow tourists we've encountered on this trip have been well past retirement age) attempted and failed to pick up the brick. I waited for a short break in the line and rushed over to try my turn, hoping that all the push-ups I've been doing lately would help me out, but I couldn't even make it budge. When Dustin entered the room, I rushed him over to have his turn. He impressed me by picking it right up and lifting it pretty high. All the senior citizens were equally impressed.

After we finished at the Gold Mine, we headed into the nearby town of Aikawa to find a festival I'd read about in the map my boss had given me. Sado is famous for oni daiko (people who dress up as demons and play giant drums), and I was told that they are at virtually every festival on the island. Somehow, Dustin and I convinced ourselves that Kodo, a world famous taiko group who is actually from Sado, were also going to be at this festival. Dustin and I have been to our fair share of festivals, usually in Nagaoka. They often include loads of vendors selling food and drinks, multiple parades and performances, and massive crowds. When we got to Aikawa, it was distinctively quiet. Quieter than a normal city would be festival or not. Hmmm... we went into the local conbini, and I used my excellent (sarcasm) Japanese to ask where the festival was. He responded by pointing across the street, and saying with a laugh "that neighborhood." We left with a puzzled look on our faces and crossed the street, trying to find the festival. Dustin's ears perked up when he heard a flute. We started walking quickly towards the sound of the flute. We crossed paths with a group of taiko drummers accompanied by a couple of samurai and what appeared to be either a god or a demon with a white face mask. They were headed to the nearby gas station. We'd been told that the taiko groups in this town play at different houses as a way of asking for donations for the local shrine (kind of like the Aikawa version of trick-or-treating?), but we hadn't expected them to stop at a gas station.

After that performance, we tagged along to the next spot, but it was pretty much the same as the gas station performance, and we were the only people in the group that weren't wearing a matching festival jacket. Plus, we're white. Needless to say, we stuck out. We weren't too keen on being groupies to this particular drumming clan without seeing the rest of the town's offerings. So, we stopped off to watch a beautiful sunset before setting out again to find the center of the festival. We wanted festival food and crowds and maybe a glass of sake.

We walked up and down the streets. We saw the tell tale lanterns that usually denote a festival, but we couldn't find anything resembling a festival we were accustomed to. We'd asked the Japanese Teacher for the Peppy school on Sado if she wanted to join us, but my phone didn't have any reception in Aikawa, so I didn't really know if she would show up or not. Dustin and I were perplexed. We didn't want to keep following the same taiko group all around town. They were going to visit EVERY house after all. We were just standing on a street corner wondering what to do, when Hiromi (the Sado JT) suddenly appeared. She'd seen us standing on this corner and gotten off the bus to join us. We shared our confusion with her, hoping she would have some answers. She grew up on Sado, but she's always lived in Sawata, 15 minutes away by taxi, so she had no idea what the traditions of Aikawa are. She'd never been to this festival. It was shocking to me that two towns so close could have little to do with each other.

Being the helpful Japanese woman she is, Hiromi stopped the first Aikawan she found and asked him for the lowdown on the festival. Now, asking for help in Japan is a risky thing, because some people (especially people of a rather advanced age) will give you far too much help. Dustin and I had experienced that earlier in the day with a nice little old lady who'd overheard us bickering about which bus would take us to Aikawa. She not only pointed us in the direction of the bus, but she made us sit right next to her on the bus and commentated our 30 minute ride together. She told us the names of all the rock formations and frequently asked us questions that were drowned out by the bus's loud effort to make it up the mountainside. We appreciated the help, but it's more work than you realize to keep a grateful smile plastered on your face while trying to think of something appropriate to say in Japanese for half an hour.

The older gentlemen Hiromi was interrogating had obviously been partaking in sake for some time already, so he was even more helpful than he might have been pre-sake. He showed us some pictures of the taiko group he'd taken on his cell phone. He told us all about their route and how all of the taiko groups would meet on the main street in town at 10:00 (wrong), and that the oni daiko would be coming down the street shortly (wrong), and that we could find festival food at the end of that street (wrong). If he had told us these things directly, I could understand how certain ideas could have been lost in translation, but no, he gave all these bits of information to Hiromi, a Japanese woman, in Japanese. And Hiromi, who has spent 3 years in a Canadian university and has been teaching English for over 3 years, has near perfect English. Once we got over the disappointment of not being able to see the oni daiko or eat festival food, we set out in search of any food. We stopped in several izakaiya, but they were all closed on account of the festival, yet there was no one on the streets. It was nearly a ghost town, aside from the distant pounding of drums.

Another helpful older Japanese person directed us to about a million different places that might serve vegetables (since my dietary restrictions were a major factor in where we could eat in Hiromi's eyes), we finally found one that was indeed open. We tried to make our meal last since it was 6:00 and the true climax of the festival where the different taiko groups meet on the main street wasn't until 9:00. Dinner didn't quite last 3 hours, but we stayed there for quite a while before finding a choice spot on the main road, where we waited and waited and waited for the drummers to arrive. People started pouring onto the street out of nowhere. I have no idea where they'd been hiding all this time. Finally, the first group (the one we'd unintentionally been following all night long) showed up.

We asked Hiromi whether the guy with the white face was a demon or a god, but she didn't know, so she went to a nearby shop to inquire. I felt so bad that she was asking all of these questions and then translating just for our benefit. The drunk guy from earlier in the night had even asked if she was our guide... but she is just such a nice and helpful person. We discovered that he was neither a god nor a demon. She said, "He's not such a bad guy, but he has to make it difficult for the gods to pass by." Basically, the purpose of this festival is to raise money to offer to the gods in exchange for a good harvest. The struggle against the guy in the white mask is supposed to represent the idea that good things require a bit of hardship, so at harvest time, everyone must work really hard. We had waited around doing nothing for about 4 hours, but the climax of the festival was worth it.

The guy in the white mask did a really interesting dance, accompanied by the samurai while the other taiko groups tried (and all inevitably succeeded) to push past him. It was so traditional and full of meaning and emotion. Everyone was unbelievably into it, despite the fact that they've seen it every year of their life. After the last group had pushed through, two of the groups seemed to be fighting. We thought it was a part of the performance, until people started moving out of the way and everyone was shouting, but not in a festive manner. I looked up and noticed that the massive fight was moving right towards me, but directly in front of my face was the samurai's blade. AH! Luckily, a more leveled headed drummer broke up the fight. Only one guy showed signs of violence with a cut eye and a bloody shirt, but it was pretty intense.

We went to the Sado Legends Museum today. Sado was the place where Japanese intellectuals were banished in the 8th century. This kitschy museum told the stories of Sado's great legends (an emperor, the priest who popularized Buddhism in Japan, a healer who could make it rain, etc.) through impressively life-like robots. They were really neat.

I like Sado. It's quaint. It's quiet (aside from the two older gents on the other side of hotel room wall, that is). It's traditional. It's really beautiful, especially now that the leaves have just begun to change. I'm enjoying my little mini-vacation. I am increasingly realizing how essential is it for me to leave Nagaoka every once in while, or I will go crazy. I think this means that Nagaoka is not the city I'm intended to live in forever. I wonder if I will ever find that place... I wonder if anyone's attention span has lasted long enough to get to the end of this long-winded post... ごめんね... sorry!

p.s. More new Sado pictures are in the new album, which you can click on at the top right of this page: Sado Living.

わたちたちは日本に一年にいます！ or We've been in Japan for a year! (or at least I think that's what that says)

Yes, we have passed our first year milestone in Japan without much fuss. We had officially been on Japanese soil as of Saturday, September 26. I kind of wanted to celebrate with a one-year anniversary party, but that date happened to coincide with the going away party of two of our friends, so we let it pass by quietly.

Nothing much is new across the ocean. We've had a new prime minister for some time now, but I've seen no noticeable differences. There's a typhoon on its way over here this week, but then again, there was supposed to be a typhoon in August, but that never arrived in Niigata-ken.

It's getting colder, which I don't like, but that means more drinking hot tea and staying in trying to keep warm and just watching movies or reading, which I do like. A friend recently told me that there are more pachinko parlors in Niigata-ken than any other prefecture in Japan, because there isn't really much to do in the winter months. I guess when you get covered in snow walking from your front door to the car (assuming you're lucky enough to have one in those chilly months), there's little motivation to do anything but sit and stare at a machine feeding it tiny balls. Dustin can't wait for the first snow, so he can use his new snowboard (which he will get for his birthday in about a month and a half).

I'm counting down the days until December 17. I can't wait for a visit to the States. I've lived abroad before, but never for more than 6 months. I'm overjoyed to be able to spend 3 weeks at home in December and I can't wait to come back in 5 months for the wedding. Yay! There are a few new pictures in the "Last Days of Summer" album if you want to see what exactly we've been doing since I last posted.

A Trip to the Onsen

Last weekend, Dustin and I went on a little mini-trip. We rode the Banetsu Monogatari, an old steam train that ran from the 1940's until the late 1960's that has been restored and makes two runs a week these days.We went to Aizu-Wakamatsu, a little town in the prefecture to our north. Our final destination was Higashi Yama Onsen Machi (East Mountain Hot Springs Town).

The 3 hour ride to Aizu was quaint. The countryside we passed on the way was beautiful. They held janken (rock, paper, scissors) tournaments in which the winners won little buttons and other souvenirs. I did feel a bit guilty about the environmental consequences of our ride when I saw the black smoke billowing out of the train. I felt even worse when our ride was finished and I saw the men covered in black shoveling coal into the train's bowels.

At the Aizu train station, we found a nice little map with different options for lunch. Most of the choices involved ramen or sushi, which is pretty typical for any Japanese town. At the very bottom of the map, however, as far away as you could get from the station, there was a little icon of a radish. I looked at the key and saw that a radish indicates something to do with vegetables. Dustin knew a few more of the kanji in the description. He determined that this particular restaurant had something to do with earth vegetables. Hmmm... an organic vegetarian restaurant in this small Japanese town? That would be incredible! I haven't seen a single vegetarian restaurant since my time in Japan began.

I warned Dustin that it might be far away and since it was Sunday, it could be closed. But he was nice enough to put those worries aside and accompany me to this potential vegetarian restaurant. From our experience, maps in Japan tend to look a lot bigger than the area they represent. And when you ask for directions, if someone tells you it's a 10 minute walk, it's usually more like 5 minutes. Despite the fact that the restaurant looked like it was about a half-hour walk from the train station, we expected it to be about 10 minutes away.

We set out with our map and walked and walked and walked. It seems this map was accurately scaled. About 25 minutes after we began our trek, we came across the "restaurant" we had been looking for all that time. Only... it wasn't a restaurant. It was a grocery store. Oops. We had passed one of those about 5 minutes from the station. They did have a really yummy pumpkin croquette and a super cheap nashi (Asian pear), but I don't know if it was worth the nearly half-hour walk.

During our journey we explored Aizu and decided that there's not too much there, so we set out immediately for the onsen. The little town where our hotel and onsen was located was up in the mountains. It was so quiet and peaceful. Nothing was there but various onsen, a few shrines, a tiny little grocery store, a liquor store, and curiously, a cork gun shooting range.

Our weekend was full of relaxing. When the cute little Japanese girl in her full kimono and accouterments took our bags to our room at the hotel, she served us a formal tea. After tea, we had a bit of time to enjoy our gorgeous room and win a few prizes at the shooting range before the fancy dinner. I can't even count how many courses were in this meal. Dustin loved it. It was all very traditional Japanese food. I didn't find much on the menu to suit me, but what I did like was very nice. I had brown rice for the first time in Japan. It was the most delicious rice I've ever had. I'm definitely going to try to find some in Nagaoka.

After dinner, we reserved one of the onsen for an hour. Normally, there is a female onsen and a male onsen, and the two sexes don't mix, but at our hotel, you could pay a bit extra and be alone with your partner for a while. It was really romantic and completely peaceful. We spent most of our time in the outside portion of the onsen. The nights are starting to get cool, so it was really lovely to feel the cool breeze and be in this piping hot, fresh water surrounded by trees and a stream and nature in general.

We had a long night's rest on very comfy futons (which were magically put out for us when we returned from dinner). In the morning, the breakfast we were served was enormous. It was pretty strange to have so many vegetables for breakfast, but it was filling and tasty, so I have no complaints. We had just enough time for one little dip in the onsen before check-out. I guess most people take their morning bath before breakfast, because both Dustin and I had our onsen to ourselves. While I was sitting outside under a little gazebo looking around at the trees and listening to the birds, I felt truly alone for the first time in about a year. Japan is so full of people that it's really difficult to find a place to be by yourself. Since we moved to the busiest corner of Nagaoka, I hear people out and about at every hour of the day and night. Even if I am alone, I don't quite feel like I am. It was incredibly calming to just sit in that water and be.

But alas, the relaxation had to come to an end eventually. We checked out, but had a few hours before our train left, so we decided to explore Higashi Yama Onsen Machi a bit more. We climbed up the steep stairs to find an uncared for shrine covered in bugs and mold. There was a playground in the yard that looked like it hadn't been used for a decade. We also saw gigantic spiders on our walk around town. Dustin was taking a picture of one and he told me to put my hand by the web for scale. I cautiously obliged, but he felt that my hand was not close enough to the spider, so he pushed it a little closer, and then closer still, and then too close. My hand hit the web and sent the spider into a fury. When I saw him move, I ran. It was terrifying.

During our adventure around Aizu the day before, we'd passed a Thai restaurant that was closed at the time, but I'd written down the phone number and confirmed that they were open for lunch Monday. We planned on lunching there before our train left. I was so excited for some yummy Thai food. After figuring out which bus to take to get to the center of town, we got off near the restaurant, sat down, and were given the options for lunch: chicken or fish. We explained that I was a vegetarian and asked if there was anything besides these two options, and the waitress said, "No. At lunch, everyone orders this one or this one." Wah. So, we didn't have Thai after all. We ate at a cheap chain Italian fast food place that was tasty, but not Thai.

I was jonesing for some ice cream, and I saw soft serve in about 4 or 5 shops along the street, so we set off in search of the perfect cone. I didn't really want plain vanilla, but that's all we could find, so I settled on it. It was a tasty treat, but I still wished I had found something more exciting. After my ice cream, we decided to head towards the station to catch our train. We got about one block from the shop where I'd bought my ice cream when we found a café that offered very interesting soft serve: black sesame, sweet potato, green tea, edamame, and others. I cursed myself for settling on vanilla. I had been wanting to try black sesame seed soft serve since I heard of its existence in Japan, but I'd never come across it in Japan. Dustin wanted to try one of these crazy ice creams, so we went inside. Knowing how strong my desire to taste the black sesame flavor was, he ordered it. Just outside the shop, he took a lick. He didn't like it. I took a lick. I didn't like it. Well, we tried it.

All in all, a very nice little weekend full of food and baths. I came back quite relaxed, but I wish it could have lasted longer. Luckily, a few Japanese holidays line up nicely this year to create the rare "Silver Week." We have a four day weekend starting Sunday! Dustin is going camping on the beach, but it's way to cold for me. Instead, I am going to join two of my friends, who are Muslim, in celebrating the end of Ramadan by eating some yummy Syrian food at their feast. Other than that, I see lots of sleeping, reading, and movie watching in my near future. It's been an extremely busy summer, and I could definitely use a vacation spent almost entirely in my apartment.

You can see some pictures of our weekend by clicking on the new photo album at the right!