Konnichiwa

We've been in Japan for a little over a week now, and we've already seen so much! We spent the first few days in Nagoya, the third largest city in Japan. We had a few days to unwind and de-jet lag. There's quite a bit to see in Nagoya, but we only had a short time to do it, so we picked a few sights to see. My favorite was the Shirotori Gardens, a Japanese stroll garden with a lovely pond full of carp. The best part of the day was spent sitting at the steps leading to the pond watching the carp glide over each other to get to the food pellets we'd throw into the water.

There are a plethora of shrines and temples in Japan and Nagoya itself, so we picked one of each to see. The craziest part of the day was spent in PARCO, a depaato ("department store"). This is a three building mega-mall. Needless to say, it was overwhelming. One unexpected sight we saw was a massive protest. There was a horde of people taking up an entire lane of traffic, holding signs and chanting, "We want pure love." A Japanese news reporter and her cameraman approached us as we were gazing at the crowd. Apparently, they asked us what we thought of pure love. Since we didn't know what pure love is, and she couldn't tell us in English, we couldn't answer. We've asked around, but no one seems to know what this movement is all about.

We've been in Takasaki since last Tuesday night. It's not as big as Nagoya, but we've managed to have a bit of fun. We went to our first izakaya, the traditional Japanese bar and tapas-like restaurant. We also tried karaoke with a few of the other trainees. Last night, we found a genuine noodle shop full of locals. Though there wasn't a word of English or a picture of the food (which I normally rely on) in the building, we managed to convey our orders and had a wonderful meal. I've been struggling to find vegetarian food since just about everything in Japan has beef extract if not meat itself in it. It was nice to have some authentic Japanese food that was truly vegetarian.

We also had the chance to go to Isesaki, Springfield's Sister City. We spent Saturday in training there since our trainer, Yukiko, has lived there for eight years and Peppy Kids Club has a classroom there. It's a nice little city. We tried to find similarities between it and Springfield, but the closest we came was comparing the industrial side of the town to JQH Tower and the surrounding buildings near downtown. The best parts of Isesaki in my opinion were the Indian restaurant Yukiko took us to and the construction barriers in the shape of frogs.

Training has been intense. They're throwing a vast amount of information at us in a series of long days. Before our days off on Sunday and Monday, we'd had pretty much zero free time. Our first day of teaching was Friday. We each taught one class. Dustin had a rough class, but my group was pretty good. My hope that Japanese children would be better behaved was dashed. They're pretty genki (wild, rambunctious, ect.). We have three more teaching days and two more training days until training is over. I've been told that life gets easier once you're through with training. I can't wait!