Children's Day

Today is Children's Day in Japan. It's one of the holidays making up Golden Week this week which means no school for us! All the neighbors have hung these carp shaped koinobori flags. It used to be called Boys Day but they changed it to include girls. It's one of those Japanese things that they make seem like it's very traditional and ancient but really was started by the government in 1948. Here are some of the koinobori from around our town.

Meanwhile, we're in the thick of trying to get rid of stuff here and tie up loose ends while meanwhile starting to think about getting things set up back home. Less than 3 weeks now!

Cherry Blossoms and Magnolias

Japanese luncheon

Our adult ESL students had us over for a luncheon. Here's the spread we encountered when we walked in.

There was fruit, pickled vegetables, homemade bread, tofu, tempura and plenty of beer and wine.


Sashimi


Maki sushi


We were really drawn to the host's garden.


John with our host.

She does "sado" (tea ceremony) so she whisked us up an amazing cup of matcha in lovely chawans (tea bowls).



Our host's house was a beautiful old labyrinth of fusuma doors and shoji screens, scrolls and sculptures with tatami mats everywhere. What a lovely afternoon we had.


It seems anyone who lives in Japan encounters questions like, "Can you use chopsticks?" and "Can you sit Japanese style?". These are strange for 2 reasons. 1) They're assuming they're the only ones who use chopsticks or sit on the floor when lots of the world does those things. 2) It shows how they see us as almost another species who may not be able to do the same basic things they do every day. But they're just so sweet, naive and well meaning about it all. They're just curious and want to make sure we're comfortable.

Mountain Walk: Part 2

In Part 1, I showed the nice parts of this walk. Here I'll show the not so nice. We told you we live in the "real Japan".

In Japan they really love their nature but what they love more is controlling it.

All the way up the mountain a stream flows next to the road. They've paved under the entire thing. They're also currently paving under the big river that flows into the lake. Next they'll pave under the lake!

Here's where the guys are always burning garbage.

Here's where people just dump their garbage.

This appears to be where people open their car doors and ditch their McDonalds wrappers.

It just feels wrong to garden so near the cemetery.

Along the way one must be careful not to fall into the gaijin trap gutters.

It's mostly a lovely town but if you go back up into it a ways this is the kind of thing you'll find. Random garbage dumps. Abandoned cars and shacks. If I could vote here, I'd be asking the politicians (who have recently been riding around in vans waving their white gloved hands out the windows and blaring messages over loudspeakers) about these spots. Also, we can't understand why they don't bury their power lines - they muck up the mountain vistas.

Most days all we notice is the beautiful (like cherry blossoms and Mt. Fuji views) but some days it's the ugly things like these that stand out.

Mountain Walk: Part 1

About 4 times a week I walk up the mountain while reading my book (just finished The Corrections by Franzen) . Here are some of the lovely things I see.

Daffodils at my school.

These flowers at the neighbors'.

Jizo statues.

There are a few cemeteries scattered about.

Soon I feel the air get cooler and I know I've come to the little stream and this mini-shrine. Power spot!

The houses and their topiary look like this.

There's an old guy who tinkers on his bonsai in his little makeshift greenhouse. Cute elderly couples head up into the mountains, maybe to collect mountain vegetables.

Rice paddies.

A cute resting area.

The High School. Every day of the week uniformed teenagers come and go along this road.

Sakura (ok, only for these 2 weeks or so).

Another little neighborhood mini shrine.

Sometimes I loop back through Akimiya Shrine.

I like to see this little pond there.

It's about an hour walk up and back - perfect for some exercise and fresh air. People from this area can be a little standoffish; maybe it's the mountains factor. Not many people initiate a greeting with me but if I say "konnichiwa" they're obligated to respond in return. I force a lot of people into interacting with me in this way - I play on their politeness :)

Psst - these are the good parts of my mountain walk. See Part 2 for the bad bits.

Tempura Thursday

Yeah, we know Tempura Tuesday would sound better, but that's not how it went down. When we do tempura, we go all out. No use in stinking up the kitchen and making a mess with the oil if you're not going to get serious about it.

We've been calling the green leaves "sesame leaves", but some searching makes it sound like they're perilla or shiso in Japanese. Basically, it's Japanese basil. It seems like whenever we get tempura at restaurants this is always one of the bits you get.

We laugh now at our horrible attempts at tempura before we came to Japan. We're no experts now but we know enough to use ice water when making the batter and not make it too thick. We're not making onion rings - although, in a sense, we are, aren't we? Yummy!


We're obsessed with this tempura paper that we buy at the dollar store which soaks up the oil. Also at Daiso we buy oil filter papers so we can clean and reuse our oil. Brilliant.

The sauce we make is just a basic tempura sauce, but it tastes like Japan to us now. I think it's this recipe. Japanese sauces are really sweet. We use a vegetarian dashi stock bouillon cube we get at the organic store the next town over.

We're always kind of subconsciously hoarding ingredients that people have brought or sent us or that we've bought in a big city. But now that we're leaving much earlier than we thought we're pushed to try to use these things up over the next few weeks. I have an almost full bottle of blackstrap molasses, so in that vein, I made ginger snaps and these gingerbread scones (with carob chips and orange flavored cranberries (thanks Gina!).

Homecation

Due to a confluence of circumstances (none related to radiation) we will be leaving Japan at the end of May and moving back to our home town. We were expecting to stay another year but things changed quickly and we had to roll with it. Now that the decision is made and tickets purchased we're excited to enjoy our last 5 weeks in Japan seeing, doing, buying and eating things we haven't gotten to yet. Mostly though we're excited that we'll be home this summer. After being here for 16 months going home seems like a vacation - homecation?!

We want to thank our family and friends back home for not forgetting about us. Check out the wall o' love now! We can't wait to hug you all soon.

It's getting warmer and we're almost ready to put the kerosene heaters away. Also, the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. John got a few shots last weekend in Matsumoto.

If you or anyone you know wants to apply for our jobs this is our company's website:
http://web.me.com/go_global_with_atoz/atozALT/Welcome.html
They're a great, small company. Our jobs are easy and close by (John recently changed jobs) and our 2 storey house is gorgeous, frankly. We're hoping they find some cool people to replace us to hang out with our awesome friends here.