I Hate It When This Happens...

It's too hard to decide where to start for this week's adventures, but I guess the beginning would make sense. I had my last class with my other elementary school this week and it was sad. The school system in Japan is slightly different than the school system in America. First of all, the school year starts in April and finishes in March; that's why I'm finishing a lot of my schools right now. There is a pre-school/kindergarten type school that kids can go to followed by six years of elementary school (grades 1-6). After elementary school, there are three years in junior high school (they call them junior high 1, 2, and 3) and three years in high school (they call them high school 1, 2, and 3). In Japanese it's pretty easy to follow, but I still like the whole K-12 names a lot better. Anyways, the last grade of each school has a special graduation; Emily spoke about how they do things in high school in last week's post. I'll speak about some of the other graduations as I experience them. Just before the school year ends, the last grade hosts a meeting called a "shionkai," which is a special meeting where the last grade students (elementary sixth year, junior high third year, and high school third year students) give thanks to all of the teachers at the school. I had the opportunity to go to one of these shionkais at one of my elementary schools because I taught the sixth year students. Here are some highlights...

Each class prepared a game or activity. This video has the losers (5 teachers) and some students (to make the teachers feel better) dancing and lip-syncing to a famous girl band's song. It was pretty funny to watch, and I'm glad I didn't lose.

The first thing we did was eat. It may not look very appetizing because it's all still wrapped up in saran wrap, but it was awesome! We had fried chicken, oinari sushi, melon flavored bread (melon pan), fried potatoes, fried shrimp, yummy salad, fruit salad, and some other stuff. My table was the only table that ate all of their food including all of the parsley. We had a kid at our table that loved parsley... and it wasn't me. :P

These are some of my kids. They are so cute! Anyways, part of the game this class did was hold up a picture of the back of someone's head and we had to guess who's head it was out of two kids. One of the teachers who was almost bald stood up to answer and said, "that was me when I was in elementary school!"

Every Friday the missionaries hold a Family Home Evening at the Church for anyone that wants to come (members, investigators, etc.). We would go every week, but sometimes it conflicts with date night. :) Anyways, this past Friday they held a special Musical Family Home Evening which ended up being a musical talent show. Emily and I were asked to perform something. We played a really short song that was pretty goofy. Although our gig wasn't that great, Emily accompanied two of the other performances. It was a really fun night!

This is Emily accompanying Papa Haga. He played "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" on the sax. 

This is Emily accompanying a quartet singing "Nearer My God to Thee."

This was the last act in the Musical Talent Show. Steve played conductor and split up the crowd into three parts; the drums (clickity-clack-clack), the sopranos (m'm-toot-toot), and the basses (m'm-beef-stew). If you watch the video, you'll understand. ;)

We had some spare time on Saturday, so we decided to go window shopping. One of the shops we went to was a pet shop. We were walking around and I heard a voice say "ohaio" (means good morning). I looked around and the only person around was Emily and I know she didn't say anything. I told Emily, "I think this bird just said ohaio to me." She came over and we tried talking to it. It eventually responded "arigato." Emily was cracking up. (Emily's note: I swear that bird spoke better Japanese than I do...ridiculous.) We should have taken a video of it, but for some reason it escaped our minds. How cool would it be to own a bird that speaks Japanese?

This has nothing to do with our window shopping adventures, but I'm going to put it here anyways. This is March's bulletin board that Emily put together. She changes it every month at school. So pretty!

Today marks a year from the time Japan had the major earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku area of Japan. Since we live in the Tohoku area, we are constantly hearing about it. Today we were invited to a special Hawaiian and Hula Concert that was put on to help ease people's minds and hearts. As the concert started, we had a minute of silence for those that had passed on from the disaster a year ago. Here are some pictures and videos from the concert (sorry for the poor quality).

No, this is not Emily with an awesome tan. Just outside the concert hall were a bunch of booths set up with Hawaiian gear. This was one of the dresses that Emily really liked. 

The concert was about 2.5 hours long and featured local hula groups as well as some people from Hawaii like Makaha Sons, Jeri-Lynn Koko, Shadow Koko, and Anthony Kawenaulaokala Mann.

Short video of almost all the pros performing together. It's hard to see, but the Makaha Sons are singing and playing while Shadow and Jeri-Lynn Koko are dancing.

On the way home, it started hailing/sleeting/raining pretty heavily. We decided to bike home anyways holding our umbrellas in one hand. Although we were still getting a little wet and getting really cold, we hung in there... until... the wind destroyed Emily's beautiful umbrella. I tried offering my umbrella, but she said she was already soaked. By the time she answered, I was already soaked too, so we just rode home in the sleet and got drenched. I would say that it was fun, but it wasn't... :P We did make it home safely and all of our clothes are hanging up in front of the heater trying to dry.

I hate it when this happens... 

We love you all very much and hope that you will have a good week! Stay tuned for our upcoming adventures at the slopes!

Singing Ourselves Silly...or Sick

On Monday for Family Home Evening this week, James and I tried karaoke for the first time together. Wow, we have been missing out.

The karaoke bar we went to was in the basement of a very dingy, somewhat smelly, building and (thanks to my mother's germ phobia), I kept telling James, "Don't touch anything! There is disease everywhere here!" Turns out I was right, but I'll expound on that later. When I learned that there was all-you-can-drink hot chocolate for only 100yen, I forgot all about germs.

We had a blast serenading each other on what ironically was our year-and-a-half anniversary. (Yes, we are still newlyweds and can celebrate things like that.)

It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to use the machine (all in Japanese) and to find the English songs. But once we did, there was no stopping us.

Hot chocolate!

Sorry, bad quality. Does it adequately capture his excitement? James was such a good sport. And a rather good singer, too.

Well, apparently the excitement of karaoke was too much for poor James (either that or he didn't obey my orders not to touch anything) because he came down with the flu a couple days later. It was...violent. I will spare you the gruesome details, but I have never seen my poor hubby so sick. I did think it was noble of him to cut down on our grocery bill by eating only applesauce for a couple days. Fortunately, he is feeling much better now.

This week was graduation at my base school. Graduation in Japan is an extremely solemn ceremony. There is a lot of standing up, bowing, sitting down. And the gym was FREEZING! Cheese whiz, sometimes I really wish there was such a thing as central heating...or any kind of heating. Anyway, below is a picture of one of my favorite students, Kana. She graduated this week. I will miss her a lot, but James will be teaching at her college, so hopefully we will stay in touch.

And a bit of random baking. These look really foul, but I promise they aren't too bad. They are called butterscotch haystacks. Chow mein noodles, peanuts, raisins, and chocolate chips coated with melted butterscotch chips and peanut butter. James says, "They're all right." Of course, if you asked James how he feels about his wife, he would probably say, "She's all right." I never really know what he means with that phrase...that's probably his tactic.

Anyway, here's wishing you a happy week. Love to all our family and friends!

I'm Getting Old...

As I sit here trying to figure out what to say, I can’t help but reflect on the good life I’ve had. I feel justified now that I’m 26 to use phrases like that. I can’t think of many things that have happened this week. But one of the highlights was my birthday…

Saturday (my birthday) was awesome. We got to bike around the town a bunch and visit some pretty cool places.  We went to one place called IImoriyama. I have been there before, but it was fun to go with Sue. It is the resting place of 19 young Samurai soldiers.  Iimoriyama was the place where they kept watch of the castle here in Aizu from afar. When they saw the castle smoking some hundreds of years ago, they ended up killing themselves. To the Samurai, it was better to kill yourself then surrender to the enemy. I know it all sounds gloomy but it was a very beautiful place. They have a shrine that has a double helix walk way going up to the top floor that was pretty cool too. One of the things that Sue found really interesting was the insects. We found some pretty big spiders there. After taking our time up in the mountain looking at the various shrines, grave stones, and beautiful scenery, we biked around to find a good place for lunch. We found this awesome restaurant (I couldn’t read what the name was) and had some pretty amazing food. I ordered sauce katsudon which is one of the famous dishes here in Aizu and Emily ordered some kind of Karaage which is breaded chicken. When hers came out, the chicken was in a dish above a small flame. It was really cool to see. After lunch we were able to take our time biking around and relaxing the rest of the day.

This is the entrance to Iimoriyama. Lots and lots of stairs.

There were quite a few shrines like this one.

The love of my life standing on a little bridge...  So pretty!

I was told that this is a one of a kind shrine. It has a double helix stairway inside... one side to go up to the top and the other side to walk down.

Not sure who's graves these are... but there were a lot of them. Just beyond the graves was an awesome view of Aizu Wakamatsu.

This is kind of a memorial of one of the Samurai looking towards the castle.

These are some of the grave stones of the 19 young Samurai that committed suicide after they found out that the castle had been overtaken.

This was Emily's yummy Karaage dish. Just underneath the dish was a flame to keep things nice and warm.

Apparently my hungry face... That sauce katsudon was dang good!

Pretty ant. I know it's hard to tell, but some of the ants here are about 10 times the size of ants in the states.

Sorry for the blurry picture... The spiders here are weird. They are very colorful but thankfully not as big as tarantula.

On Sunday, Emily gave her first talk in church on Family Home Evening. It was really good (no surprise there). It was really funny when she got the assignment to speak. The other counselor in the branch presidency gave me a slip of paper that was written in Japanese to give to Emily and told me that he wanted Emily to speak in a few weeks and that English was ok. When I gave Emily the paper, the only part she could read was “English OK.” She had mixed emotions about giving a talk where most of the people wouldn’t understand so she ended up making it an easy-to-understand talk and had me help her with the translation. She did an excellent job and there were many people that said her Japanese was perfect. She has been studying so hard and I am very proud of how quickly she is learning the language; it’s so much fun!

Well, although I didn’t write about too many different events, things continue to be busy here with work and church activities. We love you all lots and appreciate your prayers for our safety!

Trip to Tokyo and More

I know that everyone is anxiously waiting to read this post… It was a pretty packed week full of fun adventures. We both thought it might be fun to switch off writing these posts every other week, so this week I (James) will do my best to share our experience.

--  Trip to Tokyo- This past weekend was our one- year anniversary. We had a blast sharing some of it with an older couple from Arizona, Steve and LaNae Nugent. We drove down to Tokyo together in their car. Steve was a little worried about getting lost on the way, especially since this was their first time driving to Tokyo. He asked me to man the passenger seat and navigate. Unfortunately, I had never driven to Tokyo either. However, due to technology and their nice little GPS, we were guided by a British woman’s voice the 4.5 hour trip down to the hotel. We had a fun time, eating various Japanese snacks and listening to the GPS and were amazed with the accuracy of it. Even on the way back, I remember it telling us, “Traffic congestion ahead in 10 kilometers due to burning vehicle.” Sure enough, 10 km down the road there was a vehicle that looked like it had just been put out by fire extinguishers. We were impressed, to say the least. We stayed at a hotel called the Prince Park Tower Tokyo not to far from Tokyo Tower. We got there fairly late Friday night and were actually really exhausted from the drive. The hotel was super nice and our room was awesome. We thought the toilet was pretty funny because it let out water every time you sat on it to help disguise other noises… haha. Anyways, we got up early the next morning and went to a breakfast buffet on the hotel’s 33^rd floor and had a great view. After that we checked out and explored our way to the Tokyo Temple. It took us about 20 minutes to get there walking and riding the train. We were trying to make one of the sessions, but barely missed the time. They only have four sessions on Saturday so we ended up doing some sealings. We felt that it was pretty appropriate because that’s what we did exactly the year before. Although the ordinances were in Japanese, we were still able to feel of the Spirit that dwells at the temple. And all we had to say was “hai,” which means “yes” in Japanese. After our time at the temple, we decided to try and walk back to our hotel and made it there in about 30 minutes. We passed a few cool places which included the Australian Embassy. We got back to the hotel and had something called “tendon” for lunch. There were some new things in there that weren’t quite expected. “Tendon” is short for “Tempura donburi” (I hope most of you have heard of “Tempura.” “Donburi” means meal in a bowl.). With the tendon we had miso soup with clams in it which was surprisingly tasty. At the end of lunch we looked around in some of the hotel’s shops and then sent LaNae off on a bus to the airport. She is now enjoying a new grandchild in Mississippi and will return back to Japan the second week of October.

Steve and LaNae Nugent.

Crazy toilets in Japan. They have all these different buttons for the bidet and for making noise.. so weird.

The awesome switch in our room to open/shut the curtains in our room.

The view from our room.

Us on the balcony of our room.

This is tendon. It was really good! Although, the little critter that you see at the top left with long skinny legs was an interesting one to eat.

Yay for the Tokyo Temple!

      --  Teaching at the Elementary level- I was able to start teaching at an elementary school this last week. It was a lot of fun as I team taught with the teacher that I was replacing. For this job, I actually teach at two different elementary schools, Matsunaga and Monden elementary schools. I will be teaching three hours a week for each school, one on Tuesday and the other Thursday. It seems to me that they want me to make English fun so that the kids get excited about it. I really don’t know exactly how things are going to run so I’ll have to keep you posted. Most of the 6^th graders I teach were saying how cool I was (nothing new of course… j/k). Anyways, I was able to receive a little instruction from my predecessor and some from one of the teachers that I will be working with. From what I can tell so far, I think it is going to be a very rewarding experience working with the kids and getting to know them.

      --  Cooking adventures- Tuesday night we were able to invite over another JET teacher that Emily knew and one of his friends. It was nice to have people over to eat in our small apartment and was even more fun making the food. Emily decided that she wanted to make Katsu Curry. It’s actually one of my favorite meals. Katsu, also known as tonkatsu, is like a deep-fried breaded pork cutlet. It was a success, thank goodness, so we didn’t have to run to the ramen shop or somewhere else instead. It’s not that I had any doubts; it’s just that I heard from other people that it is a real pain to cook it.  Anyways, it turned out beautifully and was a lot cheaper than going to a restaurant to eat it. The friends that came over enjoyed and we decided that we would have to do it again very soon.

      --  Emily’s Birthday- So a couple weeks ago, we went out with the Nugents and Chizuko to this Indian Curry place. We wrote about it last week, but Emily liked it so much, that she wanted to go back there for her birthday. So on Emily’s birthday eve, I went to go pick up her present from the store and went by this really big dollar store. I decided to go in because I wanted to see what they had. I was able to find quite a few things that I thought might make Emily smile. They included a paper organizer, a birthday head band, birthday banner, and heavy duty scissors. What she really asked for was a paper cutter, so I got her that too. I tried my best to keep the birthday spirit alive and well, so I strategically gave her a present at different times in the day (in the morning, lunch time, when she got home from work, before we went to bed). We ended up enjoying the Indian Curry place again. If anyone comes to visit, we will take you there. Right after eating dinner, we went to Family Home Evening at the Church. For some reason they do it on Friday nights, but we were asked to prepare the message and lesson. We ended up speaking about the different gifts that Heavenly Father has blessed us with, more specifically the spiritual gifts. It was a fun day and was nice to bask in each other’s company.

      --  Volunteering- Yesterday, we went with about 40 other JET teachers to volunteer at a children’s home in Fukushima City about an hour and a half away. We played softball and dodge ball with about 30 kids ranging from about 5 to 17 years old. A lot of the teachers are from places like England, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and South Africa, so most of them didn’t know how to play softball. That was an interesting experience listening to the Japanese people trying to explain the game. We split up between Japanese and foreigners and every time someone on the foreigner team got out, they wondered why. The Japanese people explained it to them only after they had gotten out. It was really funny. Then we ended up going inside and eating Curry with all of the kids. It was nice to talk to someone of them. A lot of the kids spent time on various JET teacher’s shoulders or backs and played simple English games with them. Everyone had a blast. I was able to talk to the man in charge of the children’s home and ask him if there were places like where we were in Aizu Wakamatsu. He said that there were and gave me some contact information, so I’m looking forward to checking out some of the children’s homes closer to us. At the very end of our time, the boss man gathered all of the JET teachers together and told him how grateful he was for their service. Many of the children had never had contact with a foreigner before, so it was really nice. Just from all the teachers donating money, they raised 34,000 yen which is close to like $450. Not bad for around 40 people donating. It sounds like the JET people want to do it again in the future, so we look forward to that opportunity.


Well, I know that other things have happened this past week. Things to look forward to is a video of our apartment, more about the school’s that Emily teaches at, and whatever other adventures lie ahead of us this week. We love you all lots and pray that you are all doing well.

Let the Adventures Begin!

You know, they say there are four phases of culture shock. The first is Honeymoon, which I don’t really think needs an explanation. Phase two is Hostility, where all food, people, and smells related to the foreign environment are utterly repulsive. Phase three is Humor, my personal preference. And phase four is called simply Home.

 Well, we heard a lot about culture shock before coming here, but no one warned me that it’s possible to experience all four phases simultaneously and to morph into some kind of manic-depressive monster. But it is, indeed, very possible. It’s just a good thing that James has such a stable personality and doesn’t mind hysterical laughing one minute and having snot and mascara stains all over his t-shirt the next. Ah, culture shock, you keep my husband on his toes.

 There are so many of you that we would love to keep in touch with that we figured a blog was an easy and fun way to do it. And this way, we won’t bombard you with mass emails that you may or may not want to read. We promise to post an update every week - Sunday for us; Saturday for most of you.

 As most of you know, James and I applied for the JET Program back in November 2010. It was a long wait, but we finally found out in June 2011 that I got the job and had been placed in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima, Japan, which was actually James’s first area on his mission. So we packed our two bags, left our beloved Hawaii, said goodbye to family, and came to Japan at the beginning of August.

 So much has happened in the last month that it is hard to fit it all into a blog post that anyone would want to read all the way through. I will try and give the top 20 or so highlights from our experience so far:

*We survived our first trip away from each other since being married. I spent a few days in Tokyo for a JET Program orientation and James stayed in California for an extra week. We are happy to be together again, and so grateful that we are able to have this adventure together. 

*James has already found two English teaching jobs (one at a technical college and one at an elementary school) and is looking into volunteering with an organization called Smile Kids Japan. The organization takes volunteers to visit orphanages in their area and assess the needs and plan fun activities for the kids. 

*I experienced my first international haircut. A picture of Meg Ryan's hair is truly worth a thousand words when it comes to trying to communicate with a Japanese hairdresser. 

*We toured the Tsurugajo castle, one of the bragging points of our city. The castle grounds have an almost reverent feel to them. It was like being instantly transported away from the city life and into the countryside. The inside of the castle has been turned into a museum, and the top level was a lookout where we got a great view of the city and could actually spot our apartment.

*We discovered the 75 uses of baking soda, and have been putting some of them to the test. It's reminds me of Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

*We had our first (and hopefully last!) round of food poisoning. Note to self: don't buy discounted yakisoba, and nothing is safe on or past the expiration date. I haven't done any research on this, but I don't think the Japanese believe in food preservatives like Americans do, which really is a good thing once you learn to shop and eat like them. Most people here go grocery shopping every one or two days, and have very small refrigerators and other appliances.

*I figured out how to use the hot water! (It's complicated, ok?) We also figured out the rice cooker, the stove, the air conditioner, the toaster oven, etc. They are all written in Japanese. We don't have an oven, so if anyone out there has any recipes for cooking with a rice cooker or toaster oven, please let us know!

*Earthquakes have rocked our world (literally) almost every day. I think we have gotten used to it for the most part, but every once in a while, there is a "big" one that makes our hearts pound. Fortunately, our branch Relief Society president is so on top of things and she took us around to find supplies for our 72-hour kits.

The branch Relief Society president (left) and another American sister in the branch (right)

*We figured out the garbage system (well, mostly James. I still prefer to just hand him my garbage so that he can agonize over which of the four or five containers to throw it in).

*James bought a bike and I got one from my school, so we have been taking morning bike rides all over to explore town on our mamacharis. Biking is definitely the way to go around here.

*We met some of our neighbors. When James introduced himself to the lady beneath us, he said, "Hello, my name is James." She replied with, "I'm 87 years old!" It made us laugh. We still don't know her name. 

*We found the Church building and the branch members are really sweet. Lots of them remember James from his mission and are really excited to have him back for a whole year. In fact, they snagged him as soon as they could for a calling and set him apart as the second counselor in the branch presidency. A humbling calling for both of us, but he will do great. The branch already adores him. The missionaries hold English class on Wednesdays and Family Home Evening on Fridays, so we have had lots of fun getting involved with the members and investigators that way. We are so blessed to have a Church family wherever we go.

Weekly English class taught by the missionaries

*I started work the day after I arrived in Fukushima. School won’t start for a couple more weeks, so I have had plenty of time to study Japanese, write lesson plans, and make friends with the other teachers. I'm hoping things pick up a bit when school starts, but the students and teachers I have met so far are great. 

A brass band concert that my students invited us to. Sorry about the quality of all the pictures - we will try to do better in the future!

The English bulletin board I get to decorate every month

*We joined the Aizu Wakamatsu International Association and signed up for the fall semester of Japanese classes. 

*We planned our first trip to the Tokyo temple for this weekend. We will be making the five-hour drive to Tokyo tonight with a great American couple in our branch who offered to take us. More on that next week.

*We spent some time rearranging our apartment and making it more “our own.” I couldn’t be happier with our tiny place. Not much space, but lots of charm. 

*We have tried our hand at Japanese cuisine. Yakisoba, curry, stir-fry, cream and hayashi stew, miso soup, gyoza, somen, fried rice, eggs and rice, rice with sauce, rice without sauce, rice coming out our ears…you get the picture.

*We found an awesome Indian restaurant and had nan and chicken curry the other day. Parents, friends, teachers, mentors, husband, how have I lived this long without knowing about nan and chicken curry? I’m salivating just typing about it. We have also been to a few other restaurants including a cute Japanese ramen shop where took off our shoes when we came in and sat on pillows on the floor. 

*We discovered the joy of hyaku-en stores, the Japanese dollar store equivalent. Kitchen utensils, shoes, picture frames, food, the hyaku-en has it all. And for the most part, it is all really good quality. 

*We survived (and loved, I might add) a whole year of each other. Our anniversary is coming up tomorrow, and we are happy to be able to celebrate our life together in the same place it officially started - the temple. (Granted, this temple is thousands of miles across the ocean from that other temple, but you get the point!) Happy anniversary James!